The Dead Hand by David Hoffman Page A

was a real possibility? Had there nearly been a terrible miscalculation?”
    Ermarth’s report was finished May 18, 1984. He concluded that the war scare did
not
lead the Soviets to fear nuclear attack. Ermarth said “we knew a lot about Soviet and Warsaw Pact war plans. In effect, we had many of their military cook books.” 51 Thus, he said, the United States could easily compare what the Soviets were doing with the real war plans. “This permitted us to judge confidently the difference between when they might be brewing up for a real military confrontation or, as one wag put it, just rattling their pots and pans.” He concluded they were just rattling the pots and pans.
    Ermarth’s report declared at the outset: “We believe strongly that Soviet actions are not inspired by, and Soviet leaders do not perceive, a genuine danger of imminent conflict or confrontation with the United States.” 52 Ermarth said that there were plenty of other explanations for Soviet behavior, including a propaganda campaign. The Kremlin may have been seeking ways to raise anxiety about the deployment of the Pershing II missiles and encourage the antinuclear movement in Western Europe. Ermarth took note of the heightened Soviet alerts during Able Archer, but he didn’t think much of them. His conclusion was: “Although the Soviet reaction was somewhat greater than usual, by confining heightened readiness to selected air units, Moscow clearly revealed that it did not in fact think there was a possibility at this time of a NATO attack.” 53
    Ermarth knew about Gordievsky’s materials and RYAN. But there were a few important secrets that Ermarth did not know. When he wrote the estimate, he did not know the full extent of the provocative, top-secret U.S. naval exercises in the Pacific Ocean during the spring of 1983. The navy had not told him. 54 “I tried to find out more about it but was unsuccessful,” he said. “I think some sort of junior people in the office of naval intelligence just said, ‘You’ve got to understand, we’ve got some stuff going on here we can’t talk about.’” Among other things, Ermarth said he didn’t know about the F-14 flyover. 55
    Gates concluded that, in retrospect, the CIA had missed an important turning point. “After going through the experience at the time, then through the post-mortems, and now through the documents, I don’t think the Soviets were crying wolf,” he wrote in his memoirs. He added of the Soviets, “They may not have believed a NATO attack was imminent in November 1983, but they did seem to believe that the situationwas very dangerous. And U.S. intelligence had failed to grasp the true extent of their anxiety.” 56 Although it remains classified, a review of the CIA’s performance on the war scare came to a similar conclusion in 1990. 57
    The war scare was real.

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THE DEAD HAND
    I n the final weeks of his life, Andropov had few visitors. One of them was Mikhail Gorbachev, the youngest member of the Politburo, who had been Andropov’s protégé. They met for the last time in December 1983. “When I entered his room he was sitting in an armchair and made a weak attempt to smile,” Gorbachev recalled. “We greeted each other and embraced. The change since my last meeting with him was striking. I saw a totally different person in front of me. He was puffy-faced and haggard; his skin was sallow. His eyes were dim, he barely looked up, and sitting was obviously difficult. I exerted every effort to glance away, to somehow disguise my shock.” 1
    Within days of this meeting, Andropov prepared remarks he was scheduled to give to a Central Committee plenum. The text was typed up as usual, but Andropov was too ill to appear in person. He wrote an additional note of six paragraphs in his own hand. He called one of his top assistants, Arkady Volsky, to his bedside December 24 and gave him the note. Andropov had written in the last paragraph: