Good evening, everybody. Please find your seats. Good evening. Thanks for setting up this wonderful event. Mr. Robinson, members of the board, alumni in attendance, students, and ladies and gentlemen. For me, it is a pleasure and an honor to be able to open this event today. I am pleased to see so many faces. Some fairly young faces. And i am particularly pleased knowing the students today do not necessarily cherish things that happened 30 years ago. Be it jon bon jovi or George Michael or dirty dancing, there have been cooler periods in history than the 1980s. That is what my children keep reminding me. This is, however, different. With president reagans speech [speaking german] from president kennedys visit, might be better known in germany and the u. S. Foreign policy nerds know that there is nothing like president reagans addressing withtarygeneral gorbachev his call to tear down this wall. Interestingly, the speech received very little coverage at the time. However, the chancellor immediately realized its impact. President reagan was a stroke of luck for the world. Especially for europe. He would say after the speech. Also the rather hysterical reaction of the eastern german leadership also gives us an indication of the strength of that speech. I myself refreshed my memories a couple of days ago. After all i was in new york at , the time in 1987. So i did not have a chance to see it live. And it is indeed an impressive testimony, first and foremost to president reagans unconditional will to stand behind and sidebyside with his european partners, with germany, and with the citizens of berlin. [speaking german] i still have Something Back in berlin, is how he describes very special ties. Every american president since 1945 had to europe and to the city of berlin in particular. But reagans speech is also a clear commitment to freedom, democracy, and human rights. To those values drove american politics from the Founding Fathers to president lincoln through the 20th century until today. It is a commitment clearly reflected in this speech declaring unconditional support for european allies. And it is a commitment is clearly shown when the people of eastern germany and the people all over Eastern Europe stood up for their rights for liberty and democracy. Despite the protests and the peoples desire for freedom, we have to remember one thing. In the end, german unity was only possible because of our allies and neighbors because they had faith in us. And we also have to recall that many people in europe, many governments, were skeptical, whether a reunited germany would be as peaceful as it had been in the decades prior. The specter of the past was still very present. The American People and first and foremost its political leaders did not have these doubts. I think i see this as the strength of the oldest constitutional democracy in the world, that it recognized, people and leadership, that we, the people, is a power and force in history that cannot be stopped. Other partners, other countries in europe were more hesitant to historic this Unstoppable Force unfolding in , Eastern Europe. Without the support of the american leadership, of American People, german reunification two years later would not of happened. It is a lesson in how important and how effective the Transatlantic Alliance can be, how much we can change the world for the positive if we stand united. So, ladies and gentlemen, i find it is a nice coincidence that president reagans speech fall into the same year as the birth the arthur burns fellowship. What better connection could we think of for our event tonight . The clear commitment to freedom and Transatlantic Alliance could not be represented much better than in the combination of the two. Let us therefore welcome our panel today and in particular, the chairman of the fellowship program. And the good spirit of this event and of many other events happening with the fellowship program. Thank you for doing this and strongwelcome him with a applause. Thank you. [applause] thank you very much, ambassador, for that introduction and your continuing hatred of the fellowship. I would also like to thank the dean, who so generously arranged for us to hold the event today p and while he could not be here, his team has been here to very helpful to us. Todays panel was organized to commemorate two events of 30 years ago. The founding of the arthur burns fellowship and president reagans speech in june 1987. Let me start briefly with the burns fellowship. The arthur burns program was created to foster deeper understanding between germany and the u. S. And more recently, canada as well. Every year, nearly a dozen german journalists, american journalists, and now canadian journalists, they go to each others side of the atlantic and spend time in newsrooms learning and understanding the way that other countries think. Many top journalists from both sides of the atlantic have participated in these intellectual sojourns. The program is supported by top news organizations to send and receive journalists. Among the news organizations participated, the new york times, wall street journal, washington post, and many others. Npr, many others. Nonprofit programs. They depend on contributions from Companies IncludingGoldman Sachs and others as well as as a as individuals, as a result, you see a card to contribute. If you choose to support program we will be grateful to have it. , the burns program, as you will surmise, is named for arthur burns, the austrian economist starting with Dwight Eisenhower and was chairman of the Federal Reserve before he became ambassador to germany in 1980s. In his long career, he trained economists like milton friedman, he shaped postwar Economic Policy for the u. S. , he fought inflation in the 1970s and cemented the close ties between the u. S. And what was then west germany. He died in june of 1987 when