i want to tell you first a little bit about how this whole project got started. it was 1998. russia was sullen, dark, very, very unhappy place that autumn. banks were closed, people were reading their minds, lost their savings, not pain for much. and a young man who was working for the u.s. department of energy was on a mission to go to all the facilities that had highly enriched uranium plutonium and checked to make sure that the video cameras in the portal monitors and all the fancy equipment the u.s. have installed in the 1990's was working. and at the institute of theoretical and experimental 66 located on a very pleasant 89-acre state and moscow he win in all cameras were working in the videos were on.

all the protection was there. at this institute, there were dozens and dozens of six-inch long canisters, clad in the womb amount of highly enriched uranium which they'd used for their experiments. but as they looked around they realize that there was one very unanticipated problem. all the guards that manned the video cameras had watched over the uranium had not been paid and walked off the job. the canisters were sitting to, nobody looking but videocameras out. this young fellow gathered all the employees that the institute that he could find, 32 people into the deputy yours office on a freezing cold day, so called he had said had never experienced anything like that even in moscow. he took out of his wallet all the cash the department of energy had given him for this

one trip, his per diem and put it on the table and said, what you get the guards to stay here for two months until i can get back? fifty dollars a month. this was 1998, not just after the collapse of the soviet union. in the fiscal material, to rainier moistening in the canisters without a card. after that i visited ole miss the institute of power engineering south of moscow. another famous russian nuclear research institute. their 10 tons of fiscal material there. a lot of it are in very small discs about two and a quarter inches across. in fact, there are 100,000 of those discs and buckets and it's just one problem. they are not numbered. they're not inventoried. you could do one dozen in your

pocket and walk out with them. and they were struggling when i was there to begin the process of keeping chart of those discs. in the year 2000, the door swung open for me at the institute of applied microbiology and belinsky, also south of moscow. this was the scene of some of the most diabolical and bizarre research and genetic engineering carried out in the secret soviet biological weapons program, which i'll talk about today. what really amazed me if i had the ability as a journalist to walk around corporate for dean, the big tall central building where these experiments have been done for the first time, western journalists had been invited, was that nikolai at a rock off, the director told us that the institute which had

huge amounts of coulters of these dangerous pathogens was at that time receiving 1% of the budget that had been received in soviet times and was desperate, looking for other work. that was the year 2000. so these experiences led me to ask what else was going on in russia in those years. i was the moscow bureau chief for the "washington post." i was able to explore to rome to ask questions. and i also asked myself, how did he get this way? this begin a long research effort to roll back the clock to the 1980's, a. i had covered in washington as a white house correspondent for the "washington post" and to understand how the fissile material, the passage in the chemicals not so widely spread. and in the process of the research, i got very lucky one day. i discovered the papers from the

kremlin of the college the nebbish vitae. mr. could type with a professional staff member who passed away in 2001 boat doing my research i found he had left behind a large amount of documents from the time he served unessential member on the staff ready with on the defense department which was responsible for the entire industrial military complex. and mr. katayev was one of those fellows who lived by the power of his pencil and it's been. he filled dozens of large note works with notes every day of technical details, think that it happened in the kremlin, arms control, weapons decision. and what is so fascinating about this archive, which will be available publicly to everybody at the hoover institution is that you get an inside view of

some of the most important renting points and decisions of soviet arms control, weapons development in the last years of the cold war. and i think this is really important because a lot of us are struggling to understand this period. certainly we have read and listened to the american history, the declassified history, looked at the documents, asked ourselves questions about what they were. but it was always very difficult to understand what soviet leaders were thinking and saying to themselves. certainly they produced a large amount of material that we could've absorbed that was intended for us in their speech as and in their articles. picture is a chance to understand what they were saying to each other privately. so today i like to share with you two short case studies of things i discovered in this research that we didn't know before. and they boast focused on

gorbachev as were coming to the 20th anniversary of the fall of the berlin wall i thought it would be timely to focus on gorbachev and how we learned some very important things about his role in this period, his role is central to my story and in my book, but i also felt that i discovered rings that in all the previous years we didn't know and definitely got a new understanding of what her role was. i think it's important to remember that gorbachev's achievements in ending the cold war, breaking what he called the speeding locomotive of the arms race, allowing the revolution in europe to unfold peacefully, and in the competition in the third world aired these were not his first object is. the crew out of his own desire for radical change at home are rooted in his own experience as a peasant, son, young witness to

