Two weeks later, I attended a reception hosted by the Joint Center for Political Studies, a black Washington think tank, and spotted Stuart. I went up and said, “Man, why did you hit me with that one?”
He gave me an amused smile. “That’s what every white guy in the room was thinking, but was afraid to ask. So I asked it for them.”
In December, Mikhail Gorbachev was coming to Washington for the first time for his third summit meeting with President Reagan and to sign the treaty to eliminate intermediate-range nuclear force missiles. INF missiles had a range of about three thousand miles, which placed them between tactical battlefield nukes and intercontinental ballistic missiles aimed at targets like Washington, Moscow, New York, and Leningrad. INFs were the missiles that the Western Allies and the Soviets would hurl at each other in the event of war in Europe. In November, I traveled to Geneva with Secretary Shultz to work on the INF treaty and to prepare for the December summit. Shultz led the mission and did most of the talking at our sessions with the Soviets at the American embassy. I listened, observing the men around the table, beginning with Eduard Shevardnadze, Soviet foreign minister, handsome, silver-haired, with the expression and mild speech of an Anglican vicar.
The figure my eyes kept returning to was an older, small, spare, tough-looking soldier, Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, first deputy minister of defense and, as chief of the Soviet general staff, head of all Soviet military forces. As I studied this “Hero of the Soviet Union,” I continually had to reverse mental gears. Only a year before, I had been commanding V Corps, whose sole mission was to hurl back Akhromeyev’s armies, specifically the 8th Guards Army. Now I was National Security Advisor, engaged in negotiating agreements that should start to make V Corps and the Soviet 8th Guards Army obsolete.
That evening the Americans hosted a candlelight dinner for the Soviet team in the residence of the American ambassador. The conversation hit a lull at one point, and I leaned toward Akhromeyev. “Marshal,” I said, “you must be one of the last World War II veterans still on active duty.” (It was now forty-two years since V-E Day.)
The marshal nodded. “I am the last of the Mohicans,” he said. I laughed, surprised at his familiarity with James Fenimore Cooper. “Oh, yes,” he said, smiling, “many Russians of my generation have read Cooper and Jack London, Mark Twain, all your best writers.”
I asked Akhromeyev what he had done during the war. He had enlisted in the Red Army at seventeen, he said, right off the farm. His unit was posted about thirty-five miles from Leningrad during the siege by the Germans, which lasted 890 days and cost 830,000 civilian lives alone from bombardment and starvation.
“For eighteen months,” Ahkromeyev said, “I never set foot inside a building, even when the temperature went to fifty below zero. I was out of doors through two winters, never knew a warm day, always fighting, always hungry.” The room was silent as he spoke. “And such loss of life. Eight out of ten boys my age died during the war. Only I and one other from my high school class of thirty-two survived.”
I felt two reactions to the old marshal’s story—admiration for the courage of a fellow soldier and recognition of how hard it must be for Akhromeyev to accept that so much blood had been shed, not only to save Russia, but to preserve the false god of Marxism. He understood the need for change and supported perestroika. But he and Gorbachev both clung to reforming, not abandoning, the old faith.
Before going to Geneva, I had had to make a key decision: who was going to replace me as NSC deputy and run the store during my absences. I had been closely associated with Cap Weinberger, a former Secretary of Defense. I was just as close to the current Secretary, Frank Carlucci. And I was a military man. I needed to spike any perception that the NSC was a wholly owned subsidiary of the defense establishment. I found just the man, John D. Negroponte, off in the unlikely outpost of assistant secretary of state for oceans, the environment, and international organizations. Negroponte, a career Foreign Service officer, had the management style I liked, toughness applied in an easygoing manner, a rare combination. And as a State Department career officer, John would help dispel the perception that I was Defense’s man. I made a few other changes in the team Carlucci and I had put together. Paul Stevens moved up from legal advisor to be my executive secretary, and Nick Rostow took over the legal job. Roman Popadiuk became my press assistant.
