RERELEASE: S1E2: Will the Real Evil Empire Please Stand Up?

Summary

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SNAFU with Ed Helms — S1E2: Will the Real Evil Empire Please Stand Up?

Release Date: July 29, 2026
Podcast by: iHeartPodcasts
Theme: A gripping, darkly comic look at how nuclear brinkmanship, Cold War politics, and personal insecurities nearly brought humanity to the brink in 1983 during the NATO exercise Able Archer—focusing on the two men at the heart: Ronald Reagan and Yuri Andropov.

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Episode Overview

This episode peels back the personal histories and psychological quirks of US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov—two men holding the power to end the world with the press of a button—while examining the deep misunderstandings, paranoia, and rhetorical flourishes that stoked the nuclear fires of the early 1980s. Through sharp narration, expert insights, archival audio, and a healthy dose of gallows humor, Ed Helms explores how their backgrounds and decisions steered the world perilously close to disaster.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Psychology and Mythology of "The Button" (01:25–05:57)

• Ease of Launching Nukes:
  Helms describes the myth of the big red button versus the reality of launch codes, emphasizing how the abstraction of nuclear war makes decisions easier and more psychologically detached.

  • Quote: “The nuclear war plans live in a briefcase that follows the US President wherever they go. The codes are always on hand, written on a small card in the President's pocket, like your gym membership card.” (03:30)

• Roger Fisher’s Proposal:
  Harvard law professor Roger Fisher once joked the only way to ensure presidents weighed the real cost of nuclear war would be for the codes to be embedded in a capsule in a volunteer’s chest, requiring the president to kill someone before launching nukes.

  • Quote: “Fred, I’m sorry, buddy, but I gotta hack your chest open... They said he might never push the button. Precisely.” (04:46)

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2. Ronald Reagan’s Arc: From Hollywood to Hardline Hawk (06:02–17:23)

• Origins in Performance:
  Reagan’s journey from radio sports announcer (prone to improvisation) to Hollywood actor, to war film propagandist during World War II is recounted with humor and skepticism.

  • Notable for using his storytelling skill to his political advantage.

• FBI Informant and Anti-Communist Crusader:
  Reagan, after being approached/“buttered up” by the FBI, became a Hollywood informant during the Red Scare, reporting not just communists, but people he didn’t like.

  • Quote (Seth Rosenfeld): “After that meeting, he agreed to become an FBI informer. He did provide information about colleagues and people who he suspected were un-American in some way.” (10:24)
  • Helms quips: “It’s like calling Dr. Pepper a member of the medical establishment...” (09:39)

• From Actor to Political Avatar:
  Reagan’s rise as a political figure was aided by his stage presence and pliability; elite backers appreciated he would play his part.

  • Quote (Frankie Fitzgerald): “They knew they didn’t have to worry too much about what he actually thought about because he was a good actor. He would just… do what people wanted him to do.” (12:59)

• Rise of the Villain Politics:
  Reagan’s weaponization of myth—like the welfare queen story—shows his tendency to construct enemies for political gain, be they domestic or communist.

• Campaigning on Strength and Paranoia:
  Reagan doubled down on hawkish rhetoric, pushing the “peace through strength” mantra: to prevent nuclear war, America must match or surpass Soviet power.

  • Quote (Jeffrey Lewis): “Reagan did take a very strong line on building up U.S. defenses... hawkish in a way that alarmed not just Democrats, but many mainline Republicans.” (15:25)
  • Helms: “Reagan was hawkish, but he didn’t actually want to fight a nuclear war...” (15:40)

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3. Enter Yuri Andropov: The Soviet Enigma (19:50–25:53)

• KGB Roots, Cold Calculations:
  Newly in power after Brezhnev’s death, Andropov was a shadowy, contradictory figure: the ultimate insider “man of the system,” head of the KGB, and the architect of intensified repression.

  • Quote (Ed Helms): “Yeah, the head of the KGB took over. That KGB. Russian secret police. Political assassinations, midnight arrests, domestic surveillance. Ring a bell?” (20:16)

• Suppressing Dissent—With a Musical Twist:
  Andropov’s regime sent dissidents to psychiatric hospitals. Yet, rumors swirled about his appreciation of Western music—adding to his mystique.

  • Quote (Jeffrey Lewis): “At the same time as he’s sending these people to state mental facilities, he’s happily sitting around a fireside... singing songs and roasting sausages...” (24:45)

• Ultimate Mystery:
  By the time he became General Secretary, Andropov was already sick and dying. Western analysts and even PBS are left baffled: “Complexity. That’s the best they could do... just kind of shrug.” (25:22)

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4. Nuclear Brinkmanship as Machismo (26:39–29:45)

• Phallic Metaphors and Academic Insights:
  Nuclear posturing is hilariously, disturbingly analyzed: policy-makers’ language is described as overtly erotic and competitive.

  • Notable reference: Professor Carol Cohn’s research on the sexualization of nuclear discourse (27:09)
  • Helms quip: “In this case, the piss is radioactive and the pissers are shooting completely in the dark, and we’re all in the crosshairs getting a very deadly golden shower.” (29:45)

• Paranoia and Misperception:
  Both leaders misunderstand each other’s intentions; Reagan sees a resurgent Soviet threat, Andropov suspects Reagan is plotting a first strike.

  • Quote (Jeffrey Lewis): “When Reagan comes into office... he has this very partisan idea that the US is weak and the Soviets are strong... It’s totally and utterly incorrect.” (27:41)

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5. The View from Within the USSR (31:03–36:39)

• Soviet Fears in Daily Life:
  Svetlana Soverinskaya provides a Soviet civilian perspective, describing mandatory military training and frequent nuclear attack drills in 1983.

  • Quote (Svetlana): “We practiced regularly, like once a month, we had to go to the nuclear shelter.” (32:40)

• The Missile Time Problem:
  The deployment of Pershing II and GLCM missiles in Europe meant the flight time to Moscow shrank from 30 to as little as 7 minutes—rendering civil defense nearly pointless.

