Three Days in Moscow

by Bret Baier

  The operation would not start to come to light until the following year, and it is unlikely that Reagan himself devoted much time to it. Others in the administration took on the project and did not always share the operational facts. For example, the Contra piece would be revealed only after Attorney General Ed Meese issued a Department of Justice report tracing money missing from the arms sale to a covert project to arm the Nicaraguan Contras. Although supporting the Contras had been a passion of Reagan’s throughout his presidency, there was never any evidence that he knew of that particular plot. However, in a sense, he was damned if he knew and damned if he didn’t. It would ultimately be a stain on his legacy.

  THE VILLA FLEUR D’EAU, a twenty-room nineteenth-century château in a lakeside town outside Geneva with a stunning view of the Alps, was the site of the first summit between Reagan and Gorbachev on November 19, 1985. It was a neutral space to which they could retreat to get to know each other.

  For their personal use during the summit, His Highness Aga Khan lent the Reagans another spectacular château, the eighteenth-century Maison de Saussure, also on the lake. There was only one condition for their stay: that they feed Aga Khan’s eleven-year-old son’s goldfish. Reagan was very conscientious about that, but according to Don Regan, the president came to him the second day and said, “I’ve got a problem . . . the fish died.” An aide was immediately dispatched to find a replacement fish, and he brought back two. Reagan wrote a charming note of apology to the boy—just an example of the way mundane life intrudes on grand events.

  With all the sensitive preparations for Geneva, the Reagans were appalled when Don Regan put his foot in it in an interview with the Washington Post a week before the summit. Discussing public interest in events in Geneva, he said that women would mostly be paying attention to what Nancy Reagan and Raisa Gorbachev were up to, not the meetings between the principals. “They’re not going to understand throw-weights [how much weight a missile can carry] or what is happening in Afghanistan or what is happening in human rights,” he said pompously. “Some women will. But most women . . . believe me, your readers for the most part, if you took a poll, would rather read the human interest stuff.” His remarks prompted Eleanor Smeal, the president of the National Organization for Women, to snipe that she was glad that Reagan was taking Bonzo to Geneva with him. The outcry distracted attention from the serious intent of the summit, and it further embarrassed Reagan when reporters asked him and Gorbachev about it at a press conference the second day of the summit. Gorbachev must have relished the opportunity to share his conviction that both men and women were interested in the peace process. And surely his wife, a serious student of Soviet culture and politics and a former teacher at Moscow State University, would have agreed.

  The Reagans arrived in Geneva for the summit a day early, and the president was excited. This had been his dream—to go one-on-one with a Soviet leader—and he felt confident of his ability to communicate, without his intentions being mangled by bureaucrats.

  His staff felt less assured. God knows, they appreciated Reagan’s communication skills, but some were worried that Gorbachev, a generation younger, a master of Soviet and world history, and an exceptionally canny strategist, might show Reagan up. That was not a concern Reagan shared. In a sense, he’d been preparing for such a meeting for most of his adult life. He couldn’t wait. He barely slept the night before the meetings commenced, but he didn’t feel tired. “The juices were flowing,” he wrote. “I wanted to get started.”

  No one knew better than Reagan that when the two men met, the flashbulbs would be clicking with images viewed by millions, and the first impression would be all about style. His advisors worriedly contemplated a scenario in which an “aging lion,” bundled against the Geneva cold, would meet face-to-face with an energized “young tiger.” It wasn’t the picture anyone wanted. The day before the meetings started, as they briefed the president, they had reason to be concerned. “Reagan was tired, cranky, and uncharacteristically out of it,” Adelman recalled. “So, I thought, Oh God, this is going to be pretty bad. He’s an old man. When all was said and done, he’d been through amazing stuff, but boy, he’s out of his league here.”

  The question of stamina was once again on everyone’s minds. Although Reagan seemed generally healthy, he’d gone through two cancer surgeries that year, for a cancerous polyp on his colon and a basal-cell carcinoma on his nose. During his colon cancer surgery, he’d officially turned over the presidency to Bush, raising concerns that at seventy-four, he was growing weaker. But as usual, he showed the doubters just how wrong they were.