world war ii, the university student during the fall, a party official in the years of stagnation. and most importantly, they grew out of his own deep impression about what had gone wrong. gorbachev did not set out to change the world, but rather to save this country. and in the end he didn't save the country coming but he may have saved the world. and one part of the wood score jobs deep and profound understanding of the burden of the military and the hyper militarization on soviet life. he saw this coming accumulated this over many years. he didn't talk a lot about it publicly, of course he couldn't. but when he became general secretary he was quickly presented with a test. so my first point is what happened tonight year of 1985? what was presented to gorbachev and not very early period when he came to office, when reagan

had proposed his strategic defense industry? a lot of people have ascribed to reagan's strategic defense in nature to some kind of legendary power to have cost change in the soviet union. and i'm here today to address that with new evidence and i hope to cause us to rethink a little bit gorbachev and his role in this context. now you know much of the american literature about this is i daresay triumphalist. you know the book's title, victory, crusader, reagan figure four, there is a whole shelf of material is that star wars bankrupted the soviet union. the strategic defense initiative won the cold war. and of course the great triumphalist themselves reagan said, sdi was quote, the single most important reason for the historic racers of the later years of his presidency. but i think the trample school? an essential ingredient. and that is what was happening

on the other side in moscow? if you recall, reagan announced sdi in march 1983, the same of the call the soviet union an evil empire. allow the soviets geared up a lot of propaganda, the katayev documents suggested they weren't that worried about it. there were 20 meetings of the military industrial commission in the third quarter of 1983. not a single one of them was devoted to reagan's strategic defenses. but several were devoted to the threat of the two missiles that nato was about to deploy in europe. the pursing to frighten the about decapitation and discuss them in to the point of thinking how they could somehow turn the moscow abm system that have become interceptor to stop her shins coming from germany. by 1985, january when reagan's

second eggnog early jesse at the enemy of that speech when he said that his vision of the strategic defense initiative would be to render the weapons obsolete, a global shield. this got their attention and moscow. and with ten days after reagan gave that speech, the kgb sent out an alert to all agents, everywhere, to report as much as they could find out about the american policy on the militarization of space. of course this triggered an avalanche of intelligence all of which came across katayev's desk. and he was surprised that the large amount of that was cut from newspaper clips. he also was surprised at the lack of critical analysis he said very much of it reflect to the fact that the agents in the field were unable to really

estimate the seriousness of the threat and they certainly were free to underestimate so they overestimated. ten people today can't jam across katayev's desk and 30% to 40% of them he said that with the strategic defense of star wars on missile defense. now just two months after reagan speech and what the kgb now on full alert, gorbachev came to power. and that this time, when gorbachev is chosen, we do very, very poor understanding of his real intentions and who he really was. we know robert gates was then deputy director of the central intelligence agency has written a deeply gorbachev was a protége of stanislaus and we shouldn't consider him some kind of gary hart or lee iacocca. a few months later, the cia produced its first study of

gorbachev's first assessment that was tiled gorbachev, the new brew dated june. and of course the capture some of the early mood and excitement on the street and analysis that gorbachev was stylistically different, definitely a new suit, not a brush not, but would there be real reform? weatherby radical reform? the cia at least expressed some doubt. but then the director of the cia, bill casey, census report to president reagan with a cover note. and on the cover note is that gorbachev and the people around him are quote, not reformers and liberalize there is either in soviet domestic or foreign policy. casey was wrong. at that time, the united states was also claiming repeatedly the soviet union and was developing its own missile defense program, its it don't strategic defensive negative. paul admits he gave a speech and a july saying to the soviet

bases of potential applications for advanced defensive technology, otherwise they would not be investing so much effort in so many resources in this area. and of course, we had some good propaganda of our own in a number of glossy reports that were issued by the pentagon and the state department. we showed that the soviets had a laser reaching up to kill satellites. this pencil drawing appeared at least four times in pentagon and state department brochures but this laser shooting into the skies did not exist. in effect, the soviet wanted to build such a laser, but after years of trying they had failed. so this is the state of our knowledge of gorbachev. what really was going on? what really was happening was quite different. within three months of taking office, all the top designers and constrict jurors in the military space program brought

to gorbachev a colossal program. the new man and they put it on his desk the entire plan is listed in katayev's careful handwriting in his notebooks. this would build a soviet star wars. it was huge with two major umbrella programs, 137 projects of design and testing, 34 projects in scientific research, and 115 in fundamental science. and of course coming you can imagine the billions and billions of dollars that they were hoping to get from this. what did gorbachev to? well, if he was the old-school as our experts thoughts and as nsr cia told president reagan he probably would've built it, certainly brezhnev would've built it. but he didn't. he put this plan in his bottom drawer. some of that was allowed to go ahead for a while. some of it would eventually collapse in the next year or two.

