Vice President Bush has informed me of his recent meeting with you. I want you to know that I deeply appreciate your counsel and that, following upon it, I have decided to take the following steps concerning Poland. Our Charge in Warsaw will inform General Jaruzelski, through a most confidential envoy, that we are prepared to lift the ban on regularly scheduled LOT flights to the United States, permit the resumption of travel under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Travel Fund, and begin an official—but highly confidential—dialogue. This dialogue would include all aspects of our relations and set forth what we would expect from the Polish side in return for positive actions on our part.25
Clearly, the briefings, advice, and influence between Washington and the Holy See swung both ways. In the letter, Reagan linked his sanctions modifications to a positive Polish response;26 he also listed his own specific human-rights concerns:
These steps would, however, depend upon Warsaw’s willingness to release the eleven KOR and Solidarity activists without any onerous conditions or harassment. I am also conveying to the General my strong interest in the situation of Lech Walesa and his family and my concern that they not be subjected to officially-inspired harassment…. I sincerely hope General Jaruzelski will respond positively to our approach and agree to take steps which will lead to the reconciliation in Poland for which we all hope and pray.27
Finally, there were several meetings, not to mention an obvious special bond, between not just the principals but the two men at the top. Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II met together probably at least seven times.28 Some of the most telling moments from those meetings can be encapsulated into a single enduring image that Nancy Reagan describes as one of her favorites, captured by a photographer: “The pope is sitting with his head bent, listening, and Ronnie is half way out of his chair and talking to the pope, and his hand is out and his finger’s out. Obviously he’s telling him something. And you wonder, what in the world is Ronnie saying? The pope is listening very carefully to him.”
It was a common image derived from two men who respected one another and engaged a world they yearned to transform. John Paul II told Nancy that there was a psychological and emotional tie between the two that he never had with another president.29 And it all started with that meeting on June 7, 1982.
In the years following the end of the Reagan administration, much of the discussion regarding the pope centered on the nature of this relationship between the two prominent men. The defining characteristics of the collaboration became a subject of dispute after Carl Bernstein’s article, “The Holy Alliance,” ran in 1992. Some on both sides of the Atlantic resented the implication that there was collusion unifying the two sides. One high-level Reagan foreign-policy official was so contemptuous of Bernstein’s characterization that he unfairly maligned the former Watergate reporter as a “slimeball” and “scumbag.”30 This official apparently feared that such a term did a disservice by trivializing what happened, perhaps making it less believable to serious observers. He insisted there was no Holy Alliance, nor “conspiracy,” but mainly “shared interests”—“two groups going down the same path.” Likewise, one historian of this episode, a sympathetic one to both the pope and Reagan, personally told me that Bernstein’s claim of a conspiracy of two is “horseshit.”31
Many others also rejected the notion that there was a conspiracy between the two sides. Richard V. Allen was particularly hostile to the term, saying that when he once referred to the partnership as an alliance, he meant it as a metaphor not as a statement of fact.32 Similarly, John Paul II biographer George Weigel calls Bernstein a “journalistic fantasist,” and states categorically that there was “neither alliance nor conspiracy,” though there was “a common purpose born of a set of shared convictions.”33 The gentlemanly Bill Clark also rejects the notion of a Holy Alliance or conspiracy: “[T]he idea that this was some sort of ‘Holy Conspiracy’ is overreaching a bit. There was no plot or plan between the two sides…. We knew we were both going in the same direction and so we decided to collaborate, particularly on intelligence issues regarding the Eastern Bloc.” He adds: “There was a natural convergence of interests, which led officials at the White House to work together with their counterparts at the Vatican.” “Primarily,” Clark continued, “that cooperation involved the sharing of intelligence information. But no, there was not a formal alliance as such.”34
In the end, Clark dubbed the mutual effort a “successful collaboration” which took place “under Ronald Reagan’s direction.” This mutual effort was encouraged to flourish during Clark’s tenure at the NSC, bringing the White House and Vatican closer together than at any other point.
Though some clearly do not like the term, it seems that this mutual effort was a “conspiracy” of sorts, especially when clandestine priests were on the ground and mutual aid was secretly provided by the two sides. It certainly seems fair to characterize it as an alliance, and even a “holy” one, being that it was one that the spirit- filled Reagan and spiritual father John Paul II pushed for the purpose of undermining Communism.
Regardless of the specific language used to describe it, the end result was that their meeting on June 7, 1982 forged an indelible bond, a sacred pledge to share information that would be mutually beneficial to both sides. And despite the clear obstacles, both men persevered in the hope that they might one day live to see the walls of Communism come tumbling down. It was a unique connection between two unique individuals, the like of which have rarely been seen in modern politics.
JUNE 8, 1982: WESTMINSTER
The day after his historic meeting with the pope, Reagan left the Vatican reinvigorated with a spiritual zeal to undermine Communism. Filled with a sense of grander purpose, he flew to London, where on June 8 at Westminster he gave the most prescient speech of his presidency.
While Tony Dolan was the speechwriter for the Westminster address, Reagan’s hand—literally his pen— was apparent in every line as Reagan played a key role in the speech’s language, ensuring that it embodied all that he preached. An early draft of the speech, probably the first, is dated May 19, 1982, and is on file at the Reagan Library. That draft, written by Dolan, was overhauled by Reagan, with the president removing numerous words, lines, and paragraphs and adding so much text that he could have received a coauthor credit.35 The May 19 draft was twenty-four pages long, with twenty-seven entire paragraphs that were removed by Reagan in addition to dozens of sentences and hundreds of words the president slashed.36
Throughout the draft process, Reagan played this editing role, adding significant, well-known lines to the text. Few sections of the Westminster address were more memorable than the one Reagan penciled in to page fourteen of the May 24 draft: “What I am describing now is a policy and a hope for the long term—the march of freedom and democracy which will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash heap of history as it has left other totalitarian ideologies which stifle the freedom and muzzle the self-expression of its citizens.”37 Very tellingly, Reagan opted for the word “policy” in addition to “hope.”38
The speech offered more: The president called upon Western allies to encourage democratic developments in Eastern Europe by assisting inchoate democratic institutions behind the Iron Curtain. He said he wanted Eastern Europeans “to choose their own way to develop their own culture, to reconcile their own differences through peaceful means.” This effort, said Reagan, would constitute a “crusade for freedom.”
In the 1950s, he had signed onto the Crusade for Freedom; now, he was resurrecting and spearheading it. “[L]et us move toward a world in which all people are at last free to determine their own destiny,” he urged. Forecasting a simultaneous splurge in democracy, he assured people that “around the world today, the democratic revolution is gathering new strength.” He went on to say that “in the Caribbean and Central America, sixteen of twenty-four countries have freely elected governments. And in the United Nations, eight of ten developing nations which have joined the body in the past five years are democracies.” He offered: “This is precisely our mission today: to preserve freedom as well as peace. It may not be easy to see, but I believe we live now at the turning point.”
As he had at CPAC six months earlier, Reagan spoke of a crossroads—a “turning point.” He then turned his attention to what he saw as the source of darkness:
In an ironic sense, Karl Marx was right. We are witnessing today a great revolutionary crisis…. But the
