Rawhide Down_ The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan - Del Quentin Wilber [16]
By 1978, Allen was Reagan’s unpaid foreign policy advisor. He and another aide, Peter Hannaford, escorted the former governor on a trip to Asia in the spring and one to Europe in the fall to burnish his international credentials.
In Britain, they were shunned by the prime minister, James Callaghan, who apparently didn’t want to offend President Carter. After a meeting with a lower-level official, Reagan was surrounded by a swarm of female office workers, many of them asking for autographs and peppering him with questions about Hollywood, actresses, and actors. Beaming, Reagan took out a pen and began signing his name and telling stories. Finally, Allen realized that he had to cut the unplanned encounter short: they were late for a meeting with the leader of the British Conservative Party, Margaret Thatcher, whom Reagan had met at least once before.
“We have to go, Governor,” Allen said.
“Take it easy, Dick,” Reagan replied, smiling. “These are my friends.”
During the meeting with Thatcher, Reagan and the future British prime minister further cemented a bond that would fortify the two leaders through various domestic and international calamities in the years ahead. After the visit to Britain, the next stop was France, and then Reagan and Allen continued on to West Germany, where they visited the Berlin Wall.
Standing in front of the concrete barrier that separated free West Berlin from communist East Berlin, Reagan turned to Allen. When he spoke, his voice was full of passion. “You know, Dick, we have to find a way to knock this thing down.” The future president’s words, which he would later echo in one of his most famous speeches, hung in the air for a moment as the two adversaries of communism studied a wall that symbolized everything that was wrong with the world behind the Iron Curtain.
Since that visit to West Berlin a few years earlier, the struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union had only grown more intense. The Russians invaded Afghanistan in 1979. The United States boycotted the 1980 summer Olympic Games in Moscow. A historic arms limitation treaty died in Congress, and the United States imposed a grain embargo to protest the Soviet presence in Afghanistan. In recent weeks, Reagan and his officials had begun to ratchet up their rhetorical attacks on Moscow, accusing the Soviets of meddling in Central America and the Middle East. In January, at the president’s first news briefing, a reporter asked Reagan about the “long range intentions of the Soviet Union” and wondered whether the president believed the USSR was “bent on world domination.”
Reagan answered by saying that Soviet leaders had long promoted “world revolution and a one-world Socialist or Communist state.” Continuing, he said, “Now, as long as they do that and as long as they, at the same time, have openly and publicly declared that the only morality they recognize is what will further their cause, meaning they reserve unto themselves the right to commit any crime, to lie, to cheat, in order to attain that, and that is moral, not immoral, and we operate on a different set of standards, I think when you do business with them, even at a détente, you keep that in mind.”
Allen, standing at the back of the room, cracked a grin. Reagan’s sharp words sent the Soviets a clear signal that he heartily endorsed. But during the preparations for the press conference, Reagan had carefully avoided using just this kind of inflammatory language, knowing that some of his advisors would insist he tone it down.
Shortly after the press conference, Reagan turned to Allen as they both headed for the Oval Office. “Say, Dick,” Reagan said. “The Soviets—they do lie, cheat, and steal to get everything they want, right?”
“They sure do, Mr. President,” Allen replied.
Reagan chuckled and said, “I thought so.”
Now, in March 1981, there was serious labor unrest in Poland, a country