but i repeat, he did not do what we thought he might do and what we were saying he was doing. so what did gorbachev do with? he turned at the time to a progressive assistant. bellicosity actually worked him out laser and knew that it didn't work and gone awry and ripped the report in 1983 which is still classified. but ellicott said there is no way reagan can concede at the physics of the strategic defense initiative for 20 years. and he and gorchev t of responss instead of going toe to toe with the united states in building their own star wars, maybe they should think about someday symmetrical. something less expensive and less granular. one option that came up was maybe they could just overwhelm the american offensive with more warheads, with more missiles.

this was a serious discussion in the summer of 1985 and a katayev's documents in his careful and charts refined that there was talk about putting 38 warheads on every ss 18 missile, which at the time had ten. of course, this idea would have been also a way to accelerate the arms race. and gorbachev released in 1985 mentioned it to reagan at the geneva summit, their first meeting. he alluded to it by saying to reagan after hearing reagan's description of his plan to make nuclear weapons obsolete. we, he said, will build up to smash your sheet. the gorbachev didn't want that answer either. he did not want another arms race. he didn't want more warheads or to build his own sdi and ultimately he decided not to build it, but to use one other aspect of the asymmetric response, his voice and tried to

talk reagan out of it which gave rise to reagan in many things that happened after that. and i think that this short case shows us that pressures that gorbachev was under were actually much greater than we understood. we thought old-school guy under building their own star wars and the troops with new school guy and he didn't. and in this sense, gorbachev's role in this sense do i think deserves more scrutiny for the really courageous decisions he made. this is only one we know also the fact nt of the top people and the defense ministry after matthias bruce at this plane and its choir and the new military doctrine and concessions on intermediate range missiles and neocon missile. yes, there were a lot of things going on. but we have to understand that the triumphalist here who just looked at the united states and reagan is the sole agent of change are missing because

gorbachev really was the one choosing a new direction. it's also quite clear that sdi did not bankrupt the soviet union. the soviet union bankrupted itself. and if anything, reagan's vision might have frightened and puzzled them and we can talk more about that. but now i'd like to give you my second case. because it also applies to gorbachev. and also opens a window on the difficulties of this. read and to raises questions on the other side of the ledger. and that is the soviet biological weapons program. as i report in the book that the soviet union had an illicit and huge program for germ warfare, brezhnev started it right after or maybe even slightly before the soviet unions and the biological toxic weapons convention. it was in full swing in gorbachev's ears. it involved using genetic engineering that developed passages the world had never

known before. it was unstoppable by any antidote. it involves pathogens that kill people, animals and plants. it was not just laboratory research. it was also backed areas to create terms of anthrax. so the question is, where does this fit into our understanding? i found a lot of evidence that through the period he was general secretary there were high-level decisions taken in the kremlin orly central committees about biological weapons. i'm going to summarize some of them come but you find a lot of details in the book. as early as february 1986, there two or three people that they gorbachev signed a five-year plan for biological weapons. february 1986, the month after gorbachev proposes to eliminate all nuclear weapons. i've not seen the documents, what i have heard of it. and certainly in november of 1986 and do not over 1997 there

are more central committee resolutions about biological weapons facilities. and fortunately for us, mr. katayev kept track of the state than we could see this was a pattern having high-level attention. and one of the reasons was that foreign minister chapa not see who shared his impulses for openness and four paris strike and you think full. should it not have gone to the conference in geneva and in a speech yet announced the soviet union would henceforth in a display of openness, of greed to mandatory challenge inspections without right of refusal for any chemical weapons facility. and he did this at the time the chemical weapons convention was being negotiated. and it was hailed definitely as an advance in verification.

