toward the USSR over Afghanistan. In early 1980, Kennedy, for whatever reason, seemed convinced that Leonid Brezhnev was committed to a peaceful settlement in Afghanistan—a country which the Soviets had just invaded and where they remained for the next decade. According to Vasiliy Mitrokhin’s 2002 report for the prestigious Cold War International History Project of the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC, which also cites Soviet documents, John Tunney went to Moscow on March 5, 1980 to relay yet another message on Kennedy’s behalf: Here, too, Kennedy reportedly blamed not the Kremlin and its dictator for aggression and escalating tensions but instead the American commander-in-chief that Kennedy was campaigning against for the presidency. Tunney said that the great Massachusetts liberal saw it as (in Mitrokhin’s words) “his duty to take action himself.”33
As the 1984 race heated up, Ted Kennedy continued to do extraordinary things to prevent Reagan’s reelection. He wrote a March 1984 article for Rolling Stone, in which he again denounced Reagan’s “Star Wars schemes” and called Reagan “the best pretender as president that we have had in modern history,” before leveling the irresponsible allegation that Reagan officials were “talking peace in 1984 as a prelude to making war in 1985.” Kennedy spoke of his “fears about an administration whose officials have spoken of winnable nuclear conflict.”34
Needless to say, Kennedy’s warnings did not materialize. In neither 1985 nor any point thereafter did Ronald Reagan fire a nuclear warhead. If the Kremlin never developed a formal axis with Kennedy, it at least sensed it had a blistering ally to assist its PR campaign against Ronald Reagan and his policies.
THE SDI DECEPTION
Despite the seeming potential for collaboration with Kennedy, Soviet fears of SDI’s feasibility were worsened by a shadowy, extraordinary incident in June 1984. While the Kremlin was unsure whether or not the United States could execute a missile defense system, it remained uneasy over SDI. This uneasiness proved ripe for exploitation, and the Reagan administration sought to take advantage of Soviet anxiety. In the ensuing program of deception reportedly approved by Secretary of Defense Cap Weinberger, the United States appears to have rigged an SDI test.
To convey this hoax, military planners reportedly scheduled four attempts to down a missile launched from California with an interceptor missile launched from the Pacific. After three failed attempts in this test, a fourth attempt was a perfect success. The fourth test worked flawlessly, or so it seemed, as the missile struck and exploded the target—an apparent major victory for the SDI program. The test, however, was rigged—a beacon was inserted in the target and a receiver was placed on the interceptor.
In a revelatory August 1993 piece, the New York Times cited unnamed Reagan administration officials who confirmed the fake, explaining the ruse as necessary to fool the Soviets into diverting crucial resources. The Times tracked down retired Secretary Weinberger from his home in Maine, where, wrote reporter Tim Weiner, he “would not confirm or deny that he had approved the deception.” Nonetheless, acknowledged Weinberger, in a possible concession: “You always work on deception. You’re always trying to practice deception. You are obviously trying to mislead your opponents.”35 Deception, or counterintelligence, or black operations, is a natural component of any war, including the Cold War.
In September 2005, I sought definitive confirmation on the fake test from Weinberger and other officials. The 88-year-old Weinberger, in poor health (he died seven months later), said he did not recall the incident or even the 1993 Times article. Weinberger’s close friend Bill Clark was also unaware of the incident, which would not have been surprising, since Clark was no longer national security adviser in June 1984. I posed the question to author Peter Schweizer, a friend of Weinberger who partnered with the former secretary of defense on a number of books and projects. Schweizer confirmed the incident. He pointed to a 2001 conversation in which Weinberger told him that the “disinformation” had indeed taken place.36
Unfortunately, I was not able to confirm Ronald Reagan’s precise role in the situation, but regardless the deception worked. The Soviets were further alarmed about the realistic possibilities of SDI and suddenly had a greater imperative to avoid a second term of the Reagan administration.
RHETORICAL BOMBS
Ironically, though Reagan kept silent on something of such magnitude as a faked SDI test, two months later he blurted out an unintended statement that handed the Soviets a campaign issue, and during the time of the Republican and Democratic national conventions. During an August microphone test prior to one of his weekly radio broadcasts, the president jokingly told Americans that he had just signed a law outlawing the USSR and the bombs were about to start flying. Reagan thought he was speaking off the air, but he was on live. To the Soviets, the joke was not funny.
A parade of subsequent articles in the Communist press claimed that the gaffe proved Reagan was not merely out to end socialism, but, as one East Berlin reporter put it, to “bomb it out of existence”; his real intentions had been exposed.37 The Bulgarian press said that while Reagan’s team had always been “aggressive and constant in its anti-Sovietism,” and “the moral and physical negation of real socialism has been the ultimate goal of the United States,” now, finally, the whole world could recognize Reagan’s unmistakable objectives through his insensitive humor.38
On Moscow television, Genrikh Borovik linked Reagan to Hitler, noting the similarity between Reagan’s regular rhetoric—here Borovik had in mind recent Reagan words on Grenada, not the radio gaffe—and that of the Fuhrer. “The very same words were heard by the world from Berlin just over 45 years ago when Germany was occupying Czechoslovakia,” opined Borovik, with little sense of proportion.39
This Kremlin chatter failed to silence Reagan. That August, Reagan himself made reference to the Nazis. The occasion was the fortieth anniversary of the Warsaw uprising, where he again made clear his intentions regarding Eastern Europe. He declared:
[L]et me state emphatically that we reject any interpretation of the Yalta agreement that suggests American consent for the division of Europe into spheres of influence. On the contrary, we see that agreement as a pledge by the three great powers to restore full independence and to allow free and democratic elections in all countries liberated from the Nazis after World War II and there is no reason to absolve the Soviet Union or ourselves from this commitment…. Passively accepting the permanent subjugation of the people of Eastern Europe is not an acceptable alternative.40
Unlike in the past, Ronald Reagan now remonstrated against Yalta not as a presidential candidate but as leader of the free world, where he could make things happen. And he refused to accept Eastern Europe’s continued condition.
In response, TASS expressed disbelief at the president’s insolence. Complaining that this was hardly the first time Reagan had spoken against Yalta, a displeased TASS properly interpreted this particular case as an example of Reagan “actually call[ing] for the revision of the decisions of the Yalta conference.”41 What audacity!
FALL OF 1984: MIXED MESSAGES BEHIND THE CURTAIN
As the November presidential vote approached, the Soviets remained strident in their war of words. On September 7 during Moscow TV’s “The World Today” program, watched by millions of Soviet citizens, Valentin Zorin warned of the dangers of a reelected Reagan, a president who was “banking on undermining the economy of the Soviet Union,” on “stifling” the USSR, on “causing considerable harm.”42 He had to be
