tv Book TV CSPAN August 29, 2009 9:00am-10:00am EDT
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and months at a time. and among the letrs he got during that period were some from rose telling him to work on his speeches and his grammar more. [laughter] >>nd i must say that his campaign manager told me that he believes it was while on his back with a broken back, that's when he started to think about what other people who did not have the means went through with devastating illness. >> yeah. >> and situations like that. >> his passion for healthcare began in that bed. >> hello. my question is quite broad and it's addressed to all of the authors. how did your perceptions of senator kennedy change from the beginning stages of writing the book to the end stages like was mentioned earlier? many people have fixed opinions about the senator and if you did have an opinion before, how did it change to the end stages of writing the book?
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>> i know i thought i knew a l about him and i didn't and after i finished my reporting i ended him liking him a lot more. >> joe? >> well, i was going to say, it would be hard to live in massachusetts for any length of time and not have opinions about ted kennedy. [laughter] >> i think it wasn't so much opinions that began to crystallize. it was themes. it was -- it was dimension. it was perspective. it was, for instance -- i mean, during that whole time that i alluded to, the womanizing and all these kinds of random relationships, people were telling me how lonely he was. well, that didn't really match up with this sort of playboy party boy, but it certainly matched up with what we knew about him as a child. and it certainly contrasted sharply with how fulfilled and
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stable he seemed in his second marriage. so it was that kind of resonance that did have an effect, you kn, howou felt -- you how perceived this man >> i also would say too that this wasn't from my own reporting -- because he's such a gregarious person. i was really kind of surprised to find out how lonely he was as a child and even as a -- as an adult. but the other thing is i thought i knew him so well and how he operated on the hill and, you know, everybody i ran into had some story to tell me about some kindness he extended. senator voinovi who is this very kind of, you know, poker-faced senator from ohio told me that -- i've never seen him show any emotion. he almost broke down when his nephew got bone cancer he reached out to kennedy, you know, who had obvious experience with it because his son. he wanted to make sure his nephew was getting the right,
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you know, treatment and he said kennedy not only came through with that you but called his nephew, sent him a painting that he'd done. i mean, i just -- i kept hearing more and more stories like that the more i interviewed people on the hill. >> i don't know if you mentioned it, bella, you talked about his loneliness. it was ten schools in ten years, was it not? >> yeah, i think it was ten schools in 11 years. >> teddy is not one to feel sorry for himself or complain. he's optimistic but he even conceded it was very tough for him. >> thank you all for the great portrait of kennedy as he changed through the years. you and like we are constituents. how have the constituency changed and how would you attribute the constituency to the behavior of the politician? >> that's another issue. [laughter]
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>> what do you think? don aucoin? >> yeah the constituency changes than the generation that supported jack and ted in the early part of his career. i guess he has made strides to sort of embrace and understand the biotech sector, the 128-495 technology sector. he's identified and rightly so with championing the causes of blue collar union members. but i think he also understood that as massachusetts became more high tech and he had to move with the times and tried to find ways to do so. and indeed if you talk to any healthcare executives, head of research organizations around boston, kennedy is a raiaker on the hill for them unlike none other. >> the change in constituencies, thchange in brothers. i think we should frankly acknowledge the myth-making that ted has been involved in with his brother jack who was not as liberal as ted was? >> i believe it's peter's
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insight. maybe you should take. >> i think it is an important observation that, you know, people refer to ted kennedy as having been sort of entrapped by these comparisons with his brothers jack and bobby. yet the very positive mythic images that jack and bobby have wereartly influenced by tes depictions of them. and, you know, one area might be in civil rights. there have been whole books written about how jack kennedy was sort of aate comer to the civil rights issue though he did embrace it in the final year of his presidency very strongly. but when ted became the primary senate sponsor of the civil rights act of 1964, you know, he delivered a strong speech referring to that act as sort of the dying wish of his brother, the president. which i think, you know, invested jack kennedy with a nobility and passion that a lot of people didn't think he had. ted's uology of bobby's is one of the most memorable sort of defining of bobby kennedy who