this was something the soviet union has certainly not permitted before. but after seven not the speech people in begin to get very worried. they realized that his announcement has just opened the door for possible inspections of their own. they certainly cannot say no don't come in here, that's biological weapon. we aren't supposed to have any biological weapons. by 1989 in july, july 27th, all the leaders of the biological weapons convention gathered in the office of loves icons. as i caught was a member who is in charge of the military industrial conference. and that this meeting was to shove it out the as well as the head of the military, the kgb, the general staff, the biological weapons direct your. overall they are to come up with a new resolution to come up with some kind of showcase, dare i say attempt and laboratory they

could show inspectors in case they showed up asking about the warfare. and they did this and by october at resolution was passed by the central committee, proposing to do some sites ready for foreign expect yours, but it also said to preserve the observed charity in the field of military biology. first there was no parity because the united states actually abandoned biological weapons in 1969 although many soviet scientists think that we didn't and said that they were done german warfare out of a feeling we had hidden hours. these worries got more intense in 1989 when blood america such night took to the british the whole story, laid it all out for them, lock stock and barrel but by 1989 gorbachev's harbor was beginning to raise. fewer call, president george w. bush met with gorbachev in december, a few months after the

defect or on ships at that summit there was no mention of biological weapons at all. to one of the reasons was of course that bush was afraid to bring it up. it will blow up everything else to do was working on, the unification of germany within nato, strategic arms control and gorbachev didn't want to bring it up because of all she knew about the defector. he also realized that talk about biological weapons program on his watch would cause the world to us and questions about new thinking. so there was a little bit of a conspiracy of silence, but the soviet leadership worried terribly about how to respond if they got asked questions. and this continued to envelop or bischoff and bringing in his top advisers including foreign minister and the numerous meetings in the spring about how to respond and they finally decided to forgive any questions will just come up with some sort of confident building measure. will propose to exchange

experts. on may 14, 1990, the american and british and massacres made a day march to gorbachev's national security adviser and to the foreign minister, laying out the whole story of what we think you are doing. it's a quite specific indictment. in secret on a they also told the leadership would make it public and all these other things going on. while backup their attention in the very next day, the very next day he wrote a letter about biological weapons. it's the first paper we see the show's gorbachev's knowledge and understanding. i brought just a photocopy of this so you can see them in the letter, and i can't hand wrote the letter because he didn't want the typist to know what kind of weapons he was talking about. it was that sensitive. this letter is in katayev's

files and helps us see that of course in the soviet system, not only have we lied to the world about biological weapons for a long time and not only are they lying to the world about their own people, they also lied to the president. this is not an honest account of the whole program. it's actually kind of a little bit of a cover-up within a cover-up. but there it is. gorbachev gets the letter. in a few days later the secretary of state bankers in mock scowl raises it again. he said he didn't think it could be so, but he would check it out. and in the summer, there's a sauna, gorbachev comes to washington at camp david with president bush. they begin to discuss biological weapons secretly and again he talks about me being exchange of visit. and in july because this whole staff together and says my god we have to respond. they're going to ask us about this again.

baker presents more paperwork. again i was covering secretary baker at this time and none of us knew anything about it. this was all done in secret. fortunately scepter was taking notes during always discussions and he preserved a lot of the papers. and finally if you recall, secretary baker and foreign minister shevardnadze he mats and it was august 1990. the match of the which katayev thoughtfully preserved and is filed. and shevardnadze he said we have no biological weapons. he proposed a confidence building measure in exchange of visits. and this kind of cover-up, which now gorbachev and shevardnadze he continued to 1990 and exchanged for visits to work out the exchange happened in the american tradition experts went on the first trip to moscow came home more suspicious than ever

that there was a biological weapons program. so this kind of back-and-forth when on all the way to 1991 at the end of gorbachev entitlement raises an important question. and all of miguel gorbachev's struggle for disarmament in pushing back the military and his powerful designers in his willingness to abandon two blocks and his rhetoric about a world free of nuclear destruction in danger there was this one unexplained gap. the biological weapons drive was going at full speed, at the same moment that gorbachev reached the apex of this cooperation with reagan. or bischoff had hoarded nuclear weapons and declare his intention to eliminate the google weapons. did he also feared the pathogens? you know, i think there's several speculative advances by own efforts met with obfuscation and dissembling and you the

subject. i find it persuasive that he would have known about resolutions of the central committee from 1986 to 1991. but shania insisted that gorbachev wanted to and the biological weapons program. the military list by them about it and promised to set it down and didn't. we've yet to see proof of that is one explanation. another is that gorbachev was told by the kgb, the same guys doing newspaper clippings about sdi, that they were told america still had a biological weapons program and it was hidden. of course, we had abandoned ours. but if gorbachev knew of the program, what didion could he have done about it? you know, one explanation is that the program was so deeply entrenched, so firmly stuck in