  On Tuesday morning, Reagan arrived early at the château and was talking to his aides when word came that Gorbachev’s limousine was pulling up. It was bitterly cold that day, and Reagan considered putting on a coat, but his personal assistant, James Kuhn, argued against it, thinking the coatless look would make him appear more vigorous. Reagan ultimately decided to greet Gorbachev coatless, though he didn’t quite grasp what all the fuss was about.

  “He comes down the stairs of the chateau and Gorbachev gets out of the car,” Adelman said, clearly relishing the retelling. “Gorbachev has a hat on, Gorbachev has a gigantic scarf on, Gorbachev has a Soviet-like, Russian-like big coat on. He looks like an absolute old man huddled up to keep warm and just seems decrepit and old. He gets out of the car, comes and takes off his hat, and reaches for Reagan. Reagan comes down the stairs like he’s a Labrador retriever.”

  Gorbachev motioned to his coat and Reagan’s lack of one, and everyone could see the difference as plain as could be. Then Reagan pointed to the house and gestured for Gorbachev to join him inside, as if he were the owner. “As Gorbachev is going up the stairs,” said Adelman, “Reagan slides his hand under Gorbachev’s arm in a gesture of kindness, but it came across as We hope you make it up these stairs, and if you can’t I’m here to help you. The visual of it was this young, frisky, growing leader who had all of tomorrow ahead of him in Ronald Reagan, who is helping this decrepit man from the fallen empire get up the stairs. It was just an amazing sight.”

  The optics of it were not lost on the Soviets. Sergei Tarasenko, a Gorbachev aide, later recalled the scene: “We came to the porch and I saw President Reagan coming out to greet Gorbachev in a well-tailored suit, looking young with a good haircut, you know. Maybe he was made up a little bit, but skillfully. He projected an image of a young, dynamic leader. And Gorbachev came out of this tank-like limo, black limo, in an autumn overcoat, a heavy overcoat, looking like an old guy.”

  Once inside, Reagan told Gorbachev a joke to break the ice. “An American and a Russian meet,” he began with a twinkle in his eye. “ ‘My country is the best,’ says the American, ‘because I can walk into the White House and tell the president he’s doing a lousy job.’ ‘Big deal,’ says the Russian. ‘My country is just as good. I can go to the Kremlin and tell Gorbachev the same thing—Reagan is doing a lousy job.’ ” Reagan grinned; Gorbachev smiled tentatively. The joke was unexpected. “He used to drive Gorbachev nuts with his jokes—including Russian jokes,” said Frank Carlucci, who would become national security advisor and then secretary of defense later in Reagan’s administration.

  Reagan found Gorbachev instantly likable. There was a warmth in his face that had not been present in other Soviet representatives during the icy winter of the Cold War years. They retreated for a personal meeting, which was scheduled to run fifteen minutes but lasted more than an hour. Outside, Don Regan began getting nervous at the half-hour mark, and he started pressuring Kuhn to break in. That was the last thing Kuhn wanted to do, but as the minutes ticked on, Regan kept asking him. Then McFarlane joined in. Kuhn was feeling the heat, and he kept sidestepping the request. Finally, McFarlane suggested that Kuhn ask Shultz, which he did.

  “Are you out of your mind?” Shultz barked. “If you’re dumb enough to do that, you shouldn’t be in your job. This is what it’s about. The longer they talk, the better it is.” (Kuhn was understandably
wounded by Shultz’s sharp reply, since he was only the messenger, not the instigator.)

  Finally Reagan and Gorbachev emerged and walked into a plenary session, where their expert teams were in place. Through interpreters, they went through the laborious process of stating their views and recounting history from their different perspectives, breaking for lunch around 12:30 P.M.

  Reagan’s twenty-seven-year-old son, Ron, was at the summit, covering it for Playboy magazine. Ron, who was opposed to most of his father’s policies, always believed he was a “good, decent and kind man,” and he took that fundamental respect with him to the summit. Of course, other reporters grumbled about his special access, and although the White House denied it, Ron happened to be at a tea his mother gave for Raisa Gorbachev and was seen chatting alone with his father. He was also standing among the US contingent waiting for the first session to break up so they could have lunch.

