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REAGAN’S SECRET WAR

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REAGAN’S
SECRET WAR
The Untold Story of His Fight
to Save the World
from Nuclear Disaster

Martin Anderson and

Annelise Anderson

Crown Publishers
New York
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Copyright © 2009 by Martin Anderson and Annelise Anderson

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing
Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation for

permission to reprint handwritten excerpts from Ronald Reagan’s diary.

All photographs in this book are courtesy of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Anderson, Martin, 1936–

Reagan’s secret war / Martin Anderson and Annelise Anderson.
p. cm.
1. United States—Foreign relations—Soviet Union. 2. Soviet Union—Foreign
relations—United States. 3. United States—Foreign relations—1981–1989.
4. Reagan, Ronald. 5. Cold War. 6. Nuclear arms control.
I. Anderson, Annelise Graebner. II. Title.
E876.A556 2008
327.73047—dc22 2008050918

ISBN 978-0-307-23861-0

Printed in the United States of America

Design by Leonard Henderson

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First Edition

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For Nancy Reagan and George Shultz

Nancy, who was at Ronald Reagan’s side

for more than fifty years,
helping him as he shaped
our country—and then the world

And George, who as secretary of state

was with Reagan at every step he took
on the path to defeat the Soviet Union

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contents

Foreword ix
Introduction 1
1. Reagan the Man 9
2. The Awesome Power of a President 17
3. Juggling Priorities: 1981 27
4. Near Death from an Assassin 43
5. The Beginning of the End of the Cold War 49
6. Going for Zero 59
7. The Bond with Pope John Paul II 73
8. The Nuclear Abolitionist: 1982 93
9. “Star Wars” 111
10. Close to Nuclear War: 1983 133
11. Reagan Wins Reelection: 1984 153
12. Reagan’s Negotiating Strategy 177
13. The Ascent of Gorbachev: 1985 205
14. “Star Wars” in Moscow 219
15. The Geneva “Fireside” Summit 229
16. The Priority of Human Rights 247
17. Gorbachev’s Gambit 265
18. Soviet Strategy at Reykjavik: 1986 287
19. The Iran- Contra Controversy 317
20. Gorbachev Caves First: 1987 335
21. Treaty Signing in Washington 343
22. The Cold War Ends: 1988 367
Glossary of Acronyms 397
Notes 399
Acknowledgments 433
Index 437

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foreword

By George P. Shultz

H ow do you judge a presidency and a president?

Accomplishments are one yardstick. In the case of Ronald Rea-
gan, you can point to ample successes, both during his presidency
and throughout his life. He was successful as a negotiator when he
was head of the Screen Actors Guild. He was successful as an actor,
mastering the art of inhabiting a character or role. As a two-term
governor of California, he left the state in much better shape than
he found it and was even more popular when he left office than
when he entered.
During the Reagan presidency, I had the privilege of close as-
sociation with Ronald Reagan as he changed our country for the
better. Rather than looking for political glory, he always seemed
motivated by his view of what was best for America. His was a non-
partisan way of thinking.
I saw Reagan inherit an economy in shambles with inflation in
the teens and the prime rate at 20 percent. I watched as he worked
closely with Paul Volcker, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board,
to fight inflation and put us back on the right track. (Reagan was
fond of telling what were, in some respects, old chestnuts. I re-
member him saying, when people warned that a serious effort to
get rid of inflation might well lead to a recession, “If not us, who?
If not now, when?”)

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x
foreword

In the areas of national security and foreign policy, there was a

dramatic change for the better between the beginning and end of
Reagan’s presidency. When Reagan entered office, the Cold War
was as cold as it could get, and when he left, it was all over but the
shouting. Sometimes you hear doubters argue that whatever hap-
pens just happens—that Reagan’s policies of strength, realism,
and diplomacy (let alone his skill in negotiations) had nothing to
do with it. But looking at his long list of accomplishments, most
people feel that he must have had something special to offer.
A president’s real legacy is ultimately about more than accom-
plishments, though—no matter how impressive they may be. Most
actions of consequence are, in the end, based on ideas. If the ideas
are good, they have staying power.
Ronald Reagan was very much a man of ideas, and one of his
key convictions was that nuclear weapons are so destructive they
should not be in the hands of mankind. He recognized the argu-
ments for deterrence through mutual assured destruction. But he
thought this strategy was immoral. I heard him ask on many occa-
sions, “What’s so good about a peace kept by the threat of destroy-
ing each other?”
Close as I was to Reagan, I learned a lot about the depth and
long history of his thinking on the nuclear threat from reading
Martin and Annelise Anderson’s thorough and illuminating analy-
sis of the record—much of it hidden until now in secret files.
Thanks to the Andersons’ truly vast accumulation of essays, stories,
and letters in the president’s own handwriting, we learn that Rea-
gan committed his thoughts to paper almost continuously. This is
significant because the act of writing is fundamentally an act of
thinking. Reagan was a thinker as well as a doer.
Reagan made no secret of his view that we should abolish nu-
clear weapons. But most people did not take this idea seriously—
until Reykjavik. I had the privilege of sitting beside Ronald Reagan
in that tiny room in Hofdi House as we talked for two days with

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Mikhail Gorbachev and Eduard Shevardnadze. There it emerged

that the leaders of the two countries that jointly controlled more
than 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons were calling for
the abolition of those weapons.
I remember vividly the reaction when we returned to Washing-
ton. Almost immediately, Margaret Thatcher summoned me to the
British ambassador’s residence. There I learned the meaning of a
British verb that derives from Thatcher’s characteristically carry-
ing a stiff handbag, for I was “handbagged.”
“How could you let the president agree to abolish nuclear
weapons?” she accused.
“But Margaret, he’s the president.”
“Yes, but you’re supposed to be the one who has his feet on the
ground.”
“Margaret, I agreed with him.”
I emerged from the ambassador’s residence bloodied. And
over the next few days, as I heard similar reactions from others, I
came to realize that this idea of abolishing all nuclear weapons was
one whose time had not yet come. But I still believed in the con-
cept, and more important, so did Ronald Reagan.
Today, Reykjavik can be seen as a watershed meeting. Maybe it
was the beginning of the end of the Cold War. Clearly, the number
of nuclear weapons in the hands of the United States and Russia
has been sharply reduced since that time (although huge numbers
still remain and the possibility of proliferation is all too apparent).
The contrast between the resistance to nuclear abolition among
the political intelligentsia during Reagan’s presidency and the cur-
rent growing acceptance that this might just be possible was brought
home to me in 2006, when my colleague Sid Drell, a physicist, and I
decided to hold a conference marking the twentieth anniversary of
the Reykjavik meeting with the objective of exploring its implica-
tions. Many outstanding individuals joined us and another of our
colleagues, Bill Perry, at this conference, and in other ways we in-

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cluded our friends Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn in the effort.
Among the results was an essay in the Wall Street Journal published on
January 4, 2007, calling for a world free of nuclear weapons.
Of course, the essay caused some to speak out in opposition,
but the overwhelming response globally was positive. In the United
States, some two-thirds of the former secretaries of state and de-
fense, as well as national security advisers, have publicly expressed
support for this effort.
Many people have commented on how refreshing it is to
have something advanced on a bipartisan basis. Those leading
the initiative all reply that this effort isn’t bipartisan; it’s nonparti-
san. That was always the spirit of Ronald Reagan, who asked him-
self what was good for the country and, in the case of nuclear
weapons, what was good for mankind.
Ultimately, the true test of a man and his presidency is whether
his ideas have staying power. And as Martin and Annelise Ander-
son incisively argue in these pages, Reagan’s idea of abolishing nu-
clear weapons once and for all was of immense importance. The
public was hesitant to embrace it. Advisers Reagan trusted and
who were experts in this arena didn’t support it. But none of that
diminished Reagan’s conviction, and now we see that his idea lives
on and is attracting support in the United States and around the
world.
This book will make an immense contribution to the thinking
on this subject because the authors have defied assumptions about
what Reagan thought and said and conducted painstaking re-
search to get at the truth of what he really planned and executed.
All of us who are gripped by the transcendent importance of the
nuclear threat will learn, and be inspired by, this account.

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REAGAN’S SECRET WAR

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introduction

One eyewitness
is worth more than ten who
tell you what they have heard.
—Plautus, Roman playwright, c. 190 b.c.

R onald Reagan accomplished so much with such apparent

ease that the casual observer often assumes he had nothing to do
with it, nothing to do with the resurgence of the economy or the
reduction in nuclear arsenals or the end of the Cold War.
Perhaps he had advisers whose lines he read with such skill.
Perhaps it was Gorbachev or Thatcher or the Pope. Or maybe it
was just plain luck.
We think not.

The evidence for this conclusion comes primarily from Reagan

himself—what he wrote and what he said, his own words, written
in his own hand or spoken extemporaneously. This evidence
shows that throughout his presidency, Reagan carried out goals he
had long held, carefully plotted the strategy that brought about
the ends he achieved, and made all the major decisions of his ad-
ministration. He did not always reveal to friends, family, the press,
or his closest advisers how he intended to accomplish his objec-
tives or the purpose of his actions. Yet with the benefit of hind-
sight, we see intent, planning, and timing. And as we look back we
begin to understand the origins of the ambitious goals he brought
to his presidency.

