'Reagan's Secret War' shows how he outsmarted Soviets

WASHINGTON — A key figure in the early days of the Reagan administration tells of one of the first meetings the new president had with his military and security advisers. Speaking of the Soviet Union, Reagan is supposed to have asked how the U.S. sized up with the Russians.

Reagan wanted to know whether the United States had more planes, missiles, nuclear warheads, and so forth. Each time, the answer came back negative. Finally the president allegedly said, "What do we have more of?"

After a long pause one of his advisers held up his hand and said, "money."

"Then that is what we will use, to even things out," Reagan reportedly said.

Whether completely accurate or not, the fact is that this former movie star turned politician took the nation down a military spending path that nearly bankrupted the nation but ultimately led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. He literally forced the Russians to keep up and in the end they couldn't. At the same time it dispelled the notion, long held by his most liberal critics, that he was an easily manipulated B actor who rarely had an original thought.

It turns out that nothing was further from the truth, as two of his former key advisers, Martin and Annelise Anderson, have documented in a series of books based on Reagan's own writings and private papers. It is a body of work that reveals a president whose core beliefs never wavered and whose commitment to solving the nuclear arms race never faltered — a far deeper, more introspective chief executive than his opponents would let themselves believe.

This husband and wife team — senior fellows at the Hoover Institution — has followed up bestsellers "Reagan, In His Own Hand;" "Reagan: A Life in Letters" and "Reagan's Path to Victory" with an intimate portrayal of a president not only completely in charge but making decisions without hesitation. Using dozens of secret letters from Reagan to world leaders, the minutes of 154 Reagan-chaired National Security Council meetings and eyewitness notes from four Reagan-Mikhail Gorbachev summits, the authors reveal a stubborn determination to make the world a safer place.

Adding significantly to the work is a foreword by former Reagan Secretary of State George Shultz who relates a wonderful vignette about Margaret Thatcher's reaction to the Reykjavik meeting where Reagan and Gorbachev decided nuclear weaponry should be abolished.