  “Dad, you’re late,” he said when Reagan finally strode in. Reagan explained that everything had taken longer because of the interpreters and then excused himself to go to the men’s room. All the others took their places around the table and remained standing, waiting for the president.

  “When he came out, Reagan stood at his place and had a grin like a cat who had just swallowed a canary,” Adelman recalled. “He was just so beaming. Then one by one all of us realized that one of his arms was in his suit coat, the other arm was just hanging down right there and Reagan was holding the arm in back of it so it would be clear it was hanging down. Then the whole room started laughing, I was one of the last to catch on. Finally, someone next to me says, ‘Where’s your arm?’ And Reagan burst out laughing and said, ‘Well, it was here before I met Gorbachev. I don’t know where it is now.’ He just got the biggest kick out of it, all of us laughed. It was just a great tension lowerer at the time because it really put all of us at ease.”

  They sat down to lunch, and when someone finally dared to ask, “How was Gorbachev?” he said, “Well, he’s a new kind of Soviet leader.”

  During the morning session Reagan had outlined the incidences of Soviet aggression in defense of the West’s countermeasures. In reply, Gorbachev opened the afternoon session in a defensive posture. The Soviet people were peace loving, he argued. Reagan countered: Where were the free elections? Where was the freedom to go where they pleased or do what they liked? Where was the evidence?

  When the topic of Afghanistan came up, the debate was vigorous. Adelman felt that Reagan cleaned Gorbachev’s clock on the issue of interventionism. “It’s just genocide . . . they don’t want you there . . . you’re killing kids . . . you’re butchering the country,” he recalled Reagan saying. “Here’s Gorbachev in his earphones, cannot imagine what he’s hearing. I’ve often said that the only person there who was more shocked in the room was the State Department note taker; his pants were never dry. But the fact is that Reagan would tell it directly because that was his way. He didn’t care that much about the briefing book. He wanted to have these views and he was very frank about that.”

  As the afternoon wore on, with arms control experts battling back and forth, Reagan asked Gorbachev if he would like to get a breath of fresh air. There was a boathouse down by the lake, and Reagan had arranged to have a fire lit, with comfortable chairs positioned in front of it. His idea had been that the two leaders could have a “fireside chat,” away from the summit, with only a translator present.

  Warming by the fire, Reagan made a personal appeal that put the conflict into perspective. He quietly told Gorbachev that they were the only two men in the world who could start World War III—or prevent it. Wasn’t it their obligation, didn’t they owe it to the world and to their own people, to do whatever was necessary for peace?

  Gorbachev was listening carefully, and Reagan thought he agreed. But he told Reagan he’d have to address the justified fear his people had of the United States launching a nuclear attack. That brought them to SDI, the most contentious item on the agenda. To Gorbachev, SDI did not seem defensive at all; the Soviet Union believed its true aim was offensive, an effort to neutralize any Soviet weapons and thus render them helpless against a US attack. Reagan reasserted that this was not SDI’s purpose at all—in fact, at that point it was little more than a research project, and if it worked, the United States was willing to share its research with other countries so the whole world would be closer to peace. Gorbachev was not convinced.

  As they walked back to join the meeting, Reagan paused and asked Gorbachev if he would come to Washington for a second summit. Gorbachev not only agreed but invited Reagan to Moscow for a third meeting. Shultz observed that when the two men rejoined the conference, they were both smiling and seemed at ease with each other.

  As Reagan and Gorbachev were carefully leaning in toward a mutual understanding of sorts, their wives were having a tenser summit, beginning with a private tea hosted by Nancy. Sipping almond tea in front of a cozy fire, their hour-long conversation was stiff and unpleasant. Raisa, who was fifteen minutes late to the tea—which Nancy took as a sign of disrespect—lectured the first lady about communism, and, to Nancy’s chagrin, the subject of their children never came up. Later, when Reagan asked how her day had gone, Nancy retorted, “That Raisa Gorbachev is one cold cookie.”