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REAGAN’S SECRET WAR

Especially important to this understanding is a new block of ev-

idence declassified for use in this book: the minutes of the National
Security Council (NSC), documents previously classified as Top Se-
cret or Secret, unavailable to researchers or the public until now.
The NSC is the group that advises the president on the most
difficult decisions he must make—those about national security. In
the Reagan White House, the meetings of the NSC were not tape-
recorded, but a scribe usually took careful notes on what each of
the participants said, including the president. In quoting Reagan,
these minutes reveal his decisions and directions to his staff on na-
tional defense, arms control negotiations, and U.S. strategy with re-
spect to the Soviet Union, the Middle East, and Latin America.
Reagan chaired 355 meetings of the NSC or its smaller and
more secretive component, the National Security Planning Group
(NSPG). Minutes were found for 192 of them, and of these more
than 80 have been declassified for use in this book—those most re-
vealing of Reagan’s thinking and decision making on national de-
fense, arms control, and dealing with the Soviets.
Martin Anderson was given access to these minutes (and to
other classified documents) in a rare confluence of events: he had
the necessary clearances, and both the office of President Reagan
(where Nancy Reagan was making the final decisions) and the
current president had to agree. So did the Central Intelligence
Agency, the National Security Council, the National Security
Agency, and the departments of State and Defense. Each wrote a
letter granting access and giving conditions.
To access the documents, Martin went into the vault at the Rea-
gan Library through four locked and secured steel doors and was
given a small desk in the archivists’ workroom at which he could
take notes—notes that were immediately classified and could not
be taken out of the library. He had to leave his cell phone behind,
and was always accompanied by one of the few archivists at the Rea-
gan Library authorized to handle classified documents, an addi-
tional burden on these hardworking people. Security became even

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introduction
3

touchier a short time after Martin began his work, when President
Clinton’s former national security adviser, Samuel “Sandy” Berger,
was caught extracting documents from the Clinton Presidential Li-
brary by concealing them in his clothing, even hiding them in his
socks. Henceforth Martin’s library visits involved pulling up his
pant legs to demonstrate that there were no precious papers con-
cealed in his socks.
The NSC minutes are critical to knowing who Reagan was and
how he accomplished his goals, and they are the final block of evi-
dence necessary to understanding Ronald Wilson Reagan. Only in
these records do we find out what Reagan decided, how he han-
dled controversy among advisers, and what instructions he gave
on negotiating with the most formidable foe of the United States
during the Cold War, the Soviet Union. They are the ultimate evi-
dence of Reagan’s own role in dealing with the threat of nuclear
catastrophe and ultimately ending the Cold War.
They will not come as a surprise to his closest staff and advisers,
who, after all, were there and have always said that he made all the
decisions, but they will astonish many others, even those who al-
ready admire Reagan as a communicator, a politician, and a man
with firm convictions.
Martin Anderson had access to other classified documents in
the Reagan Library, including memorandums of conversations,
known as “memcons” for short, prepared as a record when the
president met foreign leaders or talked to them on the phone.
One of the documents declassified for this book is a memcon of
Reagan’s December 15, 1981, meeting with the representative of
Pope John Paul II, Vatican Secretary of State Agostino Cardinal
Casaroli.
Of special interest are the transcripts of the four historic U.S.-
Soviet summit meetings where Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev de-
bated and negotiated. The transcripts record not only the plenary
sessions, attended by staff and advisers, but also the private ses-
sions between the two men, where only translators and note takers

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REAGAN’S SECRET WAR

were present. Many Soviets and Americans worked on the negotia-

tions, but the man-to-man negotiations between the two leaders
were of key importance. We have excerpted many of these tran-
scripts to give the reader a feel for what happened at these sum-
mits and why.
Also of great interest and importance are the dozens of letters
that went back and forth between Reagan and the four men who
led the Soviet Union while he was president—Leonid Brezhnev,
Yuri Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko, and finally Mikhail Gor-
bachev. Reagan took up his own pen to write some of these letters.
Now declassified, they give us a strong understanding of Reagan’s
approach to the Soviets and how much was accomplished before
Gorbachev ever took office.
Other evidence abounds, but much of it did not begin to be-
come available until long after Reagan had left the presidency. As
this information became available, even Reagan’s own staff was
surprised at the extent to which he had been developing his own
policy views and crafting his own speeches over the years. They did
not know that Reagan was, in truth, a writer. Whatever else he was
doing—as student, sportscaster, Hollywood actor, representative
for General Electric, governor, private citizen, president—Ronald
Reagan wrote. He wrote short stories, articles, radio commen-
taries, speeches, letters, two autobiographies, and, during his years
in the White House, a personal diary.
Even we, the co-authors of this book, did not know how much
Reagan had written over the years until we began researching him.
And we were intimately acquainted with Reagan’s political life. We
had worked in Reagan’s presidential campaigns of 1976 and 1980,
the 1980 transition to the new administration, and the Reagan
White House. Martin Anderson joined Reagan’s 1976 campaign in
October 1975, taking a leave of absence from Columbia’s Gradu-
ate School of Business. Martin was in charge of policy develop-
ment and traveled with Reagan, travels that ended at the 1976
convention when Reagan lost his challenge to sitting president

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5

Gerald R. Ford for the Republican nomination. Annelise Ander-

son joined the Reagan campaign in the summer of 1976 when her
teaching responsibilities at California State University, Hayward,
were over for the school year, and staffed a policy research center
at the 1976 convention.
In 1979 Martin, again on leave, was back on the campaign trail,
often traveling with Reagan. Both of us were heavily involved with
the Republican Party platform at the convention. During the fall
1980 campaign, Martin traveled with Reagan, and Annelise was se-
lected to travel with vice presidential candidate George H. W. Bush
as his policy adviser and a link to the Reagan campaign. In the
transition following Reagan’s November 4, 1980, victory, Annelise
was the lead person in developing recommendations for presiden-
tial appointments in the departments of Treasury, Commerce, and
Transportation. When the administration took office, Martin be-
came assistant to the president for policy development, and An-
nelise became an associate director of the Office of Management
and Budget with responsibility for overseeing the budgets of five
cabinet departments and forty agencies with $80 billion in discre-
tionary spending.
Despite our years working with Reagan, neither of us knew
that he had written—in his own hand, usually on yellow tablets—
685 essays on domestic and foreign policy for his five-days-a-week
radio commentary program, which was on the air every weekday
from 1975 through 1979 except when he was a declared candidate
for the presidency. The handwritten commentaries were discov-
ered in Reagan’s personal pre-presidential papers in the Reagan
Presidential Library. Some were in dated folders, but more than
sixty had been unceremoniously dumped in one cardboard box,
and the task was to figure out which handwritten drafts went with
which typed broadcasts—found in the Ronald Reagan Subject
Collection in the Hoover Institution Archives—so that we knew
what Reagan had himself written. At the same time we were find-
ing handwritten drafts of speeches on foreign policy, national

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REAGAN’S SECRET WAR

defense, agriculture, and much more. Suddenly it was obvious that

Reagan himself had written most of the lines he was delivering.
(Many of the commentaries and some handwritten speeches were
published in the book Reagan, In His Own Hand.)
But we found much more than radio commentaries. Another
treasure trove was Reagan’s correspondence—handwritten letters
or drafts of letters on yellow pads to be typed up for signature, and
sometimes letters dictated on tape. Our search went far beyond
the Reagan Library, and we collected copies of handwritten letters
from other archives and from people who had collections of let-
ters because they had corresponded with Reagan frequently. Rea-
gan wrote hundreds of letters a year while governor of California
(1967–75) and hundreds a year while president. (We selected
more than a thousand of these letters for publication in Reagan: A
Life in Letters, but this amounts to only about 10 percent of his total
handwritten or dictated correspondence.) In many of these let-
ters, Reagan wrote about policy and politics, often with ideas and
viewpoints that had not yet made their way into public speeches.
The final treasure trove of Reagan’s own words is the personal
diary he kept as president. He used—from the very beginning—
blank books: leather-bound volumes with 81⁄2-by-11-inch pages.
He could not add or replace a page. By the end of his presidency
there were five volumes, all filled with his own script. He was con-
cise and to the point, and he wrote about everything—events, pol-
icy decisions, working with the Congress, impressions of foreign
leaders, personality conflicts in his administration, family, friends,
horseback riding, the weather, and social engagements. For years
no one—except Nancy—knew he was keeping a diary. The diary is
invaluable as a contemporaneous account and as a record of the
consistency of his policies and the persistence of his efforts to
make those policies reality on issues such as taxes, the budget, and
national defense. Many of the diary entries become clear only in
the context of events.

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Another major resource mined by the authors are the tran-

scripts of Reagan’s frequent meetings with members of the press.
Reagan gave a number of formal news conferences during his pres-
idency, five or six a year, but he also met with various members of
the press or particular groups—foreign correspondents, radio cor-
respondents, regional groups, editorial boards of newspapers—on
many occasions. He also did question-and-answer sessions with stu-
dents and other citizen groups where the press was present. Includ-
ing his formal news conferences, he met more than eighty times a
year with one or more members of the press—a total of 678 meet-
ings during the eight years. The transcripts of these interactions
alone are massive, over three thousand pages. All are included in
the official public papers of Ronald Reagan, but they are difficult to
search either in printed form or online. Yet they are important, as
Reagan often revealed his positions on issues and objectives in
these less formal meetings before he made official statements. We
have made a special collection of these transcripts and created our
own index.
Reagan’s speeches and Saturday radio addresses are also im-
portant, not only because they embody his skills in communicat-
ing with the public but also because he wrote so many of them
himself, even though he had superb speechwriters. Reagan had al-
ways drafted many of his own speeches, and he continued to write
a considerable number of them when he was president. In addi-
tion, he held meetings with his speechwriters to give them direc-
tion. Several specific instructions survive in his own hand, as well
as his own editing on speeches drafted by others. The Presidential
Handwriting File of Speeches at the Reagan Presidential Library
includes 2,639 speeches—almost one a day for the 2,922 days of
his presidency—that his hand touched in one way or another. Of
these, sixty-four have significant sections (sometimes the entire
speech) drafted in his own hand, and almost half include his own
edits and rewriting.

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A final resource for us has been the White House Daily Diary,
not to be confused with Reagan’s personal diary. The daily diary is
actually a by-the-minute log of the president’s comings and goings,
his phone contacts, and his meetings, listing all participants—
including those attending meetings of the NSC and the NSPG.
The log is maintained by representatives of the National Archives
stationed in the White House. The entire log is some eighteen
thousand pages. A classified electronic copy is maintained by the
Ronald Reagan Library. The declassified log, which excludes some
family matters and private information such as Social Security
numbers of White House guests, was copied, and Lawrence Liver-
more National Laboratory agreed to use its best scanning technol-
ogy to create a searchable electronic copy, so we could check the
times and attendance of meetings, phone conversations, travel,
and so forth. It has proved invaluable for us in such tasks as deter-
mining how often he met with given members of Congress, where
he was when he recorded his weekly radio broadcasts, and with
whom he met in the press.

