Michael douglas played reagan and then that started about eight years ago. I was involved in that way and then the movie stalled and this and that happened and on and on. And i was thinking if this is such a good story why dont i write it up. I had written five books. That was enough for moses and it was going to be enough for me. He retired and his sales were higher than mine. Someone said the most valuable copy of one of my previous books was an unsigned copy which were none and an unsigned copy with a receipt from the bookstore was rare. I decided not to write anymore. And this kept going so i decided why not. And the more i looked into it the better it became. Host you say at the outset that reykjavik has been relegated to being a footnote to history and it is largely forgotten and most of the public are only vaguely aware of the summit. What is misunderstood by historians and the general public that may have caused people to under estimate the importance of what you think is an important event for modern history. Guest because the general soviet Union Falling is a huge thing and the end of the cold war is a huge thing. And the conventional wisdom is the old system of the soviet union, the economic bankruptcy of the soviet union, the fact the was a secession of dying leaders brought down the soviet union and nothing from the outside mattered. Host were there other books or historians or participants in reykjavik . Is there much bodies of literature on this . Guest no one really did a deep dive into what happened and the best thing is no one had the notes but the american notes and the russian notes. What does that enable you to do . That enabled you to see them raw and to peak through the keyhole of the little Conference Room in the lofty house and put your ear to the door and listen to what they said for ten and a half hours. I dont know about you, but i have never talked to anyone for ten and a half hours. If i talked to my wife that long i think she would walk out screaming. But they talked about the most important issues of the world for ten and a half hours. Without notes, without talking points, without staff involvement and without memos. They must have felt this is more like me than any time in my presidency and gorbachev must have thought this is more like me than any time as general secretary. And michael reagan, Ronald Reagans son said you get a real insight into my dad from this book. Why . Because other books say he did this on this day and signed this but they dont show his mind at work. And this shows his mind at work minute by minute and his character in play. Host so the notes from the summit, in addition to the other documents that you consulted, where are they . Where did you find the material . Is this available to the general public if you want to go look at this . Guest some is at the Reagan Library, some is online, some is at reykjavik, and it has been scattered around. What made this the more i looked at it what made this such a wonderful story is first of all the story. This is a weekend, a stormy weekend in october, with rain lashing at the window seal in a creaky old house in the middle of nowhere in a desolate place, iceland. And said to be haunted. Neighbors call it the haunted or ghost house rather than the house. And if the hofty was haunted they said ghost were most welcome. So over the weekend, the most Amazing Things happened. And they happened to two characters. Mikhail gorbachev and Ronald Reagan who are among the most interesting and intriguing characters of the 21st century. And beside the setting, story line, the emotions, the ins and out and besides the two characters who are fabulous is the consequences. 48 hours that ended the cold war. Host we will get to reykjavik in a second and i would love to let people hear the stories. But this is a memoir of this summit and the end game of the cold war. When you were working at the Reagan Whitehouse and at the reykjavik summit in a prominent role, did you believe or anticipate you would want to write a book . Did you keep a diary . Were you able to consult any notes from that time . Guest no. And it really was stupid. It was the most important weekend of my life and i just went on and did whatever i did. I chased down wonderful documents in reykjavik at the Reagan Library and washington, d. C. And everywhere else. I found after the book went to the press that i had in my files because we were moving a letter that Ronald Reagan wrote me about reykjavik and saying nice job i had done and such and such and it isnt in the book. So the most personal document of reykjavik, Ronald Reagans letter to me a few days later, isnt recounted in the book while i go chasing the other documents. I saved nothing. Host i would guess many of your recollections from that weekend you may have found discredi discre discrepancies when you went back. Guest not very much. But when Something Like this happens, you were a remarkable number of things. When you trace it, you can look at the photos. I will tell you an example. The summit was a surprise. Everything about reykjavik is a surprise. So the kgb and the cia and the secret service knew about the summit before the state department did. They go in to reykjavik and went all of the rooms. Then the secret Service Knows to the u. S. Ambassador in reykjavik which isnt overworked, to tell you the truth, because nothing happens there. But he enjoyed deep sea fishing so it was the perfect appointment for the ambassador. And he was told the president is going to be in your house on october 912th and the ambassador was excited about it. He said but the bad news is you are not. The ambasder tried to find a room and couldnt so he left. Ambassador i remember thinking that was shabby treatment. The only thing in the hundred years that happened between iceland and the United States, theome thing that mattered, the u. S. Ambusder is nowhere to be found. Years later i heard his wife said he was at reagans side and doing all of this and then his widow and i thought maybe my memory is just wrong because that is odd. So were the research of this i looked at, you know, reams of photographs of the whitehouse photographer in those little rolls of films that people used to have for the whitehouse photographer. There were very few taken inside hofty house but a lot at the ambassad ambassadors house and he is not in any of the pictures. And even when