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was a much more complex figure. he had worked with joe mccarthy. he was his brother's campaign manager and was considered ruthless and tough. ted portrayed him as a simple man who saw wrong and tried to right it and saw warnd tried stop it. he's portraying bobby in that heroic way that bobby always wanted to be portrayed. ted was always compared unfavoring. >> this is a much different city. it's a much different city and state now than it was in the 1960s. has a change in constituents -- has a change in constituency changed the senator's politics. >> well, i think -- i mean, you can sort of see the antecedent of these chang early on where the kennedys were always good at just being -- jack kennedy particularly and joe kennedy with him being one step ahead of their base, just to bring them along and a think what you saw
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in the '60s was ted starting to be a couple of paces ahead of his base and so he lost support for immigration with the irish community here because they had been favored under the old immigration plan. he lost support with some of the working class white voters based on his support for busing and affirmative action and other things. there does seem to be, you know -- i think you can see earlier signs of those changes >> thank you. go ahead. >> my question is directed at sam or susan. susan, you might have touched upon it earlier. what are the one or two major pieces of legislation that senator ted kennedy really championed during his career? >> i think he would probably say healthcare in general. i mean, just so many bits and pieces he's done in trying to get national healthcare, whether it's, you know, children's health or, you know, cobra and hippa and this whole alphabet soup of healthcare plans. i think there's some very enduring things like the immigration act of 1964, '65, i
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should know this. and his fight with civil rights but without barack obama would not be our president today. i mean, not just because of the civil rights legislati kennedy's championed but if it were not for the redoing the immigration act so it was no longer based on quotas but on family connections and workability. barack obama's father wouldn't have come here. >> i would add that two big ones in the '80s were -- 81, the first year he was back in the senate. he ended up leading the fight for continuion of the voting rights act of 1965, arguably the most important thing in the world. he ended up leading that and it passed in 1982 and the civil rights restoration act which was huge that ended up becoming law in 1988, he started that in 1994 which goes to what susan said about hisilling to take time,
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you know, to get it done. i would add one thing. the vote he said he's most proud of in his entire senate career was his vote against iraq. [applause] >> thank you all for an excellent book and an excellent symposium. i have one question for any of you. if chappaquiddick had not happened do you think ted kennedy would have become president and how do you feel he would have done? >> you want to take that one? >> yeah. >> we could all weigh in. it was the year after watergate, the first election after watergate. it was a very strong year for democrats. i think that he probably would have entertained the possibility of a run in '72 but nixon was popular enough and, you know, things were moving along enough that he might have delayed until
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'76 and become president then. but as many people have pointed out, if he had become president in 1976, his career would have been career would have been over by 1984 which was, you know, 25 years ago. so, you know, he would have -- he would have eliminated 25 years of active public service. [inaudible] >> i guess anything would be possible in that case. >> i think everybody would acknowledge that religion has played an increasing role in politics over the last 25 years and ted kennedy probably has been more of a lightning rod than anybody else particularly with regard to the whole catholic thing. i just wonder what your feelings are, for instance, about why he is such a lightning rod this way? when his views on abortion are indistinguishable from virtually any other democrat in legislative life and on so many moral issues being an early
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opponent of the iraq war and an advocate for poverty and being one of the articulate spokesman for the abortion reduction strategy which the obama campaign took in as its own, so religion and politics, why i ted kennedy right in the front there? >> a lot of the religious right, richard vigry who's the direct mail czar for the right and has been for years -- i called him up and said -- talk to me about kennedy-haters. and he said it stems from his personal behavior which have these evangelicals found odious and held that against him forever and would not let that go. that you simply can't excuses again chappaquiddick and that simply rises above all the other stuff and keeps him in low estimation within the church, a lot of the churches. we can never buy that. and he's lived with that for the rest of his life.