  • Quote (Svetlana): “Our military officers explained... now with the Pershings in Europe, it takes under 10 minutes. They said it takes seven minutes for them to hit Moscow.” (34:54)
  • Dark Soviet joke: “If you hear the alarm, your training should be you cover yourself with a white sheet and lay your head away from the nuclear blast.” (35:18)

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6. The "Evil Empire" Rhetoric & SDI—Igniting Hysteria (39:26–45:39)

• Nuclear Freeze Movement and Presidential Paranoia:
  As activists protest new nuclear deployments, Reagan labels the movement “another communist plot.”

  • Quote (Seth Rosenfeld): “Reagan actually made an allegation that the Nuclear Freeze movement was just another communist plot to weaken America.” (39:56)

• Infamous "Evil Empire" Speech (41:32–42:16):

  • Reagan’s March 1983 Orlando speech is a rhetorical bombshell—calling the USSR “the focus of evil in the modern world.”
  • Critical Quote (Ronald Reagan, 42:00): “They are the focus of evil in the modern world... the aggressive impulses of an evil empire.”

• Paranoia Amplified by SDI (Star Wars):
  Weeks later, Reagan proposes the Strategic Defense Initiative, pitching an impossible missile shield—interpreted by Soviets as a first strike enabler, not a defense.

  • Quote (Frankie Fitzgerald): “He said we’re going to make nuclear weapons obsolete by building these defenses. But people then began asking... and whereas everyone... understood that he was talking about something that simply didn’t exist and couldn’t exist.” (43:48)
  • Soviet interpretation (Svetlana): “There was a certain hysteria among the Soviet leaders because what it meant to them is blitzkrieg from space... United States would have first strike capability.” (45:39)

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7. Setting the Stage for Abel Archer Crisis (45:39–46:57)

• The confluence of new missiles in Europe, belligerent presidential speeches, and fanciful defense concepts lead the Soviets to conclude that a surprise US nuclear attack is imminent.

• Quote (Ed Helms): “Star wars, the new missiles in Europe, and the Evil Empire speech—to the Soviets, these three things added up to one conclusion: the United States was preparing a surprise nuclear attack against the Soviet Union... They were certain of it.” (45:57)

• Narration teases the next chapter: how spies and field operators would confront the mounting crisis.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Button-Pushing Psychology:
  “What will it really take to push a man so far that he’d press that button? That he’d prompt the end of the world?” — Ed Helms (05:23)

• On Nuclear Jargon:
  “Nuclear blasts were called orgasmic whoomps. I’m not joking… apparently the men kept touching the bombs, like stroking them… ‘Hey Carol, do you want to touch?’” — Ed Helms, describing Carol Cohn’s observations (27:09)

• On Soviet Civil Defense:
  “If it takes Svetlana 10 minutes to get to her bunker, there is no use anymore of going running... cover yourself with a white sheet and lay your head away from the nuclear blast.” — Svetlana Soverinskaya (35:18)

• On Rhetorical Warfare:
  “If all this nuclear tension was already soaked in gasoline, you might say Reagan was about to light a fucking match.” — Ed Helms on Reagan’s “Evil Empire” speech (41:46)

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Timestamps by Segment

| Segment Topic | Start Time | |----------------------------------------------|-------------| | The Button, Psychology, Roger Fisher | 01:25 | | Reagan’s Early Life & Red Scare | 06:02 | | Reagan, FBI Informant & Rise to Politics | 09:09 | | Reaganomics and Myth of Villains | 14:00 | | Reagan's Cold War Posture | 15:17 | | Reagan Election and Soviet Leadership Shift | 17:01–19:50 | | Enter Yuri Andropov—KGB & Mysteriousness | 19:50–25:53 | | Nuclear Machismo & Misperceptions | 26:39–29:45 | | Soviet Civilian Fears in Early 80s | 31:03–36:39 | | Nuclear Freeze, “Evil Empire,” SDI | 39:26–45:39 | | Escalation: Soviets Assume First Strike | 45:39–46:57 |

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Tone & Style

• Ed Helms expertly blends dark humor, pop culture references, and academic insights. He swings from irreverent analogies (“deadly golden shower”) to sharply observed character analysis—humanizing Reagan and Andropov while skewering their flaws.
• The experts, like Jeffrey Lewis, Frankie Fitzgerald, and Seth Rosenfeld, provide gravitas and context, often in dry, wry tones that match the host’s wit.
• Archival audio and personal accounts inject authenticity and emotion, especially from Svetlana describing student life under nuclear threat.

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In Summary

This episode sets the stage for the Able Archer crisis by diving deep into the worldviews of Reagan and Andropov, exposing how myth, misunderstanding, and machismo brought the globe to the brink of annihilation. The show mixes laugh-out-loud moments with chilling insight, illustrating both the absurdity and horror of how easily nuclear war could have started.

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Next episode: The spies and field agents who tried to keep the world from going up in flames.

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Transcript

[Svetlana Soverinskaya]

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[Ed Helms]

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[Ed Helms]

All right, we're back. And as I mentioned last week, we're coming at you with episode two of our first season of SNAFU, all about Able Archer 83, the NATO military exercise that almost started a real nuclear war. Last week you met some of our main characters and heard about 1980s America, where tension with the Soviets was just a fact of everyday life. And we heard about a dauntless sleuth trying to unearth the secret CIA files and that hold the entire Able Archer story. Now in episode two, we get into the two men at the center of it all, just trying to keep it all together. And by that I mean avoid nuclear Armageddon. I'm of course referring to Ronald Reagan. Yeah, that's my Ronald Reagan impression. Not good Ronald Reagan and his counterpart in the Soviet Union, Yuri Andropov. So sit back and enjoy SNAFU Season 1, Episode 2. Will the real Evil Empire please stand Up? You know what's unsettling? Thinking about how easy it would be to push the nuclear button. You know the one, the big red button. Nukes go flying and millions of people instantaneously evaporate. You know, you shouldn't, but you still kind of want to push it. It's right there, that button.