he had lunch twice at the ambassadors house he is not there. So i am thinking i remember right. He wasnt there. His widow and i am glad she thought he was but he wasnt. Host well, lets segue into the start of the summit. It is october 11th, 1986. This is the second meeting. They met in geneva one year earlier. What transpired from the meeting in geneva and the summit in reykjavik . What were the expectationsf of the americans going into this . Guest the expectations were very low that the arms control was stuck at that time. Reagan was thought to be an out of control hardliner who put the world on the brink of Nuclear Annihilation at that time. Things were not panning out. His main priority was to negotiate with the soviets and show he was a great negotiator and bring peace. It is remarkable one of the remarkable parts of the research i did was on the plane to detroit to accept the republican nomination Stewart Spencer says ron, why are you doing this . Why do you want to be president . He said to end the cold war. Who in their right mind thought anybody was going to end the cold war . He had an outcome. He said we win and they lose. And his approach of reducing Nuclear Weapons, having starwars and the sdi expanding military might and delegitimizing them this was going to end up a heap in history. They were all a deliberate sixyear attack before reykjavik on that. So he had a strategy. I dont know if he thought about it because you never know what he thought about. But it was thought to be a summit reykjavik that wasnt going to be a summit. The remarks on the south lawn of the whitehouse in fact said this isnt a summit. It is a meeting to prepare a summit. Host it came together quickly . Guest oh, yeah, ten days time. We spent six months preparing for the Geneva Summit. This was 12 days. Host and huge amount of attention descends on this tiny place. You have got 3,000 journalist i think you said. Guest 3, 173. Host and anchors and Television Broadcast networks showed up and you were there in your role as arms control director, i believe. Tell me about what your responsibilities would be going into the weekend. Guest as we understood it our responsibility was nothing because nothing of substance was happening. This was a grin and grab kind of summit. It was going to be a media event. And thought to be that gorbachev needed to elevate his stature within the soviet union and how better to do it than meet with the president of the United States in the middle of nowhere is offer a meeting on that. That is what we expected and what the cia told us and the American Ambassador in moscow found out and what the soviet ambassador in washington told us. So we were going along with the kind of photoop summit on that. And all of a sudden boom we knew the morning came the first morning when reagan and gorbachev met. We were sitting in a bubble which is a room within a room. It is totally secure. It has big latches on the outside so that it cant be bugged. All right . And bubbles generally are pretty big and when when he had the ones for the arms control talk we could have 25 people in the bubble in reykjavik they ordered the smallest bubble because Nothing Happened in iceland and nothing was classified. So eight of us are sitting side by side next to each other on the folding gray chairs the kind walmart would be ashamed to sell. Almost knee to knee is side to side. And shultz is tells us what we knew. The secretary of state at the time. All of a sudden the latch opens up, door swings open, we look up and there is one of these 7 foot 8 inch secret Service Agents who said the president of the United States. We did what any redblooded american would do, we stood up and were belly to belly and reagan looks at all of us and said this would make a great aquarium and we come to a crisis because it was an eightseater and there were nine of us and there was the chief of staff of the whitehouse, the secretary of state, the National Security advisor and then there is the armed control director. I knew if i was going to stay, and by god i knew i was going to stay, i offered the president my chair, i said sit right here, mr. President and i hit the ground. And i was on the floor. And meanwhile this secret service guy latched the door and we were in there. It was a great, great moment because reagan cracked a few jokes and then said gorbachev is really serious about doing things and we said in what way and he kind of tried to tell us an approach that gorbachev was taking and he sat there for about 30 minutes and i was gently leaning against the president ial knees and we knew our assessment was wrong, intelligence was wrong, and reports were wrong. This was going to be a real thing. Host and reagan and gorbachev dont know each other that well. Meetings in geneva and exchanged letters not a lot of heart to heart times. Guest he picked that up that something was different. The Geneva Summit was wel wellscripted and an ideal state department summit. Everything is scripted, protocol and nothing was ready and it was come as you are in this meeting. During the whole week, i missed this and should have put it into the book, they never shared a meal or a drink or a social event. Where geneva was just about all social events. It was like they were Double Dating around the city and this had nothing. Just nothing. And neither of them were that busy outside of the main talks. But it never occurred why dont we invite gorbachev over for lunch. Host what is reagan like in a setting like that . In command of the issues . Engaged in what you are talking about . Guest he told us gorbachev was serious and wanted to lower the Nuclear Weapons and that gorbachev wasnt flexible on sdi and all of that was good and riot right. Then he tried to tell us the proposals gorbachev came up with and they were mix mash and she was trying to figure out what gorbachev said with shultz and he wasnt much better. The whole lingo was specialized and complicated and very few people knew it and even fewer needed to know it so they got all screwed up. But then they said oh, my, god he gave me a piece of paper. He brought out the paper and reagan thought that was a very kind thing for gorbachev to do. We all thought gorbachev knew his man so he dove for the paper and thanked for president very much on that. And then talked about what it meant and stuff. Host so you deal with a lot of the sort of details of what