Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency report, dated 1 June 1984 and marked unclassified for official use only, reviews how Soviet leaders and media treated President Reagan from November 1980 through May 1984. It finds that Moscow twice moderated its rhetoric to test prospects for better relations, and that attacks became the most abusive in two decades after the South Korean airliner shootdown. The report compiles authoritative Soviet statements and midlevel and routine media commentary as a baseline for analysts.
“Cooper”12 pages
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Document 1 of 2 AGAL Concatenated Database But let no one expect unilateral disarmament from us. We are not naive people. 94. We do not demand unilateral disarmament from the West. We are for equality, for consideration for the interests of both sides, for honest agreement. We are ready for this. 95. Ustinov, TASS interview (Pravda, 7 Dec 82) 96. [President Reagan] said in his speech of 22 November that the Soviet Union now has a clear margin in practically any type of military power. Such assertions are not in keeping with reality. They are calculated at deceiving the public and have the purpose of justifying the United States' unprecedented military programs and aggressive doctrines. It is regrettable that such attempts to convince people of the existence of what does not exist in nature are made by the leader of a great power whose very position presupposes realism and responsibility in assessing reality. . . 97. At the same time, the President's speech contains an attempt to sow distrust in the Soviet Union's stand. He stated that the Soviet Union violates the unilateral moratorium it announced on the deployment of its medium-range missiles in the European part of the USSR. I state quite definitely that the USSR is true to its word. 98. Andropov, Pravda interview responding to President Reagan's Open Letter (Pravda, 2 Feb 83) 99. I must say quite definitely that there is nothing new in President R. Reagan's proposal. What it is all about--and this all the world's news agencies have immediately taken note of--is the same "zero option." That it is patently unacceptable to the Soviet Union now is already generally recognized. Really, can one seriously speak about a proposal according to which the Soviet Union would have to scrap unilaterally all its medium-range missiles, while the United States and its NATO allies would retain all their nuclear weapons of this category? 100. It is precisely this unrealistic position of the United States that has blocked, and this is well known, progress at the talks in Geneva. That now the U.S. President has reiterated again this position indicates one thing: The United States does not want to look for a mutually acceptable accord with the Soviet Union and thereby deliberately dooms the Geneva talks to failure. . . . 101. We have believed and still believe that summit meetings have special significance to resolving complicated problems. This determines our serious approach to them.
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 56 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.