Dupes

  Chapter 17: John Kerry—and Genghis Khan

  1. Ion Mihai Pacepa, “Propaganda Redux,” Wall Street Journal, August 7, 2007.

  2. Ion Mihai Pacepa, “Kerry's Soviet Rhetoric,” National Review, February 26, 2004.

  3. See Michael Kranish, Brian C. Mooney, and Nina J. Easton, John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography by the Boston Globe Reporters Who Knew Him Best (New York: Public Affairs, 2004), 122–23; and O'Neill and Corsi, Unfit for Command, 99–100.

  4. This is according to Professor Ernest Bolt of the University of Richmond, who posted an analysis of Kerry's testimony at the “facultystaff” portion of the University of Richmond website.

  5. “Hearings Before the Committee on Foreign Relations,” United States Senate, 92nd Congress, First Session (April–May 1971) (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1971), 180–208.

  6. Kerry appeared on NBC's Meet the Press on April 18, 1971.

  7. See Michael Kranish, “With Antiwar Role, High Visibility,” Boston Globe, June 17, 2003.

  8. Ibid.

  9. John E. O'Neill and Jerome R. Corsi, Unfit for Command (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2004), 6.

  10. Pacepa, “Kerry's Soviet Rhetoric.”

  11. Whether Kerry threw his own medals or those of other vets was a debate heard throughout the 2004 presidential campaign, and it still persists. For the record, Thomas Oliphant, a Boston Globe reporter, was there, and maintains that Kerry tossed his own medals. See Thomas Oliphant, “I Watched Kerry Throw His War Decorations,” Boston Globe, April 27, 2004.

  12. A photo of Kerry and Fonda at the same antiwar rally is included in the photo gallery of O'Neill's Unfit for Command.

  13. See, among others, Mark Lane, Plausible Denial: Was the CIA Involved in the Assassination of JFK? (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1992).

  14. Mackubin Thomas Owens, “Vetting the Vet Record,” National Review, January 27, 2004.

  15. Mark Lane, Conversations with Americans: Testimonies from 32 Vietnam Veterans (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970).

  16. Owens, “Vetting the Vet Record.”

  17. Ibid. As Owens notes, Guenter Lewy tells the full story in his book America in Vietnam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978).

  18. O'Neill and Corsi, Unfit for Command, 7–8.

  19. A photo of the plaque is contained in the photo section of O'Neill and Corsi, Unfit for Command.

  20. Pacepa, “Kerry's Soviet Rhetoric.”

  Chapter 18: A Kiss for Brezhnev: Jimmy Carter

  1. Most observers would agree on at least ten nations, including, among others, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, and Mozambique. Thomas Henriksen of the Hoover Institution, for example, wrote that from 1974 to 1979 the Soviets “incorporated 10 countries into their orbit.” Constantine Menges, a member of the Reagan National Security Council, said that between 1975 and 1980, eleven new “pro-Soviet regimes” were established. See Thomas Henriksen, “The Lessons of Afghanistan,” Washington Times, December 29, 1999; and Constantine C. Menges in 1993 Hofstra University conference on the Reagan presidency, published in Eric J. Schmertz et al., eds., President Reagan and the World (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997), 29–30. Hereafter referred to as “Hofstra Conference (1993).”

  2. Reagan blasted Republican president Gerald Ford on détente before Jimmy Carter even became president. Ford was so wedded to détente that he refused to meet with the great dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn out of fear of offending the Soviets. For an extended discussion of this, see Kengor, The Crusader, 40–55.

  3. Genrikh Aleksandrovich (Henry) Trofimenko, in Hofstra Conference (1993), 136.

  4. Peter Osnos, “Angola Stirs Questions on Détente Fine Print,” Washington Post, January 16, 1976, A12.

  5. Quoted by James Reston, “The Mood of the Capital,” New York Times, February 27, 1976, 31.

  6. See “Kissinger Said to Reject Report on Soviet View,” Washington Post, February 12, 1977, A2. The Post piece (among others) followed up the original February 11, 1977, Boston Globe article by William Beecher, which was the source for the story. See William Beecher, “Brezhnev Termed Détente a Ruse, 1973 Report Said,” Boston Globe, February 11, 1977. According to the Globe article, in early 1973 British intelligence obtained a speech by Leonid Brezhnev given at a secret meeting of Eastern European Communist rulers in Prague. The Brits rated the speech comparable in importance to Nikita Khrushchev's 1956 “Crimes of Stalin” speech.

