Opinion An official U S history revealed a Cold War nuclear scare Now back to the vault washingtonpost com opinions 2022 10 16 cold-war-government-secrets-nuclear-weapons By the Editorial Board October 16 2022 at 7 00 a m EDT President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in November 1985 in Geneva AFP Getty Images There are good reasons for the government to keep secrets such as protecting sources and methods in intelligence work Yet it is critical to maintain public confidence in the process Keeping secrets is a form of “trust us ” An Oct 4 ruling by U S District Judge James E Boasberg undermines that trust The ruling protects the secrecy of an entire document even though it was already made public — by the government In February 2021 the State Department released a volume in the Foreign Relations of the United States or FRUS concerning U S -Soviet relations from January 1983 through March 1985 This was an important period in the Cold War during which President Ronald Reagan 1 4 accused the Soviet Union of being an “evil empire” and Soviet leaders were rattled by a NATO nuclear weapons command exercise “Able Archer 83 ” Although it was known that the Soviet leadership experienced a “war scare” in the fall of 1983 the FRUS volume revealed a heightened round-the-clock Soviet alert in the fighterbomber divisions of forces stationed in East Germany and Poland They were ordered to load nuclear bombs on one squadron of aircraft in each regiment and aircraft were placed at “readiness 3 ” meaning a 30-minute alert Among the disclosures is a retrospective memo from Lt Gen Leonard Perroots who served as assistant chief of staff for intelligence U S Air Forces Europe during the 1983 exercise and director of the Defense Intelligence Agency from 1985 to 1989 At the end of his DIA tour he wrote the memo to record his disquiet over what had happened In the FRUS volume the text of his memo was published for the first time with only slight redactions The National Security Archive a nonprofit research group at George Washington University that has used the Freedom of Information Act to explore government decision-making sought the original of Gen Perroots’s memo in a FOIA lawsuit saying the memo was already public in the official history The CIA released a cover letter but insisted the original must remain secret in its entirety saying disclosure could “reveal specific intelligence activities sources and methods that are either still actively in use or which remain viable for use today ” In considering the case Judge Boasberg said he received a classified submission from the CIA He ruled that the Perroots memo must remain entirely secret saying the CIA was “not properly involved in the document’s disclosure ” for reasons that are — well secret The judge said his analysis was “admittedly cryptic ” The FRUS volume says it was subject to an extensive four-year declassification review process Given this how could the CIA have not been “properly involved” The process seems to have faltered This is not a leak but an official history The Russians could have easily read the memo in FRUS If a small part of the memo needed to be redacted to protect sources and methods a common practice better to do that and release the rest Unfortunately the entire FRUS volume has now been taken offline by the State Department’s Office of the Historian The State Department says it is “under review ” The Perroots memo and the FRUS volume offer vital history lessons about the difficulty of crisis management in the nuclear age — lessons we could use in this perilous time Members of the Editorial Board and areas of focus Deputy Editorial Page Editor Karen Tumulty Deputy Editorial Page Editor Ruth Marcus Associate Editorial Page Editor Jo-Ann Armao education D C affairs Jonathan Capehart national politics Lee Hockstader immigration issues affecting Virginia and Maryland David E Hoffman global public 2 4 health Charles Lane foreign affairs national security international economics Heather Long economics Molly Roberts technology and society and Stephen Stromberg elections the White House Congress legal affairs energy the environment health care 3 4 4 4