Ronald Reagan, the U.S. President who understood the threat

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See the Lev Navrozov Archive By Lev Navrozov SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM Lev Navrozov emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1972 He settled in New York City where he quickly learned that there was no market for his eloquent and powerful English language attacks on the Soviet Union. To this day, he writes without fear or favor or the conventions of polite society. He chaired the "Alternative to the New York Times Committee" in 1980, challenged the editors of the New York Times to a debate (which they declined) and became a columnist for the New York City Tribune. His columns are today read in both English and Russian.

After ÒCommentaryÓ published (September 1978) my article ÒWhat the CIA Knows about Russia,Ó which was reprinted or outlined in more than 500 periodicals all over the West, I received a letter from Richard V. Allen, later President Reagan's National Security Adviser. He wrote:

Following your excellent and intriguing article in the September issue of ÒCommentary,Ó I had intended to drop you a line to tell you how much I appreciated it. I also consider the article to be largely correct, based on my past experience with the organization in question. Then, in late Fall, Bill Stetson, Editor of the ÒCFTR NewsletterÓ [Reagan's electoral ÒCitizens for the Republic NewsletterÓ], passed along to me copies of your correspondence with him.

As it turned out, Reagan had read my ÒCommentaryÓ article Òin the proofsÓ and wanted to meet with me. He had been reading excerpts from my article to his voters during his election campaign. Much of what the CIA testified in Congress and quoted in my article made Reagan's audiences laugh. For example, those Americans who studied chemistry at school know that the Periodic Table was devised by a Russian chemist named Mendeleyev. The CIA garbled the name into MendelyevICH, a name straight from a Jewish joke. The presidential candidate laughed with his audience, and his purposeÑto demonstrate the disastrous state of the CIAÑwas well served.

Richard Allen said in his letter to me:

Bill Stanton recently wrote me again to say that you are still interested in providing some input to Governor Reagan.

Still interested! You bet! My situation was very much as it is now if you replace in my column and articles ÒSoviet RussiaÓ with Ò(Communist) China.Ó I was drawing public attention to the Soviet development of post-nuclear weapons. But no one believed me or was interested. Frankly, I was afraid to divulge my revelations in small periodicals. If the ÒNew York TimesÓ had published them, it would have been useless for the KGB to assassinate me, since the assassination would have only made Òthe storyÓ better known. Yet the ÒNew York TimesÓ never published a word of what I told its editor about the Soviet development of post-nuclear superweapons. Until Yeltsin opened the giant Soviet project to international inspection.

But here I was meeting a likely future U.S. president. If HE announced publicly what I was saying to him, it would be even better than the ÒNew York TimesÓ report.

Yes, Ronald Reagan was telling the truth without dividing it into Republican and Democratic truths. As of 1978, the CIA was viewed as a conservative Republican citadel of patriots, endangering themselves for the sake of their country. And here I was treating them like a bunch of bureaucrats unable to learn the name of the Russian author of the Periodic Table. And Ronald Reagan quoted my article and made fun of the CIA!

Today the CIA seems to be completely subordinate to the president. It was different in the 1980s. After our meeting, President Reagan did make public my message about the development in the evil empire of post-nuclear and, in particular, bio superweapons. But the CIA defied his statement and even called all those who spread it Òevil empiristsÓÑuntil the late 1980s and the early 1990s, when a Soviet bioweapons scientist defected in 1989.

So, by his statement, President Reagan defied the media (with the only exception of the ÒWall Street Journal,Ó which reported the Soviet development of post-nuclear superweapons), the CIAÑand the human inclination to believe that everything is for the best in our best of all possible worlds, and the Soviet dictators, whom John F. Kennedy had accused in the 1960s of their Òquest for world domination,Ó were engaged in the 1970s and the 1980s in the quest for world peace. What post-nuclear superweapons?

Nor did my oral message I conveyed to ÒGovernor ReaganÓ during our meeting readily fit some Republican or conservative conformities. On the contrary, it put the conventional political wisdom upside down. It was generally assumed that from 1947 and until Stalin's death in 1953 or Khrushchev's fall in 1963, Soviet Russia was close to attacking the United States. That was the Cold War. But the 1970s saw the Òrelaxation of international tensions.Ó

I told ÒGovernor ReaganÓ that the reality was just the opposite. Before the 1970s Soviet Russia would not attack the West. Why not? Mutual Assured Destruction! But in the 1970s the Soviet dictators began their search for superweapons, able to destroy the Western means of nuclear retaliation, that is, to circumvent Mutual Assured Destruction. This is when Soviet Russia became dangerous.

Yet for all its paradoxicality, ÒGovernor ReaganÓ accepted my oral message as readily as he did my ÒCommentaryÓ article.

Richard Allen was the link between Ronald Reagan and me. But as a result of a story so silly that I do not want even to recall it, Richard Allen resigned, and my connection with Ronald Reagan stopped. I thought it presumptuous to call the White House on my own.

However, when we had met, ÒGovernor ReaganÓ spoke of his plan to reform the CIAÑto create a new CIA, if you will. The Ònew CIAÓ has not been created as the latest events demonstrate. I think the task is beyond one person, no matter how intellectually bold and gifted. What is necessary is a new geostrategic culture, but if such culture is created before the West is annihilated or surrenders unconditionally, the name of Ronald Reagan will be inscribed into its opening page.