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The american nation cannot,

must not, and will not permit the

establishment of another communist
government in the western hemisphere.

If America's soul totally becomes poisoned
part of the autopsy must read Vietnam.

Let us be united in peace

let us also be united against defeat.

For General Electric,

here is Ronald Reagan

Good evening ladies and gentlemen
tonight it's my pleasure to appear

in the General Electric theater

In 1970, attorney general John Mitchell
gloated:

'This country is going so far right
that you're not going to recognize it.'

But how much further to the
right could the US go?

In 1970 there was Vietnam, Cambodia,
Laos, nuclear threats, surveillance,

sabotage, dirty tricks, official lies,
racial polarization, crime,

and still to come were war on drugs,
Chile and Watergate.

But compared to the world that
Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush

would usher in, one could almost
look back nostalgically on the

Nixon era.

Right-wing forces have always
operated freely and openly in

the dark chasms of American life
where racism, militarism,

imperialism and blind devotion
to private enterprise festered.

The raw underbelly of fanaticism
has spun groups as disparate as

the Ku Klux Klan

Nazi party

the Liberty League

the American First'ers

the John Birch'ers

the McCarthyite's

and the Tea Party

spilling either hatred, bigotry or
simply ignorance of history.

Beginning with Nixon's courting
of a new republican south

and the success of George Wallace
as a third party candidate

these forces migrated from the
fringes of American politics

and the nether reaches of rationality
to a new home in the republican party

which gradually banished its once
thriving moderate and liberal wings.

Nixon had once said, domestic politics
interested him about as much as

But on his watch, whether he liked it
or not, 18 year-olds won the vote

censorship declined,

and gays and lesbians emerged from the shadows.

He established the EPA, the
Environmental Protection Agency

supported the equal rights amendment

and new regulations governing
the health of workers

and even strengthen
the voting rights act.

His former right-wing allies were
belatedly recognizing that

this was not the 1950s anti-communist
hatchet man Richard Nixon they had known

Though he was pulverizing southeast
Asia, he horrified the right when he

turned around and, seeking to ease
the stresses of US land war in Asia,

recognized red China in 1972.

And on top of that, he went to
the Soviet union and signed the

historic SALT 1 treaty, placing limits
on missile and anti-missile systems.

When Nixon took the country off
the gold standard and imposed wage

and price controls in 1971,
and then

pulled all of remaining US troops
out of Vietnam in '73,

it seemed he had lost his mind
and totally betrayed his base.

By the time of Watergate, Nixon
had made far too many enemies

on both left and right that
he could afford.

Facing a probable impeachment,
he resigned on aug. 9, 1974.

The presidency was now in the
hands of the amiable Gerald Ford,

a man who, Lyndon Johnson said,

could not fart and chew gum
at the same time.

As we can see the Ford popularity is

certainly on a sharp rise here

Ford announced that our long
national nightmare is over.

But, sending all the wrong signals,
pardoned Nixon:

an absolute pardon onto Richard Nixon
for all offenses against the US which he,

Richard Nixon, has committed or
may have committed.

But, even more troubling for the
future was that, Nixon's fall

brought out the deepest impulses of
rage and revenge from the core of

Nixon's new republican party.

His legendary anger became theirs,

but now directed against
the government itself.

Reinvigorated by anger at a
so-called liberal media which had

played such a toxic role in their
mind in distorting Vietnam and

driving Nixon from the presidency,

a network of conservative think-tanks
as well as rich foundations

invested large sums of money to push

for their agendas.

Among these was a radical return
to the concept of privatization

that had been, in their minds, destroyed
by Roosevelt's loathed new deal.

Roosevelt's old enemies, the
money class, were back.

The burgeoning right-wing
network had little use for a

relative moderate like Gerald Ford
and itched to put a

real right-winger like former
governor Reagan of California

into the white house.

Bowing to pressure, Ford and
Donald Rumsfeld -a young congressman

who'd made a name attacking the
Soviets in the '60s- engineered

a major cabinet check-up known as
the Halloween Day Massacre in oct. '75.

Rumsfeld, who Nixon had called a
ruthless little bastard, took over Defense.

Kissinger, staying on at State, lost
his national security post to

gen. Brent Scowcroft

Bush took over the CIA and
Dick Cheney, a protégé of Rumsfeld's,

replaced him as Chief of Staff.

Vice-president Nelson Rockefeller,
a moderate, was forced off the ticket

in '76.

Rumsfeld helped block a new SALT
treaty, and Ford banished the term

détente, associated now with Henry
Kissinger from the white house.