In the military, we are constantly judging human material, placing and replacing personnel. By now, I had developed Powell’s Rules for Picking People. What I looked for was intelligence and judgment, and most critically, a capacity to anticipate, to see around corners. I also valued loyalty, integrity, a high energy level, a certain passion, a balanced ego, and the drive to get things done. Academics and subject specialists are valuable for their expertise. But, above all, I needed people to help me make the NSC trains run on time.
After the Geneva trip, I flew to California and went to the Reagans’ ranch in the Santa Ynez Mountains above Santa Barbara, where the first family was spending Thanksgiving and where I was to brief the President on the now completed INF treaty. I was surprised at the modesty of the ranch house, small and lacking even central heating. I entered and found President Reagan in a plaid shirt, jeans, and boots, a man clearly in his element. And hovering, just within our peripheral vision, was Nancy Reagan, never missing a word. The President beamed as I reported the deal we had made with the Soviet Union, and with reason. He was the first American leader to begin dismantling nuclear weapons.
The White House staff was booked into the Biltmore Four Seasons in Santa Barbara, and when I got back there from the ranch, the President’s press secretary, Marlin Fitzwater, cornered me. “It’s time to lose your virginity,” Marlin said. He wanted me go to the nearby Sheraton Hotel to brief the White House press corps on the INF treaty and other issues covered at Geneva. I was to speak “on background,” which meant I was about to become one of those anonymous “senior administration officials” quoted in news accounts.
The White House press corps can be a carnivorous lot, and I braced myself for this first exposure by relying on the techniques drilled into me thirty years before at the Fort Benning Infantry School instructors course—how to stand, move, use the hands and the voice (never cough or shift your feet); how to organize your thoughts (tell ’em what you’re gonna tell ’em, tell ’em, then tell ’em what you just told ’em). Communication is still communication, whether to a class of OCS students or to Sam Donaldson.
I nevertheless felt as if I were approaching a minefield as I went to the mike, explained the treaty and other issues, and opened the floor to questions. The air was quickly filled with the Sanskrit of arms control—“encrypting telemetry,” “throw weights,” “multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles.” My confidence grew as I managed to get wood on every pitch. The questioning turned to two sites agreed to by us and the Soviets for verifying disarmament, Magna, Utah, and Votkinsk, Siberia. Which one was preferable? a reporter asked teasingly. “Given my druthers, I’d take Magna,” I said. Votkinsk was quite a desolate place. But, I promised, “We will make sure CNN gets there.” They began laughing. I started not only to act relaxed, but to feel relaxed. By the end of the conference, I felt positively warm toward these folks. I was like a child who has not yet seen any tigers in the jungle and therefore concludes there aren’t any.
On this first outing, however, I did pick up a few useful press pointers. I realized that the interviewee is the only one at risk in this duel. The media report only stupid or careless answers, not stupid or unfair questions. Also, when reporters ask a follow-up question, you’re headed for trouble—so break off, apply power, gain altitude, or eject.
I looked anxiously at my watch this November morning. I had a roomful of Russians in my office, the advance delegation for the Gorbachev-Reagan summit. Unlike their dapper new leader, this group still wore suits that looked as if they had been tailored by State Garment Factory #2, Minsk. My life was now consumed by the thousand and one
logistical preparations a summit meeting demands. This morning, I was trying to sell the Russians on helicoptering Gorbachev in from Andrews Air Force Base so that he could get a panoramic view of Washington. “Nyet,” they said, concerned about security. Gorbachev must come in by motorcade.
Weeks before, I had committed myself to a Veterans Day luncheon speech before the women of the James Reese Europe Post #5 of the American Legion Auxiliary at the Howard Inn near Howard University. Outside my window, an early, heavy snow was falling. It probably made the Russians feel at home, but presented a problem for me, since a sixteenth of an inch of snow is sufficient to paralyze Washington. I had asked Florence Gantt to call the good ladies of Post #5 to find out if they intended to cancel the lunch. Oh, no, they were expecting General Powell.
