The Crusader

47. Editorial, “Another Anticommunist Fit,” Pravda, July 22, 1982, 4, published as “Reagan’s ‘Captive Nations’ Speech Slammed,” in The Current Digest of the Soviet Press, 34, no. 29 (1982): 10– 11.

48. A review of 1982 by Pravda, published in the January 3, 1983 edition, sweepingly said that, “The year 1982 [was]…a year when the U.S. President publicly called for a ‘crusade’ against the USSR, that is, for a political, economic, and ideological offensive against real socialism.” Vsevolod Ovchinnikov, “International Review,” Pravda, January 3, 1983, 4. Text is published as “Pravda Views International Events of 1982,’” in FBIS-SOV-5-JAN-83, January 5, 1983, CC1.

1. In May, General Secretary Brezhnev said at a major KGB conference that Reagan was committed to “a further expansion of the arms race and….working to undermine the Soviet economy.” He said that Reagan wanted to “erase the gains of international socialism through provocations” and “economic warfare.” Minutes after Brezhnev’s statement, KGB head Yuri Andropov stepped to the podium to call the advent of the Reagan administration a sign of “dangerous times.” Schweizer, Victory, xi, 40–41.

2. The Clark quote from Dobrynin comes from: Bill Clark, “President Reagan and the Wall,” Address to the Council of National Policy, San Francisco, California, March 2000, 3–5. Clark does not recall the exact date.

3. Haig’s reaction is recounted in Pipes, Vixi, 179.

4. This is one of a number of examples offered by Cannon himself which undermine Cannon’s portrayal of Reagan in Role of a Lifetime as an easily manipulated leader led around by his advisers. The president with almost no ideas of his own, according to Cannon’s first edition of the book, who was controlled by his advisers, was yet again, by Cannon’s own account, in the same book where he alleged the lack of ideas and control by Reagan, was in fact himself the main obstacle. In other words, Reagan himself was in control of the decision and direction. Lou Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York: PublicAffairs Books, second edition, 2000), 167.

5. Reagan, “Interview With Julius Hunter of KMOX-TV,” St. Louis, Missouri, July 22, 1982.

6. Reagan, “Responses to Questions Submitted by Bunte Magazine,” April 25, 1983.

7. Reagan, “Interview With Julius Hunter of KMOX-TV,” St. Louis, Missouri, July 22, 1982.

8. The 70 percent estimate was provided by Roger Robinson. Interview with Roger Robinson, June 6, 2005. The 50 percent figure was provided by Richard Pipes, who says that it was Bill Casey’s estimate. Pipes, Vixi, 180.

9. Data provided by Roger Robinson. Interview with Roger Robinson, June 6, 2005.

10. Interviews with Roger Robinson, June 6 and 8, 2005.

11. Located in “Ronald Reagan: Pre-Presidential Papers: Selected Radio Broadcasts, 1975–1979,” October 31, 1978 to October 1979, Box 4, RRL. For transcript, see Skinner, Anderson, and Anderson, eds., Reagan, In His Own Hand, 73–74. Alexander Solzhenitsyn was fond of making this same point. See Solzhenitsyn, Alexander Solzhenitsyn Speaks to the West, 69.

12. In a July 9, 1979 radio broadcast, Reagan said: “Several weeks ago a Commerce Department official whose job is to monitor the sale of advanced technology to the Soviet Union so as to guard against giving them something that would be used militarily, blew the whistle on his own department.” He continued: “He said our system of export controls is a ‘total shambles.’” Reagan spoke of the debate in the Carter administration over selling “advanced American products to the Soviets.” He took aim at the dovish Carter State Department and Secretary of State, who favored increased trade. He sided with the more hawkish Carter DOD and Zbigniew Brzezinski’s NSC: “Understandably aides in the Defense Department and the National Security Council are opposed.” He concluded with this dire warning: “Maybe we should remember World War II when a former trading partner returned tons of our scrap iron in the form of shrapnel that killed our young men. What we are talking about today isn’t scrap iron. Mr. [Lawrence] Brady [director of the Office of Export Administration] says that last year only a few hundred of the 7000 requests to sell our products to the Soviet-bloc nations were turned down. We are supposed to insure that nothing we sell can be diverted to military use but that is virtually impossible to do. Truck motors turning up in assault vehicles is proof of that.” Skinner, Anderson, and Anderson, eds., Reagan: A Life in Letters, 73–74. This was the polar opposite of the sort of economic warfare Reagan wanted to pursue.