But the people wanted change,
and in the interest of the presidency

in 1976, the governor Jimmy Carter
a former peanut farmer and long time

sunday school teacher from Plains,
Georgia who narrowly defeated Ford.

Carter was anything but a typical candidate.

He sought to end the arms race,
revive détente,

restore America's moral standing and
learn from Vietnam, saying:

Never again shall our country
become militarily involved

in the internal affairs of another nation,

unless there's a direct and obvious threat
to the security of the US.

He said at the UN that the US
would cut its nuclear arsenal by 50%

if the Soviets did the same.

Following his gut, Carter scored some
significant early successes.

He helped secure the Camp David Accords
in 1978

leading to Israeli withdrawal from

Egyptian territory captured in the 1967 war

and established diplomatic relations

between the two countries.

He negotiated a SALT 2 treaty with the Soviets

mandating a reduction in nuclear missiles

and bombers.

But Carter knew little about foreign policy
and had been deeply influenced by the

ideas of Zbigniew Brzezinski, his national
security advisor.

An ... professor and fierce anti-communist
he tapped the rising, though still little known,

Carter from membership in the

a group founded by Chase Manhattan Bank
chairman David Rockefeller in 1973

to bolster the world capitalist order.

With 180 elite members and offices
on 3 continents, most rejected the

rigidity of right-wing anti-communism.

But Brzezinski, like Kissinger before him,
marginalized the moral liberal

secretary of State, and engineered a return

to cold war orthodoxy.

He bragged about being the first Pole
in 300 years in a position

to really stick it to the Russians.

Massive US arms sales to Iran,
half of all US sales worldwide,

had kept the unpopular Shah in power, and
despite his dismal human rights record

Carter shared a lavish
new year's eve in Tehran:

There is no leader with whom I have
a deeper sense of personal friendship.

Iran, because of the great leadership
of the Shah, is an island of stability

in one of the more troubled areas
of the world.

Within a year the Shah had imposed
martial law, and his troops

shot down 100s in the street.

Fearing that Soviets would occupy
Iran's oil fields in this chaos

Brzezinski warned Carter that
the US now faced

Two months later the Shah fled
for his life.

Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile
demanding the Shah's return to face trial.

Carter, under pressure from Brzezinski,
Kissinger and David Rockefeller

allowed the Shah into the US
for medical treatment of his cancer

infuriating the Iranian public:
The US embassy in Tehran has been

invaded and occupied by Iranian
students.

Americans inside have been
taken prisoner.

In november, students burst into
the embassy and seized

52 american hostages
whom they held for 444 days,

effectively destroying Carter's presidency.

Crises seemed to be flaring all over.

Central america, after suffering decades
of poverty, brutality and corruption

under US backed right-wing dictators,
was ready to explode by the late 1970s.

In Nicaragua, the Sandinistas seized power
in july of '79

Latin America’s first successful revolution

since Cuba's 20 years earlier

and began an ambitious program of
land, education and health reform.

Brzezinski argued for military intervention

fearing the revolutionary ... would
establish forces in neighboring

Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador where
40 families had ruled for over a century.

Right-wing death squad murders
and tortures increased

and the progressive Salvadorian
archbishop Oscar Romero

was assassinated in 1980.

Later that year the FMLN insurgents were

on the brink of another successful revolution

when Carter, pressured by Brzezinski,
restored significant needed military aid

to the government.

Another storm was brewing in Afghanistan,

an impoverished remnant from the
British empire where

life expectancy was 40 years.

Only 1 in 10 could read and
most lived as no-man's or farmers

in muddy villages scarcely different
from when Alexander the Great

had passed through 2000 years before.

It was in july 1979 that Brzezinski had

Carter sign a little known directive

for secret aid to the Islamic
fundamentalist opponents

of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul.

In that day Brzezinski proudly noted that

His intention was to drag them
into their own Vietnam.

Brzezinski understood the Soviet's
fear that the

Afghan insurgency might spark an
uprising by the 40 million muslims

in Soviet central asia.

He compared it in its effect on the US
to a communist insurgency in Mexico.

The Soviets concluded correctly that
the americans were instigating the insurgency.

possibly with help from China.

But they still hesitated to intervene.

Veteran foreign minister Gromyko knew that

With their top heavy bureaucratically
ossified economy stagnating,

the Soviets saw arms control as
their chance to finally escape

the wartime treadmill.

The provocation worked.

President Brezhnev, a Stalin
unimaginative Soviet leader

insisting the war would be over
in 3 to 4 weeks, launched

a full scale invasion of 80,000
Soviet troops into Afghanistan

on christmas day 1979.

The inexperienced Carter
hyperbolically called the invasion

the greatest threat to world peace
since WW2.

