123. Reagan, “Remarks and Q & A With Reporters on Domestic and Foreign Policy Issues,” March 25, 1983.
124. Interview with Bill Clark, August 24, 2001.
125. “Reagan’s Foreign Policy—His No. 1 Aide Speaks Out,” U.S. News & World Report, May 9, 1983.
126. See Schweizer’s works, including his The Fall of the Berlin Wall, 40; Also see Pipes, Vixi, 158. CHAPTER 17
1. Data cited by Reed, At the Abyss, 215. At the time, the United States was second and Saudi
Arabia was third.
2. See Schweizer’s works, including his The Fall of the Berlin Wall, 45–46. 3. Paul Taylor, “Furor Over Remarks Fails to Dismay Bush,” Washington Post, April 14,
1986; Schweizer, Victory, 242–43; and Richard Alm, “Alarm bells over cheaper oil; while consumers cheer plummeting prices, Vice President Bush and others are warning enough is enough,” U.S. News & World Report, April 14, 1986, 24. A read of the U.S. News & World Report article demonstrates the extent to which the media was unaware of the true reason for the increase in Saudi oil production and low prices.
4. Interview with Roger Robinson, June 6 and 8, 2005. See Richard V. Allen, “The Man Who Changed the Game Plan,” The National Interest, Summer 1996, 64; Schweizer, Victory, 140–44, 261; and Schweizer, Reagan’s War, 239.
5. CIA report is cited in Schweizer, Victory, 261–63.
6. Cited in Schweizer, Victory, 261–63.
7. On this, Peter Schweizer gives a number of examples. Schweizer, Victory, 263.
8. Ibid., 166.
9. See analysis by Grigorii Khanin in Ellman and Kontorovich, eds., The Disintegration of the Soviet Economic System, 77.
10. Richard V. Allen, “The Man Who Changed the Game Plan;” and Schweizer, Victory, 262.
15. Schweizer, Victory, 255–56, 261.
16. Prince Turki al-Faisal, “Allied Against Terrorism,” The Washington Post, September
17, 2002, A21.
17. Bush’s role in this was very interesting. For a discussion, see Paul Kengor, Wreath Layer or Policy Player? The Vice President’s Role in Foreign Policy (Lanham, MD: RowmanLittlefield, 2000).
18. Reagan, “The President’s News Conference,” October 1, 1981.
19. Weinberger told this to Peter Schweizer. Quote is in Schweizer, ed., The Fall of the Berlin Wall, 44.
20. Reagan, “Remarks and an Informal Exchange With Reporters on the U.S. Arms Sale to Saudi Arabia,” June 3, 1986.
21. The one obstacle was probably the ambivalence and personal dealings of Vice President Bush.
22. The date of this was September 26, 1986. This information was taken from a variety of sources, including: Rodman, More Precious Than Peace, 339–40; Fred Barnes “Victory in Afghanistan: The Inside Story,” Reader’s Digest, December 1988, 87–93; and interviews. 23. Barnes, “Victory in Afghanistan,” 87.
24. Rodman, More Precious Than Peace, 336–37.
25. Barnes, “Victory in Afghanistan,” 91.
26. Cited in Rodman, More Precious Than Peace, 339. Schweizer says that the Stingers downed 75% of their targets in the first year. Schweizer, Victory, 269–70. Steve Coll says that estimates vary widely, from 30% to 75%, though he cited no source. Coll, “In CIA’s Covert Afghan War,” A1.
27. Martin Schram, “Reagan Urges U.S. Mideast Presence,” Washington Post, January 10,
1980, A3.
28. Other contemporary sources from 1980, including Lou Cannon in the Washington Post, reported that Reagan supported sending arms (in general) to the Mujahedin. Lou Cannon, “A Vision of America Frozen in Time,” Washington Post, April 24, 1980, A2. Surely, someone must have advised Reagan on the Stingers; nonetheless, the earliest on-the-record account of this idea (as far as I could find) was from the mouth of Ronald Reagan.
