at the university of iceland in reykjavik. this vault, original manuscripts that date back hundreds of years, some nearly a millennium old. geezely sickerson is a research professor here. today he s pulled one of the icelandic settlement books for us. this manuscript was handwritten in the 1600s, believed to be a copy of the book from the 14th century, and that one is believed to be a copy from the 1200s. you get the idea. how far back are we talking here? we know from our sources, writing in ireland around 825, that the irish hermits were here around 790 or thereabouts. wow. if you think about genealogy around the world, how unique is
personal diplomacy. and you remember as well as i do, he was asked at several news conferences after brezhnev died and the soviet leaders why haven t you met with your soviet counterpart. and he said memorably at a news conference, well, they all keep dying on me. and then when, with the help, i think, importantly of nancy reagan and others, he agreed to meet with gorbachev in november of 1985 in geneva. and that was the beginning of this personal diplomacy. that was the beginning of the personal diplomacy. reykjavik was the real pinnacle. at reykjavik they met for 10 1/2 hours. it was like an agatha christie story. they met in an isolated place at the end of the world in an old creaky house with rain lashing on the windowsill. and the house was thought to be haunted. and the two of them over a
weekend experienced the most amazing things. and what did they experience is the terms for this deep reductions, the deep nest hiest history for nuclear weapons that s continued to this day and what neither of them could imagine, that the cold war would end within a very short time. it was amazing. the thesis of the book is that these 48 hours, reykjavik, represented the start of the end of the cold war, and the events coming out of reykjavik resulted in just that. the decline of the soviet union, the end of the soviet union and then the end of the cold war. ken, this is all fascinating stuff. thank you so much for bringing it all back. and it could never be more relevant than today with vladimir putin. thank you again. it s a great story. it s a great story. thanks very much for the book. and we ll be right back. naming names. the fact is, it comes standard with an engine that s been called the benchmark of its class.
with mikhail gorbachev in reykjavik, ireland. it would set the stage for future talks. the two men at the height of their power end upped addressing the core issues of nuclear disarmament. what first appeared to be a diplomatic disaster turned out to lay the groundwork for a nuclear arms accord that would change the course of history. i m joined by ken adelman, former arms controller for president reagan. he took part in that summit in iceland and wrote the new book reagan at reykjavik: 48 hours that ended the cold war. when president reagan and gorbachev came out of that white house and their faces were so grim, it looked as though the whole thing had exploded. that all the promise and hope of their past meetings had just fallen apart. tell me what happened and how do you think it turned around. you were on the lawn, andrea. yeah. i was in the house with the president and we shared the same view that it had all absolutely
been disastrous. but then a year later, reagan s real determination and strategic plan had come about because we signed he signed and gorbachev signed the most sweeping arms control agreement in history. and then three years after that or four years after that, the soviet union fell. exactly on the terms that reagan had laid out. well, at the time, one of the things he quoted in the book, we don t know just what reagan had in mind before reykjavik but we know his mood. awfully excited. part of it was his fondness for big events. and reykjavik, despite his attempts to damp ten down, shaping up to be a very big event. he also liked negotiating. considered himself quite a master of it. he really was a good negotiator. he held out on strategic defense. he was ridiculed by many in the media. ridiculed by many so-called foreign policy experts but he was holding out for that whole card of strategic defense. and would not give it up.