[Ronald Reagan]

Button.

[Ed Helms]

Pushing it gets so Much easier to

[Ronald Reagan]

talk of how many tens of millions

[Ed Helms]

of deaths are acceptable when one is removed from it. This guy gets it. The idea that a simple flinch of a presidential finger could cause so much destruction, it feels too easy to clean. Okay, there's not really a big red button. That's a myth. The truth is, the nuclear war plans live in a briefcase that follows the US President wherever they go. The codes are always on hand, written on a small card in the President's pocket, like your gym membership card. You've always got it on you and you never use it. But it's still relatively easy because the process of launching a nuclear weapon is still a million miles removed from the real cost. Millions of human lives. In the 1980s, people were pondering this problem. How to make the weight of pushing that button just a little bit heavier. People like Roger Fisher. Roger Fisher, who is a law professor at Harvard or Yale, I can't remember which, had a fantasy about how one could overcome this button pushing distance. Fisher was a professor at Harvard, not Yale. But anyway, he proposed an idea. What if he said the nuclear codes weren't in a briefcase? What if the codes were actually in a little capsule and that capsule was buried in the chest of a volunteer. Let's call him Fred. Instead of carrying around the briefcase with the codes inside, imagine Fred carrying around a big, heavy butcher knife. And if the President needed the codes, he would have to retrieve them from the volunteer and would hand the President the knife. Fred, I'm sorry, buddy, but I gotta hack your chest open. Fred's freaking out. The Commander in Chief is forced to then physically butcher good old Fred with his own hands in order to then kill millions. When he told this to his friends in the Pentagon, they were aghast.

[Ronald Reagan]

Blood on the White House carpet.

[Ed Helms]

They said he might never push the button. Precisely. Much to his dismay, Roger Fisher's fantasy was just that Earth destroying power still rests in a briefcase that follows the President wherever they go. To me, it makes the prospect of launching a nuclear weapon a terrifying psychological dilemma. What will it really take to push a man so far that he'd press that button? That he'd prompt the end of the world? I'm Ed Helms, and this is SNAFU, a podcast about history's greatest screw ups. In season one, we're telling the story of Able Archer 83, the 1983 NATO military exercise that became a snafu so gigantic, so absurd, so terrifying, that it almost led to a real nuclear war.

[Svetlana Soverinskaya]

Foreign.

[Ed Helms]

To Trace what happened during able archer83? We need to get to know the players at the heart of this story. This episode will follow the two powerful men behind the proverbial big red buttons. US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov. They're two men with political savvy, plenty of bravado and an aptitude for mind games. The question is, would they push each other too far?

[Ronald Reagan]

How do you do, everybody?

[Ed Helms]

Hey there.

[Ronald Reagan]

I'd like to introduce myself.

[Ed Helms]

Please do.

[Ronald Reagan]

My name is Ronald Reagan.

[Ed Helms]

This was it, where it all began. It's the late 30s and a young Ronald Reagan introduces himself to moviegoers in the trailer for his first film, Love Is on the Air. Even from the beginning, he had that incredible knack for making you feel like he was talking right to you through the camera.

[Ronald Reagan]

A few months ago, I was a sports announcer on a radio station in Des Moines, Iowa.

[Ed Helms]

Back before he was charming political audiences with his good looks and brilliant smile. Ronald Reagan was a radio sports announcer in Iowa. Legend has it, sometimes Reagan would lose the feed of the game while he was live on air. So he would just make up amazing plays until the feed came back. But his descriptions were so vivid, audiences didn't really care whether they were hearing about a real game or not. But Reagan knew his face was too pretty for radio. He wanted Hollywood. And in 1937, he got the break he was looking for.

[Ronald Reagan]

One day I ran into one of these movie talent scouts. I think I caught him off guard because the next thing I knew, I was taking a screen test for Warner Brothers in Hollywood.

[Ed Helms]

His career didn't exactly take off like a rocket, but he was working. Got some good roles in smaller films. He even got to play a guy whose legs were amputated by an angry small town doctor. Good stuff. After a few years, it seemed like Reagan was finally headed for the A list. Until a world war inconveniently disrupted his path.

[Ronald Reagan]

December 7, 1941. A date which will live in infamy.

[Ed Helms]

The World War II draft called up young, able bodied American men, including the famous ones. Even Jimmy Stewart went off to fly bombers in the war. But Ronald, well, he left Hollywood to go nowhere. Yeah, no, he didn't actually leave Hollywood at all. Instead of fighting the war on the front line, he filmed propaganda and training videos for the army at a movie studio in Culver City, California. To be fair, the 405 and the 10 intersection is the closest I've ever seen to a war zone. But I digress.

[Seth Rosenfeld]

So he serves out his time, the war ends and he is very disappointed that the fighting has not fixed the world.

[Ed Helms]

This is journalist Seth Rosenfeld. He says that at this point in time, Reagan's life wasn't going so well. His relationship was falling apart, his career was faltering, and he was looking for a new sense of purpose.

[Seth Rosenfeld]

One night there's a knock on his door, his home, 1946, and two FBI agents are standing there and they say they have some information that he might be interested in.

[Ronald Reagan]

They came wanting some findings from me on people that I had dealt with and so forth.

[Ed Helms]

By this time, Reagan was a vice president of the Screen Actors Guild. And the FBI came knocking. Hey, Ronald, we could use your help.

[Seth Rosenfeld]

This is about spies and saboteurs. We're sure as a former military man, you know all about that.

[Ed Helms]

Calling Reagan a military man was a bit much. It's like calling Dr. Pepper a member of the medical establishment. But you know, I mean, come on, they were buttering him up. The FBI thought Hollywood Communists were brainwashing the American public by sneaking pro communist propaganda into movies. At first Reagan said no thanks. He wasn't interested in what he called red baiting. But then the FBI said, we think

[Seth Rosenfeld]

you're going to want to hear what some of these people are saying about you.

