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, 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 plan for a massive combined Nato exercise, simulating a nuclear war on eastern Europe using live nuclear weapons and with every sense of a real situation, so alarmed the Soviet Union that they thought the exercise was a fig leaf for the real thing – a pre-emptive strike against them. They were determined to get in first, and only days before the exercise was due to take 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, at the last minute, to provide them with highly classified documentation to prove his assertion.
Without his timely intervention, the world would almost certainly have experienced a nuclear holocaust. For his efforts, Rupp was given 12 years in prison after German unification. It would be historically of great interest to know why the security chiefs are trying to block the release of documents that would shed fresh light on how Britain and the US came close to provoking a Soviet nuclear attack.
Bruni de la Motte
London
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