  7. Reagan delivered this commentary on March 23, 1977. His source was the February 11, 1977, Boston Globe article by Beecher, which was reprinted in National Review on March 4, 1977, in an article titled “Secret Speech: Did Brezhnev Come Clean?” In the handwritten text of his radio commentary, Reagan complained that “the British informed our government of Brezhnev's speech, but apparently it didn't lessen our desire for ‘détente.’”Text located in “Ronald Reagan: Selected Radio Broadcasts, 1975–1979,” January 1975 to March 1977, Box 1, RRL. For a full transcript, see Kiron Skinner, Martin Anderson, and Annelise Anderson, eds., Reagan, In His Own Hand (New York: Free Press, 2001), 117–19.

  8. President Jimmy Carter, “Remarks at Stetson Junior High School in West Chester, PA,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 1977, vol. 1, January 27, 1977, 28.

  9. President Jimmy Carter, “News Conference,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 1977, vol. 1, March 24, 1977, 502.

  10. President Jimmy Carter, “Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session at a Luncheon Sponsored by Fort Worth Civic Organizations in Fort Worth, Texas,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 1978, vol. 1, June 23, 1978, 1160.

  11. President Jimmy Carter, “News Conference,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 1978, vol. 1, June 26, 1978, 1184.

  12. President Jimmy Carter, “Question-and-Answer Session with Western European and Japanese Leaders,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 1978, vol. 2, July 11, 1978, 1256.

  13. President Jimmy Carter, “Question-and-Answer Session with the Japanese Press,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 1979, vol. 2, June 20, 1979, 1148.

  14. President Jimmy Carter, “Remarks on Arrival at the White House,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 1978, vol. 1, January 6, 1978, 40.

  15. Among other occasions, Carter said this in his June 1977 commencement speech at the University of Notre Dame and in a press conference on May 25, 1978.

  16. President Jimmy Carter, “Meeting with Student Leaders,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 1980–1981, vol. 1, February 15, 1980, 330.

  17. After one classified briefing on the Soviet economy, on March 26, 1982, Reagan concluded: “The situation was so bad that if Western countries got together and cut off credits to it [the USSR], we could bring it to its knees.” See Ronald Reagan, An American Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), 552.

  18. In the official transcript of the exchange, published in the Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, this laughter is noted aside Carter's remarks. It reads: “I don't know. [Laughter] I hope that it will be removed.” President Jimmy Carter, “Question-and-Answer Session at a Town Meeting in Berlin (west side), Federal Republic of Germany,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 1978, vol. 2, July 15, 1978, 1301.

  19. Allen remarks, published in Peter Schweizer, ed., The Fall of the Berlin Wall (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2000), 55–56.

  20. Interview with Michael Reagan, May 9, 2005. Michael Reagan has since told me this story many times. It is one of his favorite anecdotes about his father, and genuinely a telling one.

  21. President Carter initially said this in a December 31, 1979, interview with Frank Reynolds of ABC News's World News Tonight. See ABC News Transcript, World News Tonight, December 31, 1979. See also “Transcript of President's Interview on Soviet Reply,” New York Times, January 1, 1980, 4.

  22. See, for example, “Transcript of President's Interv
iew on Soviet Reply.”

  23. Reagan wrote this in a January 1980 letter to a “Professor Nikolaev.” The letter is published in Skinner, Anderson, and Anderson, eds., Reagan: A Life in Letters, 400.

  24. Reagan wrote this in a January 1980 letter to a man named Edward Langley. The letter is published in ibid., 433–34.

  25. President Jimmy Carter, “Situation in Iran and Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, Remarks at a White House Briefing for Members of Congress,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 1980–81, vol. 1, January 8, 1980, 38–42.

  26. President Jimmy Carter, “Venice Economic Summit: Concluding Statements of the Participants,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 1980–81, vol. 2, June 23, 1980, 1177–78.