[Ed Helms]

Basically, the commies are talking shit about you behind your back.

[Seth Rosenfeld]

That got his attention.

[Ed Helms]

And there, right on his doorstep, Reagan got his shot at patriotic glory. The FBI offered him a chance to enlist in the world's next great conflict, the war against the Communists.

[Seth Rosenfeld]

After that meeting, he agreed to become an FBI informer. He did provide information about colleagues and people who he suspected were un American in some way.

[Ed Helms]

As it happens, the FBI's communist plot story was a bit exaggerated.

[Seth Rosenfeld]

There's really no evidence that anything like that ever happened.

[Ed Helms]

Sure, there were people in Hollywood who called themselves communists. And it's not at all surprising that some of their politics seeped into their work. But these weren't national traitors in contact with Soviet agents. There was no coordinated plot. But that wasn't Reagan's takeaway.

[Ronald Reagan]

I never got over realizing I could recognize the signs.

[Ed Helms]

Reagan wasn't just convinced that communists were his enemies. He started to believe that every one of his enemies were communists. If someone was against him, it was a sign. They were a pinko for sure. And here's where things get a little weirder.

[Seth Rosenfeld]

Not only was Reagan reporting on somebody who he suspected somehow might be a communist or a communist sympathizer, but he was also reporting on people he didn't

[Ed Helms]

like get in an argument with Ron at a meeting Snub him at a party, Maybe write a bad review for his chimpanzee movie. You just got yourself blacklisted. It wasn't just Reagan. Everyone was ratting each other out. There were hearings, public shamings. People were prevented from ever working in Hollywood again. Some even ended up serving time in prison.

[Ronald Reagan]

It did give me a real understanding of the communist menace.

[Ed Helms]

If you asked Reagan, he was fighting the good fight. He was an American hero. Fast Forward to the mid-50s. Reagan's acting career was sputtering a little, which meant maybe it was time for a career change. Perhaps a leap from the silver screen to the political podium. Reagan versus the communists coming soon to a police political stage near you.

[Ronald Reagan]

Thank you. Thank you very much. A group of prominent party members came to me before the 1966 governor race in California and claimed that I was the only one who could bring the party together and win the election.

[Frankie Fitzgerald]

California millionaires were looking for a new candidate and they didn't have an obvious one, but they saw him and they saw how he appealed to audiences.

[Ed Helms]

This is Frankie Fitzgerald. She literally wrote the book on Reagan and nukes.

[Frankie Fitzgerald]

They knew they didn't have to worry too much about what he actually thought about because he was a good actor. He would just, he would do what people wanted him to do.

[Ronald Reagan]

Well, they kept after us till pretty soon Nancy and I couldn't sleep. We thought, well, what if they're right? Then we live with ourselves if we keep saying no.

[Ed Helms]

Pretty soon the Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan was the Governor of California with his sights set on the White House.

[Ronald Reagan]

The distinguished guest here, and you, ladies and gentlemen, who I know are looking for a cause around which to rally and which I believe we can give them.

[Ed Helms]

Running For President in 1980, Reagan gave Americans causes to rally around, all right. And in so doing, he permanently altered the character of the Republican Party.

[Frankie Fitzgerald]

He didn't have much support at that point nationally, but he went for the south. And the south had just turned Republican.

[Ed Helms]

His opponent was Jimmy Carter, the incumbent Democrat who was really more of a centrist. So in order to capture votes, Reagan needed to move to the right, far to the right. His main thing was Reaganomics. Tax cuts, balanced budget, trickle down economics, all that. And in order to sell the policy, he needed a villain. And you could be pretty sure it wouldn't be Wall Street.

[Ronald Reagan]

In Chicago, they found a woman who holds the record. She used 80 names, 30 addresses, 15 telephone numbers to collect food stamps, Social Security, Veterans benefits for 4 non existent deceased veterans, husbands as well as welfare. Her tax free cash income alone has been running $150,000 a year.

[Ed Helms]

Now, this little anecdote, while tethered to an actual person, is deeply embellished. And worse, Reagan is using it to sell a larger myth that is complete horseshit that welfare queens were running rampant in US society. It was racist. And this myth has never really gone away. It's a nasty old political trick, scaring the voters straight into the voting booth. And when it came to the Cold War, Ronald Reagan saw an opportunity for a new villain, one he knew very well. The Communists.

[Frankie Fitzgerald]

So that was when Reagan began to move to the right on national security issues.

[Jeffrey Lewis]

Reagan did take a very strong line on building up U.S. defenses.

[Ed Helms]

That's nuclear expert Jeffrey Lewis.

[Jeffrey Lewis]

Reagan was hawkish in a way that alarmed not just Democrats, but many mainline Republicans.

[Ed Helms]

Reagan was hawkish, but he didn't actually want to fight a nuclear war. In the same breath that he spoke about building more weapons, he always talked about how awful a nuclear war would be. He said he dreamed of a day with no nuclear weapons. A bit confusing, I know, but the idea was this. In order to maintain MAD mutually assured destruction, the US Needed to match the Soviets nuclear strength. That would be the only way to keep us all safe. And that's what's known as peace through strength.

[Jeffrey Lewis]

Reagan really painted himself as a person who was going to be strong and who was going to stand up to the Soviet Union in a way that Jimmy Carter did not.

[Ed Helms]

In reality, Jimmy Carter was not at all soft on the Soviets. I mean, this is the President who pulled the US out of the Moscow Olympics. He wouldn't even share the beauty of rhythmic gymnastics with the Soviets. But the truth didn't really matter. Reagan had a political story to sell. The evil Communists are threatening the American way of life and we're too weak to stop them. Hey, vote for me.