13. Reagan, An American Life, 558.

14. Ibid., 316.

15. Reagan, “Interview in New York City With Members of the Editorial Board of the New York Post,” March 23, 1982.

16. Quoted by Schweizer, Victory, xiv.

17. Pipes, Vixi, 179–80.

18. Reagan, An American Life, 320.

19. Jim Hoagland, “France Refuses to Wage Economic War on Soviets,” Washington Post, June 15, 1982, A1.

20. Reagan stood and left the room, as expressions of momentary pleasure quickly transformed into looks of horror. “They were crestfallen,” Roger Robinson remembers. “Those were [Reagan’s] last words at the meeting. And I will never forget them.” Interviews with Roger Robinson, June 6 and 8, 2005.

21. “A. A. Gromyko’s Press Conference in New York,” TASS, printed in both Pravda and Izvestia, June 22, 1982, 5 and 4, respectively. Published as “Gromyko: US Is ‘Blowing Up Bridges,” in The Current Digest of the Soviet Press, 34, no. 25 (1982): 6.

22. “Lies as Policy, or the Policy of Lies,” Za Rubezhom, August 5, 1982, 5, published as “U.S. Resorts to Foreign ‘Policy of Lies,’” in FBIS, FBIS-13-AUG-82, August 13, 1982, A1–2. The author of this article was listed only as “D. K.”

23. The editorial continued: “As yet it is hard to say whether or not such a solution will be found. One thing is clear: The present American leadership is refusing to abandon the shameful role of destroyer of everything positive accumulated over the preceding period in relations between states with different social systems.” Editorial, “Normal International Contact Versus Adventurism of ‘Sanctions,’” Za Rubezhom, September 9, 1982, 1, published as “Za Rubezhom Scores Reagan Policy on Pipeline,” in FBIS, FBIS-15-SEP-82, September 15, 1982, CC1–2.

24. Reagan, “The President’s News Conference,” June 30, 1982.

25. Reagan, “Interview With Julius Hunter of KMOX-TV,” St. Louis, Missouri, July 22, 1982.

26. The Soviets were “very hard pressed economically,” he said openly on October 18, 1982. The pipeline’s construction would help bail them out. Reagan, “Remarks and a Questionand-Answer Session via Satellite to Republican Campaign Events,” October 18, 1982. 27. Reagan, “Remarks at an Illinois Republican Party Rally,” Peoria, Illinois, October 20, 1982.

28. Reagan said this at the June 18, 1982 meeting. Quoted by Laurence I. Barrett, Gambling with History: Ronald Reagan in the White House (New York: Doubleday, 1983), 300. 29. V. Shmyganovsky, “On the Basis of Mutuality,” Izvestia, October 19, 1983, 2. Reprinted in The Current Digest of the Soviet Press, 35, no. 42 (1983): 16.

30. I will be detailing this very candid meeting at length in my upcoming biography of Bill Clark. Also on this, see Barrett, Gambling with History, 299–302.

31. Among others, see Pipes, Vixi, 181, 208; Reed, At the Abyss; and Milt Bearden, The Main Enemy (New York: Random House, 2003).

32. Interview with Bill Clark, February 14, 2005.

33. One can find this exact objection particularly in TASS press releases at the time and in the pages of Pravda and Izvestia.

34. Memorandum of Conversation, “Meeting with President Mitterand of France,” October 27, 1982, prepared by Ambassador Evan Galbraith, declassified July 26, 2000, on file at the Reagan Library.

35. Barrett, Gambling with History, 301.

36. Ibid., 302.

37. Reagan radio address, “East-West Trade Relations and the Soviet Pipeline Sanctions,” November 13, 1982, in Fred L. Israel, ed., Ronald Reagan’s Weekly Radio Addresses, Vol. 1 (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1987), 45.

38. Leebaert, The Fifty-Year Wound, 524.