  27. President Jimmy Carter, “Remarks to the Democratic National Committee,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 1977, vol. 2, October 7, 1977, 1749.

  28. Reagan said this constantly. See, for example, President Ronald Reagan, “Remarks at a Fundraising Dinner for Senator Paula Hawkins in Miami, Florida,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 1985, vol. 1, May 27, 1985, 674; and President Ronald Reagan, “Remarks at a Fundraising Luncheon for Senator Don Nickles in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 1985, vol. 1, June 5, 1985, 718.

  29. See Vasiliy Mitrokhin, “The KGB in Afghanistan,” Working Paper No. 40, English edition, introduced and edited by Christian F. Ostermann and Odd Arne Westad, Cold War International History Project, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC, July 2002, 160. Note: a full copy of the working paper, in PDF format, is available at the website of the Wilson Center: http://www.wilsoncenter.org/topics/pubs/ACFAE9.pdf.

  30. President Jimmy Carter, “Remarks at a Toast for the President and the Shah,” Tehran, Iran, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States,” 1977, vol. 2, December 31, 1977, 2221.

  31. President Jimmy Carter, “Remarks at a Question-and-Answer Session at a Breakfast with Members of the White House Correspondents Association,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 1978, vol. 2, December 7, 1978, 2172.

  Chapter 19: Defending the “Evil Empire”: Stopping Ronald Reagan's “Errors” and “Distortions”

  1. Allen says this lunch took place the last week of January 1977. Source: Interview with Richard V. Allen, November 12, 2001; and Richard Allen, “An Extraordinary Man in Extraordinary Times: Ronald Reagan's Leadership and the Decision to End the Cold War,” Address to the Hoover Institution and the William J. Casey Institute of the Center for Security Policy, Washington, DC, February 22, 1999, text printed in Schweizer, ed., The Fall of the Berlin Wall, 52.

  2. Natan Sharansky, who was imprisoned in the gulag, has discussed this at length, quite dramatically. Similar testimonies from the Polish Solidarity movement are innumerable. For example, one Solidarity member, Jan Winiecki, said: “It's very important for those underground to know they'll have support diplomatically if they're repressed. They knew they could count on Reagan and his administration for this rhetorical, moral, public support—this political support. It raised their spirits that they could survive.” I have published many of these accounts. From the Soviet side, including Sharansky, see Kengor, God and Ronald Reagan, 262–69. From the Solidarity side, see Kengor, The Crusader, 84–111, 285–92.

  3. This is true for rankings both by the general public and by presidential scholars. Reagan consistently ranks extraordinarily high in public rankings, usually among the top three to five presidents, and sometimes number one. For instance, a 2001 Gallup poll showed that Americans rank Reagan the greatest president of all time. As for presidential scholars, C-SPAN released a survey for Presidents Day 2009 that ranked Reagan the tenth best president. Among other citations of these polls and other appraisals, see Lou Cannon and Carl Cannon, Reagan's Disciple (New York: Public Affairs, 2008), xii.

  4. A June 2005 survey by the Discovery Channel and AOL (2.4 million participants) declared Reagan the “greatest American of all time,” beating Lincoln and Washington.

  5. Root told this story numerous times in the summer of 2009 during promotion for his latest book. The quotes cited here are taken from his blog entries posted at www.rootforamerica.com/blog as well as a March 7, 2008, interview he did with Glenn Beck, posted at www.glennbeck.com.

  6. In particular, Lamont blasted the president's support of groups like “the savage and terrorist [Nicaraguan] Contras.” Lamont stated this in a full-page ad by his National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, for which he provided the lead signature. Among others, the ad was placed in publications like Mother Jones magazine, June–July 1987, 61.

