James Mann - The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan

The objections covered everything from broad policy to the most arcane details. On behalf of the State Department, Rodman tried to take out the allusion to Marlene Dietrich’s song “Ich hab’ noch einen Koffer in Berlin” (“I still have a suitcase in Berlin”), which Robinson had picked up at his dinner in West Berlin. Rodman said the line had “the wrong tone—nostalgia and abandonment, not commitment.” State Department officials added that this was an old German song not particularly identified with Dietrich anyway. In a Solomonic compromise, the line stayed in, but not Dietrich: in his actual speech, Reagan attributed the song to its German composer, Paul Lincke.

Some of Rodman’s suggestions were accepted. The early versions of the speech included the line “General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, come to Berlin.” (Those words evoked John F. Kennedy’s 1963 speech: “There are some who say, in Europe and elsewhere, we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin .”) But in his critique, Rodman argued that it would be silly for Reagan to utter these words, because by the time of the president’s speech, Gorbachev would in fact have recently attended the Warsaw Pact meetings in Berlin and would have just departed. Was Reagan supposed to tell Gorbachev to come back to Berlin? This became too confusing, and the line vanished. 4

Among the deletions Rodman sought was the line calling upon Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall. In Rodman’s editing of a draft of the speech dated May 27, 1987, the entire four-paragraph passage about demolishing the wall is crossed out with a big X.

Rodman had the support of senior officials. On June 1, Powell wrote a short note saying that “we (and the State Department) continue to have serious problems with this speech…. We still believe that some important thematic passages (e.g., pp. 6-7) are wrong.” At the very top of page 6, the first sentence read: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” 5

This was not merely a war of memos. In late May, the top officials of Ronald Reagan’s foreign-policy team spent time on the phone and in meetings attempting to change the speech—in particular, to remove the words “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” At first, they directed their lobbying campaign at Thomas Griscom, the White House official responsible for overseeing the speechwriters. At one point, Robinson was summoned to Griscom’s office, where he found Colin Powell waiting for him. Powell said he didn’t like the tone of the speech.

Robinson defended what he had written, and Griscom supported his speechwriter. Reagan himself had already seen, recited, and felt comfortable with the line about tearing down the wall, Griscom pointed out. In an interview two decades later, Powell explained that he had merely been doing his job to pass along the objections of the State Department. The “fantastic” line about tearing down the Berlin Wall remained in the speech, Powell noted, “and the State Department said, ‘Uh oh, this could be trouble.’ I think the secretary of state had reservations that we might be putting our finger in Gorbachev’s eye, while we were trying to build a relationship with him.” 6

A few days after the Powell meeting, the dispute was elevated to the very highest level of the Reagan administration. White House chief of staff Howard Baker called Griscom into his West Wing office for a session with Secretary of State George Shultz. The secretary said he had problems with the Berlin speech. He was concerned that if Reagan delivered the line urging Gorbachev to tear down the wall, it could set back the progress that had been made so far in improving relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. Indeed, such a speech might even jeopardize Gorbachev’s position and the domestic reforms he was carrying out. (Shultz, in an interview for this book, said he did not recall making such an argument. “I can’t imagine anyone objecting to him making that statement, ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall,’” Shultz said.) 7

Griscom responded that “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” was the best line in the whole speech. “That is the sound bite that everyone is going to grab,” he told Shultz and Baker. This would be one of the president’s final trips to Europe, and the Berlin speech represented an opportunity for him to say something memorable, he argued. Moreover, Griscom pointed out, the line about the wall did not really represent any significant change in American foreign policy. The United States had always taken the position that the Berlin Wall should be torn down.

Baker was not persuaded. In the end, the decision went back to the president. Baker’s deputy, Kenneth Duberstein, informed Reagan in the Oval Office that there had been a dispute within his administration over the words “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” Duberstein said that he thought it was a great line, but that the State Department strongly objected on grounds that it might be too inflammatory. Reagan asked Duberstein if he agreed. The White House aide gave no direct answer. You’re the president, he said. You get to decide. Reagan looked down at his desk, looked back up, and said, “I think we’ll leave it in.” 8

The battles over what Reagan would say in Berlin continued even as he departed for Europe. At 8:45 a.m. on June 3, 1987, the president and his wife left the White House by helicopter for Andrews Air Force Base, where they boarded Air Force One for Venice. Reagan was by then seventy-six years old and traveling less and less; this was the first time he had left the continental United States since the summit in Reykjavik nearly eight months earlier.

That same morning, officials at his National Security Council gathered in the Situation Room of the White House, the place where senior officials try to resolve foreign-policy crises. They were trying one more time to win approval for changes in Reagan’s Berlin speech:

June 3, 1987

Memorandum For Colin L. Powell

From: Peter W. Rodman

Subject: Presidential Address: Brandenburg Gate

Attached is a redo of the Berlin speech, reflecting our meeting in the Sit Room this morning…. You indicated you planned to call Tom Griscom about it. 1

This time, Reagan’s foreign-policy advisers complained about several passages in the speech that depicted life in West Berlin. In the speechwriters’ draft, the president was supposed to praise the economic advances made there in the four decades since World War II: “Where there was want, today there is abundance—food, clothing, automobiles, the wonderful goods of the Kudamm [the Kurfurstensdamm, West Berlin’s main shopping street]; even home computers.”

Rodman crossed out the words food, clothing and the rest of the sentence that followed. “Patronizing as well as materialistic,” he commented.

The foreign-policy team also attempted to cut a passage that asked residents of West Berlin why they continued to live in the city, despite its isolation inside East German surroundings, the history of the threatening Soviet blockade, and the grim presence of the wall. “What keeps you here?” the speech asked. It suggested that West Berliners had a way of life “that stubbornly refuses to abandon this good and proud city to a surrounding presence that is merely brutish.”

Officials at the State Department and the National Security Council warned that Reagan should not ask the people of West Berlin why they stayed there. Those words were too negative in tone, they argued. In fact, some people lived in West Berlin for self-interested reasons: because it was among the most subsidized cities in Europe, or because residence there won them an exemption from the military draft to which other West Germans were subject.