that system that gorbachev decided it would be impossible to change and. he is such an insight into nuclear priesthood as he called it at the time of chernobyl. he was angry at how they've handled the chernobyl reactor. perhaps he saw the biological weapons program is the same. it's also possible that in the latter part of his term, having accumulated so much global approbation for the thinking that gorbachev decided he couldn't possibly go public with it that it was too invested in the things he had started. would have such a negative impact. and lastly, one argument that's been suggested by some officials is that gorbachev saw biological weapons as some kind of secret reserve of strength, some military program that would give the soviet union and manage after nuclear weapons were negotiated. i don't buy that last argument. i don't think gorbachev saw

biological weapons as some kind of secret military asset, but i hear this. so as i close, i would just like to tell you that for all his accomplishments to new information in this book that we've learned about gorbachev deepens our understanding of the pressures on him and deepens the puzzle of why given his dedication and his enormous effort that discernment in the nuclear field he didn't do more to stop the dangerous biological weapons program. so i'd like to close here. i hope you enjoy reading this book. i hope that you find any new insights as new data for what the judge had a working frowned and i apologize because in this whole talk i've yet to to tell you what the daddy and is. and i'm not, i hope you'll ask me some questions. thanks. >> okay, we have time for questions. i ask people to try to be direct

and concise in their comments and questions. i will go first down here and then will go up here and then we'll come back over here. >> my name is cherry os. i was your intelligence analyst during this period and i would like to say everything you say is supported by evidence in the intelligence community at the time. there's a great deal of evidence showing that the soviet union was an economic crisis. going back to the late 70's they realized they couldn't win the armed services hearing and its varied information. we were just a minority voice. and so that was just an intelligence judgment. my question to you was on the biological aspect, which there was evidence for as well. is that maybe if the scientist convinced gorbachev about was the fact that they were doing basic research and not building and accumulating biological weapons on a grand scale like the chemical weapons. we know there's a great deal of chemical weapons in the

inventory, but biological weapons program was very, very robust, but hadn't yet reached that stage. so i would agree with kind of the concept that he was looking as it is in the whole the asymmetrical answer that he could put on the table. with that in this 90's felt he was sufficiently clean as far as presenting as nonoperational weapons program. would you comment on all that stuff? >> i would have to disagree in a couple ways, jerry. it was right that he knew he was so why would he allow an illicit or graham do not act on it. secondly, the issue of how much they stockpiled is an open question. i don't find the answer and katayev, but i do find a lot of evidence that once the secret research program produced a new pathogen and sometimes you recall i said diabolic because sometimes the route for to

centrally use genetic engineering to unite two different pathogens in one, something that would be really awful if you let loose on the population. there was a second stage which we documented to prepare the pathogen for delivery in a weapon. aerosolization, tabulation, that was the duty of latin america section, the defector to get them ready. what we have not seen as what was the third phase, the actual weapons of the delivery mechanism and macros to your question if we ever did learn that. but where the factory was built for anthrax had the mobilization capacity to produce tons of anthrax. some people say up to 300 tons a year. and i remind you that a teaspoon of anthrax spores contains millions. so this was an incredible production capacity that would suggest to me that it was not

simply in a laboratory in the gorbachev only had to somebody, why do we have this type actor he? it was not research. >> going to that and then maybe we'll come up and then back over there. so this gentleman right here. >> thank you. carl lundgren from jonas speaks. i assume the dead hand in your title refers to the underground chambers that would allow the military to have a retaliatory strike against the united states in case the united states had a first strike that decapitated the civilian leadership in soviet union. and you're nodding so i assume it's yes. but they kept it all secret. so that we didn't know they had this extra deterrent against the first strike. and it's similar to the cuban missile crisis where they installed nuclear missiles in cuba presumably to turn american invasion of cuba, yet they didn't tell us about it.

and maybe you can continue. >> well, you're right that i was a retaliatory system. that the soviet leaders devised and they actually had one point thought about a completely automated test them and they got word that would be a little to do too frightening for them. so they developed a semi automatic system, which involved this deep underground bunker in the shape of the globe and several men with a checklist and under certain circumstances lost an indication that the national command authority, seismic evidence of a first strike or a nuclear strike. they would launch small command rockets which would then be used to module the weapons. they described as in the chapter in the book. but the key point you mention, which was all puzzled over including the man who worked on the system that describes it in the book is wide did they keep it secret. because of it was intended as a deterrent, it would only work as a deterrent of whose public. and by keeping it secret, they

essentially suggest that they didn't see it as a deterrent. and i don't think that irony when it's completely answered this question. one possibility is that they were afraid that if they announced that it could also be decapitated. i don't know, it seems to me to be speculative. another possibility is that they weren't thinking of it as a deterrent, that they were simply thinking of it as some kind of reserve system in case decapitation and it didn't have any dock or a limb port. my chapter told me he said it was a huge mistake to keep it be great and he today would like to have more transparency about it. but he has been unable to convince anybody. >> okay, dmitry wayne, this gentleman over here and then we'll go over there. >> my name is dmitry wayne. i was at this time there.