his program was established in his name. Its goal is to strengthen the understanding between two powerful western allies has seldom been more relevant than it is today. The importance of the relationship was front and center in berlin 30 years ago this summer. It was there that president Ronald Reagan delivered one of his most memorable speeches. It was a call to tear down the wall that divided the postworld war ii world. An appeal to our common humanity and freedom and dignity. It is a call that should be trumpeted again today. Were fortunate to have with us today to talk about that speech three of the most knowledgeable people of the moment. Burt, Ambassador Richard who is on stage in berlin, who was with president reagan, and is also a trustee of the program. Peter robinson, a white house speechwriter who had primary responsibility for the speech. And the former Deputy Editor who wrote a book on it and will moderate todays conversations. I will hand it to them. Thank you very much. [applause] thank you. It is a pleasure to be here. It is a pleasure to be on the stage with men who witnessed and made history in berlin and throughout their careers. Quickly introduce them although markets already got us started. The ambassador, many of you know, was the center of a whole range of conversations that dealt with the end of the cold war. He was the assistant secretary for european and Canadian Affairs at the state department from 1983 to 1985, and he was of course the ambassador to west germany, and later the principal negotiator on the strategic arms reduction talks with the former soviet union. The ambassador was in berlin on that day and will talk about his role in the speech and what he witnessed when president reagan delivered those famous words. Peter robinson was the chief tear downr on the this wall address. He worked in the white house for five years as special assistant and speechwriter to president reagan. Theiously, he had been speechwriter for Vice President george h. W. Bush. Peter is now a Research Fellow at the hoover institution. The edits the quarterly journal and hosts the wildly Popular Video series on television. I hope you will indulge us as we talk about the history of the reagan speech. I think it is a fascinating history, silver fascinating i wrote a book about it. The fact that it did not sell a lot of copies may mean that others did not agree my assessment. Nevertheless, i bought two. There you go. I should have sent you a free one. We will talk for about a halfhour, talk about the speech and its legacy, and then we will open it up to questions from all of you. Ambassador burt, i wonder if we could start with you. I hope you could just take it back to the time leading up to president reagans visit to west berlin and give us a sense of the mood among west germans in particular. Inevitable the wall would come down november of 1989, but it was that something people were thinking about . Did they think it was realistic at that time in june of 1987 . That is i think a really great question and it is probably the most interesting question for understanding the impact of the reagan speech. I guess i would make a couple of points that need to be taken into account. You talk about the impact on the west germans that day. People at the speech were not considered west germans. They were berliners. They were not citizens of the federal republic of germany. At the time, berlin was still formally and occupied city. It is interesting. One of the reasons i got to sit so close to the president when he was delivering that speech is that the chancellor of germany and the foreign minister of germany were not present. They were not recognized officials in berlin. You had the governing mayor and representatives of the city council, but this was a kind of anomaly, still being an occupied city. When i went to berlin, i was not the u. S. Ambassador. I was the high commissioner. Strange i had this responsibility. Meet on occasion with my russian counterpart the russian , ambassador to the federal republic. But when i was in berlin, i was having regular meetings with the ambassador to east germany. I was talking to two different Russian Ambassadors, given this unique, peculiar situation of berlin being an occupied city. Why that is important for the reagan speech is this. One of the things we had to do, and we always talk about the allies and we talk about the allies in those days, we met the United States, britain, and and france. And our collective responsibility. Recognized that for it to work it had to get Political Support from home. It was not just enough that west germany and the west German Parliament would support us financially, which they did. But we needed the public, Political Support from the United States, britain, and from france. These countries or at least the leadership needed to understand why we were still hanging around defending berlin. And somebody, probably the governing mayor, came up with the idea that we should commemorate the 750th anniversary of berlin. I think that was probably phony date. I dont think you could go back 750 years and find the establishment of berlin. But it gained traction. It gave us an opportunity. One of the big ideas was during that year, the head of state of all three i like powers should come to berlin. Sure enough, you had a visit from the queen, the president of france, and of course, Ronald Reagan. That created the opportunity. I always thought it was perfectly teed up for Ronald Reagan, that this was the opportunity to talk about an issue he believed in, that he would feel totally at home and comfortable with. But he did not, i think, and you can correct me if im wrong, and now i am getting to the heart of the question, there was a weariness, a fatigue, with the division of germany and of berlin. Berlin was still an exciting place, a big youth culture, and a great place