An intelligence officer whose restraint mattered at the nuclear brink
Seeing unusual Soviet nuclear readiness, he advised against raising NATO's alert level.
Leonard H. Perroots was a U.S. Air Force general and military intelligence specialist whose career intersected with the management of nuclear danger late in the Cold War. As assistant chief of staff for intelligence, U.S. Air Forces in Europe, during Able Archer 83 in 1983, he observed unusual Soviet nuclear readiness but advised against raising NATO alert levels, avoiding a potentially dangerous escalation. He later directed the Defense Intelligence Agency and left a significant retrospective account of the war scare, illustrating how intelligence judgment can shape decisions at the nuclear brink.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1955Commissioned in the U.S. Air Force
- 1970년대Air Force command and intelligence assignments
- 1982–1984Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, U.S. Air Forces in Europe
- 1983Advised against escalating NATO alert levels during Able Archer 83
- 1984–1985Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, U.S. Air Force
- 1985–1988Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency
- 1989Retired from the U.S. Air Force
- 2017Died
Related historical events
The End of Tour Report Addendum and the declassification dispute, 1987-2025
When his tour as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency ended, Leonard Perroots wrote the "End of Tour Report Addendum" to record his disquiet over what he had observed in 1983, and it was published in February 2021 in a Foreign Relations of the United States volume on U.S.-Soviet relations from January 1983 to March 1985. Perroots directed the DIA from October 1985 to December 1988 after serving as assistant chief of staff for intelligence, U.S. Air Forces in Europe, during Able Archer 83, and retired on January 1, 1989. One point remains unsettled in the record: the CIA's cover letter for the memorandum is dated November 10, 1987, while the State Department publication places the document at the close of his 1985-1989 tour.
What the volume added to the public record concerned Soviet behavior rather than American intentions. It revealed a round-the-clock alert in the fighter-bomber divisions of Soviet forces stationed in East Germany and Poland: one squadron of aircraft in each regiment was ordered to load nuclear bombs, and aircraft were held at "readiness 3," a thirty-minute alert. The memorandum itself, a retrospective account written years after the fact, is a record of how one intelligence chief understood the episode rather than a contemporaneous operational log.
The release became a dispute over the record's custody. The National Security Archive sought the original of the memorandum in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, arguing it was already public in the official history; the CIA released a cover letter but insisted the original must remain secret in its entirety, citing intelligence activities, sources and methods still in use or still viable. The FRUS appendix that carried the document was itself unstable: the volume was removed in January 2022 and republished with the appendix's Editorial Note censored in January 2025. In November 2025 the State Department deleted records from the volume, the first known case of previously declassified and published documents being removed from a FRUS volume, and on October 4 a ruling by U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg protected the secrecy of an entire document that the government had already made public. Even after being published, Perroots's warning was not fully recoverable from the archive.