29. Statement from the Moscow Domestic Service, published as “Afghan ‘Basmachs’ Visit Washington Seeking Missiles,” in FBIS, FBIS-SOV-26-FEB-81, February 26, 1981, A1. 30. On this, see especially Rodman, More Precious Than Peace, 337–38. 31. Ibid., 338.
32. Barnes, “Victory in Afghanistan,” 88–89.
33. Simpson, NSDDs, 446–47.
34. Rodman, More Precious Than Peace, 337–38.
35. Barnes, “Victory in Afghanistan,” 90.
36. Rodman, More Precious Than Peace, 339; and Barnes, “Victory in Afghanistan,” 90. 37. McFarlane was interviewed by Schweizer in Schweizer, Reagan’s War, 255–56. 38. I was unable to ascertain whether these were the same group of individuals, nor the precise day of the visit.
39. Coll, “Anatomy of a Victory,” A1.
40. Rodman, More Precious Than Peace, 339.
41. Jack F. Matlock, Autopsy of an Empire (New York: Random House, 1995), 747–48.
42. Reagan, An American Life, 660. Later recalling Gorbachev’s “strong motives for wanting to end the arms race,” Reagan asserted: “The Soviet economy was a basket case, in part because of enormous expenditures on arms. He had to know that the quality of American military technology, after reasserting itself beginning in 1981, was now overwhelmingly superior to his. He had to know we could outspend the Soviets on weapons as long as we wanted to” (14–15).
43. Reagan to William F. Buckley, Jr., May 5, 1987 in Skinner, Anderson, and Anderson, eds., Reagan: A Life in Letters, 418–19.
44. Gorbachev speaking on Soviet television, October 14, 1986. Remarks provided by Peter Schweizer.
45. Shevardnadze November 1991 interview with International Affairs (Moscow), in “Retrospective on the End of the Cold War,” Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University, February 25–27, 1993, 6.
46. Bessmertnykh speaking during February 25–27, 1993 conference at Princeton University. Remarks published in Wohlforth, ed., Witnesses to the End of the Cold War, 31–32.
47. Ibid., pp. 47–48.
48. Estimate is provided by Peter Schweizer in Reagan’s War.
49. Ellman and Kontorovich, eds., The Disintegration of the Soviet Economic System, 13–16, 19. Michael Ellman and Vladimir Kontorovich, economics professors with expertise on the Soviet economy, said that it was the “unprecedented peacetime escalation of military expenditures and the other costs of being a superpower” that sapped the USSR. They note that while the USSR was doomed in the long run, it was certainly not predestined to disintegrate in the late 1980s. That demise, Ellman and Kontorovich found, “could have been alleviated by appropriate policies.” Even Yuri Andropov had notable success by applying strict policies, particularly by replacing ineffective managers and corrupt officials and ministers; he also benefited from a series of better harvests in the agricultural sector. In all, the Soviet economy had recovered from its 1979–82 decline.
50. Akhromeev quoted by Ellman and Kontorovich, “The collapse of the Soviet system and the memoir literature,” Europe-Asia Studies, 49, no. 2 (March 1997): 259. 7. Brown, The Gorbachev Factor, 249.
8. Ibid. To be sure, Gorbachev later moved away from this sentiment. Yet, this language, especially shared privately, in no way helped those hoping for democracy in East Germany and Eastern Europe as a whole. To the contrary, it very much hurt their efforts.
9. The first of these was in an August 7 interview with the West German publication Bild Zeitung. After describing the wall as an “affront to the human spirit” and a symbol of the “failings of totalitarian regimes,” he was asked: “When do you believe the wall can be torn down?” He replied: “I would like to see the wall come down today, and I call upon those responsible to dismantle it.” He urged the wall come down again in an August 12 news conference. The skeptical reporter retorted: “How realistic is it, though? Some critics have suggested it raises false hopes for those beyond the wall.” Reagan said he did not think so. He assessed again on August
13—the wall’s twenty-fifth anniversary—stating that the wall “cannot be” a permanent structure and affirming that it “will come down.” See, respectively, Reagan, “Written Responses to Questions Submitted by Bild- Zeitung of the Federal Republic of Germany,” August 7, 1986; Reagan, “The President’s News Conference,” August