A NY Times columnist felt compelled
to remind them of the Berlin blockade,

the Korean war, the Suez crisis,
Cuban missile crisis, and

the war in Vietnam.

Carter withdrew the US ambassador
and took SALT 2 off the table.

He cut trade between the
two countries,

banned US athletes from the
upcoming Moscow olympics

and sent his defense secretary
... Chinese leaders about

military ties.

He effectively extended the
Truman doctrine to the

adjacent Persian gulf region,
including Iran

which now would be regarded
as a US vital interest.

Muslim nations condemned the
Soviet aggression.

Saudi Arabia sent money, and
thousands of young muslims

from all over the middle east now
began the journey to Afghanistan

for jihad, holy war against the
Soviet infidels.

Brzezinski traveled to meet with
the dictators of Pakistan and Saudi

Arabia to work out financial and
military aid for the holy warriors

who were particularly upset
over the Soviet supported

government's reforms to emancipate
and educate their women.

Brzezinski has repeatedly denied
having any regrets about

fueling Islamic fundamentalism which
would blow back against US on 9/11

and plague it for years to come.

because your cause is right
and God is on your side.

Later he would say:

What is more important in world
history? Taliban or the collapse of

the Soviet empire? Some agitated
muslims or the liberation of

central europe and the end of
the cold war?

At what price?

In seeking to destroy the Soviet
empire, Brzezinski instead destroyed

Jimmy Carter's presidency.

Carter never fulfilled his promise
to reduce defense spending

increasing it from 115 billion to
180 billion.

Carter more than doubled the number
of warheads aimed at Soviet union.

Carter even repudiated his earlier
criticism of the Vietnam war.

Vietnam veterans became

Carter's policies ironically in the end
laid the groundwork for the even

more extreme actions that Ronald
Reagan would bring to the white house.

It's morning again in America.
Today more men and women

will go to work than ever before
in our country's history.

With interest rates and inflation down
more people are buying new homes

and new families can have confidence
in the future.

America today is prouder,
and stronger, and better.

Why would we want to
return to where we were

less than 4 short years ago?

There's never been a president quite
like Ronald Reagan with his

charm, humor, elegant good looks
and driving compulsion to

transform America into a
conservative fortress.

A foxy home-spun actor turned
General Electric pitchman,

Reagan served 8 years as
California's governor.

He was underrated by many as
a B-actor in Hollywood,

and titled his first autobiography
'where's the rest of me?'

based on his 1942 movie Kings Row,
a gothic classic about small town America.

In the film, his legs were amputated
by his girlfriend's sadistic surgeon father.

The film marked his transition from
new deal liberal to cold war conservative.

He had discovered his missing half
in his fight against communism;

a fight that, as president of the Screen
Actors Guild, turned him into a highly

public crusader against the red menace
as well as a secret FBI informer

who denounced colleagues as communists.

Political consultant Roger Ailes who
would later create Fox News,

drawing on tactics he'd developed
with Richard Nixon, reminded the

73 year-old Reagan 'he got elected
on themes, not details';

happy thoughts like Morning in America,

or the puritan belief that America
was the shining city on a hill.

His critics were 'defeatists who would
blame America first'

or there were dark fictional
themes such as

We're in greater danger today than
we were in the day after Pearl Harbor.

Our military is absolutely incapable
of defending this country.

The facts never quite mattered
if there was a good punch line.

He loved to repeat the story
about the Chicago welfare queen

with 80 names, 30 addresses
and 12 social security cards

who had a tax-free income
of 150,000 dollars.

He preferred films to reading and
had visual aids, especially prepared

on issues such as the Soviet threat
or the problem in the middle east.

For meetings even with a few
people in the room, Reagan would

read his lines like an actor from
3x5 index cards.

At one meeting with US automobile
leaders he read from the wrong cards

until he finally caught on.

He liked to go home to his
beloved wife Nancy punctually

late in the afternoon, exercise,
eat dinner in his pyjamas, watch TV

and be in bed early.

There is one sign the Soviets can make
that would be unmistakable,

that would advance dramatically
the cause of freedom and peace.

General Secretary Gorbachev,
if you seek peace,

if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union
and Eastern Europe,

if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate.
Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate.

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

Less than 2.5 years later, the wall
did indeed come crashing down.

And by 1991 the Soviet empire
had collapsed.

The cold war was over.
Many credit Reagan with winning it.

Admirers lionized him as the
greatest president since WW2,

one of the greatest ever.

But the real story is far more complex.

Reagan left behind a bloody trail of
death and destruction,

but also came excruciatingly close
to achieving enduring greatness.