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>> and it's been an interesting change in his relationship with the church. here is someone, if i'm not mistaken, that was baptized -- was he baptized by the pope or add first communion. >> he was baptized by a cardinal and he was at the vatican, i believe, for his first communion. thank you. thank you. for his communion. the kennedys were very close to the church at one point. in fact, that proximity extended into politics to the point in 1969, i believe, it was the call from cardinal urging her not to have an autopsy for her daughter so there was a close proximity to the church between the -- with the kennedys. that's turned, though. it's partly because of the stance -- well, of course, there's a divorce. the issue of the divorce. >> well, that was more of a personal relationship, i think,
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with cushing. >> a point well-taken. they were well within the church and, of course, there was the divorce. his stance against abortion among other things. and the personal behavior. does that cover some of the issues? >> i would mentioned also in the '94 campaign he was kind of on the other side of that issue because if you remember, in the heat of the battle when it was really close between romney and ted kennedy, joe kennedy, ted's nephew, famously was on the campaign stump, and he criticized the mormon church for its exclusionary policies particularly against african-americans and women and there was a furor and romney thought that was a breach of conduct and when joe kennedy was
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the first catholic president and could he overcome that and romney felt very bitter about that issue being raised and sort of demanded an apology and ted kind of stuck up for joe and said, no, it's legitimate. and it wasn't the defining moment in the race but i actually went back and uncovered two months aft the election which i had forgotten, romney wrote an op-ed piece for the "boston globe" basically just saying that he had been absolutely steam rolled by the kennedy people and particularly on that issue. i mean, the piece is just dripping with bitterness. now, after that romney and kennedy as i understand it, forged a really good relationship particularly when he was governor. >> it's interesting, joe, there are not many cases of real hostility or enmity with kennedy
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and people in the senate. that's one of them with romney during the campaign and the other one was that 1980 run-in which carter blamed him. the carter people blamed kennedy for his his camign and there aren't too many other stories for that petchlence, is there? >> this was the one -- with this issue it was balancing politics with his opinion. it was not typical of his ted kennedy nor was his outrageous performance on the carter night when he was supposed to hold up his hands. he practiced with bob shrum and he hid in the sea of suits and ultimately took his hand. those are very rare occasions for a guy who's known with great grace and great manner so those stand out.
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>> thank you so much for this opportunity tonight. i want to ask, you're both acting as historians and reporters and i wanted to ask very soon massachusetts will have to see a new young senator. i hope not too soon but it is in the foreseeable future. and do you see that this modern youtube-enhanced know everything immediately of age is there a possibility of creating a dynasty like kennedy created over these last few cades? >> i would say we've actually seen more dynasties in politics f7ñ fundraising. partly because now, there's some new wrinkles inhere as you're referring to with online fundraising and the obama campaign. it may take away some of the advante that the traditional family names have.9&f but you also raise an interesting point which is that,
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you know, the kennedys rose to power at a time when the media was quite willing to sort of, you know, consider it not their business to look into people's conduct of their personal lives. and there were things that would have been politically toxic in other eras that were not revealed about jack kennedy, for example, or all of them. so would ted kennedy have had more trouble and his brothers in this era? i thinky; that's probably right. but in terms of, you know, birthing another dynasty, i thin the technology and the media-enhanced campaign can actually make it more fertile ground for dynasties in american politics. >> i also want to express appreciation for the whole collaboration in writing it as a reader actually i was in shock. i think the first day of the series and i thought, oh, my god, this is an obituary and why
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didn't i know this and no one told me about it? 'cause that's how it came off that way. but i like the integrity that it is a collaboration as opposed to one writer and it didn't gloss over a lot over the alieniation and the loneliness and what happened at chappaquiddick and the on the subject of chappaquiddick, it makes me think now just recently which chandra levy the woman who was found murdered in the washington woods suburbs and it destroyed the congressman gary condit w wasn't the culprit at all and just because they had an affair briefly and he got trounced and plummeted and destroyed and condemned and kennedy, because of kennedy and who he is did get reelected even though he has redeemed himself a million times
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over but i find that to be quite a paradox and quite an irony. i don't know if you had thought about it. but i just wanted to share that. >> thank you. >> i would say that it is very hard, i think, in this age that we live in to look back at what happened after chappaquiddick and to understand how it could have been possible for him to resume his career. i think partf it is the point that peter made about the media, a different time, different level of scrutiny. certainly, that was huge amount of criticism of him afterwards. i don't know that i can fully explain the willingness that people had, especially, voters# that except to say that maybe in some ways something that i thought about when i was working on this is that, you know, not to this great of degree but i
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think a lot of people can relate to that -- to having used poor judgment and then having that black mark against you on your record, something you can't escape for the rest of your life and in some w i think maybe that almost can -- people can relate to that. >> who actually lived two blocks from my house, chandra levy. it wasn't a car zhent that was an out and out brutal murder. you know, they just made -- they just recently made an arrest in it. but that had a whole different tone to it for a reason. >> sam mentioned kennedy's was unprepared in the '80s for chappaquiddick. i mean, it really did not come up in any substantial way in the '70s and he was handily reelected. >> i'll set this up a little bit. my name is john f. fitzgerald.
