FIRST SPOUSES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403000002-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 12, 2012
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: April 8, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
1 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000403000002-6
ARTICLE AP D CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
ON PAGE 8 April 1987
JONM S$
First spouses
TIME magazine was once doing a major story on
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and
asked Secretary of State George P Shultz for a
quote summing up his views of her.
"I'd hate to be her husband if she got home and I
didn't have dinner ready for her," said Shultz.
Fbr the ever-discreet Shultz it was a mildly daring
comment, but it captured in humorous vein his consid-
erable admiration for her toughness. And he was
persuaded that Mrs. Thatcher's husband, Denis,
would find it funny enough not to be offensive.
Actually, in a bid to soften her image somewhat,
Mrs. Thatcher has lately been letting herself be photo-
graphed stirring cabbage and performing other do-
mestic chores. But with a perfectly adequate staff at
No. 10 Downing Street, the fact is that the Thatchers
have little need to do the cooking themselves.
However, though life at the top may be plush, the
spouses of world leaders have been having a tough
time of it lately, and probably a little humor helps
them cope.
Mr. Thatcher, for instance, has long been getting
merciless treatment in those British publications spe-
cializing in intellectual humor. He is depicted as a kind
of bumbling "first gentleman." The British under-
stand all this kind of humor rather well and don't take
it too seriously, and it is to be hoped Mr. Thatcher
doesn't either.
First Lady Nancy Reagan has been the butt of some
less charitable criticism. Early in her husband's presi-
dency, she was under attack for extravagant spend-
ing at the White House, and on haute couture gowns.
She defused much of that criticism by throwing her-
self seriously into antidrug work, and also by a re-
markable, self-mocking performance at a Washington
Gridiron Club dinner. Dressed in hand-me-downs, she
wowed the Washington press corps with her own
version of Barbra Streisand's "Secondhand clothes"
song.
Fbr some years after that, Mrs. Reagan got a good
press, but during the Irangate debacle she again cum
under fire. This time some commentators cast her as a
dragm lady," and behind ga slipping
Presided, manipulating What has since become clear is that while Mr.
Reagan suffered a serious political setback, he is
totally capable and coherent and that all Mrs. Reagan
was doing was trying to support him and extricate
him from a rough patch. If that is a mime, then half
the wives in America must be dragon ladies.
And now it is Raisa Gorbachev's turn. The criticism
of her seems far from benevolent. Somebody has put
leader s wia fe clandestine videotape
abroad for jewelry ~and fash-
ionable Western clothing. She is supposed to be shown
signing for some of these items on an American Ex-
press Gold Card.
The tape is apparently circulating on the Moscow
underground and is intended to stir criticism. of her,
and probably, by indirection, her husband's attempt
to shake up the Soviet system.
Who made the tave9 Mr. Gorbachev's enemies
within the USSR are prime suaDerxs. Some point the
Raw at the KGB, which certainly would have the
technical and the op Nymgr to shoot
such an undercover film. H -
gence agency, such as the CIA, cannot be ruled out.
I hope the CIA is not the m1prit in this. Mrs.
Go s emergence may- pose Rg~or the
Soviets, for the wives of their leaders have tradition
encourage, not deride, that spouses with a
little independence, a little flair. And if they are
communist first spouses, a little rising expectation, a
little admiration for Western style, is not a bad thing
to take back home to such a drab, gray capital as
Moscow.
The American Express Company - if you'll excuse
the expression - is probably tidied pink. They're
probably trying to figure out how they can get Rain
to do one of their oommqals
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000403000002-6