The Dead Hand (81 page)

20
Soviet Forces for Strategic Nuclear Conflict Through the Mid-1980s, NIE 11-3/8-76, Dec. 21, 1976, Vol. 1, Key Judgments and Summary, p. 3.

21
Eugene V. Rostow, the Yale law professor, was committee chairman. Dozens of members eventually held appointments in the Reagan administration, including
Nitze and Pipes. Charles Tyroller II, ed.,
Alerting America: The Papers of the Committee on the Present Danger
(Washington: Pergamon-Brassey’s, 1984).

22
Brzezinski became concerned about weaknesses in the command and control system when an exercise to simulate evacuating the president on Jan. 28, 1977, went awry. Brzezinski,
Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Advisor, 1977–1981
(New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1983), pp. 14–15. Brzezinski asked William E. Odom, then a colonel general on the White House National Security Council staff, to study the chain of command and control of nuclear weapons. The study revealed weaknesses in the system. The two presidential directives were an outgrowth of the study. Odom interview, Feb. 3, 2006; Odom, “The Origins and Design of Presidential Decision-59: A Memoir,” in Henry D. Sokolski, ed.,
Getting Mad: Nuclear Mutual Assured Destruction, Its Origins and Practice
(Carlisle, Pa.: U.S. Army War College, 2004). On targeting the Soviet leadership, see Hines, vol. 2, p. 118. Andrew W. Marshall, the director of the Office of Net Assessment in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, told Hines that “PD-59 was developed to reinforce deterrence by making it clear to the Soviet leadership that they would not escape destruction in any exchange. The objective was to clarify and personalize somewhat the danger of warfare and nuclear use to Soviet decision-makers.”

1
See
www.cheyennemountain.af.mil
.

2
Morrow later promoted NASA programs. See Kiron K. Skinner, Annelise Anderson and Martin Anderson, eds.,
Reagan: A Life in Letters
(New York: Free Press, 2003), p. 107.

3
Martin Anderson,
Revolution: The Reagan Legacy
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988), pp. 80–83.

4
Reagan radio address, May 29, 1979, “Miscellaneous 1,” reproduced in
Reagan in His Own Hand: The Writings of Ronald Reagan That Reveal His Revolutionary Vision for America
, Kiron K. Skinner, Annelise Anderson, Martin Anderson, eds. (New York: Free Press, 2001), p. 104. The treaty was signed by Carter and Brezhnev in Vienna on June 18.

5
Draft copy, “Policy Memorandum No. 3,” August 1979, author’s possession. Anderson knew Reagan had in earlier years disagreed with President Nixon’s decision to limit missile defenses in the 1972 ABM treaty. “We bargained that away in exchange for nothing,” Reagan had said. See “Defense IV,” Sept. 11, 1979,
Reagan in His Own Hand
. Anderson interview, Sept. 10, 2008.

6
In his memoir, Reagan wrote: “Nothing was more important to mankind than assuring its survival and the survival of our planet. Yet for forty years nuclear weapons had kept the world under a shadow of terror. Our dealings with the Soviets—and theirs with us—had been based on a policy known as ‘mutual assured destruction’—the ‘MAD’ policy, and madness it was. It was the craziest thing I had ever heard of: Simply put, it called for each side to keep enough nuclear weapons at the ready to obliterate each other, so that if one attacked, the second had enough bombs left to annihilate its adversary in a matter of minutes. We were a button push away from oblivion.” Ronald Reagan,
An American Life
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), p. 13.

7
Ronald Reagan,
The Reagan Diaries
(New York: HarperCollins, 2007), June 7, 1981.

8
Martin Anderson, presentation, Oct. 11, 2006, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, “Implications of the Reykjavik Summit on Its Twentieth Anniversary.” Also, communication with author, Sept. 10, 2008.

9
Tony Thomas,
The Films of Ronald Reagan
(Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1980), pp. 98–99.

10
Laurence W. Beilenson,
The Treaty Trap: A History of the Performance of Political Treaties by the United States and European Nations
(Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1969), pp. 212, 219–221.

11
The author covered the Reagan campaign as a reporter for Knight-Ridder newspapers, and never picked up on Reagan’s nuclear abolitionist views. Yet his thinking was expressed in earlier years. See Reagan’s 1963 speech text, “Are Liberals Really Liberal?” in
Reagan in His Own Hand
, and Reagan’s address to the 1976 Republican National Convention, Anderson, pp. 69–71.

12
Reagan, “Peace: Restoring the Margin of Safety,” address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention, Chicago, August 18, 1980.

13
David Hoffman, “Reagan’s Lure Is His Optimism,”
Detroit Free Press
, Summer 1980.

14
Reagan,
An American Life
, p. 267.

15
Anatoly Dobrynin,
In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to America’s Six Cold War Presidents
(New York: Times Books, 1995), p. 484.

16
Lou Cannon,
Ronald Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), pp. 299–301. Reagan’s diary for April 23 includes one version of what he calls a “script” of a letter written by hand. This is a short letter. In
An American Life
, pp. 272–273, Reagan reprints a broader version of the handwritten letter, apparently reflecting revisions by the State Department and others.

17
James A. Baker III,
“Work Hard, Study …And Keep Out of Politics!”
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2006), p. 163.

18
Reagan,
An American Life
, p. 273.

19
Thomas C. Reed,
At the Abyss: An Insider’s History of the Cold War
(New York: Ballantine Books, 2004), pp. 266–270.

20
Gus Weiss, “The Farewell Dossier,”
Studies in Intelligence
, Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, vol. 39, no. 5, 1996.

21
Pelton volunteered information about the program as early as his first contact with the Soviets on Jan. 15, 1980, and received $20,000 from them in October. He received another $15,000 in 1983. Pelton was arrested in 1985 and convicted of spying in 1986. See
United States of America v. Ronald William Pelton
, Indictment, U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, Dec. 20, 1985, case no. HM-850621.

22
Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew,
Blind Man’s Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage
(New York: PublicAffairs, 1998), p. 230.

23
Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky,
KGB: The Inside Story
(New York: HarperCollins, 1990), p. 583.

24
Thomas C. Reed communication with author, Nov. 21, 2006.

25
Richard Halloran, “Pentagon Draws Up First Strategy for Fighting a Long Nuclear War,”
New York Times
, May 30, 1982, p. 1.

26
Charles Mohr, “Preserving U.S. Command After Nuclear Attack,”
New York Times
, June 28, 1982, p. 18.

27
Thomas C. Reed, interview, Dec. 4, 2004.

28
John Lewis Gaddis,
Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy During the Cold War
, rev. ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 354.

29
Reed, p. 236.

30
Gaddis, p. 354.

31
Reagan diary, March 26, 1982.

32
NSDD 32 is dated May 20, 1982. But the next presidential directive, NSDD 33, is dated a week earlier, May 14. Reed said Clark put it into the system the day before he was to deliver a public speech, on May 21, describing the new approach.

33
Reagan admitted having trouble. “Some of the journalists who write so easily as to why we don’t sit down and start talking with the Soviets should know just how complicated it is,” he wrote. Reagan diary, April 21, 1982.

34
Reagan,
An American Life
, p. 553. See Dobrynin, pp. 502–503. In November 1981, Reagan had unveiled another arms control proposal, for intermediate-range nuclear forces in Europe. This was his “zero option,” proposing that the United States would forgo deployment of the Pershing IIs and GLCMs if 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.