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[laughter] >> i was at the 1962 debate with ted kennedy and eddy mccormick. i was in that auditorium rooting for eddy mccormick. the reason why i was named after kennedy's grandfather who, of course, was the mayor of boston -- but my in this case was john mccormick -- one of his chief aids in washington for over 35 years. so i was campaigning for eddy mccormick and i came out of that debate because in that debate, in that hall everybody thought eddie won that election, of course, he didn't. when you walked out the door, you knew he didn't. when he went home, you knew he didn't. i didn't read the articles -- i've read every aicle on the mccormicks and the kennedys. i'm a political science major as well but i didn't because i've been out of the country but i have to get the book to read it
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because i know details that i think i know about. here's the question. i want to talk about the mccormick campaign in 1962. you know he ran the 66 against ken volpe and i was in the campaign with kennedy against romney and helped organized some of the union stuff. the question is, in '62, someone said what would have it taken to get eddie out of that campaign? i think i know what happened. i didn't read the book so i'm not sure -- if someone can answer that question for me. i'll give you my take first if you want just in case the answer that i'm going to give, it may not be. as i recall it and as my uncle and my father would tell me -- and i was 18 at the time and i wasn't youngnd i loved politics then and now. as i recall the speaker and the senator at that time -- he wasn't senator, of course, the president's fath tried to get eddie to run for governor.
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instead kennedy rannd beat volume pregnancy hypertension i think the president was willing to make eddie -- secretary of the navy, i think. someonerought up a fact -- >> i'm laughing, sir, because i am so into this with you and it's like a half a century ago and i'm thinking about the inside politics. you have to go over to the jfk library, listen to the tape. you'll still be rooting for eddie. [laughter] >> you'll still be rooting for eddie and maybe we can talk about this afterwards. >> i will say this to you, eddie said to me a year -- eddie died a year before teddy -- romney ran against teddy. i think it was the year after he died. and eddie said to me at breakfast, he said -- i want to
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endorse edd because we've become great friends and, two, he said without any question, he was -- he is the greatest senator that ever hit the united states senate. and so i was just wondering what the take might be on that. >> i will say quickly there were negotiations that went on and, you know, i talked to eddie's son about that and these campaign managers and other people about that. basically, eddie felt it was his time. they thought they were going to make a move and they were interested to moving to washington and his wife at the time was dead set against kennedy sort of waltzing in and she was probably more so than eddie opposed to stepping aside, but they did become close in year's later. >> in respect to eddie, who i talked to said kennedy the best senator the state ever had but the interesting thing is eddie
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mccormick a fabulous civil rights record long before the kennedys got involved in civil rights. and he was out of character that night and he said he was out of character that night. thank you. >> thank you very much for a great panel. a quick question and it's open for everybody. it's a little bit vague but i think -- i hope it will be fruitful. jf was noted in his presidency for his call to public service and we all as constituents have expectations of our politicians. what are ted kennedy's expectations of us as citizens? >> well, actually, one of the bills that he's working on right now is national service bill to greatly expand volunteerism starting with very young children and having them learn how to do volunteer work to people who are retired and taking even sort of sabbaticals to six months to a year to do volunteer work so he's still
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working on that. >> i was just going to add that one institution that ted kennedy absolutely has poured his heart and soul int is the institute of politics in cambridge. between that and his senate office, which has been a training ground for just extraordinary men and women going into all areas of politics and public service, this may be a little different than what you're asking about common citizens but many looked to kennedy's legacy in part has been training and to a certain extent inspiring an extraordinary number of incredible men and women including people like supreme court justice steven breyer. so that's been -- tt's something that you see best when you really step back and take a look at his whole career. >> our time is very, very short.
