The Dead Hand

the Soviets dismantled their Pioneers. Although it seemed one-sided at the time, it later proved to be the template for the 1987 treaty eliminating this entire class of weapons.

35 Reagan diary, May 24, 1982.

36 Carl Bernstein, “The Holy Alliance,” Time magazine, Feb. 24, 1992, pp. 28– 35.

37 George Weigel, Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), p. 441, and note 13, p. 905.

38 Steven R. Weisman, “Reagan, in Berlin, Bids Soviet Work for a Safe Europe,” New York Times, June 12, 1982, p. 1; and Edmund Morris, Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan (New York: Random House, 1999), p. 461.

39 George Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993), p. 5.

40 This assessment was made in 1979 by Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering William J. Perry before the House Armed Services Committee. Also see Strategic Command, Control and Communications: Alternative Approaches for Modernization, Congressional Budget Office, October 1981.

41 Reed communication with author, Nov. 21, 2006.

42 NSDD 55. http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsdd/index.html.

43 James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet (New York: Viking, 2004), Ch. 9.

44 Reagan diary, Nov. 13, 1982. Dobrynin, pp. 511–512.

45 “Report of the President’s Commission on Strategic Forces,” April 1983, p. 4.

46 In December, Congress voted to reduce funding until the basing could be resolved, but did not kill the missile altogether.

47 Donald R. Baucom, The Origins of SDI: 1944–1983 (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas), p. 184. Baucom was staff historian for the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative Organization.

48 Bob Sims, interview, Feb. 26, 1985.

49 Skinner, pp. 430–432. The essay is dated May 7, 1931.

50 Anderson, Hoover presentation.

51 A handwritten annotation says the speech was “written around 1962,” but archivists think it may have been 1963. See Skinner, pp. 438–442.

52 Among those who attended were Bendetsen and two members of the so-called kitchen cabinet, William A. Wilson, then U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, and Joseph Coors. “Daily Diary of President Ronald Reagan,” Jan. 8, 1992, RRPL. Graham was excluded. See Baucom, Ch. 7. Soon after the White House meeting, in early 1982, the group began to splinter over tactics. Bendetsen wanted to work quietly, but Graham decided to go public and published High Frontier: A New National Strategy, a 175-page study on using space platforms and existing or near-term technology. In another split, Graham envisioned non-nuclear defense, while physicist Edward Teller was pushing nuclear-pumped lasers. According to Baucom, for the rest of the year, Bendetsen continued to seek White House action on his Jan. 8 memorandum. A White House science office committee was also studying the idea. Late in the year, Bendetsen went as far as to write a proposed insert for a Reagan State of the Union speech endorsing strategic defense and sent it to the White House. Baucom, pp. 169– 170. Another account of this period is contained in William J. Broad, Teller’s War: The Top Secret Story Behind the Star Wars Deception (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), pp. 114–115.

53 Broad, p. 118, quotes Ray Pollack, a White House official at the meeting.

54 Edward Teller with Judith Shoolery, Memoirs: A Twentieth-Century Journey in Science and Politics (Cambridge: Perseus Publishing, 2001), p. 530.

55 Reagan diary, Sept. 14, 1982. Teller described his idea as a laser “driven by a nuclear explosion.” Later in the 1980s, Teller endorsed a non-nuclear approach. Teller, pp. 528, 535–536.

56 Anderson, p. 97, and interview, Nov. 10, 2008. Also, “The Schedule of President Ronald Reagan,” Wednesday, Dec. 22, 1982, courtesy Annelise and Martin Anderson.

57 The commission, chaired by Brent Scowcroft, recommended April 6, 1983, that the United States put one hundred MX missiles in existing Minuteman silos and move to build a new generation of small, single-warhead missiles for the longer term. The commission said the “window of vulnerability” wasn’t serious enough to warrant expensive schemes such as Dense Pack or setting up ABM for silos. See “Report of the President’s Commission,” p. 17. Congress eventually approved fifty MX missiles in May 1985.

58 In addition to Baucom’s detailed account, see Cannon, pp. 327–333; Hedrick Smith, The Power Game (New York: Random House, 1988), pp. 596–616; Frances Fitzgerald, Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), Ch. 5; Morris, p. 471; Robert C. McFarlane, with Zofia Smardz, Special Trust (New York: Cadell & Davies, 1994), pp. 229–230; and Frederick H. Hartmann, Naval Renaissance: The U.S. Navy in the 1980s (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1990), Ch. 14.

59 McFarlane, pp. 226–229.

60 Reagan diary, Feb. 11, 1983.

61 Reagan diary, Feb. 15, 1983.

62 Jack F. Matlock Jr., Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended (New York: Random House, 2004), p. 55. Shultz, p. 165.

63 Gordievsky, interview, Aug. 29, 2005; Oleg Gordievsky, Next Stop Execution: The Autobiography of Oleg Gordievsky (London: Macmillan, 1995).

64 Andrew and Gordievsky, p. 589.

65 Reagan, An American Life, p. 570.

66 Reagan, An American Life, p. 569.

67 McFarlane warned Reagan twice he should consult Congress and the allies, but Reagan rejected the advice, Special Trust, pp. 230–231.

68 “U.S. Relations with the USSR,” NSDD 75, Jan. 17, 1983. Pipes, the Harvard professor who had led Team B, was on the White House National Security Council staff and drafted the directive. In his memoir, Pipes said that inducing change in the Soviet regime was the goal. Pipes, pp. 188–208. Raymond L. Garthoff said it was a compromise and the “main thrust of the directive … was pragmatic and geopolitical.” Garthoff, The Great Transition (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1994), p. 33.

69 In a letter Feb. 19, 2004, to Shultz, McFarlane recalled that Reagan had not made strategic defense a priority “through no less than four budget cycles” since taking office. Letter courtesy McFarlane.

70 Cannon, p. 331.

71 Shultz doubted the technology was ready, doubted the expertise of the joint chiefs and told Reagan the proposal was a “revolution in our strategic doctrine.” Shultz, p. 250.

72 Reagan diary, March 22, 1983.

73 Address by the president to the nation, March 23, 1983.

CHAPTER 2: WAR GAMES

1 Dmitri Volkogonov, Autopsy for an Empire: The Seven Leaders Who Built the Soviet Regime (New York: Free Press, 1998), p. 361.

2 On July 16, 1982, Nitze, then negotiator for the United States, tried to work out a settlement in a “walk in the woods” with his Soviet counterpart, but the Soviets did not take up the ideas. Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost: At the Center of Decision, A Memoir (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1989), pp.