  7. See Kengor, The Crusader, 198.

  8. See my discussion in Kengor, God and Ronald Reagan, 264–69.

  9. See Reagan, “Address at Commencement Exercises at Eureka College in Illinois, May 9, 1982,” Presidential Papers, 1982, vol. 1, 583. On July 19, 1982, he said that the USSR's “self-proclaimed goal is the domination of every nation on Earth.” See Reagan, “Remarks on Signing the Captive Nations Week Proclamation, July 19, 1982,” Presidential Papers, 1982, vol. 2, 936. Two months earlier, on May 27, he told Western European journalists that the USSR's “worldwide aggression” stemmed from “the Marxist-Leninist theory of world domination.” See Reagan, “Interview with Representatives of Western European Publications, May 21, 1982,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, Ronald Reagan, 1982, vol. 1, 696. He constantly said the USSR was expansionary in nature and committed to a “one-world Communist state.” He said this so often—in formal speeches, on the stump, in interviews, wherever—that it's impossible to count all the references. See, for example, Reagan, “Interview with Reporters from the Los Angeles Times, January 20, 1982,” Presidential Papers, 1982, vol. 1, 62; Reagan, “Interview with Morton Kondracke and Richard H. Smith of Newsweek Magazine, March 4, 1985,” Presidential Papers, vol. 1, 1985, 261; Reagan, “Interview with Representatives of College Radio Stations, September 9, 1985,” Presidential Papers, 1985, vol. 2, 1068–69; Reagan, “Question-and-Answer Session with Students at Fallston High School, Fallston, Maryland, December 4, 1985,” Presidential Papers, 1985, vol. 2, 1438. He didn't just charge this motive to the leadership generally. He specified each Soviet leader—and top officials like Andrei Gromyko—as hell-bent on expansion and world domination. Importantly, he found one exception—Mikhail Gorbachev—and said so openly. Before Gorbachev, Reagan wrote, every other had vowed to pursue the Marxist commitment to a one-world Communist state. See Reagan, An American Life, 641, 706–7.

  10. In a 1975 radio broadcast that he wrote, Reagan complained, “The Russians have told us over and over again their goal is to impose their incompetent and ridiculous system on the world.” Quoted by Ronnie Dugger, On Reagan: The Man and His Presidency (New York: McGraw Hill, 1983), 439. Another example: In May 1977 Reagan wrote that “every Soviet leader,” including Brezhnev, “has sworn to carry out to the letter the words of Lenin.” This passage is from a May 25, 1977, radio broadcast he wrote, located in “Ronald Reagan: Pre-Presidential Papers: Selected Radio Broadcasts, 1975–1979,” April 1977 to September 1977, box 2, RRL. For a transcript, see Skinner, Anderson, and Anderson, eds., Reagan, In His Own Hand, 33–35. This was common for Reagan in his 1970s pronouncements. See also “Keng Piao,” radio broadcast written by Reagan, May 4, 1977, located in “Ronald Reagan: Pre-Presidential Papers: Selected Radio Broadcasts, 1975–1979,” April 1977 to September 1977, box 2, RRL. A transcript is in Skinner, Anderson, and Anderson, eds., Reagan, In His Own Hand, 35–36; and “Reagan: ’It Isn't Only Washington … ,’” National Journal, March 8, 1980, 391.

  11. Allen interviewed in Stephen F. Knott and Jeffrey L. Chidester, At Reagan's Side (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), 94.

  12. Reagan, “The President's News Conference,” January 29, 1981.

  13. In a speech to the American Legion Convention at New York's Madison Square Garden
on August 27, 1952, Adlai Stevenson, a liberal's liberal, an intellectual, and twice the Democratic Party's standard-bearer in the 1950s, spoke approvingly of America's “healthy apprehension about the Communist menace within our country.” Sounding mild compared to Reagan, Stevenson declared: “Communism is abhorrent. It is strangulation of the individual; it is death for the soul. Americans who have surrendered to this misbegotten idol have surrendered their right to our trust. And there can be no secure place for them in our public life.”

  14. Among other points in his classic Long Telegram, Kennan warned caveat emptor—that America must recognize that when the Soviets put their signature to a document, it is for strategic purposes only, and should not be trusted. George F. Kennan, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” Foreign Affairs, July 1947.

  15. Allen interviewed in Knott and Chidester, At Reagan's Side, 94.

  16. Bernard Gwertzman, “President Sharply Assails Kremlin,” New York Times, January 30, 1981, A1.

  17. Lee Lescaze, “Reagan Voices a Tone for Relations Far Harsher Than His Predecessors,” Washington Post, January 30, 1981, A1.