and i have question for you. it so many times gorbachev was here as private citizen and why you don't ask him the question which you cannot answer. what's the reason? >> demetri, i did ask him this question and interviewed him twice for this book. his answer to me was, i specifically asked him, did he know of a secret organization that carried out the biological weapons research. he says well, you know there's a fine line between offense and defense of research in biology and he just assembled and then you change the subject. he didn't want to answer. >> wayne? >> wayne mary.

of course we have to relate your topic to iran. so would you address to the specific questions. one, what indications he may bet that any of those cylinders were disks? in fact, did they end up in iran? and second a more broader question which is during the 1990's of this program was under the tall. and in my own state department dealing with the russian leadership was pretty clear that this was a state within a state and that even they themselves had no idea and lost control of what was going on. this was the 1990's, not 1980's. so what extent does your research indicate that part of the problem was a structural one of a state within a state of nuclear energy matters that in some respects even conducted its own foreign-policy? >> on the first question, we know the iranians were on the hunt for fiscal material.

an project sapphire carried out in 1995 and kazakhstan to bring mediterranean back they found a large supply of brilliant which is an agreement in the weapons and a great address to tehran. we also know and a report that there were repeated efforts to scrub the entire military-industrial complex were technology for biological technology and for missile technology. now i don't believe that any -- i have no evidence of fissile material going to iran because iran is now drying it all and it makes you think they didn't get that far. but there is solid evidence which i reported in the book that russian missile designers made repeated trips with the connivance of the state to help the iranians work on missiles at this time. i would point out however that iran seemed incapable of assimilating some of this expertise and their till you're behind where we thought they would eat in the 1990's and

missiles. i still have trouble with it. they also set up a special office in moscow to find this to allergy and to look elsewhere. so if they missed story but it's a real serious issue and i think the open bizarre nature of russia in the night he 90's made it an easy target. and so did iraq come by the way. >> this gentleman right here. >> my name is howard morland. during the 1980's, i spend full time organizing antinuclear grassroot efforts to stop the mx missile, the cruising person, intended mass demonstrations, even gave a speaking to her of england and scotland on the subject. and i think they're saying that the july 1982 or june 12, 1982 disjunction icon gave the

largest in north america ever. did we have an impact on those events? >> well, i think he did in a way that would surprise you. one of the things i urge you to do is get a copy of reagan's diaries and read them carefully because one of the things that reagan didn't tell us at the time and didn't tell me. it was a white house correspondent for the "washington post." i didn't fully appreciate that they become in his own mind a bit of a nuclear abolitionist. he was out there in central park with you. my favorite anecdote about this where really came through occurred in 1986. he gave gorbachev a big speech in moscow in january of 1986 calling for the elimination of all nuclear weapons with daytime schedule in charge and are reproduced as in the book. i found this in katayev's files. the speech was immediately transmitted, sent back to washington, translated for reagan and secretary schultz got in his car to race over to the white house to give the presence

and guidance about what to think about it. and when he got there, reagan was third in meeting him. and reagan looks up at him and says, george, why should we wait till the year 2000? >> lives right here in the front. >> i bought the book and read three fourths of it and it's very informative and persuasive here it let me ask you about katayev. you show gorbachev within a ten year period. and reagan while he was interested, reagan seems at times really to be lost in those discussions. he's not a tentative. he is not responsive at times. do you think reagan was really sick at this point? >> know. or was white house correspondent

ben and i covered it for the pressroom was to tell me very much, but re-examining the record i think that it's quite interesting. gorbachev prepared very carefully. other people do so because that was meant gave gorbachev rather serious guidelines for the summit. gorbachev didn't filed that he would eat -- is a steamroller, locomotive, he knew what he wanted. he actually created a trap. in the deal was he was going to propose to reagan the irresistible idea of the productions of offensive weapons in order to bottle up sdi. it was his plan and if reagan refused was going to show to the whole world but that was his plan going in. it was quite dramatic anyway. reagan didn't prepare that well. he didn't have a plan and in fact he had a tug-of-war inside his own circle and one of the reasons for his confucian at reykjavík with some of the paragraphs that his advisers put on the table didn't agree with each other. one paragraph we talked about

all ballistic missiles and the other one is strategic documents in one document. reagan had a war inside his own group. but he did catch the romance of a gorbachev was offering him and that's why was such a dramatic moment. and asked the question to you today, if reagan had known what gorbachev was thinking back they are in 1985 with the hugh sdi plan was put on his desk if reagan had known how far and fast overtop wanted to go they might've had a deal instead of a near miss. >> final two questions. this gentleman here and then the back row. >> david rogers, independent column. what became of this huge biological weapons structure and program and how -- to what degree is it still around or has it been broken out and such?