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one last question for the panelists. >> we couldn't finish the night without asking the obama question. what led up to and why did senator kennedy endorse barack obama and get caroline -- or was it the reverse, i don't know. but you must comment on that because it obviously impacts the future so dramatically. >> i got to tell you that i saw -- i thought for a lg time that kennedy would endorse obama 'cause i could see it in his face when he would talk about him. he just got this look in his face and i could tell you saw something in obama that he liked. when obama got him on his health and labor pensions committee and he brought him into the immigration debate and i think he saw in him someone who could carry on the legacy of his brothers and he saw somebody who, you know, certainly just would be an historic -- would have an historic presidency, you know, in terms of civil rights and so forth but i think that's what did it for him. as for caroline, you're saying why didn't she get the --
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>>he obviously -- [inaudible] >> yeah. that rollout was planned. i mean, they'd been talking about it for some time and she would do the op-ed on sunday and he would make the announcement on monday. >> and his former chief of staff told me he saw it as a meeting in the bend of the moment obama energized young voters. kennedy always listens to his nieces and nephews and they were excited about obama. that's the flip side of the patiac and once they achieve adulthood he takes their views seriously and it was the culmination in some respects of the civil rights battle that kennedy had waged throughout his career. [inaudible] >> you know, he has a lot of respect for senator clinton and they worked a lot on healthcare and he helped her a lot whenhe first cam to the senate because was really the only one knew what their life was going to be way. she never clicked in the same
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way. she's more from way up here and he's more from down here. you know, she's a very hard worker and she -- she's really just so knowledgeable on policy but she just -- she doesn't operate in the same way up there that he does. so i don't think he ended u having quite the relationship with her that he thought thought he might. >> thank you very much. >> no, i'm done. [laughter] >> well, there it is -- it's about 75 years and about 90 minutes. we cld go a lot longer. you've been a terrific audience. [applause] >> let's hear it from the seven writers and the editor of the "boston globe." [applause] ar it for the seven [applause] >> the eight writers will be outside autographing books as
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you leave. thank you all for coming, everyone. you've been terrific. >> to find out more about the contributors to the book, visit boston.com/bostonglobe. senator kennedy died on august 25th. c-span will have live coverage of his funeral mass today starting at 10:30 am eastern and burial at 5:30 pm. >> martin and annelise anderson used formerly classified documents that ronald reagan believed that the disruption of nuclear weapons was tantamount in achieving his goal to bring an end to the soviet union.
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the ronald reagan presidential library in simi valley, california, hosted this event. it's 25 minutes. >> hello. i was just thinking it's now been about 34 years since we first met ronald reagan and we always liked him when we first met him and we still like him now. as has been said, we worked with him for quite a long time. in 1988, i wrote one book about -- explaining what reagan s like and what he'd done. and i thought i really knew about him. but whe people left him, a lot of people talked to me about how -- that he was silly. he didn't know what he was doing and he was lucky. all kinds of things. they called him names. the thing that they could not understand is how in god's name
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did he get all that work done? how was he able to do it? and that idea held up with a lot of people. for example, one of the things they often would do is who was actually doing his work? who was pulling the strings? and startingbout six or seven years ago we began to understand who was pulling the strings. and the first was reagan's life as what he is writing and we discovered that he could write and from 1975 to 1979, he wrote 660-odd essays. he did the research. he did the writing on them and he did everything on them and we got curious and we were told he wrote a lot of letters and indeed he did.
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we ended up -- we found 1,000 letters that he had written. everything from people who had called in to people in the soviet union and so forth. by the way, in the last few years we've been collecting more letters that he's written. and now there are close to 10,000 letters. then what has been done recently, every night before he went to bed he used to write in this as to what was happening during the day. and those documents are incredibly important because they really tell you exactly what he had done and so then. so now what we have is a situation where we've got people that suddenly realize he can write and he can do all kinds of things with a pencil and he writes letters. he likes to write letters and
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now he writes in his diary and the one thing that always fascinated me but who was pulling his strings? so one of the things that resulted -- excuse me, i got a bad cold, anyway. a few years ago i was on the defense policy board. and for that reason i had top secret clearances. and i talked to some of the people around here and it took me over a year but i finally got clearance to come in and taka look at what was reagan doing. and that was very interesting. so far i know, no one else has gotten access to the classified documents except a half of dozen of archivists. and there are millions and millions of papers and one of the nices things they did was they helped me.