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Chapter 1

reagan the man

Ronnie became a loner. . . .

He doesn’t let anybody get too close.
There’s a wall around him.
—Nancy Reagan, 1989

T he best clue to understanding Ronald Reagan is Nancy Rea-

gan. She is a graduate of Smith College in Massachusetts, a highly
intelligent woman, an actress who met Ronald Reagan in Holly-
wood and married him in 1952. They were happily in love for
more than fifty years. Nancy was also his closest friend, perhaps his
only real friend, and she knew far more about him than anyone
else in the world.
In 1989, just after they had left office, Nancy wrote a book
about her life in which she told us more about Ronald Reagan
than anyone. She knew the key to his self-assurance—he was a
loner. Here is how she explained Reagan in her book:

It’s hard to make close friends or to put down roots when you’re
always moving, and I think this—plus the fact that everybody
knew his father was an alcoholic—explained why Ronnie became a
loner. Although he loves people, he often seems remote, and he
doesn’t let anybody get too close.

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There’s a wall around him. He lets me come closer than any-

one else, but there are times when even I feel that barrier.
Ronnie’s closest friends and advisers have often been disap-
pointed that he keeps this distance. . . .
Ronnie is an affable and gregarious man who enjoys other peo-
ple, but unlike most of us, he doesn’t need them for companion-
ship or approval.
As he himself has told me, he seems to need only one other
person—me.1

Despite all appearances, then, Reagan was a very private man.

His pollster, Richard Wirthlin, met with him one day in March
1983, to give him the latest results. It was good news; the national
polls were showing that Reagan’s policies were widely supported.
While he was reporting the polls, Reagan interrupted in midsen-
tence and said:

You know what I really want to be remembered for?

I want to be remembered as the President of the United
States who brought a sense and reality of peace and security. I
want to eliminate that awful fear that each of us feels some-
times when we get up in the morning knowing that the world
could be destroyed through a nuclear holocaust.2

As far as we know he only said that once, in private. His usual

answer about his legacy was a response about restoring the Ameri-
can economy.
Another foundation for Reagan’s actions, perhaps, was his
high intelligence—and his ability to hide it. He was an extraordi-
narily bright pupil who even taught himself how to read a newspa-
per when he was five years old.3 But as time went on, he seemed to
quickly learn something that most highly intelligent people learn
as they grow older: a child who seems to know all the answers soon

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reagan the man
11

has few friends. So he spent more time playing ball and being a
regular student.
Unlike many intelligent people, Reagan’s self-confidence was
also great enough that he never felt he had to demonstrate his
knowledge or his quickness. Indeed, on the front of his desk in the
White House was a small sign that carried the words “There’s no
limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn’t mind
who gets the credit.”
One of Reagan’s key tactics while deep in long and arduous
negotiations was to accept what his opponent had offered. He
never crowed over what he was given; he just said thanks. As he ex-
plained it one day in Fortune magazine:

I’ve never understood people who want me to hang in

there for a hundred percent or nothing. Why not take seventy
percent or eighty percent, and then come back another day for
the other twenty or thirty percent.4

One of the few people who seemed to understand how Reagan

managed the White House was Washington Post editor Meg Green-
field. In 1984 she wrote an essay for Newsweek titled “How Does
Reagan Decide?” As a liberal Democrat, she observed something
that even many of Reagan’s closest conservative supporters failed
to understand—that he made decisions like a labor negotiator for
a workers’ union. She summed up part of his decision-making
style like this:

The long waiting out of the adversary, the immobility meanwhile,

the refusal to give anything until the last moment, the willing-
ness—nonetheless—finally to yield to superior pressure or force
or particular circumstance on almost everything, but only with
something to show in return, and only if the final deal can be in-
terpreted as furthering the original Reagan objective.5

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REAGAN’S SECRET WAR

Reagan was also an unusual boss. Those who worked for him
liked him. They did not necessarily agree with all of his policies,
but they still found him pleasant and friendly. He didn’t criticize
his advisers in front of others. He didn’t chew people out. He
didn’t reprimand them, he didn’t complain to them face-to-face—
and he never yelled at them. Sometimes he might look a little dis-
appointed when things went wrong, but you rarely felt a sense of
failure or humiliation.
When people first met Reagan, they often thought he was too
easygoing and friendly to be tough. The impression was like a soft
down pillow. What people failed to see was the two-inch-thick rod
of steel right down the inside of the pillow.
Perhaps the most important key to Reagan’s success was the
quality of his advisers and staff. Individually the men and women
in his staff were very different, and they all had skills that matched
the jobs they held. But the one thing they all shared was that they
were all smart and sensible. Some presidents have felt uncomfort-
able with brilliant men and women; Reagan thrived on them.
Even his political opponents noted that the group of advisers
and staff was unusual. Robert Strauss, perhaps the most savvy Dem-
ocrat around when Reagan was elected, called Reagan’s staff “sim-
ply spectacular. It’s the best White House staff I’ve ever seen.”6
President Reagan’s management philosophy was best summed
up when a reporter asked: “Your friend Roger Smith, chairman of
General Motors, says that you’ve done a great job of focusing on
the big picture without getting bogged down in detail. How do you
decide which problems to address personally, and which to leave
to subordinates?” Reagan replied:

You surround yourself with the best people you can find,
delegate authority, and don’t interfere as long as the overall
policy that you’ve decided upon is being carried out.
In the Cabinet meetings—and some members of the Cabi-
net who have been members of other Cabinets told me there

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reagan the man
13

have never been such meetings—I use a system in which I want

to hear what everybody wants to say honestly. I want the deci-
sions made on what is right or wrong, what is good or bad for
the people of this country. I encourage all the input I can
get. . . .
And when I’ve heard all that I need to make a decision, I
don’t take a vote.
I make the decision.
Then I expect every one of them, whether their views have
carried the day or not, to go forward together in carrying out
the policy.7

All this does not mean that Reagan was some kind of superhu-
man who could not be riled or upset. In fact, one of the most un-
appreciated facets of Reagan’s character was his temper; it flared
rarely, but was memorable when it did. If Reagan was crossed—
crossed badly—he exploded into what could be called a black
Irish rage. His face darkened, his jaw muscles clenched and
bulged, and his lips got thin and tight. In public he might show
sporadic flashes of displeasure, but never real anger. It wasn’t that
he did not get angry, but rather that he usually covered it up.
During his presidential campaign, on one of those rare occa-
sions of real fury—a well-justified one, we might add—we watched
him lean back a bit, reach up and grab the right side of his eye-
glasses, rip the glasses off, and fling them across the room into the
wall closest to him. After he smashed his glasses into the wall, he
calmed down quickly and carried on. No one who was there can
remember what happened to the eyeglasses. That kind of outburst
didn’t happen often—but it did happen.
Once during the campaign in 1976 Reagan was holding an im-
promptu press conference outside a building with a narrow alley.
Some of the reporters were asking questions that had an insulting
tone. After Reagan finished answering the last question, he turned
and headed through the alley into the building, with the Secret

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REAGAN’S SECRET WAR

Service clearing the way. When he was about halfway down the
alley, one of the reporters, a particularly provocative one, yelled:
“What’s the matter? Are you afraid to answer the question?”
Reagan stopped, his face turning red. Abruptly he turned and
headed back out through the alley. His eyes were blazing, focused
on the heckler waiting outside. As he moved through the alley, one
of the advisers was standing in the way. Reagan, with one swift thrust
of his arm, shoved him aside, slamming him against the wall. Out-
side he angrily answered the reporter’s question, then turned back
and went into the building. (The fellow he “moved” was fine.)
Another rare example of what could make Reagan upset was a
rewritten draft of one of his speeches. One day, Peter Hannaford,
one of his oldest and most valued speechwriters, handed him a
new redraft of a major speech for him to read on the plane. Rea-
gan smiled, slipped on his reading glasses, and started to read.
After two or three pages, his eyebrows narrowed and his jaw tight-
ened. Then, after reading the next page, he lifted it, raised it high
in the air, and slammed it down hard onto the small pile he had
just read. He continued to read, slamming each succeeding page
down harder and harder. It was clear he didn’t like the redraft of
the speech.8
After Reagan had been in office for nearly six months, very few
people understood his foreign policy. It especially bothered some
of the reporters writing about him. They feared that he was on a
course that could be dangerous, even leading the United States to
a nuclear war. It was true that Reagan had never spelled out a de-
tailed picture of what he wished to do in foreign policy, but it did
not seem to bother him. A letter he dictated to a friend, John O.
Koehler, on July 9, 1981, explains his reluctance to do so—and
serves as a perfect example of his quietly self-confident approach:

I know I’m being criticized for not having made a great

speech outlining what would be the Reagan foreign policy. I
have a foreign policy; I’m working on it.

