NEEDED: STRENGTH AND PATIENCE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000505410064-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 10, 2010
• Sequence Number: 64
• Publication Date: March 22, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/10: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505410064-8
STAT
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE 4
TIME
22 MARCH 1982
Superpower dress: Reagan, center, with advisers In White House Situation Room
The Presidency/Hugh Sidey
Needed: Strength and Patience
F rom Ronald Reagan's first day on the job, photographs and clandestine re-
ports have flowed across his desk every morning, convincing this President
that a revolution in the Caribbean has been coaxed and fed by Moscow and Ha-
vana. The CIA gave the world a glimpse of that evidence last week. But docu-
mentation of a big military buildup in Nicaragua is only one fragment of the in-
doctrination the President has received in superpower chess.
He has listened-to CIA Director William Casey narrate how the Soviet Union
has exploited food, technology and credits from the free world; both men were
astonished at how important these were to Soviet society. Lips pursed, head
shaking in grim amazement, Reagan watched the agency's "horror show"
of satellite pictures of Soviet ships and submarines coming down the ways,
bow to stem, like compacts rolling off a Detroit production line.
Reagan has sat, wondering at the irony of it all, as his briefers have traced
how captured American M-16s, their serial numbers clumsily altered, were
shipped around the world from Viet Nam to the rebels in El Salvador. The Presi-
dent has observed the painstaking accumulation of evidence that Moscow's cli-
ents have used poison gas (the deadly `yellow rain") in Southeast Asia and that
the Soviets have themselves employed it in Afghanistan-perhaps out of frustra-
tion that all their troops and equipment have been unable to break down a stub-
born resistance by the mountain tribes to military occupation-
Reagan relished the accounts of how the CIA
penetrated the Polish govern-,
ment and how informers, once discovered, were spirited out of the country along
with their families-but not before they had disclosed Moscow's hand in the
martial-law crackdown.. Reagan has followed the cabled details of Leonid
Brezhnev's tears and grief after the recent death of Mikhail Suslov, the hard-line
ideologue of the Politburo. Some of those secret reports tell of instant "personal-
ity changes" of high Soviet diplomats when they were informed of Suslov's de--
mise. Those diplomats grew distant, their minds-back in Moscow, as they wor-
riedly waited for the changes that inevitably follow any unexpected interruption,
in totalitarian authority.: fi
Reagan has been tutored day after day by his experts that the Soviets are in a
"historic decline" and a "systemic failure" that renders them, despite their pow-
er, more unpredictable and dangerous than ever. From all of this, and much
more, he has concluded that we have entered two of the most perilous years of
modern times and that in this period it is imperative for the U.S. to stay strong-
This conviction explains why the President seems shrill about Central America
and sometimes nearly fanatical in his refusal to cut defense spending. He be-
lieves that America's--and his--credibility, both with adversaries and friends,
lies in the extra billions. Those dollars instantly translate in Reagan's mind into
helicopters and guns, then into confidence and courage,. and ultimately into vic-
tory for our side.
The danger-and it is a serious danger-is that the President may be a pris-
oner of his preconceptions, and that the selectively chosen evidence being shown
him could simply reinforce his entrenched ideology in illusory ways. El Salvador
and Viet Nam are not alike, in either geography or politics, but restraint and pa-
tience about American intervention may be as much in order as they should-..:: -
have been 20 years ago. If the Soviet empire is overextended, Reagan's challenge
is to assist that "historic decline"-a long journey requiring, quiet courage and..,
extraordinary sensitivity = , a:'?
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/10: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505410064-8