they recognize is that which will further their cause, which is world revolution. Lenin… said in 1920 that they repudiate all morality that proceeds from supernatural ideas—that’s their name for religion—or ideas that are outside class conceptions. Morality is entirely subordinate to the interests of class war. And everything is moral that is necessary for the annihilation of the old, exploiting social order and for uniting the proletariat.
Yet, to think that this address was all fire and brimstone would be a mistake. Immediately after dubbing the USSR evil, Reagan, employing a line he inserted into the text himself, served up a plea for prayer for the USSR: “[L]et us pray for the salvation of all of those who live in that totalitarian darkness—pray they will discover the joy of knowing God.” However, “until they do,” said Reagan, “let us be aware that while they preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the Earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world.”
Then, in a moment that has been almost completely neglected by history, Reagan drew similar parallels to his own country, turning the spotlight on the manifold sins of which the United States had been guilty since its inception. “Our nation, too, has a legacy of evil with which it must deal,” he said, citing slavery, racism, bigotry, ethnic hatred, anti-Semitism, and the “long struggle of minority citizens for equal rights.” America had also betrayed God, particularly the commandment, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”
While America was hardly exempt from sin and did not escape criticism in this address, the thrust of Reagan’s message was that America was facing not simply any old enemy; it was facing an evil enemy, an Evil Empire. And that empire, said Reagan, with some good news, was doomed: “I believe that communism is another sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages even now are being written,” he said again.25
Because of these dramatic pronouncements, certain Reagan staff loved the speech. Bill Clark called it “probably his greatest speech.”26 Fred Ikle, Reagan’s undersecretary of defense for policy, appreciated the underlying logic and strategy in such bombastic statements. Ikle admired Reagan for having the “courage” to articulate what was then an “incendiary idea” but is now a “hackneyed truth”; namely, “that we had a Cold War because of the evil empire, and could not end the Cold War without undoing that empire.”
For every Ikle or Clark, however, there was a David Gergen or State Department official who got quite nervous about such Reagan remarks. To them, such comments were more incendiary than helpful, destined to produce international anger instead of progress.
Two people who shared this view were Nancy Reagan and her friend Stuart Spencer, a Reagan campaign adviser: About a week after the speech, Spencer was having one of his private dinners for three with the Reagans. Nancy and Spencer both expressed reservations over the president’s speech a week earlier. Reagan waved them off: “It is an Evil Empire,” he responded. “It’s time to close it down.”27
SDI
While the “Evil Empire” speech had shocked people on both sides of the Atlantic and had burned yet another page in the annals of searing Reagan rhetoric against the Soviets, March 1983 still had another surprise in store. “My fellow Americans, tonight we’re launching an effort which holds the promise of changing the course of human history,” declared the president on March 23, 1983, in a nationally televised address that caught even his top advisers off guard. Reagan penciled a line into the speech text: “I call upon the scientific community which gave us nuclear weapons to turn their talents to the cause of mankind and world peace; to give us the means of rendering these weapons impotent and obsolete.”
With this introduction, he announced his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a vision for a space-based missile-defense system. Among other lines he added to the text of his speech was this harbinger of what was to come: “[L]et me just say that I am totally committed to this course.”28 That would soon be abundantly clear to the world. Coming only two weeks after the Evil Empire speech and amid his push to place intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Western Europe, Reagan’s remarks left Moscow shell-shocked, not to mention his own staff. Four days before the speech, only Bill Clark, Robert McFarlane, John Poindexter, and science advisor George Keyworth knew what was to come.29 Even physicist Edward Teller, who had been involved in Reagan’s thinking on SDI longer than any individual, was completely surprised.30
The secrecy was necessary: Reagan had a terrible problem with leaks, especially from White House moderates and the State Department, the latter of which adamantly opposed SDI and anything that rankled the Soviets. Leaks had been a particularly big problem that spring of 1983, to the point where Reagan had Clark investigate the matter and even considered employing a polygraph.31 He did not want SDI to be sabotaged by an in-house opponent as a lame-brain idea prior to its announcement.
Keyworth recalled a Monday meeting in the Oval Office with Secretary of State Shultz before the Wednesday evening speech. “Shultz called me a lunatic in front of the president,” remembered Keyworth, “and said the implication of this new initiative was that it would destroy the NATO alliance. It would not work… and was the idea of a blooming madman.”32 What Shultz did not realize when he confronted Keyworth was that he had just called Reagan a madman in front of his top advisers—since the idea was completely Reagan’s.
Resistance came not only from Shultz’s State Department but also from Pentagon hardliners who usually supported Reagan. As the speech approached, Richard Perle telephoned Keyworth from Portugal and told him to fall on his sword, to go so far as to tell the president he would oppose the new idea publicly, to do anything to stop the speech. Keyworth said that even Fred Ikle was “violently opposed.” “I guess I have never seen such opposition to anything,” Keyworth estimated. “But [Reagan] was absolutely committed.”33
Bill Clark notes that SDI offers one of the best examples of Reagan’s full control over a decision and its fate. He says that even McFarlane, who helped Reagan write the SDI speech, was opposed: “My deputy, McFarlane, gave me a memo the night before the speech and said, ‘Bill, can you talk him out of doing this?’ No way, I said….No one supported him on this announcement but a few of us.” Clark said of McFarlane: “[He] helped put the words together, as instructed, for that speech. As a military officer he saluted and drafted for us. He came to me almost in tears to say, ‘You’ve got to talk to the President out of giving this. It’s not ready and violates certain treaties.’”34
What many of the principles did not realize at the time was that this Reagan fascination with a technological breakthrough that might allow for defense against missiles had begun long before his presidency. For years, he had called it “my dream,” and having carefully thought out the concept for over a decade, it was beyond question his baby.35 Reagan had a plaque in his office stating that there is no limit to what a man can achieve if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit—yet, he was the first to admit SDI was his idea.36
An early seed was planted during a 1967 meeting between Reagan and Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb and one of the twentieth century’s most influential physicists.37 When Reagan moved in to the governor’s mansion, Teller requested a meeting, and the new governor, eager to accommodate, responded right away. They met at the mansion—their first of numerous meetings over the years. Teller said he did “nothing more” than invite Reagan to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for a series of briefings, which in November the governor proceeded to do. Teller shared with Reagan his research on using explosives to defend against a nuclear attack. In Reagan’s first year in public office, these two historic men met on what would become a historic idea.38
At the lab, Reagan asked Teller about a dozen questions, listening intently but without giving a clear indication of whether he was for or against the concept. The governor’s questions, said Teller, “were by no means obvious questions, but in a field that must have been quite new to him he saw the salient points.”39 He said Reagan asked “very intelligent questions” and was keenly interested. Until his literal dying days, Teller insisted Reagan was a “very bright… exceptionally intelligent individual,” who was always greatly underestimated by partisan foes.40
The two continued to meet and correspond right up until March 23.41 In one exchange, Teller contacted the White House about a “potential advance” in nuclear weapons technology: the massive energy
