Transcript: Chapter 24

Narrator: In October 1986 Reagan met Gorbachev for the second time in a hastily called summit at Reykjavik, Iceland. Once again, his conservative backers, now largely out of government, were worried he would seek an arms agreement just for the sake of an agreement.

Nofziger: I said, well, Mr. President, I'm here because there's a lot of people worried that you're going to go to Reykjavik and give away the store, and he said Linwood cause he always called me Linwood which is not my name. He said Linwood, I don't want you ever to worry about that. He said I still have the scars on my back from when I fought the Communists in Hollywood. He said don't ever worry about it.

Narrator: Gorbachev had his own problems. He needed an arms agreement. He could not manage both economic reform and the arms race, especially SDI. He would try his best to make Reagan give away the store.

Tarasenko: Propose to him a package beyond all the expectation -- to talk real big, see, that was his idea. Why we shall discuss all these small things? Let's come up with a big idea and sell it.

Narrator: Gorbachev offered Reagan everything he had wanted: they would both destroy half their long range bombers and missiles. Eliminate all the missiles threatening Europe. And he made a major concession on human rights.

Shultz: They agreed for the first time, that human rights would be a legitimate recognized, regular item on our agenda. They agreed to that. That was a breakthrough and with all due respect to the arms control breakthroughs, when you are breaking through on the nature of the relations between a government and its people, you're really getting a lot deeper than perhaps you think.

Narrator: Gorbachev, Secretary Shultz wrote, laid "gifts at our feet." The delegations worked all night to iron out the details of his proposal. The next morning, Gorbachev insisted that all the missile reductions he proposed were contingent on restricting SDI research to the laboratory. Reagan refused. The meeting appeared to be over.

Regan: He wanted to get out of there and be home. He wanted to be home for dinner that night if at all possible and with the change of hours if he left in the early afternoon, he could be home in Washington for dinner. And as a matter of fact I remember his talking to me about that saying, "Don, these things are really dragging on." And I had to say to him "Hang in there, Mr. President, I think we're winning."

Sam Donaldson, Journalist: Mr. President, have you made any real progress, Sir?

Reagan: We're not through.

Donaldson: Are you going to meet again, sir?

Reagan: Yes.

Narrator: At this point the Soviets challenged the Americans to make a concession. The US delegation did. It agreed to abide by the treaty banning space defenses for 10 years. And proposed that during that time both sides scrap all -- not just half -- their long-range missiles. Reagan liked the boldness of the proposal.

Bessmertnykh: Reagan responded with the idea of having the complete elimination of strategic ballistic missiles. And Gorbachev said how about eliminating all the nuclear weapons instead of just going part by part. They actually moved each other to the direction of the discussion of the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. They were carried away. The two gentlemen were carried away with the historic ideas they had presented to each other.

Tarasenko: It's easy to say that President Reagan was anti-Communist or anti-something. No, he was a romantic. As I later on judged, he really was maybe the last romantic of this generation.

Cannon: Gorbachev also had a romantic abolitionist vision of nuclear weapons. And you've got the two leaders of these two powerful countries running way beyond their arms controllers and their defense ministries and their State Departments and saying let's get rid of nuclear weapons.

Bessmertnykh: There was a time out asked by the American side. And Gorbachev walked out and we were sitting in a small room and he said, if Reagan accepts, the world will be a new one. Things will change historically.

Narrator: Reagan could realize his dream of reducing the nuclear threat. Perhaps only by risking his dream of a space defense. Gorbachev still insisted on restricting SDI research to the laboratory.

Richard Perle, Assistant Secretary of Defense: The president needed to understand. He needed information in a very tense situation. When asked I expressed the categorical view that there was no way you could see the program through to a successful conclusion if we accepted the constraints that Gorbachev had in mind. Upon hearing that, he turned to Don Regan and said, "If we agree to this won't we be doing that simply so we can leave here with an agreement?" And it was a rhetorical question, of course, and you knew the moment he put it that he'd made his decision. And within seconds, it was over. Presidents grasp at treaties because they convey an image of presidents as statesmen and peacemakers, and they're sometimes not bothered about the details. It took tremendous discipline for Ronald Reagan to leave that little room without an agreement.

Narrator: "I still think we can find a deal," Reagan said. Gorbachev replied, "I don't know what else I could have done."

Regan: He got into the car and his shoulders slumped. He was in the back seat. You would have thought that he'd just lost a combination of the Rose Bowl and the Stanley Cup and the Olympics. He was so ... down. I've never seen a guy so beat in all my life.

He said, Don, we were that close and he held up his left hand. Just finger and thumb. That much. He said we were that close to getting rid of all missiles and he said he wouldn't, he, give in. He kept insisting that we had to do away with SDI and I couldn't do that. He said I promised the American people I would not give in on that. I cannot do it.

Narrator: At the time, Reykjavik was considered a failure. Conservatives criticized Reagan for the deep cuts he was willing to make in nuclear weapons -- for almost giving away the store. Margaret Thatcher worried he was bargaining away Europe's security. The mainstream press faulted him for walking away from the most sweeping offer of arms reductions in history, for sinking a summit by being so stubborn on Star Wars. Gorbachev stressed the positive. Mikhail Gorbachev: I said to the reporters that indeed Reykjavik was a breakthrough. And I said Reykjavik will eventually produce results. And that is exactly what happened. Without Reykjavik, the process that eventually started and that brought about the one treaty and further treaties ... that would not have been possible. Reykjavik is really a top of the hill and from that top, we saw a great deal.

Shultz: When Gorbachev visited me at Stanford University after we were both out of office, I said to him, when you entered office and when I entered office, the Cold War could not have been colder, and when we left it was basically over. What do you think was the turning point? And he said, without any hesitation, just like that, he said Reykjavik. And I said, why, expecting him to talk about missiles and stuff like that. He said, because for the first time the two leaders really had a deep conversation about everything. We really exchanged views, and not just about peripheral things, about the central things, and that was what was important about Reykjavik.

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