Reagan's disengaged style and lack of
foreign policy experience left a void that

the administration's anti-communist
hawks scrambled to fill.

Leading the pack was William Casey.

The movies could not have invented
a man like Casey.

A catholic knight of Malta, he
attended mass daily and

proclaimed Christianity to anyone
who asked his advice.

Statues of the Virgin Mary filled
his mansion on Long Island.

He'd been the head of the Securities and
Exchange Commission, and before that

he'd worked with the OSS.

According to Casey's deputy Robert Gates
the Reaganites saw their arrival as a

hostile takeover.

Casey had read Claire Sterling's ...
The Terror Network, and was convinced

that Soviet union was behind
international terrorism

including the recent assassination
attempt on the Polish born Pope

and a fellow catholic.

The head of the CIA's office for
Soviet analysis Melvin Goodman

said that much of Sterling's evidence
was based on black propaganda

anti-communist allegations that the CIA
itself had planted in the european press.

Yet, Casey told analysts that he'd
learned more from Sterling than

from all of them.

Al Hague, the hardcore secretary of
State, agreed and thought

the Soviets had tried to assassinate him
when he was the head of NATO in europe.

Experts knew that the Soviets
actually disapproved of terrorism

and had not supported the nihilist
terrorist groups of western europe.

But Casey and Gates purged analysts
who refused to knuckle under,

crippling the agency in such a way
that, when the Soviet union fell apart

later in the decade, the agency
was unable to predict it.

At his first press conference using
the language of John F. Dulles

and James Forrestal, Reagan quickly
reversed almost 2 decades of progress

in easing cold war tensions when
he declared

that the only morality they recognize
is what will further their cause

meaning they reserve under themselves
the right to commit any crime

to lie, to cheat in order to attain that

America's morality, he insisted,
was different:

I'd always felt that from our deeds
it must be clear to anyone that

Americans were a moral people who had
always used our power only as a force

for good in the world.

In reality, Reagan's election encouraged
right-wing elites throughout the 3rd world

to take back perceived losses of
land or power resulting from

indecisive American leadership
since Vietnam.

The methods would be cruel.

The colonel who headed the US
advisory team in El Salvador said

an apt description of US leaders'
efforts to test their new post-Vietnam

counter-insurgency doctrines and
defeat uprisings without

a large commitment of
US forces.

Many top Salvadoran, Honduran and
Guatemalan army officers were trained

at the US Army School of the Americas
in Panama, and then after 1984

Fort Benning in Georgia.

The emphasis on counter-insurgency
techniques honed from Vietnam

was expanded.

Visiting neighboring Honduras in 1982
Reagan met with Guatemalan president

gen. Efrain Rios Montt, a born-again
evangelical Christian

who'd recently seized power in a coup.

Reagan complained that Montt
had received a bum rap:

I know that president Rios Montt
is a man of great personal integrity

and commitment.

Roughly 100,000 Mayan peasants
living in the region of leftist insurgency

would be killed between 1981
and '83 by the Guatemalan army.

Across the Nicaraguan border in
Honduras, former members of

Somoza's thuggish national guard
gathered with Casey's assistance.

They plotted a return to power.
They called themselves the

counter-revolutionaries or Contras.

The war began in march of 1982.
Congress then banned the use of

government funds to overthrow
the Sandinista government.

But Casey and NSC official Oliver North
concocted a plot right out of WW2 OSS days;

an elaborate, illegal operation aided by
Israeli arms dealers. The US sold missiles to

its enemies in Iran at exorbitant prices and
used the profits to fund the Contras

with Latin American drug dealers often
serving as intermediaries and receiving

easier access to American markets in return.

The 15,000 men Contra army
employing kidnapping, torture,

rape and murder, targeted health clinics
schools, agricultural cooperatives,

bridges and power stations.

I was aware that resistance was
receiving funds directly from

third countries and from private
efforts, and I endorsed those

endeavors wholeheartedly. But
let me put this in capital letters

I did not know about the
diversion of funds.

Reagan and Casey lied to Congress
about what the CIA was up to.

According to his deputy Gates,
Casey was guilty of contempt of

Congress from the day he was
sworn in.

Reagan defended the covert
war by saying in 1984:

The Nicaraguan people are trapped
in a totalitarian dungeon by a

dictatorship made all the more
dangerous by the unwanted

presence of thousands of Cuban,
Soviet block and radical Arab helpers.

He went so far as to call the
Contras

the moral equivalent of our
founding fathers.

His moral equivalence were
responsible for most of the

deaths of the 20 to 30,000
Nicaraguan civilians during the war.

