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.
“Harder”1 page
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
Document 1 of 2 AGAL Concatenated Database will drift to the right. If he is right of center, he will drift slightly to the left remaining at some distance, but even so will approach the center. Reagan is a rather experienced man in this respect. I would like to say that I have heard and read in the foreign press that as a film actor he is a man without much experience. However, it is difficult to judge from the past. There were excellent presidents who were former loggers. . . . 259. The fact itself that moderate statements are made seems important to me, because quite a few obstacles were left over from the election campaign. This certainly does not mean that we will be rancorous and will not let anything pass, including what was said in the heat of the election struggle. We have already said publicly that we will not act like that. However, even words are deeds to a certain extent at present, because they influence atmosphere and climate. Atmosphere and climate are rather important in politics and any beginnings depend on them. 260. Aleksandr Bovin, Izvestiya political observer and reputed adviser to Presidents Brezhnev and Andropov (Soviet domestic radio, 7 Dec 80) 261. Reagan, of course, realizes that he cannot get away from continuing talks with the Soviet Union. But, by all accounts, it seems to me, in general, that a harder line U.S. policy is at hand, particularly where it concerns, for example, the problems of disarmament and military detente. It seems to me that soon we will have to confront a harder line of this kind and preparations for this should be made, although in general I do not exclude the possibility that after a while everything may return to the beaten track, as we say. 262. Vitaliy Kobysh, CPSU Central Committee official (Literaturnaya Gazeta, 1 Jan 81) 263. Reagan, with his reputation for being a politician belonging to the extreme right wing of the Republican Party, has formed his cabinet from people of basically moderate views. . . . 264. When "taking over," every new administration strives to show that it is different from the previous one and that its policy will meet the country's interests to a greater degree. Statements by Reagan and some of his closest assistants indicate that they consider the status to which the Carter-Brzezinski administration has reduced Soviet-U.S. relations to be abnormal and that they see the normalization of these relations as the next U.S. Government's foremost priority. At the same time they stress that they will pursue a "tough policy"; in other words, they will act from a "position of strength." We will see how all this will appear in
Not linked to a story yet.
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.