There was, for me, something touching about these women, many of them widows of black GIs who had fought in the segregated services of World War II, still meeting to honor their men. Therefore, I left the Russians in the middle of a summit planning session to skid and slide my way up to the Howard Inn, where I was greeted by my hostess, the Reverend Imagene Stewart, and my audience, nine elderly ladies in a room set up for two hundred. To my astonishment, the television cameras of C-Span were there, which magnified my impact somewhat, since C-Span ran my speech to the nine ladies three times nationwide.
Subsequently, this appearance spawned a continuing relationship between me and my hostess’s homeless facility, the House of Imagene. Once after I ran a Pentagon clothing drive for her she sent me a note: “Don’t send me any more old clothes. I need suits to dress up these folks for job interviews!”
With or without me, the Soviet advance party was having a good time. On their first night at the Madison Hotel, they hit the minibars in their rooms to the tune of $1,400. We asked the hotel management to stop restocking the bars. I was also playing referee between the KGB and our security agencies. The Soviet team had arrived with all kinds of electronic equipment. And when Gorbachev came, they would bring their own nuclear release system, the equivalent of our “football,” carried wherever the President went. The National Security Agency, our eavesdropping outfit, was licking its chops for permission to move its intercepting gear onto the White House grounds. The CIA wanted a shot too. Spooks spying on spooks spying on spooks. Anybody walking across the White House lawn wearing a pacemaker during the summit would be lucky not to be microwaved.
The security chief for the Soviet advance party was a senior KGB deputy minister, Vladimir A. Kryuchkov, who asked to see me. When our Secret Service found out that I intended to let a top KGB official into the West Wing of the White House, they panicked. There was no telling what Kryuchkov might be up to. How do we know what’s in his shoes? Suppose he tries to plant a bug? Suppose he sticks a pin mike into your sofa? “Fellas,” I said, “I don’t think the Soviet security chief for summit meetings makes his own drops. What are you going to do when Gorbachev comes, strip-search him in the East Wing?” I assured them that as soon as Kryuchkov was gone they could sweep my office down to the bare walls.
Kryuchkov had wanted to see me, he said, “to make absolutely sure of the safety of Comrade Gorbachev.” I outlined the security arrangements, and he nodded approvingly. “Yes,” he said, “we have been much impressed by your Secret Service. We could learn from them,” and he added, “just as you could learn from us.” He then gave me a sly smile and said, “We are pleased too to see so many new employees at our hotel. The FBI headquarters must be depleted.”
Less than a year after his visit to the White House, Vladimir A. Kryuchkov became head of the KGB.
The mistake Ronald Reagan’s liberal critics made was to assume that because he was a conservative and because he supported a huge defense buildup, he was some sort of dude-ranch warmonger. Wrong. Ronald Reagan was a visionary, dreaming of reversing the threat of nuclear annihilation. That was what the INF treaty was all about. That is what SDI was aimed at. The SDI “umbrella” was intended to make nuclear weapons obsolete. The science of SDI (or Star Wars, as its critics insisted on calling it) was mind-boggling, but the strategy was fairly elementary. The present situation was tantamount to two enemy soldiers each in his foxhole armed with a hand grenade. If you throw yours to destroy me, I’ll still have time to throw mine to destroy you. Mutual Assured Destruction, MAD. In order to give himself an edge, soldier #I gets a rifle. Seeing this, soldier #2 gets himself a rifle, and on and on. This is known as an arms race. SDI was intended to break the circuit. President Reagan saw SDI as a shield as contrasted to a sword. If we have a shield on our left arm, we don’t need such a massive sword in our right hand. And the more secure we feel behind the shield, the smaller the sword needs to be. The SDI shield was designed not to destroy people, only to protect them.