>> the part of it in context on which included the anthrax factory has been bulldozed and destroyed here it other parts of it around the former soviet union, especially in central asia and some of the ukraine have at least been revealed of discovering insecure area parts of it in russia however certainly for a while was open to international cooperation. i actually went there last in 2005 and back there, the viruses laboratory, both of those two places have been open for some international cooperation. however, parts of russia not close down. their three military biological weapons laboratories in russia which had never been opened that we don't know what remains are of it and they should be. and their other things such as the anti-places them in russia which was used to harvest pathogens. it's never been opened whereas we have seen efforts in the anti-play system in tajikistan and other former republics that was part of the biological weapons effort. there's more work work to be

done. >> in the back. >> in your description of the dead hand system, you mentioned that it involved a bunker outside of moscow and that it was globe shaped and its people sat in it with checklists and things like that they could use command rocket to transmit information structures to the rest of the nuclear ports. can you talk a little bit more about the technical details you picked up in your research about the system and also what her sources were? for their readers that akayev papers, something else? >> first of all, the source said in his last year was the one who took a three final testing in 1984. that was his accomplishment that it was put on duty in early 1985. furthermore, i verified through other sources that the soviet union did not build a fully automatic one. it's difficult to put a name or a project on that one because it's only referred to very vaguely in some cases.

but i have three sources that it was actually conceived. in the technical details, which i think i described someone carefully in the book because i wanted it to be accessible, that the soviets beaters at the time shared decapitation and the fact that their own leadership is aging. i think that they both imagine it would be difficult of a pursing missile were fired at them, is immune to the range which was an issue of debate. imagine getting brezhnev out of his office and into a bunker or a safe place, what would they do. i've had some discussions with people about whether their fear was infirmity or decapitation. but either way, perimeter was built, perimeter being the name of the system as a reserve so that a leader like as not, given miller's that they were facing a nuclear attack is simply flip a switch and turn on the system

into delegate to the people in the bunker and therefore not have to make it himself. and not to some people, including those who worked on it made it a safety catch, which at least you didn't have to have your ailing leaders subject to decapitation, having to make a decision in five minutes. and here the danger was always the weird you had to decide faster and faster. and i described evolution of soviet command-and-control that they built a system that was so quick it has of the hair triggered nations of the time. so i think that in their mind it was not dangerous, but by not making a public and not making it a deterrent you could also argue those guys in the bunker, are they the last human firewall against armageddon? are they drilled and trained that if everything on the checklist for which there is no retreat. or as a human being's?

are they really going to be sitting there realizing that moscow has been destroyed, the feeling come to shake and bake the sense that there's a nuclear war on the surface, what are they going to do? and there you have a nub of the whole history of the nuclear age and that is the question of human reaction.svailable outside and i'm sure you'll find them. [applause] >> david hoffman is a contributed editor at the "washington post" where he was formally a white house correspondent in moscow bureau chief. he's the author of the oligarchs, wealth and power in the new russia. for more information, visit "the dead hand" book.com. >> michael medved talks about his latest book in which he argues that recent criticisms of free-market capitalism triggered

by the 2008 economillapse arrgely witht merit. the heritage foundation in washington d.c. host the hour ten minute event. >> you know, enterprise in the united states is under attack assembly as it has been in no time over the last 70 years. is under attack right now in congress, not just a health care bill going going through, but the house of representatives is looking at a financial regulatory bill to restrain her financial sector. the sec is looking arose to regulate the internet. the epa has been a determination that could lead to regulating every business in america under the guise of climate change control. this is a time where free enterprise and business needs support, nice defense and need to remember why it's good and not bad. now in one sense, americans have