[Frankie Fitzgerald]

Somewhere along the ways, fantasy got mixed up with reality. That is to say, if you're an actor, it does to some degree.

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Ouch.

[Ed Helms]

Frankie, that hurts. But I guess it's fair. I still think the Hangover is a documentary. And do not try to convince me otherwise.

[Ronald Reagan]

Well, the time has come.

[Ed Helms]

Ronald Wilson Reagan of California, a sports announcer, a film actor.

[Ronald Reagan]

We have projected Ronald Reagan the winner.

[Ed Helms]

You hear the subtle incredulity in his voice. How about a little less subtle incredulity? Who's President of the United States in 1985?

[Ronald Reagan]

Ronald Reagan.

[Ed Helms]

Ronald Reagan, the actor. Suffice to say, Doc wasn't the only person who was surprised. Over in Moscow, the Soviets were trying to get a read on this new Hollywood president, but they also had their hands full with a leadership shakeup of their own. Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile now. I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made 15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal, so there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a [e-mail] Switch upfront payment

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[Ed Helms]

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[Frankie Fitzgerald]

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[Ronald Reagan]

Good evening. Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet Communist Party leader and president, died yesterday morning of a heart attack. But the news was not in The

[Ed Helms]

Soviet Union, 1982 ended with the bang of a coffin lid. Brezhnev was dead and his successor emerged from the shadows.

[Ronald Reagan]

Yuri Andropov, former chief of the KGB or secret police, was named chairman of the funeral Committee. Possibly a sign that he could succeed as party leader.

[Ed Helms]

When Leonid Brezhnev died at the end of 1982, Yuri Andropov, former head of the KGB, stepped up to become the leader of the Soviet Union. Yeah, the head of the KGB took over that kgb.

[Ronald Reagan]

Mm.

[Ed Helms]

Russian secret police. Political assassinations, midnight arrests, domestic surveillance. Ring a bell? So believe me when I say the news of Andropov's appointment sent a chill up every spine in Washington. Suddenly everyone was scrambling to learn something, anything, about their new adversary. But the stories that were emerging about Andropov, they were all over the fucking place. Some said he spent his youth as a boatman or a film projectionist. Others say Stalin almost killed him in the Soviet purge, or that he was the mastermind behind the Berlin Wall, or that he plotted the death of the Pope. It was difficult to get a sense of him, to figure out what was true biography and what was lore. What people were left with were mostly just photographs. His icy white hair was always combed back just so, the thick black rim of his glasses kind of merging with his wily eyebrows. His face always entirely expressionless, not giving a damn thing away about what he's thinking. So when it comes down to it, as you might expect from a KGB man, Yuri Andropov was a total mystery.

[Jeffrey Lewis]

Yuri Andropov is, I think, one of the most interesting Soviet leaders.

[Ed Helms]

This is Simon Miles, a Cold War historian.

[Jeffrey Lewis]

So Andropov was definitely a man of the system, as we say. He started his career in the party and he finished his career in the party.

[Ed Helms]

It was actually more complicated than it sounds because throughout the middle of the 20th century, the party was constantly shape shifting, as were its rules, norms and expectations. So to remain in the party's good graces for so many years was a feat all its own.

[Seth Rosenfeld]

He's a remarkable man.

[Ronald Reagan]

I read his speeches very carefully. He managed always to be a centrist, whatever it meant to be a centrist

[Ed Helms]

at that particular moment.

[Ronald Reagan]

A great master of political maneuver, Andropov

[Ed Helms]

rose through the ranks of Soviet politics, slowly gaining more and more power and eventually demonstrating a particular talent for brutal policing. He became head of the KGB in 1967. This is historian Douglas Selvage, who specializes in the history of Soviet secret police and propaganda. Once Andropov took over the kgb, he began to issue new regulations, push for new laws, new ways to prosecute people for anti Soviet agitation or propaganda. As head of the kgb, it was like Andropov became a twisted Soviet Santa. Through his staggering surveillance network, he sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake. He knows if you've been bad or good. So holy shit, you better be good. This was a naughty list you did not want to be on. He actually created a new division within the KGB responsible practically just for suppressing internal dissent, one that was especially dealing with intellectuals or people who had contacts to Western journalists of the West. One story goes that when he was hiring someone new for his KGB office, he didn't bother to interview anyone. One candidate said, let me tell you about myself. To which Andropov replied, my dear boy, what makes you think I don't already know everything about you? Yeah, the British accent's mine. I was taking creative license. I just thought it sounded more kind of like a movie villain, because that's kind of what he is, right? I mean, this dude was frickin scary. All you had to do was sing the wrong protest song and you'd get scooped up by Andropov's trash collectors.

[Jeffrey Lewis]

He is having Soviet dissidents sent to state mental facilities.

[Ed Helms]

Of course, if you're diagnosed with. There was a special diagnosis, sluggish schizophrenia. It's very. It's even harder to get out of a mental hospital than to get out of prison.

[Jeffrey Lewis]

He was a perpetrator of some really horrible things.

[Ed Helms]

And yet in 1982, as he stepped into the role of Soviet leader, rumors began floating around about Andropov that he loved Western art, literature, folk music. A real Renaissance man.

[Jeffrey Lewis]

So at the same time as he's sending these people to state mental facilities, he's happily sitting around a fireside in the Caucasus Mountains with the head of the local Communist Party, singing their songs and playing them on a guitar and roasting, you know, sausages on sticks and things like that.

[Ronald Reagan]

There seems to be some controversy about Andropov. There's a suggestion that some of his political aids leaked through the Western press. What some are calling disinformation about his being a closet liberal. A man who likes Western art is a very urbane intellectual. What is your view of him?

[Ed Helms]

Part of it is the complexity of the man himself, I think. Complexity. That's the best they could do on good old PBS back in 1982, throw their hands up in the air and just kind of shrug. Goes to show, when it comes to Andropov, everything you learn about him should have an asterisk and a little footnote

[Jeffrey Lewis]

that says, maybe Andropov is ultimately a mystery in this because he turns out to be an old sick man dying.