  The discomfort was repeated the next day, when Raisa invited Nancy to tea at the Soviet Embassy. Again, Raisa lectured, as if Nancy didn’t understand the missile program. Perhaps Raisa was channeling Don Regan.

  Tuesday evening the Gorbachevs hosted a dinner at the Soviet Embassy, and for the first time, Americans saw another side of the couple. They were warm and gracious, and the evening had its share of humor. The first course was caviar, accompanied by shot glasses of vodka. Raising his glass, Shevardnadze joked, “Mr. President, I have to come all the way to Geneva to get this.” Even Gorbachev laughed. “Suddenly everyone was talking about visiting California, visiting Moscow,” Shultz said. “It was wonderful in a way, but there was little real movement yet on key issues of substance.”

  On Wednesday, in a private meeting with Gorbachev, Reagan decided to press the matter of human rights. It was a topic the Soviets did not want to pursue, but Gorbachev was prepared. He argued fiercely that Americans had no right to criticize the Soviets when in their country blacks were treated poorly and women did not have equal rights. “The most basic human right,” he said, “is everyone’s right to a job.” He pointed out that in the Soviet system, there was full employment.

  Even if that were true, he did not mention that there was little freedom to choose one’s job, nor did the socialist economy have lasting potential. Both individual and common growth were stunted. Although he acknowledged that changes needed to be made in his system, he believed in communism and was ready to defend its principles.

  In the plenary session, Gorbachev returned to his worries about SDI, and the debate was loud and contentious, the leaders frequently interrupting each other and giving the translators heartburn.

  “We’ll share SDI with you,” Reagan finally said, surprising his own diplomats as well as the Soviets. “Gorbachev thought it was whacko,” Adelman said, and he countered angrily, “Mr. President, the United States doesn’t even share cow-milking equipment with us.” (Later Reagan would ask his aides, “Why don’t we share cow-milking equipment with the Soviets?”)

  Reagan was particularly passionate and eloquent during that debate, Shultz said. “He was intense as he expressed his abhorrence at having to rely on the ability to ‘wipe each other out’ as the means of keeping the peace. ‘We must do better, and we can.’ The depth of the president’s belief in SDI was vividly apparent. Ronald Reagan was talking from the inside out. Translation was simultaneous. Gorbachev could connect what the president said with his facial expression and body language.”

  Gorbachev seemed stunned by the emotion in Reagan’s presentation and was newly aware that SDI would remain a sticking point. “Mr. President, I don’t agree with you,” he said, “but I can
see that you really mean it.” Shultz saw that as a victory for Reagan. “I just thought, Well, Reagan just nailed down one of our planks. He knows we mean it. That’s good.”

  On Wednesday night, the Reagans played host to the Gorbachevs at an intimate dinner at Maison de Saussure. The menu was exquisite—soufflé of lobster, supreme of chicken perigourdine, endive salad, mousse de fromage with avocado, and hot lemon soufflé with raspberry sauce. The three wines served were from California—Silverado Chardonnay 1983, Stag’s Leap Cabernet Sauvignon 1974, and Iron Horse Blanc de Blanc 1982.

  Once again Reagan saw another side of Gorbachev, the charming, social side. He even told jokes. Reagan concluded that “maybe there was a little of Tip O’Neill in him.” Raisa, too, was relaxed and smiling. The dinner ended with warm toasts from both sides, and that evening they decided to issue a joint statement on the conference before they left Geneva the following day. There was a general sense that the first summit had been a success.

  About that stamina issue. Reagan flew home on Thursday and immediately headed for Capitol Hill to appear before a joint session of Congress, which was televised nationwide. It was 9:20 P.M. Washington time—3:00 A.M. in Geneva—and he’d been awake for twenty-four hours. Reagan’s Air Force One (now on display at the Reagan Library) was half the size of the current model and had no beds or shower facility. But Reagan showed little evidence of exhaustion, just resolve. He spoke of the true accomplishment of the summit: the effort to “reduce the mistrust and suspicions between us.” He reported that Gorbachev was in agreement with that goal. In the end, he returned eloquently to the theme of the American spirit: