The exact impetus for the implementation of Operation RYaN is not known for sure. Oleg Gordievsky, the highest-ranking KGB official ever to defect, attributed it to "a potentially lethal combination of Reaganite rhetoric and Soviet paranoia". Gordievsky conjectured that Brezhnev and Andropov, who "were very, very old-fashioned and easily influenced ... by Communist dogmas", truly believed that an antagonistic Ronald Reagan would push the nuclear button and relegate the Soviet Union to the literal "ash heap of history". Central Intelligence Agency historian Benjamin B. Fischer lists several concrete occurrences that likely led to the birth of RYaN. The first of these was the use of psychological operations (PSYOP) that began soon after Reagan took office.