[Ed Helms]

Oh, yeah. One more thing you should know about Yuri Andropov, when he became the leader of the Soviet Union, he was practically on his deathbed from kidney failure.

[Jeffrey Lewis]

Keep in mind, if you complained about the Soviet Union too much, he'd probably have you and your family murdered.

[Ed Helms]

But yes, he'd kill you, then sing songs at your funeral. Permission to not feel bad for him. So here's where we are. In one corner we've got Ronald Reagan, newly elected American cowboy who does not keep his distaste for the con. Communists on the down low campaigned on the promise of building more weapons. And in the other corner, Yuri Andropov, who nobody really knows anything about except for the fact that he likes to squash dissidents and he's dying of kidney failure. I'd buy a ticket to this fight. That's right, Ed. The atmosphere is electric. We've been waiting nearly 40 years to see these two sluggers enter the ring. Who's gonna land the first punch? Well, that's anywhere. One thing we should probably get out of the way. This nuclear missile standoff is basically just a big dick measuring contest. I'm not being crass. This is an idea straight out of academia. A young professor named Carol Cohn wrote about it in the early 80s. She said that US defense intellectuals, the guys who literally shape our nuclear policy, talked about nuclear war in a way that was overtly erotic. Nations without nukes were called virgins. They talked about the creamy foam of mushroom clouds. Nuclear blasts were called orgasmic whoomps. I'm not joking. And according to Carol, apparently the men kept touching the bombs, like stroking them, even asking her, hey, Carol, do you want to touch? Sounds like harassment. But Carol says they were totally unaware of the innuendo. Honestly, to me it sounds like a bad stand up routine. The point is, at the peak of the arms race, nuclear weapons became a very unsubtle metaphor for one's manhood, which made nuclear policy awfully susceptible to the good old fashioned inferiority complex.

[Jeffrey Lewis]

When Reagan comes into office, and this is where the war scare comes in, he has this very partisan idea that the US is weak and the Soviets are strong and we have to fix that.

[Ed Helms]

Oh, yeah, Reagan's campaign message, that whole thing about Soviet strength and American weakness, it's totally and utterly incorrect. Let me take a big highlighter to that, because this is the first domino. It's this misunderstanding that sets us up for the real clusterfuck. In November 1983, the United States was never behind the Soviet Union in military capability. In fact, the Soviet economy wasn't doing great. The military was broke, and their equipment was in total disrepair. But Reagan was running for president, and candidates always ramp up the rhetoric. Of course, now that he is president, surely he'll get the real intel, he'll realize the Soviets are not an actual threat and cool down all this talk about building more bombs, right?

[Jeffrey Lewis]

Ronald Reagan, having campaigned on being tough, is not going to stand up and say, oh, that was just for the cameras. I'm actually an old softie. I love borscht. He's not going to do that. He truly believes that the Soviets are strong and we are weak, and he has to restore his strength.

[Ed Helms]

And Andropov, trained to be paranoid, assumes that Reagan must be up to something.

[Jeffrey Lewis]

And I think when he hears Reagan talking about how the Soviet Union is strong and America's weak and America has to get stronger, Andropov knows it's the other way around. And he thinks that Reagan is lying, right? That Reagan is deliberately distorting the truth in order to exploit the Soviet Union's

[Ed Helms]

weakness in order to gain public support for building more bombs. Which, of course, had the Soviets wondering, why does Reagan want all these bombs so badly?

[Jeffrey Lewis]

And they don't see Reagan as bringing the US up to their level. They see Reagan as pushing past them. And it's really in that context, right, where you have those two totally different views of what the hell is happening, happening, that you get the war scare.

[Ed Helms]

Ladies and gentlemen, that is a pissing contest. Except in this case, the piss is radioactive and the pissers are shooting completely in the dark, and we're all in the crosshairs getting a very deadly golden shower. If it's possible to take a metaphor too far, we might have done it. And what's about to happen next, it's only going to make things worse. I think it's time for that day after Scream again. When Andropov and Reagan came into power, they weren't just on different pages. They were reading from entirely different books. Arms negotiations were closed, but a chilly Cold War relationship does not necessarily a nuclear crisis make. In order for things to spiral out of control during 1983's Abel Archer exercise, things needed to get a lot hotter. And they did.

[Svetlana Soverinskaya]

I was born in Hungary. My father was in the Soviet military, so we moved a lot.

[Ed Helms]

This is Svetlana Soverinskaya.

[Svetlana Soverinskaya]

I work at the National Security Archive as Director of Russia Program and Senior Analyst.

[Ed Helms]

Svetlana works in D.C. now, but she grew up in the Soviet Union, where she was constantly told that the United States was a threat, that they could attack at any time.

[Svetlana Soverinskaya]

My father was very devoted communist. He actually believed seriously. I remember when I began asking questions about nuclear weapons and possibility of war. Much later in, maybe in high school, he was always saying that, well, of course we have to defend ourselves. So I get into Moscow State University and I am very, very excited.

[Ed Helms]

Svetlana's first year of university was, you guessed it, 1983.

[Svetlana Soverinskaya]

In the universities in Moscow, you had mandatory military preparation. So one day a week we would have a complete military immersion day. You would wear a military uniform, go to a separate place, and you take military courses.

[Ed Helms]

It wasn't all marching to Tchaikovsky. Periodically, Svetlana and her comrades would do nuclear drills, practice what to do if the Americans launched nuclear weapons at the Soviet Union. Sirens would blare and the students would file into lines and head straight for the bunkers.

[Svetlana Soverinskaya]

We had a civil defense system.

[Ed Helms]

Underground bunkers were meticulously scattered throughout the country so that in case of a nuclear attack, Soviet citizens could survive.

[Svetlana Soverinskaya]

So we practiced it regularly, like once a month, we had to go to the nuclear shelter.