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they knew what i was looking for and they picked out the good ones that i was very interested in. there's enough in there someone wants to write another 15 or 2 books will take a while. and when i started doing this, one of the things that i was -- that struck me is when we opened up these documents, it looked like most of theeetings -- somebody had been set up as the person who was supposed to read and then write down whatever i would say. while this was going on and reagan was the chairman -- there were probably 10 to 15 people, when they were doing all these things that were top secret, he was writing down what every single person said. what casey said, judge clark said, all those people.
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so what i've tried to do in this is to go in and find )- what reagan did. the reason why i feel very strongly about this is that if you talk a lot about what people will tell you -- i think there are probably around 300 books written on reagan. and they all have a different view of reagan and why he's doing something. so the only really way to find out what he's doing is to get something that he has written. or said. that's where you find out what happens. and what we're doing, we'd end up with 87 of these classified document that showed what he was doing and when it was happening. and i think we can say now in the -- i think we have the first letter number one up here and they will show you -- there it is. there it is. that's the first classified document.
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that's the first side of it which shows all the various people from the president down. the vice presint and so forth. and as i was reading through this, i opened the second page and that -- as you go down about halfway down, it shows what reagan is doing and he's telling these people they're really good and casey is really important and have a cia and he tells pele what's going to happen. and then he suddenly says, but i will make all the decisions. and when he said i will make all the decisions, it went on for the entire eight years. he was running his own clients. he made all the decisions. he'd listen to these people back and forth and forth. a lot of people argued with him. they did not like him. all different kinds of things went through it and he never wavered. he knew exactly what he was going to do and he stayed with
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it. he would listen to these experts. and he had some of the best experts in the world. he would listen to them. sometimes he would go on the left side. sometimes on the right side. but he always ended up on his side. and what we have discovered in this material as we go on is that a lot of things that said, reagan was for. he put them all together. and i think as this goes around and people see them, it will make a difference. rarely did anyone realize what he was doing. and some of the most amazing things he did was the -- what he did was with geneva and how do you deal with a country which has a huge amount of -- new york
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weapons that want to kill you? and he worked on it for seven years and did something which everyone thought was impossible. he got them to pull down. and the cold war was over. and he finished it up in 1988. and i thin the reason why he hasn't gotten as much attraction as most people should do they couldn't believe it. how on earth did he do it? because it seemed so simple and easy but it wasn't. it was extremely difficult and that's what's in this book in an explanation of how he did it, who he talked to, and when h talked to them. and i'm going to turn it over and let annelise talk more. well, i think that what we see
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as we read various of these documents, there were 355 meetings of the national security council during his administration. that were again shared. and we got -- there are about almost 200 of them have minutes taken by a scribe that tells what everybody said. and martin requested for declassification and got declassified. about 85, 87 of those minutes. there are a lot of other stories in those minutes as well of what other people are saying. but what he has to say is very important. and you can see that he is his own strategist and that he's following this over a long period of time. but i wanted to go back and read you something that he said. in 1963.
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and this document happens to be in the hoover institution archives and1+w it's, quote, inr earlier book and it's also quoted in this book "reagan's secret war" and he says in 1963 in a speech, the only sure way to avoid war is to surrender without fighting. the other way is based on the belief that in an all-out race our system is stronger and eventually the enemy gives up the race as a hopeless cause. then a noble nation believing in peace extends the hand of friendship and says there is room in e world for both of us. now, i think that in 1963 is prescient of what happened and what he had accomplished.
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that he had the vision of how the world might be way back fore he even ran for governor or president. and so i think that's an interesting thing to understand that he was his own strategist. these documents are then clearly a great resource in addition to his letters and his speeches and his own diary. and as we put them together in this book, we realize that he's e only person who knows not only what he's saying to the public, which not everybody is hearing. 85% of his communications with the press are outside of his private -- of his formal press conferences but he knows what he's writing at night. he knows what he's saying in meetings that are classified that people can't talk about. and he knows what he's writing in letters to the soviets.
