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.
“The Pentagon”4 pages
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## Document 1 of 2 AGAL Concatenated Database long as Reagan is in the White House we will not reach an agreement with the Americans on anything solid. . . . 383. The question of [a summit meeting] is . . . complicated, for, above all, thorough preparation would have to precede it. Second, if I may be frank, I would not even want such a meeting to take place, because, after all, in the current situation it would mean throwing a lifeline to Reagan, and I think that there is no need to do that. 384. Leonid Ponomarev, TASS commentator (TASS, 20 Mar 84) 385. Large-scale propaganda of nuclear war has become an integral element of the policy of the present U.S. Administration which preaches not only the admissibility and the moral justification of a nuclear conflict but also the certainty of a U.S. victory in it. 386. Kornilov (TASS, 20 Mar 84) 387. It is common knowledge that Washington has made militarist plans for a "limited" nuclear war although it is perfectly obvious that nuclear holocaust, wherever it might spring from, will not spare the United States. It is Washington's strategists who are making plans for the first "disarming" nuclear strike, which can only be viewed as an attempt to tailor Hitler's delirious "blitzkrieg" idea to the realities of the nuclear age. ## 388. Bovin (Izvestiya, 21 Mar 84) 389. Reagan and his advisers realize that the dangerous formula "Reagan Means War!" is being bandied about. It is no accident that the President has been saying so much about peace, negotiations, and disarmament in recent months. The image of the wild cowboy is hurriedly being replaced by the image of the wise statesman concerned to avert a war. What if the voters do not believe it? . . . 390. Reagan's immense strength is his personal attractiveness, his ability to be just the way people want to see him. In the television age this is not just a "subjective factor" but the most objective and politically significant reality. The indomitable optimism, the ostentatiously emphasized confidence, the permanent mask of the regular, good-natured guy--all this impresses the "average American." Much is said and written about the fact that Reagan is not weighed down by erudition and culture, reads virtually nothing, spends his evenings in front of the television, does not overwork himself, confuses facts, names, and events, and so on. And here is the paradox. What is a minus from the standpoint of a more or less developed political culture becomes a plus in the eyes of that "average American" who is pleased that the President is not some intellectual or Harvard know-it-all, but a down-to-earth,
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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.