Reagan told Walter Cronkite on the fortieth anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, France on June 6, 1984: “Walter, I have said, and will continue to say, a nuclear war cannot be won. It must never be fought. And this is why the goal must be to rid the world once and for all of those weapons.” Reagan, “Interview With Walter Cronkite of CBS News in Normandy, France,” June 6, 1984.
48. Reagan, “Interview With Alastair Burnet of ITN Television of the United Kingdom,” March 10, 1988.
49. Among many others, see Reagan, “Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the State of the Union,” January 26, 1984; Reagan, “Debate Between the President and Former Vice President Walter F. Mondale,” Kansas City, Missouri, October 21, 1984; Reagan, “Interview With Arrigo Levi of Canale 5 Television of Italy,” March 10, 1988; Reagan, “Interview With Soviet Television Journalists Valentin Zorin and Boris Kalyagin,” May 20, 1988; and Reagan, “Radio Address to the Nation on Soviet-United States Relations,” December 3, 1988. Also see Reagan, An American Life, 288; and Kenneth W. Thompson, “The Reagan Presidency: Interview with Frank Carlucci,” Miller Center Journal, 2 (Spring 1995): 43.
50. Quoted by William Pemberton, Exit With Honor: The Life and Presidency of Ronald Reagan (Armonk, NY: Sharpe, 1997), 131.
51. Interview with George P. Shultz, July 15, 2003, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California.
52. Reagan, “Remarks to a White House Briefing for Republican Student Interns on Soviet-US Relations,” July 29, 1986.
53. Reagan, An American Life, 257. Also on MAD, see Reagan, “Interview With Morton Kondracke and Richard H. Smith of Newsweek Magazine,” March 4, 1985; Reagan, “Interview With Foreign Journalists,” April 25, 1985; Reagan, “Statement on the Fifth Anniversary of the Strategic Defense Initiative,” March 23, 1988; and Joseph Coors, oral-history testimony, July 31, 1987, RRL, OHT, Folder 35, Box 8.
54. Reagan, “Remarks to the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis at a Conference on the Strategic Defense Initiative,” March 14, 1988; and Caspar W. Weinberger, Fighting for Peace: Seven Critical Years in the Pentagon (New York: Warner Books, 1991), 327.
55. Reagan, “Remarks to Citizens in Hambach, Federal Republic of Germany,” May 6, 1985.
56. Reagan, “Remarks to the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis at a Conference on the Strategic Defense Initiative,” March 14, 1988.
57. Interview with Ed Meese, September 23, 1998.
58. Adelman quoted in Cannon, Role of a Lifetime, 278.
59. Reagan, “Remarks to the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis at a Conference on the Strategic Defense Initiative,” March 14, 1988.
60. Reagan, “Remarks to Administration Supporters at a White House Briefing on Arms Control, Central America, and the Supreme Court,” November 23, 1987.
61. See Reagan, “Remarks at a Luncheon Hosted by the Heritage Foundation,” November 30, 1987.
62. Reagan, An American Life, 571.
63. Reagan, “Address to the Conservative Political Action Conference,” March 8, 1985. 64. Keyworth interviewed by Baucom, September 28, 1987, RRL, OHT, Folder 37, Box 8, 30.
65. Gergen interviewed on television series, “Television and the Presidency,” Fox News Channel, December 25, 2000.
66. Cannon, Role of a Lifetime, 683. At one press conference in Moscow, for example, he spoke of SDI’s potential to “make it impossible for missiles to get through the screen.” Of course, it is possible that Reagan was willing to exaggerate SDI while in Moscow. Reagan, “President’s News Conference Following the Soviet-United States Summit Meeting in Moscow,” June 1, 1988.
67. Reagan, “Foreword Written for a Report on the Strategic Defense Initiative,” December 28, 1984.
68. Later, he was also measured when negotiating directly with Gorbachev, a moment when bluster and exaggeration might be expected. In the third plenary session at the Geneva Summit on November 20, 1985, he told Gorbachev that “no one was sure whether SDI would work; the U.S. effort was designed only to find out if a defense was possible.” It “would be years before this was known.” See Details in “Geneva Meeting: Memcons,” Box 92137, Folder 2, RRL.