Similar atrocities occurred in neighboring

El Salvador, where US trained troops stabbed

de-capitated, raped and machine gunned
767 civilians in the village of El Mozote

in late 1981, including 358 children
under age 13.

Congress ended up funneling almost

$6 billion to this tiny country

making it the largest recipient of US

foreign aid per capita in the world.

Wealthy landlords were running
the right-wing death squads

that murdered thousands of
suspected leftists.

The death toll from the war
reached 70,000.

I go, alright, just take her

If you send her back they will
kill her, rape her, mutilate her

You don't know what it's
like in El Salvador.

The Salvadoran population of US
expanded 5 times, to half a million

by 1990,
many of these illegal entries.

Yet, Nicaraguan supposedly fleeing
communist oppression, if not the

Contra war, were allowed into
the US.

Many Salvadorans would turn back.

Bogged down in protracted
proxy wars in Nicaragua and

El Salvador, and haunted by the memory
of defeat in Vietnam which he called

a noble cause, Reagan hungered
for an easy military victory to

restore Americans' self-confidence.

In 1983 a powerful truck bomb
set off by the anti-Israeli terrorist

organization Hezbollah, the
Al-Qaeda of its time,

blew up a US Marine barracks
in Lebanon leaving 241 dead

and dealing another
devastating blow to US pride.

Two days later US troops invaded
not Lebanon, but Grenada

a tiny Caribbean island with
100,000 inhabitants.

Reagan claimed it was a
Soviet-Cuban colony being

readied as a major military bastion to
export terror and undermine democracy

We got there just in time.

As in one of his old Westerns, he sent
7,000 american soldiers into battle.

Then in media, supposedly for their
own safety, he offered government

footage instead. The entire op
was bungled from the start.

19 soldiers died and more than
100 were wounded, as a

small force of poorly armed Cuban

construction workers resisted.

9 helicopters were lost.

The invasion from a military POV
was a farce, with the Army

awarding almost 275 medals for
valor to 7,000 troops of whom

only about 2500 saw a limited form of combat.

Well lt. what are we waiting for?

Alright you devil dogs
let's take this fucking hell

Reagan proudly announced:
our days of weakness are over.

our military forces are back on
their feet and standing tall.

Halfway across the world, Reagan
and Casey transformed Carter's

limited support for the Afghan
insurgents into the CIA's largest

covert operation to date,
totalling over $3 billion.

They channeled aid through
Pakistan's general Zia,

a corrupt dictator who funneled
the arms and dollars to the most

extreme Afghan-Islamist faction
under Gulbuddin Hekmatyar

a man of legendary cruelty
whose forces were rumored to

patrol the bazaars of Kabul
throwing viles of acid in the

faces of women not wearing
full burkas

and specialized in skinning
prisoners alive.

The CIA provided the insurgents
between 2000-2500 US made

Stinger missiles.

The US helped both sides in the
bloody Iran-Iraq war.

Reagan in 1983 sent special envoy
Donald Rumsfeld to Baghdad

to re-assure Saddam Hussein
of US support.

Under a license from the
commerce committee

US companies shipped several
strains of anthrax later used in

Iraq's biological weapons program
and insecticides for chemical warfare.

As president, Reagan persisted
in the scare talk:

So in your discussions of the
nuclear freeze proposals

I urge you to beware the temptation
of pride, the temptation of blithely

declaring yourselves above it all
and label both sides equally at fault

to ignore the facts of history and
the aggressive impulses of an

evil empire, to simply call the
arms race a giant misunderstanding

and thereby remove yourself from
the struggle between right and wrong

and good and evil.
Let us be aware that, while

they preach the supremacy of the state,
declare its omnipotence over

individual man and predict its
eventual domination of all peoples

on the earth, they are the focus
of evil in the modern world.

In late '82, although US was ahead
in every meaningful category, he said:

Today, in virtually every measure
of military power, the Soviet union

enjoys a decided advantage.

And he amped up the defense spending
which, by 1985, had increased 35%

over 1980 expenditures.

The US arsenal now contained 11,200
strategic warheads, to the Soviet's 9,900

New and upgraded weapon systems
rolled off assembly lines including the

long delayed and very costly MX
program which moved missiles

around loops that hid their precise
location, making them invulnerable

to a Soviet first strike.

Despite massive protests throughout
Europe, the US deployed

ground launched cruise missiles to
Britain, and Pershing 2 missiles

to west Germany in november '83.

Some Soviet officials were convinced
that a US attack was imminent

as relations reached their lowest
point in more than 2 decades.

To finance this, he slashed federal
support for discretionary programs

effectively transferring 70 billion from
domestic programs to the military.