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so he's got this whole picture. nobody working for him and no member of the public, no member of the press has that total picture. he worked for a long time on achieving his goals in these meetings, another thing that comes out in these meetings, he toll rates and encourages and wants a wide range of different views. and he never shoots the messenger. he knows people are goine to disagree. he welcome back it. sometimes people say, you know, you've got so much disagreement you ought to fire one side of is staff or the other. and he doesn't do it. he keeps these people who have diverse views, they disagree with each other, he encourages them to express themselves. he often holds back in expressing his own view until they have had an opportunity so that everybody is heard and then makes a decision. sometimes right in the meeting,
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sometimes he makes a decision later on. and then he writes in his diary, i'm going go with george with this, schultz or weinberger, you know, or so-and-so has a good idea. ta. and a lot of what happened in terms of progress on this happened fairly early on. people think that it wasn't until gorbachev got into office when anything happened. but, in fact, there were -- by the ti reagan was reelected, he had already met with grameco in september of '84 and they agreed on the elimination of nuclear weapons. grameco stated in a speech to the u.n. a few days before he
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met with reagan that the ussr continues to eliminate nuclear weapons and it was written to reagan who said we are prepared to seek most radical solutions which would allow movement towards a complete ban and eventually i liquidation of nuclear arms. at that point reagan had an agreement that theoviet union wanted to do the same thing that he wanted to do and he said let's take them at their word and say, okay, you agree with us. let's work on a way to do it. there's one final document. we have the first page -- this is from 1987. from september 8th, 1987.
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these are the minutes from that national security council meeting on arms control positions. and the next page of that is a a summary of some of the things that reagan said in the meeting that we have selected. and i want to read to you as sort of a conclusion beforee take some questions -- one of the things he said in that meeting which, of course, is 1987. i think they are preparing at that time for gorbachev to come to washington to sign the treaty on the elimination of intermediate-range nuclear missiles in europe, both those of the united states that we have placed there and those of the soviet union that were aimed onestern cities for a long time. and the president says, you've got to remember that the whole thing was bourne of the idea that the world needs to get rid of nuclear weapons.
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we've got to remember that we can'win a nuclear war and we can't fight one. the soviets don't want to win by war but by threat of war. they want to issue ultimatums to which we have to give in. if we could just talk about the basic steps we need to take to break the logjam and avoid the possibility of war. i mean, think about it. where would the survivors of the war live? major areas of the world would be uninhabitable. we need to keep it in mind that that's what we're about. we're about bringing together steps to bring us closer to the recognition that we need to do away with nuclear weapons. so that's what reagan was doing and maybe what some of our leaders day are trying to do as well. i think john will lead some questions. >> sure. we have a few minutes for some questions for anyone that has
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them. if you do have a question, if we could ask you to actually come forward here and stand at the microphone as all this is being broadcast by c-span and we just want to make sure they can hear your question. are there any questions? >> if you don't have any questions, we'll keep talking. [laughter] >> i think we have one right here. >> thank you for coming and sharing this information with us. i was wondering whether in your interaction with president reagan whether he had -- i'm a senior professor and i find tha most of my colleagues were legally avoiding the vietnam war by staying in school. and so they're going to write things not trying to give mr. reagan much credit. did he have a sense of how history would be written or what history would say? i know there's a lotf complaints about his bellicose rhetoric in his first term and
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after the soviet leaders stopped dying on him he was able to deal with mr. gorbachev. was it something he just thought he had to do regardless of the historical interpretatn? >> yeah, sure. i think there are a lot of people that got the wrong idea about reagan. and what he was doing at the time when he was -- people got upset in '83 and '84 was that he did something that was unusual. he started putting together a large cache of huge weapons, all kinds of weapons. now, the reason he was doing that was because the soviet union was trying to get ahead of us and they were ahead of us. they started getting ahead of us in december the 9th. and by the time he took office, they were way ahead and they kept going fther ahead. some people wanted to know why he didn't sit down with them and talk with them and his attitude -- i'll sit down with them vhen we're ready to go and that's what he did.