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reagan the man
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I just don’t happen to think that it’s wise to always stand up

and put in quotation marks in front of the world what your for-
eign policy is. I’m a believer in quiet diplomacy and so far
we’ve had several quite triumphant experiences by using that
method.
The problem is, you can’t talk about it afterward or then
you can’t do it again.9

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index

Able Archer exercise, 141–143 NSPG discussion of, 280, 325

ABM treaty (see Anti-Ballistic Missile Reagan’s views on, 129
[ABM] Treaty [1972]) Soviet violations of, 218, 274, 289, 291,
Abramowitz, Morton, 148 293, 295, 298, 303, 308–309, 311,
Adelman, Kenneth, 148, 287–288, 325
300–301, 327 at summit meetings, 238–239, 290–296,
Afghanistan, 37, 44, 53, 133, 160, 206, 226, 298–304, 306, 308
402n24 Anti-satellite (ASAT) interceptor, 182, 184
Airborne Warning and Control Systems Anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons, 273, 289,
(AWACS), 341 301, 309
Allen, Richard V., 45, 50, 62–63, 67, 113, Arab oil embargo, 340
250, 339 Arbatov, Georgy, 215
Al Shiraa newspaper, 318, 319 “Are Liberals Really Liberal?” (Reagan),
American Life, An (Reagan), 332–333 339
Amnesty International, 358 Arms buildup, 17–18, 28, 38–39, 82, 95,
Anderson, Annelise, x, xii, 4–6 102–103, 130, 133, 135, 143, 169,
Anderson, Martin, x, xii, 2–6, 31, 112–114, 180, 205, 279, 289–290, 309–310
416n21 Arms Control and Disarmament Agency,
Andrew, Christopher, 135–136 158, 288, 300
Andropov, Yuri, 122, 129, 143, 149, 153,
160, 164, 210, 290 B-1 bomber, 38, 39
death of, 155, 156 B-52 bomber, 38, 39
Gorbachev and, 190, 207 Backis, Audrys, 77
health of, 137, 141 Baker, Howard H., 354, 361, 389
letter to Reagan (August 4, 1983), 137 Baker, James A., III (Jim), 45, 77, 116, 120,
letter to Reagan (August 27, 1983), 145, 206, 215, 319
139–140 Baltimore Sun, 173
personality of, 135 Barton, Sir Andrew, 43
Reagan and, 4, 135–141, 145, 147 Baruch plan, 108
Reagan’s letter to (July 11, 1983), Bay of Pigs fiasco, 36
137–139 Bendetsen, Karl, 114
Reagan’s letter to (August 24, 1983), 139 Berger, Samuel (Sandy), 3
Reagan’s letter to (December 23, 1983), Berlin Wall, 249, 250, 345–347, 357–358,
147 360, 375, 385, 392
RYAN and, 136, 141, 210, 289 Bessmertnykh, Aleksandr A., 389
succeeds Brezhnev, 109 Brady, James, 46
Angola, 35, 37 Brezhnev, Leonid, 4, 33, 61, 79, 153, 156,
Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) system, in 158, 160, 164, 166, 179, 225, 290
Soviet Union, 212, 217, 218, 219, death of, 109
272–273, 325 on détente, 184, 186–187
Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty (1972), health of, 61, 136
129, 217, 218, 293, 295, 296, on human rights 225, 248
298–304, 306, 308, 309, 314, 325 letter to Reagan (March 6, 1981), 43–45,
interpretations of, 238–239, 280, 283, 49, 135
290–296, 298, 300–304, 306, 314, Reagan’s letter to (April 18, 1981),
325 49–55, 71, 135, 248

