WASHINGTON, November 13. /TASS/. The US State Department has deleted records about the risk of an accidental nuclear war with the USSR caused by NATO’s Able Archer exercises in 1983, without providing any explanation, The Washington Post reported.

"The Department was not required to provide public notice," the newspaper quoted a State Department spokesperson as saying.

According to the publication, in January, the agency republished on its website a volume about the Reagan administration - without 15 pages on the risk of inadvertent nuclear war sparked by a 1983 NATO exercise known as Able Archer 83. The Washington Post notes that, according to the records originally published in February 2021, the Soviet Union "implemented military and intelligence activities that previously were seen only during actual crises," including placing fighter jets on alert "which included preparations for immediate use of nuclear weapons."

The newspaper points out that in 2022, the volume of the "Foreign Relations of the United States" (FRUS) series mysteriously disappeared from the State Department’s website without explanation, with a revised version later published. Currently, a brief note on the site states that 15 pages were deleted. A former State Department official told The Washington Post that removing the excerpt was unwise, noting that attempts to erase information from the internet usually only make it more widely known.

Since 1991, the US State Department has been required by law to publish a "complete, accurate, and reliable" account of US foreign policy within 30 years of the events described. Declassified information is published in the FRUS series, which has produced more than 450 volumes detailing the formulation of US foreign policy. With the advent of the internet, FRUS has evolved into a primarily digital publication, available on the State Department’s website.