He waged war on labor and
the poor:

If they do not report for work
within 48 hours, they have

forfeited their jobs and will
be terminated.

busting the Air Traffic Controllers
union, meanwhile giving

elegant parties in the white house

for his millionaire friends.

A sense of the 1890's Gilded Age,

the Four Hundred of American Society
returned to Washington.

In june of '82 almost a million
people rallied against the arms

race in NY City's Central Park.

Among them was a young Colombia
undergraduate named Barack Obama.

The movement unnerved Reagan

who saw it as a serious threat

to his re-election.

Despite all his bluster, Reagan too
feared the possibility of war

which he associated with the
biblical armageddon. After

watching the enormously popular
1983 ABC tv movie The Day After

Reagan wrote in his diary that it

Whether influenced by his wife
or her astrologer we don't know,

but concerned about the bad
blood he may have engendered

Reagan began to rethink his
approach to the Soviet union.

He later wrote in his memoirs:

3 years had taught me something
surprising about the Russians.

Many were genuinely afraid of
America and Americans.

Incredibly, if this diary is to be
believed, it had never dawned

on president Reagan that the
Soviets might indeed fear a

US first strike.

Hoping possibly to appease the
growing anti-nuclear sentiment

in march of 1983, Reagan proposed
the strategic defense initiative, SDI

a space-based defense shield
around the nation itself;

or as his critics called it,
Star Wars.

It isn't about retaliation, it's
about prevention.

It isn't about fear, it's about hope.

And in that struggle, if you'll
pardon my stealing a film line,

the force is with us.

The fantasy of star wars became
an enormously expensive

anti-ballistic missile system.

Despite the fact that no such Soviet
project existed, the pentagon had

begun research in the 1970s
to counter a supposed Soviet

breakthrough in energy beam weaponry.

In march of 1985, an extraordinary
development changed

the course of history.

A 54 year-old agricultural expert
like Henry Wallace years before

Mikhail Gorbachev came to power
in the Soviet union.

Like Khrushchev, he had survived
with his diplomacy, with luck

and with a rare degree of honesty,
a brutal obstacle course of inefficiency

and lies.

He'd travelled wildly in the west
and, like Khrushchev, sought above all

to improve the lifes of his people.

He saw the problem with clarity.

To achieve parity with the US,
the Soviets were spending nearly

a quarter of their gross domestic
product on defense.

Defense production consumed a
highly disproportionate amount

of the Soviet budget.

Their planned economy, which had
stagnated since the late 1970s,

was run by a military-industrial
academic establishment

immune from reality.

To revitalize society, he knew he
would have to slash military spending.

Gorbachev set out to end the
arms race and redeploy resources.

He also took steps to end the war
in Afghanistan,

a conflict, he thought, from the beginning
was a fatal error and a bleeding wound.

As a very young man he'd
witnessed the horrors of war,

and in a series of extraordinary
letters to Reagan proposed,

like Henry Wallace 40 years earlier,
friendship and peaceful competition.

Reagan responded encouragingly.

The two leaders met for the first
time in Geneva in november '85

connecting on a human level, if
not a political one.

Gorbachev continued writing letters
through 1986 calling for

the elimination of all nuclear
weapons by 2000.

It didn't change Reagan's mindset.

The US announced plans for a new
series of nuclear tests and

increased support for the
mujahideen in Afghanistan.

In oct. '86 Reagan and Gorbachev
met in Reykjavik, Iceland

The 2 leaders would come within
a few words of changing history forever.

Gorbachev offered a stunningly bold
set of disarmament proposals.

Even Paul Nitze, who had done
so much to harm relations

between 2 countries, observed that
the Soviet proposal was

Nitze and secretary of State George
Schultz urged Reagan to accept a

sweeping arms control deal.

Reagan turned to hardliner
Richard Perle who feared such

a deal would strengthen the
Soviet economy.

Perle warned that the agreement
would effectively kill Reagan's SDI

or Star Wars plan.

Perle and other advisors knew Reagan's
vision of SDI was a pipe dream,

a fantasy. Only Reagan believed
it would work.

When negotiations stalled, Gorbachev
urged Reagan to act boldly.

Reagan shocked observers, 'it would
be fine' he said, 'if we eliminated

all nuclear weapons'.
Schultz agreed: let's do it.

Gorbachev said he was ready to eliminate
nuclear weapons if Reagan restricted SDI

testing to the laboratory for
10 years.

Gorbachev and Soviet scientists knew
that SDI would do nothing to

protect US from a full scale
Soviet attack, but feared

US moves to weaponize space and
recoiled at the thought of giving up

the anti-ballistic missile treaty, the only
tangible constraint upon the arms race.

Reagan explained that confining tests
to the laboratory would damage him

politically at home.
They had reached an impasse.

