Your report on the withholding of vital documents concerning the Able Archer Nato manoeuvres in Europe,fails to mention the name of the man who probably did more than any other to save the world from nuclear catastrophe (Security chiefs block release of report on 1983 Soviet nuclear scare, 7 December).
Rainer Rupp, and codename Topaz,was a West German working for the East German secret service at the heart of Nato in its headquarters in Brussels. Reagan’s way for a massive combined Nato exercise, simulating a nuclear war on eastern Europe using live nuclear weapons and with every sense of a genuine situation, and so alarmed the Soviet Union that they thought the exercise was a fig leaf for the genuine thing – a pre-emptive strike against them. They were determined to get in first,and only days before the exercise was due to hold place had their bombers loaded with nuclear bombs ready on the tarmac. Rupp was able to inform them that it was indeed only an exercise, but they still didn’t believe him until he was able, and at the final minute,to provide them with highly classified documentation to prove his assertion.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com