(An abandoned Soviet tank in Afghanistan stuck in firing positionWikimedia Commons)
The CIA declassified scores of articles from Studies in Intelligence, The Agency's internal journal on "historical, operational, doctrinal, and theoretical aspects of intelligence."
One undated article settles one of the most controversial incidents of the Cold War's often-panicked final decade: the 1983 "war scare" in which rhetoric of nearly unprecedented belligerence from Moscow may have been backed with a secret KGB protocol to remain on a state of alert nearly tantamount to a war-footing.
In an article with over a page of redactions in its declassified form, Ben B. Fischer, then of the CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence, concluded that a long-rumored Soviet project codenamed RYAN, in which Soviet intelligence agencies were "placed on a permanent intelligence watch to monitor indications and warnings of US war-planning and preparations," was "for real."
Although RYAN was neither "panicky nor unprecedented" the Soviets still undertook "a crash effort [to] build a strategic warning system" at a time when the Kremlin was feeling increasing anxiety over the direction of the Cold War.
As Fischer writes, the US's 1980s military buildup — the largest peacetime expansion in American history — convinced top Soviet brass that whatever "window of opportunity" they had for winning the Cold War was rapidly closing. Developments like the US's Strategic Defense Initiative, or "Star Wars," were viewed in Moscow with a combination of wariness and fear. If actually deployed as a missile shield, Star Wars would erase the Soviets' first-strike nuclear potential and tip the Cold War irrevocably in America's favor. And if it were a cover for a new type of weapons system, Moscow would be at an equally severe disadvantage.
As Fischer recounts, Star Wars and the 1980s military buildup came along with another, far more covert shift in US Cold War policy: the beginning of US military operations meant to subtly undermine the increasingly fragile psychology of Kremlin leadership.
The early '80s psychological operation, or PSYOP campaign, was "practically invisible," Fischer writes, even to the CIA itself. The deeply secretive military effort involved covert US naval and air penetration of sensitive areas along the Soviet periphery backed with "sophisticated and carefully rehearsed deception and denial techniques" — overflights and ship movements meant to subtly project American power and assertiveness to the Soviet leadership at a time when the '70s detente between the powers was falling apart.