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index
Brezhnev, Leonid (cont’d)
Reagan’s letter to (December 23, 1981),
87–88, 89
SALT agreements and, 103
Brokaw, Tom, 359
Bukovsky, Vladimir, 250, 251
Burns, Arthur, 31
Burns, Robert, 265
Bush, George H. W., 5, 77, 83, 84, 116,
145, 156, 204, 319, 394
on human rights, 215–216
Cadell, Patrick, 318
California State University, Hayward, 5
Camp David, 123–124, 192–193, 219, 220,
353
Captive Nations Committee, 358
Carlucci, Frank C., 83, 324–326, 353, 354,
389
Carter, Jimmy, 23, 25, 28, 36, 38, 39, 103,
402n24
Casaroli, Agostino (Cardinal), 3, 73,
77–82, 91
Casey, William, 35, 64, 67, 83, 146, 181,
183, 215, 222–223, 319, 340, 408n23
infighting and, 179, 207
Iran-Contra and, 322–324, 333
health of, 322–323
Reagan and, 207
Caterpillar, 83
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 2, 50,
94, 127,
Château Fleur d’Eau, Geneva, 230
Chernenko, Konstantin, 4, 163, 164, 186
address to Twenty-seventh Congress of
Communist Party (February 23,
1985), 199–200
death of, 203–204
health of, 156–157, 160, 176, 181, 196
letter to Reagan (December 20,1984),
191–192, 195–196
letter to Reagan (February 23, 1984), 158
letter to Reagan (November 8, 1984, 178
letter to Reagan (November 17,1984),
179–181
Reagan and, 156–158, 160, 177–181,
184–185
Reagan’s letter to (February 14, 1984),
157
Reagan’s letter to (December 7, 1984),
185
SDI and, 195–196, 210
Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion,
277–280, 290, 310, 372, 390–391
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Chernyaev, Anatoly S., 313–315, 389
Church, George J., 205
Churchill, Winston, 40
CIA (see Central Intelligence Agency
[CIA])
Clark, William P., 83, 101, 114, 116, 124,
127, 408
Clifford, Clark, 25
Clinton Presidential Library, 3
Cohn, Harry, 119
Cold War, x, 3, 60, 135, 140–142, 154
Brezhnev letter and end of, 55
end of, xi, 1, 5, 165, 201, 339, 342, 367,
394–395
Moscow summit and end of, 369–377,
387–389
Thatcher statement on end of, 367
Columbia University Graduate School of
Business, 4
Commerce, U.S. Department of, 5
Confessions of a Nazi Spy (movie), 85
Congress, U.S., 6, 8, 30–34, 38, 55–58, 95,
115, 149–150, 201, 228, 255, 263,
279, 284, 299, 314
composition of, 25, 30, 317–319
House of Representatives and, 24–25
Iran Contra and, 219, 319, 321, 322, 337
Reagan fighting and, 33, 325, 341, 337,
356–357
Reagan meeting with, 30–31, 56,
369–370
Reagan’s need for support of, 49, 55,
201, 226, 255–257, 262, 314, 326,
353, 367
visit to Soviet Union and, 258–259
Congressional elections of 1986, 317
Consumer price index, 28
Contras, 319, 320, 322, 331–333, 335, 341
Cooke, Terrance (Cardinal) 75
Coors, Joseph, 114
Corwin, Norman, 97–98
Council of Economic Advisers, 31
Cronkite, Walter, 33–34
Cruise missile, 38, 44, 82
Cuba, 34–35
Cuban missile crisis, 35, 38, 173, 369
Daniloff, Nicholas, 284, 285
Davis, Edith, 354–355
Deadly Gambits: The Reagan Administration
and the Stalemate in Nuclear Arms
Control (Talbott), 153
Deaver, Michael, 93, 120, 145, 206
Declaration of Independence, 84, 383
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Defense, U.S. Department of, 2, 113, 120,
121, 125, 127, 141, 217, 218, 219
Defense spending, 32–33, 38, 146, 279
Delanty, Thomas, 46
Demosthenes, 369
Détente, 60, 388
Brezhnev on, 184, 186–187
Devroy, Ann, 197–198
D5 missile, 39
Dobrynin, Anatoly F., 168, 169, 202, 215,
256, 278, 338, 361, 389, 425n10
Dr. Zhivago (Pasternak), 385
Domestic policy, 5, 172
Donaldson, Sam, 60
Dostoyevski, Fyodor, 385
Drell, Sidney, xi
Dubinin, Yuri V., 338, 389
Eagleburger, Larry, 127
Economic Club of Detroit, 171
Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, 57
Economy
Reagan and, ix, 24–25, 27–33, 55–58,
115, 367, 392
of Soviet Union, 133, 163, 196, 204, 223,
224, 279, 290, 339–342, 344
Egypt, 37
Eisenhower, Dwight D., 23, 42, 79, 82, 116,
151, 403n32
nuclear weapons and, 106, 107, 145,
159
El Salvador, 35, 36, 319
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 364
Ethiopia, 37
Eureka College, Illinois, 93, 95, 100,
106–107, 252
“Evil Empire” speech (March 8, 1983),
121–124, 125
Farewell address (January 11, 1989), 395
Farewell Dossier, 63–64, 339
Federal regulations, 28, 29
Federal spending, 28, 30, 32, 57
Figaro, Le, 146
Ford, Gerald R., 5, 23, 100, 220
Fortune magazine, 11
Freeman, Y. Frank, 119
Friedman, Milton, 31
Fronin, Andrei, 387
Fuller, Thomas, 49
Future Farmers of America, 99
GALOSH interceptors, 218
Gates, Robert, 50, 148, 215, 324
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index
439
Geneva, arms control negotiations in, 78,
91, 137, 144–145, 147, 153, 202, 204
Geneva summit (November 1985),
209-210, 213, 217, 223–247,
255–264, 276, 308, 314, 341,
376–378, 388
first Reagan/Gorbachev meeting,
231–236
human rights at, 247–264
Reagan’s memorandum on, 223–227
Reagan’s negotiation strategy at,
234–245, 257–261
second Reagan/Gorbachev meeting,
236–244
third Reagan/Gorbachev meeting,
255–262
Genscher, Hans-Dietrich, 66
George, Doug, 181–182
Georg Ots (ship), 289
Gershwin, Larry, 181
GLCMs (see Ground-launched cruise
missiles [GLCMs])
Glitman, Maynard, 202, 336, 337
Gold Medal for Courageous Leadership in
Government, Civil, and Human
Affairs, 93
Goldwater, Barry, 339
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 1, 3–4, 157, 163
Andropov and, 190, 207
arms control proposal of (January 15,
1986), 266–270, 273
assumes leadership of Politburo, 204
attempted coup and (1991), 268
Chernobyl accident and, 278–280, 310,
390–391
human rights and, 212, 235, 255–262,
268, 357–358, 359, 361–362, 365,
368–369
letter to Reagan (June 10, 1985),
211–212
letter to Reagan (June 22, 1985),
212–213
letter to Reagan (September 12, 1985),
214
letter to Reagan (April 2, 1986),
275–276
letter to Reagan (May 30, 1986),
278–279
letter to Reagan (September 15, 1986),
283–284, 288
New Year’s message (January 1, 1988),
368–369
nuclear war, impossibility of winning
and, 378
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440
index
Gorbachev, Mikhail (cont’d)
nuclear weapons, elimination of, xi, 214,
240–241, 266–267, 301–304, 307,
314, 364
nuclear weapons, reduction of, 245,
266–267, 296, 298, 301–304, 307,
314, 368
Reagan, negotiations with (see Geneva
summit; Moscow summit; Reykjavik
summit; Washington summit)
Reagan’s letter to (March 11, 1985),
208–209
Reagan’s letter to (April 30, 1985),
210–211
Reagan’s letter to (February 16, 1986),
272–273
Reagan’s letter to (February 22, 1986),
273–274
Reagan’s letter to (April 11, 1986), 276
Reagan’s letter to (May 23, 1986), 278
Reagan’s letter to (July 1, 1986),
282–283
Reagan and, 207, 211–212, 216,
223–224, 233, 239, 245–246,
261–265, 269, 307, 310, 313, 315,
342, 344–345, 361–362, 365,
376–380, 385, 388, 390, 394
resignation of, 268, 301
rise of, 190
SDI, opposition to, 191, 193–195, 210,
213–215, 217, 224, 237, 238,
240–243, 245, 263–264, 281, 288,
289, 292, 295, 297–298, 300–303,
305–314, 336
space ban and, 212, 214, 237, 240–242,
263, 267, 272, 284, 306, 308, 338
statement on INF (February 28, 1987),
335–336
sudden agreement with Reagan’s
demands, reasons for, 338–339,
342
Thatcher and, 191, 193
U.S. grain shipments and, 299–300,
341
visit to London (December 17, 1984),
190–191
zero-zero and, 294–295
Gorbachev, Raisa, 193, 365
Gordievsky, Oleg, 134
Graham, Daniel, 114
Grain shipments, to Soviet Union,
299–300, 341
Greenfield, Meg, 11
Greenspan, Alan, 31
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Gromyko, Andrei A., 157, 160, 180, 186,
196, 205, 210, 252, 389
human rights and, 252
meeting with Reagan (September 28,
1984), 164–171
speech at United Nations (1962),
210–211
speech at United Nations (September
27, 1984), 163
Ground-launched cruise missiles
(GLCMs), 44, 65, 71, 271
GRU, 136
Haig, Alexander, 36, 44–45, 49–50, 52, 77,
103, 106, 252
NSC meeting on Poland and, 83,
85–86
Reagan and, 50, 52, 108
resignation of, 108–109
zero-zero initiative and, 65–70
Hannaford, Peter, 14
Helsinki agreement, 84, 89, 211, 215, 253,
360, 374–375
Helsinki Watch, 358
Hezbollah, 318
“High frontier” concept, 114
Hill, James, 112
Hinckley, John, 45, 47
Hiroshima, 97, 180
Hitler, Adolf, 40, 63, 194
Hollywood Independent Citizens
Committee of the Arts, Sciences
and Professions, 97
Hoover Institution Archives, Ronald
Reagan Subject Collection, 5
House of Representatives (see Congress,
U.S.)
“How Does Reagan Decide?” (Greenfield),
11
Howe, Sir Geoffrey, 190
Human rights, 205, 215, 225, 247–248,
250–263, 268, 291, 297, 313, 347,
357–362, 365, 368, 373–375, 378
Geneva summit and, 247–264
Gorbachev’s views on, 212, 235,
258–261, 268, 291, 359, 362, 368,
374–375
Moscow summit and, 381–387
NSC minutes on, 35–36, 84
Reagan’s radio commentaries on, 74,
250–251
Reagan’s speeches on, 75, 248–249, 324,
345–347, 357–359, 373–375,
381–387
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Reagan’s views on, 53–55, 84, 87–89,
168, 211–215, 225, 248–262, 268,
360–365, 368
Reykjavik summit and, 290–291, 297
Washington summit and, 360, 362, 364,
365
ICBMs (see intercontinental ballistic
missiles [ICBMs])
Ikle, Fred, 215
Inflation, ix, 28–31
INF Treaty, 361, 363–365, 367, 368,
371–373, 376, 377, 386–389, 391
negotiations and, 117, 271, 336–338,
347–353, 355–357, 361, 372
Intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs),
18, 103, 112, 135, 182, 217, 245,
276, 290, 293, 294, 392, 394
Interest rates, 28
Intermediate-range nuclear force (INF),
106, 123–125, 159, 182, 187, 189,
238, 271, 283, 290, 335–338,
347–349, 355–357, 363–365
International Harvester, 83
Iran-Contra scandal, 318–323, 330–333,
335, 339, 342
Iranian hostage crisis, 37
Iranian revolution of 1979, 340
Iran-Iraq War, 340
Israel, 37, 318–319, 341
Jackson-Vanik Amendment (1973), 225
James, Penn, 74
Jefferson, Thomas, 247, 281, 370
Jennings, Peter, 359
Jews, in Soviet Union, 205, 225, 256,
258–259, 362
John Paul II, Pope, 1, 3