The meeting ended. As they were leaving
the building Gorbachev tried one last time

Mr. president, I'm prepared to go
back inside right now and sign

the documents we already agreed upon
if you drop your plans to militarize space.

Reagan answered reportedly:
I'm very sorry.

The US and Russia had come within a
hair's breadth of beginning the

process of eliminating nuclear weapons

thwarted by a Star Wars fantasy, that
had hardly entered the lab. in 1986.

Gorbachev was furious and blamed
the failure on Reagan's plan to exhaust

the Soviet union economically
through an arms race the US

subsequently spent well over
$100 billion, with final cost projected

to exceed $1 trillion.

With the issue of multiple decoys
overwhelming this system,

among other issues, the creation of
an effective Strategic Defensive Initiative

to this day is still highy uncertain.

Both sides hoped to revive the talks,
but before that could happen

a scandal that same month rocked
Reagan's administration.

In oct. of '86 a cargo plane was
shot down over at Nicaragua

the only survivor admitted it was
a CIA operation.

Congressional hearings revealed an
administration up to its eyeballs

in illegality, corruption, blundering
and subterfuge involving American

hostages in Lebanon, arms sales to
both Iraq and Iran, ill-fated attempts

to cultivate non-existent moderates
in Tehran and collaboration with a

whole set of unsavory characters
including Manuel Noriega in Panama.

In a flagrant violation on Congress'
ban on government support to

overthrowing the Nicaraguan government,

Americans also learned that the CIA mined

Nicaraguan harbors which provoked the
conservative icon

sen. Barry Goldwater to scold Bill Casey

I'm pissed off, he wrote, this is an
act of violating international law

it's an act of war.

Details of the murky convoluted operation
consumed much of Reagan's last 2 years.

Pathetically he told a news conference
that he was not fully informed of the

Iran policy, one aspect of which was
seriously flawed.

that so much of this can go on and
the president not know it,

he is the president of the US,
why doesn't he know?

because somebody didn't tell him, that's why

It was apparent that he had little
grasp of and less control over

what his underlings were up to:

A few months ago I told the
American people I did not trade

arms for hostages. My heart and
my best intentions still tell me

that's true. But the facts and the
evidence tell me it is not.

As the Tower board reported, what
began as a strategic opening to Iran

deteriorated in its implementation
into trading arms for hostages.

This runs counter to my own
beliefs, to administration policy

and to the original strategy we
had in mind.

There are reasons why it happened.
But no excuses. It was a mistake.

As an apology, it wouldn't have
worked for Nixon. But, perhaps

Ronald Reagan had too kindly
an aura to have to defend himself

much less go to prison.

And the Washington establishment
apparently concluded that

the country could not withstand another
impeachment or forced resignation

and thus, allowed Reagan to
serve out his term.

He left office a befuddled old man.

His subordinates were not so lucky.

Among those convicted of crimes were

2 national security advisors, one of whom

attempted suicide, as well as Oliver North

and asst. secretary of State Elliott Abrams

who would re-emerge in the
2nd Bush administration.

Defense secretary Weinberger, Abrams and

several others were convicted or indicted,
but pardoned by the next president.

The CIA director cheated his fate,
dying of a brain tumor the day after

the hearings began.

Vice-president George Bush managed
to avoid prosecution. He insisted he was

but in his private diary, which he never
thought he'd be forced to release,

he admitted before the scandal
began to break

As a result, the independent council's
final report noted the criminal

investigation of Bush was
regrettably incomplete.

In the midst of this sordid affair
Gorbachev wanting to salvage

something came to Washington
in dec. '87 and signed the

intermediate range nuclear forces
treaty, a major milestone.

It was the first agreement ever to
destroy an entire class of nuclear weapons

one in which the Soviet union
had superiority.

In Afghanistan, Soviet withdrawal
began in may 1988.

When the Soviets sought it out the US on
collaborating to curb Islamic extremism

the US, having achieved its goals,
washed its hands of the problems

that it had helped to create.

Up to 20,000 Arabs had flooded
into Pakistan to join the jihad

against the Soviet infidels,

among them a very young
Saudi construction heir

able to support an army of
volunteers, Osama Bin Ladin.

Thousands more flocked to
Pakistan's madrasas where

they were indoctrinated in radical
Islam and recruited for jihad

often with books produced in
Omaha, Nebraska, with USAID funding

and distributed by the CIA.

The Saudi's in the 1980s spent
$75 billion to spread their brand of

Wahabi extremism.

A million Afghans had died in
the war.

5 million, 1/3 of the population
had fled to Pakistan and Iran.

