The switch from Al Haig to George Shultz as secretary of state occurred in the summer of 1982. Reagan had asked Haig to stay in charge while the latest fighting in Lebanon between Israel and PLO forces, aided by Syria, continued. Shultz took over at the end of July after relaxed confirmation hearings. Reagan, who up until then had seemed to pay limited attention to the Middle East, read over a local California radio station on September 1, 1982, his own “peace proposal” fpr the region after the Lebanon fighting had died down. Reagan called upon the Israelis to allow the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to have “full autonomy over their own affairs” for five years after elections for a self-governing Palestinian authority, Reagan also called on Israel for a “settlement freeze” to provide confidence for further negotiations. He said he favored self-government for the Palestinians in association with Jordan.
This plan was immediately rejected by the Begin government in Israel and by the Arab states. In other words, it was a flop on day one. It had virtually no advance build-up and it was not “sold” to the parties privately. The Middle East became the subject of Shultz’s first major public speech as secretary of state. The speech was given to some of Israel’s strongest financial backers in the United States, many of whom had given at least $100,000 a year to Israel. Shultz acknowledged major differences but he called on the parties “to come together at the bargaining table.” “To talk,” he said. “To talk about differences: to talk about aspirations, to talk about peace. But in all events, to talk.” But Shultz did not share Kissinger’s activism, and did not go out to the region until several months later when there was renewed fighting between Israel and the PLO and Syria in Lebanon.
Shultz also met in New York with Gromyko who was in town for the yearly General Assembly session. But with U.S.-Soviet relations at that time still in a deep freeze over Afghanistan and Poland among other issues, thee was not much to agree upon. The lack of any progress may also have been due to the illness of Brezhnev, who was to die on November 10. Yuri V. Andropov, 68, the former head of the KGB, replaced Brezhnev. Andropov himself died on February 9, 1984 after just 15 months in office. He was replaced by Konstantin U. Chernenko, who in Russian terms, was an “apparatchik,” who talked about wanting to resurrect the era of detente in relations. But Chernenko himself died on March 10, 1985.
In 1983, Israel had moved troops into southern Lebanon to counter PLO forces, backed by Syrian troops, who were supplied with Soviet arms. Shultz went to the area in late April to see if he could broker a deal to stop the fighting, He tried to work out an arrangement by which Israel would withdraw its troops from Lebanon, but the Israelis would only do so if Syria was also a party to the deal. We spent several weeks in April and May shuttling back and forth between Lebanon and Israel to no avail. Shultz went on to Paris for a European ministers meeting.
In 1984, with Reagan seeking re-election, and both Russia and the United States preaching a desire for better relations, there was clearly an improvement.
The arrival of Mikhail Gorbachev on the scene came as something of a surprise to Kremlin watchers. I became caught up with Gorbachev in late October and early November of 1985. Reagan had in a way frightened Soviet leaders in March 1983 when he called for devoting resources to producing defenses in outer space–the so-called “Star Wars” speech. Gorbachev called for a summit meeting with Reagan and plans were made for a summit in Geneva on November 19 and 20. At that meeting the two leaders renewed the cultural exchange agreement which had been an important thaw in relations. It was thought that this would be a precursor to a major summit in Washington in 1986, But nothing happened until the end of August when a Soviet employee at the United Nations was arrested for trying to buy secret jet engine designs. This was followed a week later by the arrest in Moscow of Nicholas S. Daniloff, who was a good friend of mine from Washington when he covered State Department for UPI. Now, he was in Moscow working for U.S. News and World Report. This was clearly an attempt by Moscow to set up a prisoner trade, which eventually occurred.
