Documents / FOIA release

Soviet Public Treatment of President Reagan

Central Intelligence Agency · 1984-06-01 · 56 pages · text by GLM-OCR

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.

  • p. 40 …It is not hard to understand what is guiding the Pentagon's thinkers. 315. They are…
  • p. 47 …representing the interests of the "iron triangle"-the military business, the Pentagon, and the militarist wing…
  • p. 52 …the draft treaty on chemical weapons tabled at Geneva whose purpose is to camouflage the Pentagon…
  • p. 55 …The Pentagon spokesmen nevertheless note that the travel time of the missiles on new Soviet submarines…

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sphere. Finally, he has brought relations with the Soviet Union to their lowest level.

437. These results of the President's military and foreign policy are forcing many representatives of the country's elite to recall Talleyrand's memorable saying: "This is worse than a crime. This is a mistake!" And although the average American is highly impressed by strong policies and a "strong president," he is now saying more and more often: Stop, this is impractical! Practical politics is the art of the possible, not just of the desirable. . .

438. I asked one of the famous U.S. political scientists in confidence: What is the psychological explanation for the incumbent U.S. President's fondness for nuclear games? One gets the impression that some kind of mysterious force seems to attract him to them. "Yes, yes, I myself have thought of this," my interlocutor said. "And what strikes me more than anything else in this connection is our President's statements about the inevitability of Armageddon, the 'end of the world.'"

439. According to religious beliefs, Armageddon is the place where the final battle between the forces of good and evil will be fought. At that moment God will take the affairs of mankind in his hands and he will walk the earth and punish the sinners.

440. This is what R. Reagan said to correspondents of a television company: "It could be that our generation will be the one to witness Armageddon."

441. An anticommunist complex multiplied by a superstition complex and added to a boundless faith in the military-industrial complex--are these not rather too many complexes for just one man?

442. NNNN

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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.