was discussed in terms of how many Nuclear Weapons each side was willing to cut and to what size, but the main bone of contention in reykjavik as many people remember and you detail in the book is sdi and strategic defense and star wars as it was known then. Just describe what sdi was, why it was important to reagan and why gorbachev opposed it . Guest it was important to reagan because it got us out of the nuclear impass we were in since the 1940s and 1950s. Two gunman with two two cowboys with a gun to each others head and it was mutual annihilation and he wanted to get away from that. He was very value based. Gorbachev thought the United States can do anything, sdi is going to be real, it is going to negate our missiles, and soviet power, and if we try to compete it will ruin the soviet union. So reagan had this mystical view of what sdi could become and gorbachev had a frightful view and it was a small and insignificant Research Program in the pentagon but these two elevated it and i think gorbachevs view of it, that it was going to bring down the soviet union, brought down the soviet union. Host but did reagan conceive of such . This is a big source of contention. What did reagan intend to achieve with this pursuit . Guest he intented to protect the United States from incoming ballistic missiles. Host i was interested to learn the details and you get a sense of the back and forth between the two leaders. Guest without touting the book too much, although that is what we are here to do, chapters three, four and five give the back of forth of the discussion between them and you see them real and what their real views. Host how many people are in the room . Guest two of them, two Foreign Ministers who dont participate much at all, two note takers who write down what they say one russian and one american and two translators. So that is all. During this time those of us who are not in the room but met with reagan before and after we get a general idea of what happened but not very much. There is only 25 years later when i am going through these notes that i say it is amazing what these notes show. That reagan just as knowledgeable as gorbachev which everybody thought at the time was just impossible. Gorbachev was the hot kid in town. He was a whiz kid, a generation younger than reagan, so much smarter, so much younger and so much more with it. Reagan didnt know issues. He spoke from cards. He was dotering around. And you dont get that from the notes at all. You get the idea there is no gap between the two in terms of knowledge and in terms of negotiations there is a big gap between the two. One of the wonderful parts of looking at these notes, both the russian and the american notes, is that over those ten and a half years, gorbachev says to reagan i think it is 11 or 12 times, i am making all of the concessions and you have given me nothing. And you know what reagan says each of those times that gorbachev complains . He says nothing. [laughtering] guest he says absolutely nothing. And he must be sitting there thinking what is wrong with that . Suits me just fine. I knew i was a great negotiaton. I like it that way. Gorbachev gets madder and madder and we have, thank god, we have the notes of gorbachev on the plane from reykjavik back to moscow and he has the staff on the plane and he said reagan gave me nothing. I gave all of the concessions. And his staff must have thought who is the dummy here . Why did you do that . But anyway that is the way it was. And it is marvelous so i was really lucky to a be there and have the memory of what happened and b to have the notes open up. Host i want to talk about the climax of the summit in a second. But some of the details in the book are wonderful. Your own experiences in reykjavik. One image that you paint beautifully is the sight of the two military officers from each side holding the nuclear footballs the suit cases with the codes that would launch a nuclear strike. You said that is the most memorable sight that you recall from that summit. Why is that . Guest the idea these two men were as close as you and i together and holding each of them in their smartly pressed uniforms, never looking at each other that i saw over the weeke weekend, holding the brief case that had the codes to blow up each others country. I thought that is what they are talking about this in room. And hofty house is small. It is a small little house. They didnt have any room to spread out. We were upstairs in a parlor. There was a russian parlor, and an american parlor and a demilitary zone between them and the Conference Room on the first floor. And every time a leader left the fellow holding the football left as well. But to go and see the two leaders go into the room as i did and standing right outside not looking at each other and there wasnt much to look at besides each other holding the football gave me the willies. I look at them then and several times thinking that is what this is all about. Host the upstairs parlor that you write about wahat hawwas happening up there . You are up there and dont know what is discussed down below. But you said it was an atmosphere that was congenial. Guest on october 12th, 1986 they were gathering in the hallway of the top leadership of the soviet union and United States and we had just gone all night with some of these. We started at 8 00 at night and ended at 6 20 the next morning. I walked back, shower, and reported in the bubble to the president at about 8 00 that we had accomplished more in arms control that one night than we have in seven years of constant negotiations in geneva. And then while the two were meeting that sunday morning all of a sudden from both parlors the diplomats came out, the officials, and we had the most extraordinary conversations. It was like real people for the first time. I talked to acro may off who led the team. We had two daughters and we talked about our daughters and he asked me about the chairman of the joint chiefs and that and i asked him about his Prior Service and brandon told funny stories about washington. And you know, it was like normal people. And we had never or i have never had conversations with the soviet people like they were normal people. We were not trying to find anything about each other and it was amazing. Host and i suppose that is part of the unscripted nature of this
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