Able Archer 83

Nate Jones is the director of the Freedom of Information Act Project for the National Security Archive. He is also editor of the National Security Archive's blog, Unredacted. He lives in Washington, D.C. Thomas S. Blanton is the director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Praise for Able Archer 83:"Twenty-one years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, a NATO exercise, Able Archer 83, came terrifyingly close to precipitating an accidental nuclear war. Nate Jones's brilliantly researched and gripping history of government miscalculations and misjudgments on both sides of the iron curtain during this war game, poses the 21st century's most serious existential question: How many nuclear bullets can humanity dodge? Read it and reckon! I don't think you will like the answer."—Martin J. Sherwin, University Professor of History at George Mason University and author of A World Destroyed: Hiroshima and Its Legacies"Able Archer 83 is an invaluable resource on one of the most dangerous moments of the Cold War. The book contains an unmatched collection of previously secret documents about the War Scare of 1983 and the Able Archer exercise at the center of it. If you want to learn from history, this is the place to start."—David E. Hoffman, author of The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy"Able Archer 83 brings us back to a moment when we all came close to becoming cinders or radioactive corpses. It's an important contribution to our understanding of how the Cold War played out, and how erroneous assumptions routinely become institutionalized policy, which then becomes almost irresistible."—Glenn L. Carle, a former CIA officer and author of The Interrogator