[Ed Helms]

Svetlana says the walk from her university to the bunker was about 10 to 15 minutes. So if the United States launched a missile and the Soviets sounded the alarms,

[Svetlana Soverinskaya]

it takes 30 minutes for a ballistic missile to get to Moscow, and under 30 minutes you can walk leisurely to your shelter.

[Ed Helms]

I don't know how leisurely I'd be walking in that situation, but I take her point. A secret CIA report from the late 70s said that there were only enough bunkers to save about 20% of the Moscow population, if American intelligence was right. But they did expect most of these shelters to actually work. Anyone inside would survive a nuclear blast. But then, as Svetlana tells it, the bunker chatter started to get a little more tense.

[Svetlana Soverinskaya]

Over the summer, the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union really got from bad to worse. Worse, there was a discussion of how the danger is rising. The United States is becoming more and more aggressive. We could see that there was also very genuine concern among these military guys, especially after the deployments started.

[Ed Helms]

The deployments Svetlana is talking about are the 572 shiny new missiles being installed in Western Europe by NATO. The Pershing 2s, and the ground launched cruise missiles. The Pershing 2s were little and lightweight. At just over 30ft long, they were highly maneuverable and fast. And then there were the ground launched cruise missiles, aka GLCMs. They were designed to fly low to the ground underneath radar, capable of delivering seriously big booms. Now these new missiles would be nicknamed the the Euro missiles because they would be installed in Europe, very close to Soviet territory. Now, if NATO wanted to attack the Soviet Union, the missile flight times would be a lot faster. Disastrously faster.

[Svetlana Soverinskaya]

So our military officers explained to us one day, your civil defense arrangement is is useless because now with the Pershings in Europe, it takes under 10 minutes. They said it takes seven minutes for them to hit Moscow.

[Ed Helms]

Seven minutes. Which means if it took Svetlana 10 minutes to get to her bunker, there

[Svetlana Soverinskaya]

is no use anymore of going running. They had this joke now, if you hear the alarm, your training should be you cover yourself with white sheet and lay your head away from the nuclear blasts.

[Ed Helms]

Woohoo. Very dark joke. Starting to understand why Russia is known for ballet and not comedy.

[Svetlana Soverinskaya]

Really, for the first time in my life, I felt like there could be nuclear war.

[Ed Helms]

To be clear, the threat to deploy these new Euro missiles was a negotiation tactic during the Carter years, before Reagan ever set foot in the Oval Office. Because the Soviets had missiles too. Enough to bomb all of Europe if they felt so inclined. So European leaders felt exposed. They said they would also like a light sprinkling of missiles on their side of the border, thank you very much. Thus the Crews and Pershing IIs. But in reality, the prospect of these missiles being deployed was only intended to be a threat. Back off or we'll bring in some nukes. But when Ronald Reagan entered office, he and the NATO chiefs made good on that threat. The deployment was scheduled for November 1983, the exact same time as NATO's annual able archer exercise.

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[Ed Helms]

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[Jeffrey Lewis]

I see my co worker in line at the pharmacy.

[Ed Helms]

Can you tell I'm picking up prescription hemorrhoid cream?

[Jeffrey Lewis]

I'm probably standing weird.

[Ed Helms]

Why is he smiling?

[Jeffrey Lewis]

He knows he's gonna call me Hemroid Lloyd tomorrow.

[Ed Helms]

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[Jeffrey Lewis]

I gotta quit my job.

[Ed Helms]

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[Frankie Fitzgerald]

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[Ed Helms]

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[Ed Helms]

This is Adam Devine, Blake Anderson and honors home from this is important. You know those moments when you realize you've been adulting too hard? Like getting excited about a new vacuum, making a spreadsheet for a group trip saying let's circle back and meaning it. That's when you need a slice. And trust us, we all need a slice. Slice is a soda you remember back and better for you. And yes, it's still soda. The full flavor, the fizz, the whole thing. But now it has grown up. Benefits 5 grams of sugar or less

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[Ed Helms]

cause it takes me back to my childhood. So you get real soda flavor, real fizz and real benefits without making some sad adult compromise.

[Jeffrey Lewis]

Grab a slice when you want something

[Ed Helms]

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[Jeffrey Lewis]

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[Ed Helms]

New York a Nuclear Free Zone

[Ronald Reagan]

the

[Seth Rosenfeld]

Nuclear Freeze movement was a grassroots movement that wanted to de escalate the nuclear arms race.

[Ed Helms]

Seth Rosenfeld again. Seth says after the announcement of the Euro missiles, people all over the world took to the streets in protest. They thought Reagan was being irresponsible by pointing even more weapons at the Soviets. And they put pressure on Congress to cut Reagan's defense spending. And of course Reagan didn't like that.

[Seth Rosenfeld]

Reagan actually made an allegation that the nuclear Freeze movement was just another communist plot to weaken America.

[Ed Helms]

Yep, Reagan believed that the Soviets were brainwashing people all to orchestrate a massive nuclear cock block. And by now, Ronnie knew exactly what to do when a communist plot was afoot. He got on stage.

[Ronald Reagan]

I'm delighted to be here today.

[Ed Helms]

It's now March 3, 1983. We're T minus eight months to Abel Archer and Reagan's in sunny Orlando, Florida to deliver a speech.

[Ronald Reagan]

A number of years ago I heard a young father saying I love my little girls more than anything. And I would rather see my little girls die now still believing in God, than have them grow up under communism and one day die no longer believing in God.

[Ed Helms]

Okay, that's pretty weird for a crowd to cheer on a father wishing for the death of his children. But the audience was the national association of Evangelicals. And I think it's safe to say they take believing in God pretty seriously. Say what you want about Reagan, the guy knew his crowd. With the nuclear freeze movement on Reagan's back, he needed to remind the public why his military buildup was necessary. He needed to remind them who the enemy was, like he'd done a million times before. But this time he would go a little too far.