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he got enough strong weapons with them and i want to sit and talk, let's do it. now, while he was doing that, a lot of people got the wrong idea. but then when it turned around and it went the other way, i don't remember any of those people saying he had the right way. but, sure, you're right. you want to -- somebody else want to try something, too? yeah. >> thank you. president obama right now has mentioned the desire to eliminate nuclear weapons and that kind of scares me. a country like israel without nuclear weapons would be at the mercy of whatever happened to them. a lot of countries we couldn't trust. i don't think we could trust south korea. did reagan wanted to eliminate
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all nuclear weapons and was his desire to do that something something that president obama could use to launch his campaign. >> something that what everybody thought to be the case and wasn't. what reagan was saying, look, he wants to get rid of nuclear weapons if, and there's a big if in there and that's why he wanted -- where you can bring down nuclear weapons but at the same time, the persons you're working with, they're coming down. and the next problem is, what if they cheat? and, you know, a lot of our people thought that some of the other people would cheat like this. and what reagan decided was he needed to have his "star wars" and that's one of the reasons why he had "star wars" is that what he wanted to do was he could make those so powerful and so strong was that nobody could try to come in on the united states. and what he said all the way along,y the way, that's what obama is saying now. he's not saying let's get rid of all nuclear weapons.
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nobody wants to do that. what they want to do is get you to reduce the number of weapons you have so that y're not going to kill us all but while you're doing it, very careful. as further down y'all go, it's going to get very tricky and delicate and that's what's going to happen and you're absolutely right. well, can we talk about the pope. >> absolutely. >> this was an interesting thing we ran across while we were going through the classified9 documents. and i ran across some letters that the pope had sent to reagan. and reagan sent back to the pope. and i asked the archivist about that and i would like to get them but you can't get them because the vatican has got them locked up and maybe someone in the vatican can tell me what
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happened. if they died, then you he to wait for 50 years before you can see them. which is higher than the cia's. but while we were going through these documents we had find some that will showhat was going on. andeagan and the pope were very, very tight. they got together. and on december 15th -- maybe, annelise, tell them what happened. >> on december 15th, 19, the cardinal, who was the secretary of state to the vatican came over and met with ronald reagan and they met in the map room and there was the envoy frothe vatican to the united states, and they talked about poland where marshall law had just been
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declared. but they also talked about nuclear weapons. and about nuclear strategy. and the cardinal makes the statement that the united states is the sanctuary for the world. and he's expressing the view that the united states can do certain things that, you know, the vatican cannot possibly do because of the united states' position in the world. and so -- and reagan says i hope i am able to fulfill your trust in me. and so there was a close relationship. the pope, of course -- pope john paul ii was really terrific. reagan had written a couple of radio commentaries when the pope had gone to poland in 1979 and so reagan was already familiar with some of his views and the
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fact that the pope was not only anti-nazi but also anticommunist. so reagan and the pope shared an antitotalitarian view of the world and a view that freedom to worship and to choose one's line of work and to travel and to have dignity, especially, religious freedom in the case of the pope, of course, but also for reagan were very important and they shared that. and they also -- the pope, i think, came t certainly understand reagan's view of what he had to do in order to bring this to t@e bargain table and ultimately achieve a reduction in the threat of nuclear war. >> tell them about t letter he gave them. >> reagan sent the pope a letter
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in january following the meeting in december that expressed the view that he had already taken steps to -- and viewed it as a first step in eliminating the threat of nuclear war and reducing nuclear weapons. he had already proposed steer for the soviets and zero for the united stateon intermediate range nuclear forces. and what else? >> oh, just one toward the end of this book and what he had said toward the end. he said -- basically i forgot the exact words. that he and the pope togetn are responsible for whether or not they would all die. it was that simple. and they worked. and they worked very hard.5 by theway, i've often thought that if you take the size of the united states and the size of the vatican, that's pretty good together.
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[laughter] >> any other questions? >> we're free. >> drs. anderson, please accept our thanks for coming here this afternoon. and i think you certainly deserve a round of applause. >> thank you. [applause] >> martin anderson was formerly an economic policy advisor in the reagan administration. he's currently a fellow at the hoover institution and co-author with annelise anderson with reagan's path to victory and reagan a life in letters. annelise anderson was a senior policy advisor to the reagan presidential campaign and associate director of president reagan's office of management and budget. she's currently a fellow at the hoover institution. the ronald reagan presidential library in simi valley,
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