to be. Really, i think by 1987, had drawn the conclusion that the wall was not going to go away anytime soon. That it had become a kind of permanent fixture of life in berlin. Meanwhile in west germany, i found a different sort of mentality, which was, somehow, the division of germany is again going to be semipermanent. Nobody saw a way out or a way of reuniting germany. In fact, i remember very clearly going to a meeting convened by the centerright party in germany, the cdu, where they asked me and the Russian Ambassador to speak, which i found in itself a little bit unusual. And one of the things the Russian Ambassador said, you know, one thing you guys have got to stop doing is talking about reunification. It is not going to happen. I came back ferociously to argue that, whether you think it will happen next year or in 10 years, it would be a terrible thing if the people of west germany gave up on the dream of reunification. That said, i did not think it would happen anytime soon. Efforts by theus German Government not to try and bring that wall down but to transcend the wall, to find ways of building up ties for what was known as the inner german relationship. Ways contacts, and find the much bigger and richard west germans could help the east germans. I will stop my answer here but there is a lot of mythology about east germany. In west germany and in west berlin. I learned an important historic lesson. Being close to a situation does not necessarily mean you understand it. Nobody in 1987 or really 1988 or even into thought that there was 1989 going to be some kind of Popular Uprising in the east. Of so, there was a kind commitment to this process of trying to find ways of increasing interaction between the two germanys. To try to somehow ignore it on the one hand and on the other hand, to try to ease the pain and the feeling of the historical inevitability of the division of germany. That is what made, in my view, the reagan remark so refreshing. Different because he stared head on standing in front of the berlin wall and challenged the east to bring the wall down. That is a great deal of context. I would now like to know, how much of that did you know when you were assigned to write the remarks at the Brandenburg Gate . Tell us how the whole process worked in the Reagan White House and when were you told you would , write the speech . How did you start piecing together the elements of what was going to go into it . I will. Let me begin by thanking the ambassador. For 30 years, i have wondered about the correct pronunciation. Finally. I spent 30 years practicing. In a word, you brought me here after three decades to embarrass me because in a word, here we , immensely knowledgeable, all the nuances and sophistication. And that was rick burt at the time as well. And in the reagan speech, we knew essentially none of this. Youre right about the 750th anniversary being a sham when researching was when was berlin founded . It was not founded. It just sort of emerged. The briefly, and i am truly embarrassed about my younger self because i was just a kind of an idiot child stumbling along. What happened was the Scheduling Office said he was going to speak in berlin, the 750th anniversary. I cannot recall who gave me the direction. It mustve been the chief speechwriter at the time. The president is going to stand in front of the berlin wall, the gate would be visible behind him in the shot. It will be a crowd of about 10,000. I think at the events, it was closer to 40,000. Speak for half an hour. I think you ought to talk about foreign policy. That was really all the direction i was given. There is a back story that he was holding back a lot of direction. He wanted me to do research in berlin with a clear mind. But then i did go to berlin with the american preadvance party very briefly, four stops in berlin with me that day. The first was to the site where the president would speak. I remember feeling a speechwriter in trouble. I do not know how you convey to people who are not old enough to have seen it themselves. It is a serious question. How you convey what it felt like to stand at the wall . The reichstag still pockmarked. Behind you, west berlin, color motion, activity, people , welldressed, driving beautiful mercedes. And you look over the wall, and everything is gray and brown and you see very little street traffic. More soldiers than pedestrians. On the main thoroughfare, i saw a couple of cars going by. I just had a feeling of a sense of moment, of place the weight , of history. Been in a place since or before where you just felt the weight of history. Number two, i went to see your colleague. And johns title is minister. John kornblum minister. Le was john filled me in on much of what you are saying. My point of view that it was what the president should not say. Mie bashing. Com in berlin, these people are acutely sensitive to the nuance and subtlety involved in eastwest relations. And by the way, this might have been a point similar to the weariness, they have gotten used to the wall. Dont make a big thing about the wall. Number three, i was given a ride in the u. S. Helicopter over the wall. It looked bad enough from inside west berlin. You could forget about it for a moment. You were in a modern city. But from the air, incomparably worse. As im sure you remember. From the air, you can see on the other side dog runs guard , towers. For some reason, which i found a especially striking there , were large areas of raked gravel. I used the intercom to ask the pilot. The pilot explained that was for the young east german guards. If the guard ever allowed a member of his family to escape, he would have to explain footprints in the gravel. I thought, they thought of everything. You could feel angry. Then the final event, i broke away from the American Party that evening. I left the hotel in downtown brooklyn and went to