[Ronald Reagan]

Let us pray for the salvation of all of those who live in that totalitarian darkness. They preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the earth.

[Ed Helms]

The next words out of Reagan's mouth are a critical turning point in our Abel Archer story. If all this nuclear tension was already soaked in gasoline, you might say Reagan was about to light a fucking match.

[Ronald Reagan]

They are the focus of evil in the modern world. I urge you to beware the temptation to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire.

[Ed Helms]

And now them's fighting words.

[Svetlana Soverinskaya]

And that was a shock. It was in all Russian newspapers.

[Ed Helms]

To the Soviets, calling them an evil empire was a step too far. They wondered was Ronald, my nuke is bigger than yours. Reagan calling them out because he was building up to an attack. Well, they wouldn't have to wonder for long.

[Ronald Reagan]

Good evening. President Reagan today issued a formal directive to the National Security Council to begin initial research on the the space age missile defense system he proposed to the nation last night.

[Ed Helms]

Three weeks after calling the Soviet Union an evil empire, Ronald Reagan announced that he was building a new technology. He gave the public an irresistible pitch. What if the thing you're absolutely the most afraid of could suddenly vanish into thin air?

[Ronald Reagan]

We could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies.

[Ed Helms]

He proposed a kind of magic shield, a technical innovation that would shoot down Soviet missiles from outer space. He called it the Strategic Defense Initiative acronym sdi. And he would need a massive increase in his defense budget to do it. Now, a nuclear shield sounds like a comforting thought. But you might be wondering how the hell would you do that? Well, Reagan conveniently wrapped up his speech before offering much detail.

[Ronald Reagan]

There will be risks and results take time. But I believe we can do it.

[Frankie Fitzgerald]

In this speech, he said, we're going to make nuclear weapons obsolete by building these defenses. And he didn't say what the defenses would be really, but people then began asking all of his aides what the defenses could be. And they came out with their own view of it. And whereas everyone in both houses of Congress and in his notes, the Defense Department understood that he was talking about something that simply didn't exist and couldn't exist.

[Ed Helms]

In other words, it was bullshit fantasy. America didn't have the technology to block out thousands of incoming Soviet nukes. Hell, we still don't have that kind of technology. Reagan's opponents in Congress started calling it the Star wars program because of how obviously it was rooted in science fiction.

[Ronald Reagan]

I got a bad feeling about this.

[Ed Helms]

Some scientists estimated that developing Star wars would take 30 years and cost a million million dollars. But that didn't stop Reagan supporters from trying to sell the illusion with creepy ads like this. I asked my daddy what this Star wars stuff is all about.

[CarMax/Mint Mobile/Amazon Ads Voice]

He said that right now we can't

[Svetlana Soverinskaya]

protect ourselves from nuclear weapons.

[Ed Helms]

And that's why the President wants to

[Svetlana Soverinskaya]

build the peace shield.

[CarMax/Mint Mobile/Amazon Ads Voice]

It would stop missiles in outer space so they couldn't hit our house. Then nobody could win a war. And if nobody could win a war, there's no reason to start one.

[Ed Helms]

Anyway. All of that might have been fine. Funny, even if the Soviets didn't have their own interpretation of this announcement, they thought it was part of a cunning plan that sure, Reagan would put satellites in space, only these satellites wouldn't be used for nuclear defense. They would be used to launch nuclear weapons at the Soviet Union.

[Svetlana Soverinskaya]

There was a certain hysteria among the Soviet leaders because what it meant to them is blitzkrieg from space. And that would create a situation where the United States would have first strike capability.

[Ed Helms]

Star wars, the New Missiles in Europe and the Evil Empire speech to the Soviets. These three things added up to one conclusion. The United States was preparing a surprise nuclear attack against the Soviet Union. It was the only explanation. They were certain of it. What was Andropov to do? Well, for one thing, he needed to see the attack before it happened. He needed eyes on the other side of the Iron Curtain. And it turns out he had him. Next on snafu. We leave the Oval Office and Kremlin to meet the spies in the field who would be forced to intervene during the able Archer crisis. America is preparing a sudden nuclear attack on our country.

[Jeffrey Lewis]

It was moments like that that he

[Ed Helms]

really began to think, I need to do something about this.

[Jeffrey Lewis]

I need to target the Soviet system, undermine it somehow and try and damage it somehow.

[Ronald Reagan]

NATO was my enemy and I went in to destroy it.

[Ed Helms]

I mean, this is just so utterly crazy. Stanley Kubrick could not invent this. Snafu is a production of iHeartRadio Film Nation Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio. Our lead producers are Sarah, Jennifer Joyner and Alyssa Martino. Our producer is Carl Nellis, Associate producer, Torrey Smith. It's executive produced by me, Ed Helms, Milan Popelka, Mike Falbo, Andy Chugg and Whitney Donaldson. This episode was written by Carl Nellis and Sarah Joyner with additional writing from me, Elliot Kaelin and Whitney Donaldson. Our senior editor is Jeffrey Lewis.

[Jeffrey Lewis]

I'm actually an old softie.

[Ed Helms]

Olivia Canney is our production assistant. Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Additional research and fact checking by Charles Richter. Engineering and technical direction by Nick Dooley. Original music and sound design by Dan Rosado. Additional editing from Ben Chugg. Some archival audio from this episode originally appeared in Taylor Downing's fantastic film 1983 the Brink of Apocalypse. Thank you, Mr. Downing, for permission to use it. Special thanks to Allison Cohen and and Matt Azenstadt.

[Ryan Seacrest]

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[Ed Helms]

Hey everyone, it's Cal Penn. I'm inviting you to join the best sounding book club you've ever heard with my podcast Hearsay, The Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. Every episode I nerd out with amazing guests and dive into the best new audiobooks available on Audible. It's the book club for your ears. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartradio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Svetlana Soverinskaya]

This is an iHeart podcast, Guaranteed Human.