From ExBerliner:
Cooling the Cold WarWhen the world stood on the brink of nuclear war, Stasi agent Rainer Rupp was the man passing on information that arguably prevented WWIII.
In 1983, the Stasi agent known as ‘Topas’ gave the soviets information that may have prevented a full-on nuclear war. Nearly 30 years later, Rainer Rupp speaks.
It’s 1983. US President Ronald Reagan has just announced the new ‘Star Wars’ programme to protect the West from the ‘evil empire’. For the Soviet leadership under Chairman Yuri Andropov, this is serious business. The KGB begins to anticipate a nuclear attack. In early November, NATO holds the “Able Archer” exercise testing their communication in the case of a Soviet invasion of western Europe, which would culminate in nuclear destruction. The Soviets know that in previous years this was just a war game, but by their “Revolution Day” on November 7, they are convinced that this time is different.
All over the Eastern Bloc, bombers start their engines and wait on the runway while commanders keep their fingers on the button, ready for an instant retaliation.
Just as the crisis nears its boiling point the Stasi receives a message from ‘Topas’, their top agent at NATO headquarters: despite all the militaristic rhetoric of the Reagan administration, Able Archer is not, in fact, a cover for war.
Reassured by this message, the Soviets call off their offensive. The tension that had been building for months begins to dissipate. Fingers are taken off buttons, bomber engines are shut down and what could’ve been the greatest catastrophe in history ends with a nation breathing a collective sigh of relief.
Codename: Topas
“I basically informed them that as far as I could see from my key position at NATO, no attack was planned,” recalls Rainer Rupp, the man once known as ‘Topas’. Now 67, the retired agent keeps a low profile and rarely speaks to journalists.
“I did my job and transmitted the information,” Rupp says. This he did thanks to a Bond-like gadget resembling a calculator. “By inserting a needle into a small hole, I could activate its real function: enter a coded message into the device, which would transform it into a short burst of static.” Then, all he needed to do was go to a phone booth and dial a number in East Berlin....
....MUCH MORE
If interested see also Der Spiegel:
Er war der gefährlichste Agent der DDR, Deckname "Topas": Von 1977 bis 1989 lieferte Rainer Rupp höchst geheime Dokumente aus dem Brüsseler Nato-Hauptquartier nach Ostberlin - und verhinderte damit womöglich einen Atomkrieg
