In November 1983; Soviet nuclear forces went on high alert. After months nervously watching increasingly assertive NATO military posturing; Soviet intelligence agencies in Western Europe received flash telegrams reporting alarming activity on U.S. bases. In response; the Soviets began planning for a countdown to a nuclear first strike by NATO on Eastern Europe. And then Able Archer 83; a vast NATO war game exercise that modeled a Soviet attack on NATO allies; ended. What the West didn’t know at the time was that the Soviets thought Operation Able Archer 83 was real and were actively preparing for a surprise missile attack from NATO. This close scrape with Armageddon was largely unknown until last October when the U.S. government released a ninety-four-page presidential analysis of Able Archer that the National Security Archive had spent over a decade trying to declassify. Able Archer 83 is based upon more than a thousand pages of declassified documents that archive staffer Nate Jones has pried loose from several U.S. government agencies and British archives; as well as from formerly classified Soviet Politburo and KGB files; vividly recreating the atmosphere that nearly unleashed nuclear war.
#3424626 in Books 2013-10-31Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.02 x .33 x 5.98l; .48 #File Name: 1616194057142 pages
Review
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. A Reappraisal of Justice Benjamin CurtisBy George A. DavidsonSupreme Court Justice Benjamin Curtis was not the friend of black Americans the modern reader of his dissent in the Dred Scott case might assume him to be. John Gordan shows that in his earlier role as trial judge in a prosecution of a black lawyer for aiding in the escape of a fugitive slave from a Boston courthouse; Justice Curtis bent the law to try to assure a conviction. How can the same man who dissented in Dred Scott have done such a thing? In both cases; Curtis was motivated to try to preserve the Union by respecting the political compromises on each side. Fearful of a Boston jury hostile to the aims of the Fugitive Slave Act; Curtis did what he did to encourage a conviction. (In the event; he failed.) The Dred Scott majority having destroyed the benefits of the Missouri Compromise to the anti-slave North; Curtis dissented and soon after left the Court in disgust. For Curtis; Union was all.