always had some schizophrenic relationship of business here it is in one sense it is not new. we pride ourselves in our free-market system and analyze entrepreneurs, but we than to use a phrase my guest today, we have been vaguely ashamed of business. in movies and tv shows, businessmen are most always portrayed as villains like heroes. they are perceived as taking from society, not giving to society. and this view isn't just among the elite, the academics, the left-wing advocates. this view is very often shared by businessmen themselves. i remember when bill gates announced his formation of his philanthropic organization to give away billions of dollars to help fight poverty in africa and elsewhere, he said that he thought it was time that he be able to give back to society. i always thought that was a nod way of putting it. and as bill gates gave us a computer revolution, internet

revolution, contributed vastly to welfare through his business. i applaud him for his philanthropic efforts, but it's not a matter of him not giving until its philanthropy is in addition to what he gave to us through his enterprise. and for-profit activities. now pull after poll show the businessmen lag behind in popularity in america. and i was looking at that today. and strangely enough i found a rasmussen poll from scott rasmussen from justin september showing favorability ratings from various professions. no small-business owners and people who set their own business are ranked one and two of the most popular in america. so they are doing fine. the ceos are second to last. they business outside the entrepreneur circle is nothing favorably at all in america. now a bit of good news is the

very last category, the members of congress. so as bad as businesses, congress is even worse. i found to be the most fascinating finding at all, scott rasmussen found that voters are even divided over whether group of people randomly selected from the phonebook would do a better job in congress. so i always liked that. now i guess today, michael medved takes on the conception today about business head-on in his book, "the 5 big lies about american business." mr. medved is one of the prewar prewar commentators hosting a daily talk show that reaches 5 million listeners each day. he's also a veteran film critic of screenwriter and an ex-liberal at one time working for iran., somewhat last of a congressman from california. and talk about your unpopular professions, he also came close

to being a lawyer. he attended yell all school with the ball people, bill clinton and hillary rodham. and he will talk to us about his connections from school days as well. if you join me in welcoming michael medved. [applause] >> thank you so much in thank you so much for the generous introduction. we are certainly going to have time for questions and you there's which i find always the most exciting and stimulating part of any presentation or any opportunity to speak with people. and if people want to ask me about the clintons in moscow, you are free to. you can even ask me whether or not he inhaled. and we can deal with that or anything else that comes to mind. your introduction raised some of the basic reasons that i wrote this book. i had a book a year ago and i

spoke here at heritage about it called "the 10 big lies about america," which focused on some of the core misconceptions and misrepresentations that anti-americans used to smear this country very regularly. the most common of course being that america was founded on genocide against native americans or that america built its wealth entirely through the crime of slavery. and i take his life in every pot them one by one and the book facilitated a great deal of discussion and conversation and was 12 weeks on "the new york times" bestsellers list. and i was very struck however that one of the ten big lies that was most controversial of all was the big lie that the that the growth of corporations as harm to the american experience and damaged the

american people. i mean, it clearly hasn't. it should be fairly obvious to everyone that it doesn't. those of you who came here on some means other than walking benefited from some corporation that created the bus or the car and a motorscooter or whatever it is you came here with. and those of you who walk also benefited from shoes that were made somewhere. i mean, the involvement of business in our lives, every aspect of our lives in benefiting us is so obvious and so ubiquitous and so omnipresent that it seems utterly bizarre that anyone could design this. but i became very involved in promoting my previous book from last year, with some of these totally widely accepted and unthinkingly accepted lies about american business that i determined that an entire book, especially in the midst of

economic downturn, dealing with some of those lives was needed and appropriate. and to focus this for just a moment on how some of these lives operate and how they are contradict by everyday reality. let me just share forward you a little contrast that has emerged as part of this book to her so far. i am -- this is so far the third stop on my book tour. i will be honest, it was the fourth stop. i was in philadelphia yesterday in san francisco the day before and then last week i was in new york city. and during the time i was in new york city, i had an interesting experience, i had close connections with air transport. and i'd experience flying from new york to seattle which is where i live and found that as generally happens when i rely on our air transportation system that performs. i mean, i know that people do a lot of complaining about

airlines in america and they are imperfect and yes they are heavily regulated and yes they sometimes lose luggage and they sometimes keep you on the tarmac for five hours, but it is rare. generally if you're getting on an airplane and they tell you they are going to have the summer they also have adjusted schedules. you may have noticed that to make them realistic so the percentage of on-time arrivals have them going up. basically our airline system works and it works for me and flying to new york. my planes both going to and coming from new york city arrived early. which means i must've been doing something right. it was wonderful. the problem was i did my radio show from our studios. we have studios at the empire state building. and the day i arrived not just on time, but early, i then had to rely on the highway system and actually was being taken out