In the late '80s Islamists linked to
Pakistani intelligence seized control

of Afghanistan.

One Rand Corp. analyst said that
the US had to throw the worst crazies

against the Soviets. The reason we
don't have moderate leaders in

Afghanistan today is because
we let the nuts kill them all.

Among the victims of these
American armed and trained fanatics

were Afghan women who were
driven back into the dark ages.

Warned repeatedly that the fanaticism
he was unleashing would threaten

US interests, Bill Casey insisted the
partnership between Christianity

and Islam would endure,

and in the spring of 1985
even backed the mujahideen

cross-border raids into the Soviet union

and the hopes inciting
Soviet muslims to revolt.

Although Reagan left office in near
disgrace, conservatives have annointed him

as one the nation's great presidents
crediting him with restoring America's

faith in itself, after the failed presidencies
of Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter.

But, what is Reagan's real legacy?

Once a Roosevelt democrat, he
developed an extreme contempt

for government that was legendary.

Yet, he spent enormous sums on
the military while cutting social

programs for the poor.

He reduced taxes on the wealthy,

doubled both the military budget
and the national debt,

and in a revolutionary change
transformed the US from the

world's leading creditor nation in
1981 into the biggest debtor nation

by 1985.

He deregulated industries,
eroded environmental standards,

defiantly ripping down the solar
panels that Jimmy Carter had put

on the white house roof,

weakened the middle class,
busted unions,

heightened the racial divides,
widened the gap between

rich and poor

greed, for lack of a better word, is good

and abetted companies in
shipping manufacturing jobs abroad.

He deregulated savings and loans
institutions, which led to the

first giant too-big-to-fail
government bail-outs of

troubled banks, and failed
savings and loans which by

1995 would cost the taxpayers

87 billion dollars.

Under the guise of privatization and
Reagan's extolling of market's forces

Wall st. went on an enormous
greed-is-good looting binge

that resulted in oct. 1987 in
the worst stock market collapse

since the great depression.

In a parting gift to future conservatives
in 1987 the FCC, with Reagan's help,

repealed the fairness doctrine which
had required broadcasters

since 1940's to give adequate and
fair coverage to opposing views

on issues of public importance.

As a result, Rush Limbaugh and
talk radio exploded on the scene

finding a massive audience.

This and the gradual loosening
of the limitations on the number

of stations a company could own
had, by 1996, enabled the growth

of a right-wing media empire.

With it came a number of interlocked
well-funded conservative think tanks

that helped shape a new
Washington group think.

Playing up fears, resentments and
hatred of government by the end

of the '90s Clear Channel,
Rupert Murdoch's Fox News,

Talk Radio Network,
Salem Radio,

the USA Radio Network,
and Radio America

as well as the proliferation of
cable TV networks had created

a movement that would dramatically
lower the standards of

Amerian political discourse, and

in general doomed prospects for
progressive change.

The Hoover institution at Stanford
a respected conservative mecca

described Reagan as a man whose
spirit seems to stride over the country

watching us like a warm and
friendly ghost.

Even democratic presidents like
Clinton and Obama, whether

pandering to conservative forces or
suffering from historical amnesia,

would bow to pressure to flaunt
their religiosity, extol the virtues of

a free capitalist market place,
perpetuate the myth of the universal

middle class and trumpet the notion
of American exceptionalism.

They would feed the insaitable
appetite of the military-industrial

complex, expand the search for
threatening enemies at home and

abroad, and move heaven and earth
to maintain the resulting empire.

Even in Nicaragua, those scolded Reagan
won the long contra war, wrecking its

economy and exhausting the local
population who would soon lose faith

in the Sandinista's ability to bring
progress to the country.

By 1990, the religious pro-Washington candidate

helped by US funding as well as its embargo

triumphed in a democratic election

allowed by the supposedly communist
Sandinistas who stepped aside peacefully.

As far as Reagan's much ... role
in winning the cold war,

the lion's share of credit goes to
Mikhail Gorbachev,

a true visionary, and it turns out
the real democrat.

If Reagan had entered into the sincere
partnership offered by Gorbachev

as Roosevelt did with Stalin in WW2

the world would have been transformed.

But Ronald Reagan, at the least,
let the chance to rid the world of

nuclear weapons slip through
his fingers because he wouldn't

let go of a space fantasy.

Appreciating Gorbachev's extraordinary
effort, the leading Soviet expert on US

warned his American counterparts:
We will do the most horrible thing to you.

We will leave you without an enemy.

Unfortunately, he was wrong.

We're dealing with Hitler revisited.

A totalitarianism and a brutality
that is naked and unprecedented

in modern times.

And that must not stand.