69. Reagan, An American Life, 609.
70. Ibid., 608.
71. What made the idea promising, wrote Reagan, was that, if it worked, “and we then entered an era when the nations of the world agreed to eliminate nuclear weapons,” it could serve as a “safety valve against cheating—or attacks by lunatics who managed to get their hands on a nuclear missile.” This was precisely the thinking behind the U.S. Senate decision to vote 97 to 3 in January 1998 in support of President Clinton’s proposal to pursue a missile-defense system. Reagan, An American Life, 608.
72. See Lou Cannon, “President Seeks Futuristic Defense Against Missiles,” Washington Post, March 24, 1983, A1.
73. Moreover, the suggestion, advanced by some journalists, that Reagan got the SDI idea from B movies he once made in the 1950s, playing the role of Brass Bancroft, is ludicrous. There is not a shred of evidence for this. The notion was advanced by people who preferred to ridicule rather than ascertain the truth.
74. Steven R. Weisman, “Now, Talk of New Strains Among the Top Aides,” New York Times, March 31, 1983.
75. Reagan, “Interview With Morton Kondracke and Richard H. Smith of Newsweek Magazine,” March 4, 1985.
76. Reagan quoted by Philip B. Kunhardt, Jr., Philip B. Kunhardt III, and Peter W. Kunhardt, The American President (New York: Riverhead Books, 1999), 296.
77. Reagan, “Interview With Morton Kondracke and Richard H. Smith of Newsweek Magazine,” March 4, 1985.
78. Reagan wrote this in a February 4, 1985 letter to his friend V.H. Krulak. See Skinner, Anderson, and Anderson, eds., Reagan: A Life in Letters, 122.
79. Reagan wrote this in a November 1, 1984 letter to Drs. Ivy Mooring and John Shelton of Los Angeles. The letter is in Skinner, Anderson, and Anderson, eds., Reagan: A Life in Letters, 426. For a second example in the book, see the Reagan letter to Patrick Mulvey, 425.
80. Reagan, “The President’s News Conference,” January 9, 1985.
81. Ibid.
82. Ibid.
83. Moscow International Service commentary by Viktor Vasilyev, November 6, 1985, published as “Commentary on Reagan Interview with Journalists,” in FBIS, FBIS-14-NOV-85, November 14, 1985, 1985, A9.
84. On another broadcast of “Studio 9,” Valentin Zorin said: “You know that Reagan is now possessed of dreams of star wars and the militarization of space. This has been his fixation.” See “Moscow TV’s 30 June ‘Studio 9’ Program,” transcript published in FBIS, FBIS-3-JUL-84, July 3, 1984, CC6. This take is seen in official TASS statement. To cite just two, one began and ended with the words “star wars,” noting that Reagan’s “plan” to build “space weapons” would jeopardize Soviet-American talks. The other statement quoted Soviet academician-scientist Horis Raushenbakh, who assured that Reagan’s “militarization of space” would “put an end” to the hopes for future treaties between the two superpowers. The two TASS statements are published as “Concern Over ‘Star Wars’ Plans Expressed,” in FBIS, FBIS-1-FEB-85, February 1, 1985, AA8–9.
85. Viktor Olin commentary for Moscow World Service, December 18, 1984, transcript published as “Olin Views U.S. Signing of ‘Star Wars’ Contracts,” in FBIS, FBIS-19-DEC-84, December 19, 1984, AA4.
86. F. Aleksandrov, “How the ‘Star Wars’ Are Being Prepared,” Krasnaya Zvezda, March 8, 1985, 5, published as “U.S. Preparation, Research for SDI Discussed,” in FBISFBIS MAR-85, March 12, 1985, AA5.
87. “‘Studio 9’ Program Discusses ‘Star Wars,’” May 25, 1985, transcript published in FBIS, FBIS-29-MAY-85, May 29, 1985, AA1–12.