One result of the prisoner exchange was an agreement for a sudden two-day summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, on October 11 and 12. The Iceland summit caught the media by surprise, and in fact, the only way the Times team could get to Iceland was via the NY Times jet rented by Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., the publisher, who was known as “Punch,” who contributed it for the week. It was a most unusual summit. There was a complete news blackout for two days. Maureen Dowd, later a well-known columnist, had a field day writing how Raisa Gorbachev dominated the scene in the absence of Nancy Reagan who had stayed behind in Washington. Finally, on the last day, after a very long final meeting between Reagan and Gorbachev, we were given a long press conference by Shultz. Gorbachev spoke separately to Soviet reporters. The sum total was expressed by Gorbachev who said: “We missed a historic chance. Never have our positions been so close.” The issue was the same that had split the two sides in recent years ever since Reagan had called for building a defense against missiles.
There was quite a debate later that day within the Times team on how to play the story. I was in favor of playing up how close the two sides had come to an accord. The wires had played up the failure to agree on anything, The eight-column hed that the Times put on my lead story I thought was fair: “Reagan-Gorbachev Talks End in Stalemate/As US. Rejects Demand to Curb ‘Star Wars’.” Any doubts about the way the meeting went were dispelled in the next couple of days by Shultz, At a press conference in Washington two days later, he said: “We almost got to the point where what would have to be described as the most sweeping bargain ever made was possible, but we couldn’t quite make it.”
In October 1986, Max Frankel became the next executive editor of the Times and many changes were announced. Bill Kovach, the Washington bureau chief, resigned to become editor of the Atlanta Constitution, to be replaced by Craig Whitney, and I was initially asked to become chief White House correspondent. I asked not to be moved from diplomatic correspondent because I argued that in the last two years of his term he would be as a lame duck. Then, Joe Lelyveld, whom I knew from the bureau, but who had recently been the chief London correspondent, was named foreign editor, and he asked that I serve as his deputy. Marie-Jeanne had been urging me to move to a bigger house to give our two boys more room, so I asked her if she would mind looking in the New York area instead of Washington. She said okay, and I moved to New York in late January 1987, while she stayed behind so the boys could finish their school years.
But there was still another big surprise coming.
In May 1986, Robert C. McFarlane, the former director of the National Security Council, along with Lieut. Col. Oliver L.North. and a retired CIA Iranian expert. George W. Cave made a secret visit to Teheran as part of an effort to free Americans who had been taken hostage by pro-Iranian elements in Lebanon and elsewhere. It turned out to have been quite a visit. They carried with them a Bible with an inscription from President Reagan. The background for the visit was that the Israelis, who had been in touch with Iranians, had been selling Iran military equipment for its war with Iraq. And they then persuaded McFarlane and North that if the United States did the same it could lead to a hostage release. The visit was first publicized by a small Lebanese paper, but no one took it seriously until November, when the details came out in the probes by Congress.
Even though American law banned arms sales to Iran, Reagan gave his approval, but never told George Shultz, So this meant that my last days as a reporter were spent covering the seeming collapse of the Reagan administration’s command of affairs, with Shultz angrily telling Congress how he had been cut out of the deal going on. He also said he would have opposed it. Then it turned out that the funds secured from the sales to Iran were used by North to aid the so-called “Contras” fighting in Nicaragua against the leftist government there. Thus was born the Iran-Contra scandal.
Reagan gave a TV address in which he denied the Iranian dealings and later had to retract what he said. But Reagan’s reputation was saved by the continuing dialogue with Gorbachev and the improvement in US.-Russian relations. Moscow decided to pull its troops out of Afghanistan, which they had sent into the country in December 1979, in effect ruining relations with the United States for the next several years. The Reagan-Gorbachev years were productive. Following on the failed Iceland summit, Gorbachev came to Washington at the end of 1987 to sign a deal cutting both sides offensive weapons. Gorbachev, in fact, returned to the United States at the very end of 1988 to address the United Nations General Assembly. Reagan in turn visited Moscow in June 1988 for a reciprocal summit. At the end of January 1987, I had moved to New York to become deputy foreign editor, and I went along to Moscow to help the coverage of the Reagan summit in June 1988.
