The Last Temptation of Ronald Reagan: The Day the Cold War Was Won: October 12, 1986 by Doyle William

Author:Doyle, William [Doyle, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-06-01T07:00:00+00:00

6:50 P.M.

Point of No Return

A Secret Service agent burst into the second-floor room of Hofdi House and announced to the waiting American officials, “They’re breaking!”

Some in the American delegation dashed down the stairs to see Gorbachev and Reagan leaving the parlor for the wood-paneled foyer and front door of Hofdi House.

“Mr. Reagan's face,” Kenneth Adleman recalled, “red and angry, told me all I needed to know.”

The two leaders lingered in the hallway briefly, saying nothing.

White House aide James Kuhn told the president, “We’ve got to get set up for the photographers” waiting outside in the rain. Reagan replied, “I don’t think pictures are going to make any difference now.” The president was so upset he was canceling the post-summit photo opportunity.

Gorbachev put on his dark coat and hat, and his interpreter Pavel Palazhchenko followed closely behind the two leaders as they prepared to step outside toward their waiting motorcades.

“We are missing a historic chance,” said Gorbachev. “Never have our positions been so close together.”

Reagan countered, “We could have had an agreement if you had wanted it; I don’t believe you wanted it.”

The two men walked down the steps into a frenzy of popping lightbulbs — and a multitude of journalists who were suddenly realizing, from the body language, that the summit had ended in failure.“I don’t think you really wanted to deal,” Reagan said. “I don’t know when we’ll see each other again.”

The two solemnly shook hands on the gravel of the driveway, and the Soviet leader said, “I don’t know what else I could have done.”

Reagan leveled his gaze at Gorbachev’s eyes and replied, “Well, you could have said yes!”

“Well, there is still time,” said the Soviet leader, apparently still angling for a morning session to rescue the summit.

“No, there isn’t,” said Reagan, shaking his head.

The president looked away and entered his limousine.

As the car pulled away, Gorbachev stood there, his hand raised in farewell.

Inside the presidential limousine, Reagan raised his fingers and lamented to his chief of staff, Donald Regan, beside him, “Don, we were that close to an agreement, and he wouldn’t give in!” According to Regan, the president bitterly muttered an expletive, the specifics of which Regan never revealed.

Regan later recalled, “I have never felt so sad for a person in my life as I did for Ronald Reagan.”

In the immediate aftermath of the summit, perceptions of near-disaster at Reykjavík were reinforced by Reagan’s critics, and many observers predicted it would trigger a worsening of the Cold War.

The impression was fueled by Gorbachev, who, immediately after the farewell at the doorway, raced to a converted movie theater in Reykjavík to hold a press conference before the world media. It was a bravura Gorbachev monologue. “A point of no return with unpredictable political and military consequences has been reached,” Gorbachev announced ominously.

“What happened at Reykjavík is deplorable and disappointing,” he charged.

Of Reagan’s adherence to SDI, the Kremlin boss said, “Who is going to accept that? It would have taken a madman to accept that.” The Soviets, he asserted, made “compromise after compromise, the biggest we have ever made.

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