The President loved the shield image, although it was a bit exaggerated. The actual strategic edge of SDI was that while it could not stop all enemy missiles, it could destroy enough so that the Soviets could not be sure they could deliver a nuclear knockout punch. Therefore, SDI would render the continued nuclear buildup futile. Reagan had offered to share SDI technology with the Soviets, an offer they never believed. And many of our planners did not believe Reagan meant it either, though I knew that he was sincere. Only when the Soviets also felt secure, the President reasoned, would they be ready to shorten their nuclear sword. That was the visionary in the man. But Gorbachev took the position that missiles were cheaper to build than supersophisticated shields, and therefore the Soviets could just keep building them to overwhelm whatever defense we constructed. That argument omitted the economics of the equation. We had the money to go either route, SDI or more missiles, while, economically, the Russians were hurting. At the Reykjavik Summit in 1986, Gorbachev had shown himself willing to trade off a major portion of the Soviet strategic arsenal, if we would abandon SDI, which showed that while he pretended to dismiss it, he actually feared the new technology. We knew he would come to Washington in December still fighting SDI. And we knew that Reagan would stick by it.
A few days before Gorbachev’s arrival, I was briefing the President on the summit agenda when he interrupted to show me two small boxes. He opened them and, with a smile, held before me two pairs of gold cufflinks depicting figures beating swords into plowshares. Like many of his inspirations, the cufflinks had been given to him by a California pal. The President was going to wear one pair the day of Gorbachev’s arrival and give the Russian leader the other pair at their first one-on-one meeting in the Oval Office. I pointed out that I did not think the Russians wore French cuffs. He was not deterred. On this and subsequent days, we had a lot of homework to cover; Gorbachev was going to be sharp. Yet, every time I went in to brief the President on summit issues, he also brought up the cufflinks. The disarmament and economic issues would eventually be dealt with, he knew. But he also wanted personal symbols that bonded the two men who were to resolve them.
With just days to go, I asked Soviet Ambassador Yuri Dubinin to come over to my office as soon as possible. I had a problem, and so did he. Dubinin, a big, white-haired, usually affable man, looked miserable as I explained the dilemma. Sweat glistened on his brow. Mrs. Reagan was furious, I told him. She had extended invitations to the Soviet leader’s wife, Raisa Gorbachev, to tea, to lunch, to whatever she preferred. And after repeated inquiries by our staff, we had heard nothing back, not a yes, a no, not even an acknowledgment that the invitations had been received. Tom Griscom, the White House communications director, my cochair in planning the summit, a wit and popper of ego balloons, observed, “What is this, animal house? A food fight between two First Ladies?” Knowing Mrs. Reagan’s iron will, I told Dubinin that we were on the verge of jeopardizing a cordial summit meeting if she did not get a simple, civil response, and damn quick.
“Colin,” Dubinin said, shifting uncomfortably, “it is a delicate situation. Mrs. Gorbachev is …” His words petered out. I understood all about demanding First Ladies. Still, I told him, “Get cracking if you do not w
ant to screw up this summit over something so silly. Why don’t you crank up that new KGB fax of yours and get us an answer, quick.” Twenty-four hours later we received a cabled acceptance from Raisa Gorbachev, decision-making at the speed of light by Russian standards. She agreed to tea.
Yes, I knew a bit about strong-minded First Ladies. But I still had more to learn. My staff and I had choreographed the treaty-signing on the first day to get the summit off to a dramatic start. We had selected 11:00 A.M. as the hour. Ken Duberstein, an energetic, politically savvy young Brooklynite, was the President’s deputy White House chief of staff, and I sent Ken the suggested schedule. He later phoned me to say that the signing had to take place at 1:45 P.M. Not possible, I said; that would foul up the entire day. Ken repeated, 1:45 P.M. I told him maybe 11:3?, or at the very latest, noon. Duberstein insisted on 1:45. His behavior was so arbitrary and out of character that I said, “Kenny, what’s so special about one forty-five?” He would not give me a straight answer, but neither would he budge. We had to bend the schedule all out of shape to accommodate this inexplicable demand.
Some weeks later, Duberstein finally told me the reason. And that is how I became one of a half-dozen people in the White House to learn the secret. Now the whole world knows that Nancy Reagan consulted an astrologist to decide where and when the President should conduct the business of the United States; and this California seer, Joan Quigley, had decreed that the stars were right for a favorable signing of the INF treaty at 1:45 P.M.
My American Journey Page 44