(see also Vatican)
assassination attempt, 75
communism and, 74–75
human rights and, 75
information channel for, 82, 90, 408n23
nuclear war and, 76, 79–82, 90–91, 108
Reagan and, 74–75, 76, 90–91, 108,
408n23
representatives’ secret meeting with
Reagan (December 15, 1981), 77–82
Soviet Union and, 79, 82
visit to Poland (1979), 74, 77
Wilson meeting with, 73–74
Johnson, Lyndon B., 23
Joint Chiefs of Staff, 115–116, 119, 128
Jones, David, 35
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441
Kalb, Marvin, 174
Kampelman, Max, 202, 336, 337
Kandinski, Wassily, 385
Kennedy, Edward M., 111
Kennedy, John F., 23, 35, 36, 173
Kennedy, Robert F., 249
Keyworth, George (Jay), 113, 114
KGB, 46, 63–64, 109, 135, 136, 284, 340, 354
Directorate T and, 62–65, 225, 339–340
Line X and, 64
Khrushchev, Nikita, 346
Kings Row (movie), 237
Kirkpatrick, Jeane, 83
Kissinger, Henry, xii, 93, 173
Koehler, John O., 14
Korean Airlines incident (September 1,
1983), 140, 141
Krasnoyarsk Radar Station, Siberia, 274,
276, 289, 294, 303, 309–310
Krol, John (Cardinal), 75, 408n23
Kuhn, Jim, 230–231
Laghi, Pio, 77, 408n23
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 8
League of Finnish-American Societies, 375
Lehman, Ron, 336, 337
Lenin, V. I., 299, 380
Letters of Ronald Reagan
to Andropov (August 24, 1983), 139
to Andropov (December 23, 1983), 147
to Andropov (July 11, 1983), 137, 138
to Brezhnev (April 18, 1981), 49–55,
135, 248
to Brezhnev (December 23, 1981),
87–88, 89
to Chernenko (December 7, 1984),
184–185
to Chernenko (February 14, 1984), 157
to Col. Barney Oldfield (March 17,
1986), 274
to Gorbachev (March 11, 1985),
208–209
to Gorbachev (April 30, 1985), 210–211
to Gorbachev (February 16, 1986),
272–273
to Gorbachev (February 22, 1986),
273–274
to Gorbachev (April 11, 1986), 276
to Gorbachev (May 23, 1986), 278
to Gorbachev (July 1, 1986), 282–283
to John O. Koehler (July 9, 1981), 14, 15
to John Tringali (January 6, 1988), 369
to Pope John Paul II, 90–91
to Virginia Adams (April 21, 1982), 106
Ande_9780307238610_6p_bm_r1.s.qxp 4/1/09
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index
Lettow, Paul, 59
Liberation theology, 74
Lincoln, Abraham, 155
Lomonosov, Mikhail, 382
Longfellow, H. W., 335
Machiavelli, Niccolò, 17
MAD (see Mutual Assured Destruction
[MAD] policy)
Magazine Publishers Association, 207
Marshall Plan, 83, 84
Marx, Karl, 299
Matlock, Jack F., 215, 338, 380, 389, 394
McCarthy, Timothy, 46
McClelland, Woodford, 252
McFarlane, Robert C. (Bud), 120, 145, 146,
187, 202, 215, 231, 318, 322, 323
Meese, Edwin, III (Ed), 45, 67, 83, 93, 113,
114, 116, 120, 145, 146, 148, 206,
215, 318, 320, 321
Mein Kampf (Hitler), 63
Midgetman missile, 301
Military, U.S.
importance of economic recovery to
strength of, 24, 28–29, 54, 57–58,
176, 367, 370
morale and, 23–24, 367
peace without surrender and, 39, 142,
206, 290, 342, 347
Reagan’s statements on, 165, 347, 370
spending and, 32, 38
strength of, 24, 32–33, 39, 54, 163, 290
Minuteman missile, 38, 112
Missile defense, 111–116, 119–121,
128–131, 136, 144, 174–175
(see also Strategic Defense Initiative
[SDI])
Mitrokhin, Vasili, 135–136
Mitterand, François, 63–64, 157, 192
Mondale, Walter, 158, 160, 172–175
Moscow State University, Reagan’s speech
at (May 31, 1987), 380–387
Moscow summit (May 1988), 344,
371–372, 375–391
Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction
(MBFR) talks, 147–149
Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) policy,
x, 22, 125, 129, 166, 192, 282, 369
MX multiple-warhead missile, 38, 39, 120,
301
Nagasaki, 97
Nathan, Richard, 24
National Archives, 8
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National Association of Evangelicals,
121–122
National Conference of Christians and
Jews, 93
National Conference on Soviet Jewry, 358
National Intelligence Estimate (1982), 217
National Press Club, Reagan speech to
(November 18,1981), 70–71
National Security Agency, 2
National Security Council (NSC)
meetings, 2, 3, 8, 34–37, 101–102,
413n21
on arms control strategy, 61, 65–66,
68–70, 102–106, 119, 148, 276–277
chaired by Reagan, 19–21, 34–36, 61, 63,
65–66, 89, 144, 201, 276
first Reagan meeting of (February 6,
1981), 19–21, 34–36
on human rights, 35–36, 83–86, 90,
215–216, 252
on Latin America, 34–36
on Middle East, 36–37
on Mutual and Balanced Force
Reduction (MBFR) talks (January
13, 1984), 147–149
on negotiating strategy, 61, 65–66,
68–70, 103, 147–148
on Poland (December 1981), 83–86,
89–90
Reagan as decision maker at, 19–21, 108
on SDI, 144, 216
on Soviet Union, 34–36, 62–63, 66, 69,
83–86, 89–90, 101–102, 144, 147,
215–216
on START (April 21, 1982), 102–106
on U.S.-Soviet negotiations (March 4,
1985), 201
on U.S.-Soviet negotiations (September
20, 1985), 215–216
on zero-zero initiative, 67–68
National Security Decision Directive 86
(March 28, 1983), 124–125
National Security Decision Directive 192
(October 11, 1985), 325–326
National Security Planning Group (NSPG)
meetings, 2, 8, 34, 413n21
on arms control strategy, 39, 117–119,
143, 181–182, 187–188, 220,
270–271, 280, 326–330, 348–351,
371–372
chaired by Reagan, 19–21, 34, 145, 208,
218, 270, 275, 279, 324, 371
on Gorbachev’s proposal (February 3,
1986), 270–271
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on Iran-Contra scandal (November 25,
1986), 319–320
on Latin America, 319–320
on Moscow summit (February 9, 1988),
371–373
on NATO summit (February 26, 1988),
372–373
on negotiating strategy, 118, 183–189,
220, 270–271, 280, 326–230,
371–372
on Pershing II missile deployment
(January 13, 1983), 143
review of Reagan’s arms control
positions (September 8, 1987),
348–352
on SDI, 184, 187–189, 270–271,
280–281, 324–330, 348–351
on Soviet noncompliance with arms
control agreements (March 25 and
April 16, 1986), 275–277
on Soviet plans for protracted nuclear
war (December 9, 1983), 145–146
on Soviet strategic defenses (October 7,
1985), 218
on Soviet Union, 183–188, 218, 273,
275, 279–280, 325–326
on status of arms control negotiations
(March 19, 1984), 158–160
on U.S.-Soviet negotiations (June/July
1986), 279–281
on U.S.-Soviet negotiations
(November/December 1984),
181–183, 185–189
on zero-zero initiative (January 13,
1983), 117–119
NATO (see North Atlantic Treaty
Organization [NATO])
Navoi, Alisher, 385
Neuman, Johanna, 197–198
Newsweek magazine, 11, 201
New York Post, 93–94
New York Times, 111–112, 249, 312
Nicaragua, 35, 37, 319, 331–333
Nitze, Paul H., 118, 119, 159, 338, 389
Nixon, Richard M., 23, 53, 216
1972 summit, 225
Reagan and, 220–221
resignation of, 321
Safeguard ABM program and, 111
SALT agreements and, 103
North, Oliver, 320, 322, 333
North American Aerospace Defense
Command (NORAD), 65, 112,
114
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443
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO), 37, 38, 65, 86, 187, 267
summit (March 1988), 372–373
Notre Dame University, Reagan’s
commencement address at (March
9, 1988), 75, 95–96
NSC meetings (see National Security
Council [NSC] meetings)
NSPG meetings (see National Security
Planning Group [NSPG] meetings)
Nuclear weapons
Able Archer exercise, 141–143
ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) Treaty
(1972), 217, 238, 274, 280, 283, 289,
293, 295, 296, 298–304, 306, 308,
309, 314, 325
Eisenhower and, 106, 107, 145, 159
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 97
intercontinental ballistic missiles
(ICBMs), 18, 103, 112, 135, 182,
217, 245, 276, 290, 293, 294, 392,
394
intermediate-range nuclear force (INF),
106, 123–125, 159, 182, 187, 189,
238, 271, 283, 290, 335–338,
347–349, 355–357, 363–365
Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction
(MBFR) talks, 147–149
Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD)
policy, x, 22, 78, 125, 129, 166, 192,
282, 369
nuclear attack warning (September 25,
1983), 140, 141
reduction and abolition aims of Reagan,
59–62, 65, 78–79, 94, 95, 101,
106–109, 115–117, 123–131, 134,
142, 146, 150–151, 161–162,
169–171, 186, 188–189, 191–192,
196, 198
Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I
and II), 103, 159, 165, 182, 226,
274–277, 294
Strategic Arms Reduction Talks
(START), 102–106, 159, 187, 338,
348, 365
zero-zero initiative, 65–71, 117–119,
124–126, 137, 150, 189, 294–295,
297, 310, 317, 336, 352, 353, 357,
363
(see also Geneva summit; Missile defense;
Moscow summit; Reykjavik summit;
Washington summit)
(see also Strategic Defense Initiative
[SDI])
Ande_9780307238610_6p_bm_r1.s.qxp 4/1/09
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index
Nuclear arsenals of U.S., 17–18, 38, 65–66,
101, 135, 165, 180, 206, 279, 290,
363, 392–394
Nuclear arsenals of USSR, 17–18, 38,
65–66, 101, 135, 165, 180, 182,
205–206, 279, 289–290, 310, 363,
392–394
Nuclear freeze movement, 119, 357
Nuclear war impossibility of winning, 19,
79, 131, 142, 209, 214, 387–389
joint statement at Geneva summit on, 264
threat of (1983), 21, 22, 136–143
Nuclear winter, 188
Nunn, Sam, xii
Oberdorfer, Don, 142, 376
Office of Management and Budget, 5, 31,
37
Oil prices, 28–29, 299–300, 340, 341
Oldfield, Barney, 274
Olympic games, 156
Omnibus Budget and Reconciliation Act
of 1981, 57
O’Neill, Thomas (Tip), 24, 25, 55, 56, 210
Open sky proposal, 159
Organization of Petroleum Exporting
Countries (OPEC), 340
Ottawa economic summit meeting (1981),
63
Pakistan, 37
Parr, Jerry, 46
Pasternak, Boris, 385
Peaceful coexistence, 387–388
Perry, Bill, xi
Pershing II missile, 44, 65, 71, 82, 117, 136,
143–145, 271, 294, 363
Petrov, Stanislav, 140
Pipes, Richard, 45, 50, 83, 404n3
Plautus, 1
Poindexter, John, 200, 269, 320, 322, 324,
333
Poland, 34, 36, 133, 254
John Paul II’s visit to (1979), 74, 77
martial law in, 76, 77, 82, 89
NSC meetings on (December 1981),
83–86, 89–90
sanctions against, 82, 85, 86
Solidarity movement in, 76, 77, 82, 85,
86
Polybius, 153
Pontifical Academy of Science, 76, 91
