Transcript: Chapter 16

Narrator: By 1982 many Americans thought Reagan's weapons buildup was madness. It energized a movement to freeze production of nuclear weapons. Reagan's crusade was against Communism. The freeze movement's was against the bomb. Use of the bomb, scientist Carl Sagan warned, would doom the earth to a "nuclear winter." A fate more likely, Reagan's opponents felt, with yet more bombs -- in the hands of the man who pacified Berkeley with bayonets.

Robert Dallek, Historian: They saw him as something of a cowboy. They identified him with Barry Goldwater, who in the 1964 campaign says, we should think about lobbing one into the men's room of the Kremlin, you see.

People had bumper stickers in 1964 the Goldwater bumper sticker was "In Your Heart You Know He's Right." And the opponents said, "In Your Heart You Know He's Nuts," seeing him as, as a dangerous character who might provoke a nuclear war. And Reagan was seen by many people as the heir of that rhetoric and he frightens people.

Robert McNamara, Former Secretary of Defense: The stocks of both Warsaw Pact and NATO have been increasing dramatically. The deployments have been increasing. More and more one hears of the necessity of developing plans for fighting and winning nuclear wars. Inconceivable to me. Madness.

William Colby, Former CIA Director: It is precisely a freeze which would stop the further build up of weapons aimed at our country. I think the freeze is both in the mutual interest of our two countries and is certainly verifiable.

Senator Edward Kennedy: I reject the absurd theory that we can have fewer nuclear bombs tomorrow only if we build more nuclear bombs today.

Rally Host John Shea: We are the people. We want no more nuclear weapons.

Narrator: By the spring, the freeze had grown into an enormous grassroots movement. A freeze resolution was introduced in Congress. On June 12, nearly one million Americans rallied in Central Park to send a message to Ronald Reagan.

Dr. Helen Caldicott, Physicians for Social Responsibility: His motto is "Arm to Disarm." Those bombs will produce a nuclear war called On the Beach where every person on the earth dies of radioactive fallout within a few weeks. That's what these new bombs mean and that's what the president is doing. I thought he could possibly press the button. Yeah. I was terrified. And I didn't understand why people had this adulation for him.

Mike Farrell: Say a warm hello to Patti Davis.

Narrator: Reagan's daughter Patti Davis made her movement debut in the Hollywood Bowl -- Survival Sunday, 198l.

Patti Davis: We have a choice.

Patti Davis: My motives were the same as everybody else's. But I wasn't like everybody else. My father was sitting in the White House. So, you know, I was out there with the intention of speaking in a sense, for world peace, but the best thing I could have done for world peace that day, I think, was to stay home because really all I was communicating was that I was at war with my father.

Reporter: Have you ever tried to influence your father on this issue or would you ever try?

Patti Davis: We discuss it. We discuss it.

Narrator: Patti Davis met Dr. Caldicott at a star-studded fundraiser for the freeze movement at Hugh Heffner's Playboy mansion in Hollywood. She invited Dr. Caldicott to the White House to try to convert her father.

Dr. Caldicott : To break the ice, I said to him, "You probably don't know who I am, do you?" And he said, "Yes, I do. You're an Australian, you read On the Beach when you were a young girl, and you're scared of nuclear war." And I said, "Yes, that's right." He said, "Well I too am scared of nuclear war, but our ways to prevent it differ. I believe in building more bombs."

After we'd been talking for about an hour, he reached into his inside pocket and pulled a piece of paper out. And he'd written in this backhand writing of his "People who work for the nuclear weapons freeze are either KGB dupes or Soviet agents." And I said, "But that's from last month's Reader's Digest." And he said, "No," he said, "it's from my intelligence files."

Patti Davis: There was so much around, around that visit and in the background of that visit that made it impossible for it to be an open dialogue.

Dr. Caldicott: Patti didn't really participate, she was deeply involved watching, except at one point where I had a document I wanted to show him, and I was bending down to my briefcase to pick it up, and she said, I heard her say, "Daddy I know that what the doctor is saying is correct because I've got a 1982 Pentagon document to prove it." And he looked at her and he said, "That's a forgery." I mean, he didn't even ask her where it is. You know, what document it was. Anything. He just said, "That's a forgery." I was stunned.

Narrator: Dr. Caldicott recalled the meeting as "the most disconcerting" of her life. "I left the White House hardly able to walk from shock and staggered back to ... my hotel. ..." "I shared her fear about what the remaining years of my father's administration would bring," Patti wrote. "I sat at the dinner table that night drinking too much wine. ... I felt like I'd let down an entire movement." Dr. Caldicott is "a nice, caring person," Reagan wrote in his diary. "But she is all steamed up ... I ... couldn't get through her fixation. For that matter I couldn't get through to Patti. I'm afraid our daughter has been taken over by that whole gang."

William Sloane Coffin: Good-bye nuclear weapons. Forever good-bye.

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