Powell, Colin L., 324, 361, 371, 372, 389
Pravda, 199
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Presidential elections
1964, 339
1976, 4–5, 13–14, 100
1980, 4, 5, 23, 24, 27, 28, 30, 40–42, 113
1984, 153–155, 158, 160, 161, 172–176
President’s Economic Policy Advisory
Board (PEPAB), 31
Price and allocation controls, 28, 29
Providence St. Mel High School, Chicago,
107
Qadhafi, Muammar, 187, 239
Rancho del Cielo, California, 155, 160,
213, 338
Rather, Dan, 359
Reagan: A Life in Letters (ed. Skinner,
Anderson, and Anderson), 6
Reagan, In His Own Hand (ed. Skinner,
Anderson, and Anderson), 6, 66
Reagan, Maureen, 154
Reagan, Nancy, 2, 6, 93, 106, 153–154, 170,
192, 236
death of mother, 354–355
influence of, 197–198
in Moscow, 376, 378–379, 391–393
on Ronald, 9–10, 47, 197–198, 355, 376,
378–379, 391
Reagan, Ron (son), 378
Reagan, Ronald
advisers and staff, 12, 50, 52, 183, 269,
282, 323, 390
Andropov and, 4, 109, 135–141, 145,
147
Andropov’s letter to (August 4, 1983),
137
Andropov’s letter to (August 27, 1983),
139–140
approach to negotiating, 11, 33, 119,
157, 162, 202, 223–227
as decision maker, 1–3, 11–12, 19–20,
67, 84, 105–106, 123, 140, 147–148,
159–160, 164–169, 178–179,
197–198, 208, 245, 388, 394
assassination attempt, 45–48, 58, 75,
155
autobiography of, 332–333
Brezhnev and, 4, 71, 49–55, 87–88, 89,
135, 248
Brezhnev’s letter to (March 6, 1981),
43–45
at California ranch, 155, 160, 213, 338
at Camp David, 123–124, 192–193, 219,
220, 353
Ande_9780307238610_6p_bm_r1.s.qxp 4/1/09 9:23 AM
challenges of, 23–24, 73
character and personality of, 9–14, 20,
119
Chernenko and, 4, 156–158, 160,
177–181, 184–185, 195–196
Chernenko’s letter to (February 23,
1984), 158
Chernenko’s letter to (November 8,
1984), 178
Chernenko’s letter to (November 14,
1984), 179–180
Chernenko’s letter to (December 20,
1984), 191–192
communism and, 22, 60, 87, 150, 235,
254, 299, 382
conditions in U.S. on taking office,
20–24, 37, 340, 392
Congress, meetings with, 8, 30,
263–264,320
death of mother-in-law of, 354–355
defense philosophy of, 39–42, 102, 206
as Democrat, 96
on détente, 60
diary entries of, 6, 31–32, 39, 47–48, 50,
52, 56, 57, 74–76, 86, 87, 101,
108–109, 119–121, 129–130, 133,
143, 145–146, 149, 150, 154, 156,
157, 161, 172–173, 179, 181, 183,
185, 186, 189, 201–204, 218,
220–221, 223, 230, 262, 263, 269,
271–272, 275, 284–285, 289, 311,
318–319, 330, 337, 353–357, 379,
380, 391, 392
early life and, 10–11, 95–96
economic condition on taking office, ix,
23–24, 28, 38
economic policies of, ix, 24–25, 27–33,
37, 39, 57, 115, 367, 392
economic recovery program, passage of,
49, 55–58
favorite poem of, 43
finances of, 97
first welcome to Washington, 24–25
“focus of evil” statement by, 55, 122, 206,
379
Gold Medal for Courageous Leadership
in Government, Civil, and Human
Affairs awarded to, 93
Gorbachev, negotiations with (see
Geneva summit; Moscow summit;
Reykjavik summit; Washington
summit)
Gorbachev’s letter to (March 24, 1985),
209
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445
Gorbachev’s letter to (June 10, 1985),
211–212
Gorbachev’s letter to (June 22, 1985),
212–213
Gorbachev’s letter to (September 12,
1985), 214
Gorbachev’s letter to (April 2, 1986),
275–276
Gorbachev’s letter to (May 30, 1986),
278–279
Gorbachev’s letter to (September 15,
1986), 283–284, 288
Gorbachev’s proposal (January 15,
1986) and, 266, 269, 273
Gorbachev’s statement on INF
(February 28, 1987) and, 335–337
as governor of California, ix, 6, 24, 25,
40, 53, 100
Gromyko and, 160–162, 164–172
Haig resignation and, 108–109
health of, 203, 213
Hollywood and, 85, 96–99, 119, 237
human rights and, 35–36, 53–55, 75, 84,
87–89, 168, 211, 215, 225, 247–264,
268, 290–291, 313, 324, 345–347,
357–362, 364–365, 368, 373–375,
378, 381–387
humor, use of, 37, 46–47, 86, 89, 99–100,
118, 173–174, 185, 207
intelligence of, 10–11
Iran-Contra scandal and, 318–323,
330–333, 335, 339, 342
John Paul II and, 74–75, 76, 90–91, 108
on leadership, 12–13, 20, 78, 202, 208,
332
on legacy, 10, 111
legacy of, x, xii, 370, 390–391, 395
letters of (see Letters of Ronald
Reagan)
on MAD policy, x, 22
meeting with representatives of John
Paul II (December 15, 1981),
77–82
meetings with the press, 13–14, 59–61,
71, 90, 130, 145–146, 150, 162, 171,
192, 201, 207–208, 213, 228, 287,
312, 331–332 , 356
memorandum on negotiations with
Gorbachev, 223–227
military buildup of, 33–39
missile defense and, 22, 111–116,
119–121, 128–131, 136, 144,
174–175
Nancy and, 9–10, 47, 197–198
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index
Reagan, Ronald (cont’d)
negotiating strategy of, 11, 34, 57, 59,
61, 68–70, 85, 117, 123,148,154,
159, 178, 181, 183–185, 188, 201,
215–216, 220–228, 270–271,
282–283
news conferences of, 7, 59–62, 196–197,
319–322, 343–344
New York Post interview with (March
1982), 93–94
Nixon and, 220–221
NSC and NSPG meetings and (see
National Security Council (NSC)
meetings
nuclear responsibility, 17–19, 90–91,
112–113, 137, 152, 192, 391
nuclear war, impossibility of winning
and, 131, 134, 142, 145, 150–151,
161, 164, 171, 195, 264, 349, 368
on nuclear weapons, 97–98, 101, 112,
303
on nuclear weapons, elimination of,
x–xii, 10, 22, 59, 69, 91, 106–107,
111, 114–115, 117, 120, 123, 125,
128–131, 146, 150, 162, 166,
169–172, 181, 186, 193, 195,
199–203, 208–209, 213–214, 228,
245, 269, 273–274, 304–305, 310,
324, 347, 349, 352, 357, 363–364,
370–371
on nuclear weapons, elimination of and
SDI, 144, 175, 183–185, 188,
196–198, 216–217, 222, 280–281,
283, 309, 313, 327
on nuclear weapons, first public record
on elimination of, 93–95, 101
on nuclear weapons, reduction of, 33,
59, 62, 71, 78–79, 103, 109, 116,
128, 139, 153, 156, 158, 161–162,
166, 169–172, 183, 245, 263, 275,
283, 293–294, 299, 304, 324, 336,
344, 347, 357–358, 363–365, 369,
386
on nuclear weapons and international
control, 79, 82, 98, 107–108 (see also
SDI and international control)
at Ottawa economic summit meeting
(1981), 63
as pacifist, 93, 95–98
on peace without surrender, 29, 33–34,
39–42, 58, 79, 121, 142–143,
150–152, 156, 184, 202, 208, 367,
370, 373
political background of, 25, 96, 100, 339
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Polish situation and, 76, 77, 82–90
presidential election of 1976, 4–5,
13–14, 100–101
presidential election of 1980, 4, 5, 23,
24, 27, 28, 30, 40–42, 75, 113
presidential election of 1984, 153–155,
158, 160, 161, 172–176
presidential powers of, 17–20, 23, 112,
198, 200–201, 332, 367
priorities of, 1, 27–29, 48, 60, 95, 97,
111–117, 134, 150, 153, 155, 175,
186, 202, 248, 323, 344–348,
359–360, 370–371
public approval of, 32, 47, 56, 222
quiet diplomacy and, 15, 135, 168–169,
215–216, 226–227, 231, 236–237,
247, 252, 255–257, 285, 361–362
radio broadcasts by, 5, 7, 40–41, 74,
155–156, 249–251, 353–354
religious views of, 47–48, 88, 98–99,
122–123, 154–155, 202, 230, 249,
355, 374
Screen Actors Guild and, ix, 227, 384
SDI and (see Strategic Defense Initiative
[SDI])
Shultz and, 109, 115, 178–179, 181,
206
Soviets and, 41–42, 55, 60, 63, 83, 94,
102, 122–123, 133, 143–144,
149–151, 171, 173, 183–186, 189,
200, 222–223, 249, 252–254, 274,
346, 373–374, 379
Soviet economy and, 339–342
Soviets and trust, 66–67, 233–235,
240–241, 245, 263, 313, 337, 344,
347–348, 356, 369, 372, 384–386
space ban and, 283, 306
speeches of (see Speeches of Ronald
Reagan)
Thatcher and, 193–195
in West Berlin, 345–346, 358, 360
World War II and, 96–97
as writer, x, 1, 14, 30–31, 41, 88, 98–99,
121–129, 164–169, 198, 223–227,
230, 244, 310–311, 332–333, 339,
394 (see also speeches of Ronald
Reagan, letters of Ronald Reagan,
diary entries of)
on zero-zero, 65–71, 106, 117–119,
123–126, 150, 271, 295, 310, 336,
353, 357, 363
Reagan Presidential Library, 2–3, 5–8
handwriting file at, 7
Reed, Tom, 101
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Reeves, Richard, 249
Regan, Donald T., 31, 85, 202, 215,
230–231, 319
Religion, in Soviet Union, 77, 223, 362,
378
Republican National Convention
1976, 100
1984, 161
Reykjavik summit (October 1986), x–xi,
285–315, 317–318, 324, 338, 341,
376, 388
first Reagan/Gorbachev meeting,
290–291
second Reagan/Gorbachev meeting,
292–293
third Reagan/Gorbachev meeting,
293–297
fourth Reagan/Gorbachev meeting,
297–300
fifth Reagan/Gorbachev meeting,
300–303
sixth Reagan/Gorbachev meeting,
304–309
Gorbachev’s thoughts on, 312–315
reaction to, xi, 312–315, 317–318
Reagan’s thoughts on, 310–311
Ridgway, Rozanne L., 338, 389
Rogue-state argument, 114, 280, 296
Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish
Nuclear Weapons (Lettow), 59
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 84–85, 96, 99, 222
Rostow, Eugene, 69, 103
Rowny, Edward L., 103, 159, 389
Russia (see Soviet Union)
RYAN Raketno-Yadernoye Napadenie
(“Nuclear Missile Attack”), 136,
141
Safeguard ABM program, 111–112
Sakharov, Andrei, 375
SALT (see Strategic Arms Limitation
Talks/Agreements [SALT I and II])
SALT and Soviet violations of, 276–277
Saudi Arabia and airborne warning and
control system (AWACS), 340–341
Savimbi, Jonas, 35
Screen Actors Guild, ix, 227, 384
Scriabin, Aleksandr, 385
SDI (see Strategic Defense Initiative [SDI])
Sea-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs),
18, 392
Second Inaugural Address (January 21,
1985), 198
Senate, U.S. (see Congress, U.S.)
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447
Seneca, 174
“Set Your Clock at U-235” (Corwin), 97–98
Shakespeare, William, 219
Shamir, Yitzhak, 37
Shcharansky, Anatoly, 252
Shcherbitsky, Vladimir, 202
Shevardnadze, Eduard A., xi, 210, 231,
283, 285, 291–292, 337, 338, 343,
355, 356, 361, 389
Shultz, George P., 31, 140, 143, 160,
177–178, 180, 185, 202, 209, 218,
222, 269, 319, 361, 371
becomes secretary of state, 109
Daniloff release and, 285
foreword by, ix–xii
Geneva summit (November 1985) and,
196, 204, 206, 231, 262
Gromyko meeting with Reagan
(September 28, 1984) and, 164, 169
human rights and, 337–338
INF Treaty and, 365, 389
Iran-Contra scandal and, 322–323
NSC and NSPG meetings and, 144, 148,
159, 188, 215, 279–280, 319, 324
on nuclear weapons, elimination of, xii,
305
Reagan and, 109, 115, 127, 143, 160,
164, 178–179, 181, 206, 289, 310,
323, 338, 344, 356, 365
Reykjavik summit (October 1986) and,
x–xi, 291–292, 295, 305, 310
visits to Moscow (April/September
1987), 337–338, 343, 348, 353, 354
Weinberger and, 179
on zero-zero, 117
Shultz, Helena O’Brien (Obie), 390
Sinai Peninsula, 37
Single Integrated Operational Plan
(SIOP), 142
SLBMs (see Sea-launched ballistic missiles
[SLBMs])
Smith, Roger, 12
Socialism, 235, 299, 369
Solidarity labor union movement, 76, 77,
82, 85, 86
South Korea, nuclear weapons in, 295
“Soviet Ballistic Missile Defense” (Central
Intelligence Agency), 217
Soviet Military Power (1983 edition), 121
Soviet Union
Able Archer exercise and, 141–143
Afghanistan and, 37, 160, 206, 226
Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) system of,
212, 217, 218, 219, 272–273, 325
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index
Soviet Union (cont’d)
Chernobyl explosion and, 277–280, 290,
310, 372, 390–391
collapse of, 83, 339, 392
Cuba and, 34–36
disarmament proposals, 220, 266–271,
273, 276, 292, 298, 301, 335–337
economy of, 62–63, 83, 94, 102, 133,
163, 176, 182, 196, 204, 223, 224,
279–280, 290, 339–342, 344, 374
espionage by, 66–65, 134, 284, 339–340
expansion of, 101–102, 206, 212
expansion in Latin America, 34–37, 133,
205, 226, 250
glasnost and perestroika, 262, 338, 346,
359–360, 374, 385–387
grain agreements, 54, 168, 215, 256–257,
299–300, 341
human rights and, 205, 225, 247–248,
250–263, 268, 291, 297, 313, 323,
357–359, 361–362, 374–375, 378,
384
Jews in, 205, 225, 256, 258–259, 362
Korean Airlines incident (September 1,
1983), 140, 141
Krasnoyarsk radar station and, 274, 276,
289, 294, 303, 309–310
military buildup of, 33, 37–38, 77, 94,
101, 106, 117, 131, 133–135, 146,
188, 205, 244, 344
missile defense, 115, 182, 183, 194,
210–212, 217–220, 242, 268,
272–273, 293, 297, 300–304, 325,
412n10
Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction
(MBFR) talks and, 147–148
“new” thinking in, 196, 199, 272
noncompliance with arms control
agreements, 275–277, 289, 294, 295
nuclear attack warning (September 25,
1983), 140, 141
nuclear strength of, 18, 38, 41, 180, 182,
205, 279, 289–290, 310
nuclear weapons and (see Nuclear
weapons)
Pentecostals, 168, 250–252, 256–257
Poland and, 76, 77, 82–89
religion in, 77, 223, 362, 378
SDI, opposition to, 136, 191, 193–196,
210, 213–215, 217, 224, 237, 238,
240–243, 245, 263–264, 266–268,
270, 273–274, 281, 288, 289, 292,
295, 297–298, 300–303, 305–314,
326, 336, 354
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statements on eliminating nuclear
weapons, 163, 170–171, 178, 180,
186, 196, 199
suspension of talks in Geneva by,
144–145, 147, 153
technology, theft of (see KGB; Farewell
Dossier)
trans-Siberian oil pipeline and, 62–65
(see also Andropov, Yuri; Brezhnev,
Leonid; Chernenko, Konstantin;
Gorbachev, Mikhail; Gromyko,
Andrei)
Speakes, Larry, 93–94
Speeches of Ronald Reagan
addresses to Congress, 31–32, 55–56, 58
address to nation (February 5, 1981),
30–31
address to nation (December 23, 1981),
87, 88–89
address to nation (October 12, 1985),
219–220
address to nation (November 14, 1985),
228
address to nation (October 13, 1986),
313
address to nation (December 2, 1986),
321–322
address to nation (March 4, 1987),
330–332
address to nation (August 12, 1987),
347–348
Berlin Wall speech (June 12, 1987),
345–347
to British Parliament on human rights
(June 8, 1982), 253
commencement address at Eureka
College (May 9, 1982), 106–107
commencement address at Notre Dame
(March 9, 1988), 75, 95–96
commencement address at William
Woods College (June 2, 1952),
248–249
to Economic Club of Detroit (October
1, 1984), 171–172
at Eureka College (September 28,
1967), 100
at Eureka College (May 19, 1982),
252–253
farewell address (January 11, 1989),
395
First Inaugural Address (January 20,
1981), 28–29
to Future Farmers of America (1986),
99–100
Ande_9780307238610_6p_bm_r1.s.qxp 4/1/09 9:23 AM
on Helsinki agreement on human
rights, Finland (May 27, 1988), 375
on human rights and the Soviet Union,
Chicago (May 4, 1988), 373–375
to human rights supporters (December
3, 1987), 358–359
at Moscow State University (May 31,
1988), 380–387
to National Association of Evangelicals
(March 8, 1983) (“Evil Empire”
speech), 121–124
to National Press Club (November 18,
1981), 70–71
New Year’s message (January 1, 1988),
367–368
radio broadcasts, 5, 7, 40–41, 155–156,
249–251, 353–354
at Republican National Convention
(1976), 100–101
at Republican National Convention
(1984), 161
Second Inaugural Address (January 21,
1985), 198
“Star Wars” speech (March 23, 1983),
125, 127–130
State of the Union address (January 25,
1984), 150–151, 155
State of the Union address (February 6,
1985), 198–199
State of the Union address (January 25,
1988), 369–370, 371
at United Nations (June 17, 1982),
107–108
at United Nations (September 24,
1984), 162
at United Nations (September 21,
1987), 352–353
on U.S.-Soviet relations (January 16,
1984), 149–150
on Voice of America (November 9,
1985), 221–222
on Voice of America (January 1, 1987),
323–324
on Voice of America and Worldnet
television (November 4, 1987),
357–358
SS-4 missile, 65, 71, 357
SS-5 missile, 65, 71
SS-12 missile, 357
SS-20 missile, 37, 65–66, 68–69, 71, 119,
125, 271, 357, 363, 372
SS-23 missile, 357
SS-24 missile, 301
SS-25 missile, 301
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index
449
SS-X-24 missile, 187
Stagflation, 28
Stalin, Joseph, 156
START (see Strategic Arms Reduction Talks
[START])
Star Wars (see Strategic Defense Initiative
[SDI])
“Star Wars” speech (March 23, 1983), 125,
127–130
State, U.S. Department of, 2, 44–45, 50, 52,
55, 74, 113, 127, 218, 219, 282
State of the Union address
January 25, 1984, 150–151, 155
February 6, 1985, 198–199
January 25, 1988, 369–370, 371
Stealth (ATB—advanced technology)
bomber, 39, 221, 397
Stockman, David, 31, 33, 37
Stoessel, Walter, 50
Strategic Arms Limitation
Talks/Agreements (SALT I and II),
103, 159, 165, 182, 226, 274–277,
294
Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START),
78, 91, 102–106, 159, 187, 338, 348,
365
START Treaty, 372, 392
Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), 120,
174–175, 192, 197, 200, 215, 266,
282, 283, 335–336, 349, 353, 354, 367
elimination of nuclear weapons, 144,
175, 183–185, 188, 196–198,
216–217, 222, 280–281, 283, 309,
313, 327
international control of, 187–188, 197,
216–217, 222, 270–272, 288–289,
293–298, 302, 326–330, 349, 367
issue at Geneva summit, 187–189, 237,
238, 240–243, 245, 263–264
issue at Reykjavik summit, 288, 289, 292,
293, 295, 297–298, 300–303,
305–314
NSC and NSPG meetings on, 144,
216–217, 270–271, 280, 281,
324–330
Soviet efforts, 182, 268
Soviet opposition to, 136, 193–194, 196,
210–214, 218, 224, 237–245,
266–268, 270, 273–274, 281–282,
288, 293–298, 300–314, 326, 354
Thatcher and, 193–195
Strategic nuclear delivery vehicles
(SNDVs), 182
Strauss, Robert, 12
Ande_9780307238610_6p_bm_r1.s.qxp 4/1/09
450
index
Summit meetings (see also Geneva summit;
Moscow summit; Reykjavik summit;
Washington summit), 3–4, 33, 209,
225
Sunday Times of London, 161–162
Sun Tzu, 229
Sword and the Shield, The (Andrew and
Mitrokhin), 135–136
Talbott, Strobe, 11, 153
Tarasenko, Serge, 246
TASS (Soviet news agency), 122, 170, 171,
375
Tax policy, 28, 30, 32, 57
Teller, Edward, 114
Tennyson, Alfred, 177
Thatcher, Margaret, xi, 1, 192, 367
Gorbachev and, 191, 193–194, 207
Reagan and, 193–196
on SDI, 194–195
Threshold Test Ban Treaty, 338
Time magazine, 56, 205, 312
Tocqueville, Alexis de, 352
Tower, John, 202
Tower board, 330–331, 333, 335
Transportation, U.S. Department of, 5
Trans-Siberian oil pipeline, 62–65
Treasury, U.S. Department of, 5, 29, 31, 85,
206
Trewhitt, Henry, 173–174
Trident II missile, 38
Tringali, John, 369
Truman, Harry S., 96
Turn, The (Oberdorfer), 142
Unemployment, 28, 31
United Nations, Reagan’s speeches to
June 17, 1982, 107–108
September 24, 1984, 162
September 21, 1987, 352–353
United States Information Agency, 357
Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
211, 254, 374
USA Today, 197–198
USSR (see Soviet Union)
Vasyanin, Mikhail, 387
Vatican, 77, 82–83
papal delegation on nuclear war, 76–78,
91
U.S. Envoy to, 73–74, 80–81
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9:23 AM Page 450
Vessey, John, 115–116, 148
Vetrov, Vladimir I., 63–64
Vietnam War, 23, 24
Voice of America, 221–222, 323–324,
357–358
Volcker, Paul, ix, 29
Walesa, Lech, 86
Wall Street Journal, xii
Warner Brothers, 85, 97, 98
Warsaw Pact, 38
Washington Post, 11, 28, 312, 318, 376
Washington summit (December 1987),
244, 278, 343, 365, 368, 376, 386,
388
Watergate scandal, 23
Weidenbaum, Murray, 31
Weinberger, Caspar (Cap), 116, 120, 121,
145, 202, 218, 222, 323
defense readiness and, 33, 39, 46,
206
NSC and NSPG meetings and, 65–67,
69, 70, 116, 144, 146, 148, 159,
188, 216, 275, 281, 319, 324, 327,
330
on nuclear testing, 281
Reagan and, 206–207, 216, 323
on SDI, 327, 330
Shultz and, 179, 323
zero-zero initiative and, 65–67, 69, 70
Weiss, Gus, 64, 65
Weiss, Seymour, 50
West Berlin, 345–346, 358, 360
West Germany (Federal Republic of
Germany), 66
White House Daily Diary, 8
Wickman, John, 215
William Woods College, Missouri,
248–249
Wilson, William A., 73–74, 77, 114
Wirthlin, Richard, 10, 32, 222
Worldnet television, 357
World War II, 96–97
Yakovlev, Aleksandr N., 361, 389
Yazov, Dimitri T., 389
Zero-zero initiative, 65–71, 117–119,
124–126, 137, 150, 189, 263,
294–295, 297, 310, 336, 337, 352,
353, 357
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