Be more informal recollections about what it was like working in the administration for president himself and the atmosphere at the time. Each of our panelists will offer 10 to 15 minutes of prefatory comments, and then we will turn it over for q a. Especially for the historians, my fellow historians in the room, this is your time to do the expert interviews you have been wanting to do. Introducing my three panelists, the man who needs no introduction. I mean that literally, because i introduced him three hours ago. Ambassador ken adelman. For our purposes here, he served as one of president reagans ambassadors to the u. N. And was also a troubleshooter in another way. I want to talk to you about your role in putting together the iran contra. In the middle here, again, a man to those of us who here in austin and many other americans, admiral bob inman. He holds the centennial chair, a alum of thent Reagan Administration as well. He was the nsa director and was referenced by one of the speakers in the earlier panel, and then was the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence for the first few years of the administration. And admiral, i do not know if i have told you this before, but a couple of years ago, i came across a fascinating letter from Barry Goldwater to then president elect reagan to urge him to appoint admiral inman to be the director of the cia. I will just leave it at that. Andes to me is closest to me now is dr. Henry nau, one of the directors of Economic Affairs for the first he was the senior director of the Economic International Affairs for the first several years. Before we turn it to the panelists, we have an enormous breadth of expertise represented on the panel. Henry worked at the white house. Then admiral inman and master itll men as various agencies. It they all spam the first and second term, so we have a pretty good breadth of experience. We will start with ambassador aleman adelman. Mr. Adelman i will be, as henry viii was with his various wives, i will be brief. Because i had my time. I will mostly react to things that were said. Let me say and react first to the panel. Before, there was a wonderful, wonderful panel. So kudos for everyone in it and for willow for putting it together here at the clements center. The whole question of agency and how much a president actually does is an age old question. At home, i have all of the Time Magazine persons of the year since 1927, because i believe that people really do make history and really do change things. Of the flowtoy idea of the times is, i think, a good excuse for those getting in and flowing. Who really do not want to change much. There is a big difference between transactional president s and transformational president s. A transactional president is an inbox president. And a transformational president oneutbox president who really wants to make a change. In my area, as i said in the talks, the fact is there were four pillars of Ronald Reagans strategy. Whether he thought this was a strategy or not, i have no idea. Whether he really put the 4 together, i have no idea. But they were very distinct. Number one was the delegitimization of the soviet leadership. Started the First Press Conference he had as president. They lie, cheat, steal to further their aims, and ended with his speech to the nation right when he left office. And the suspicion about the soviet leadership and the system was prevalent. No other president had done anything like that. Nixon, carter, nobody had done delegitimized the soviet union like that. It was not done. It was brandnew. Second was, like i say the , overall defense buildup. That, i concede, was more of a republican view than anything at that time. So i would say it out of the four, that is the closest anyone would have done was as ever public and president. Number three is the fbi. That would not have happened without Ronald Reagan. People at ask all the time, at reykjavik, people were trying to get reagan to accept gorbachevs talking. But to tell you the truth, the issue never came up. Why . Because reagan knew what he wanted. He did not want the fdi to be cashiered in any respect. So that was pretty well set with him. So these kind of factors were from reagan and from his thoughts. The fourth was, of course, the real reduction in Nuclear Weapons. Not the limitation of increases. Again, nothing that carter ever thought of or wanted or advocated. Nothing that nixon ever thought of or wanted or advocated. Nothing that ford ever thought of or advocated. Nothing that we in the business ever thought was doable. But it was startling, and reagan insisted on it. Out of those four things, at least three and a half of them are unique to Ronald Reagan. No one else would have done that. The second overall point i would make is on the very good panel before us, which i learned a lot from, the question of the human rights. A very nice job on that. But i would make three overall points. Number one, the rap that Ronald Reagan, in retrospect, gets for really going after human rights against communism, not against authoritarian south african, south american bad guys around the world. I think it was totally justified. Authoritarian dictators never massacred tens of millions of people as communism did. Authoritarian governments can change. South korea goes from authoritarian government to a free government. Taiwan goes from authoritarian government to a free government. Chile goes to an authoritarian government to a freer government. Communist till the end of the cold war never changes. So i think the idea lets really stress human rights against communism rather than against authoritarianism, i think it is totally justified. Second overall point on human rights is i am sure it is in your paper, but this is a gigantic factor. The gigantic factor is, of course iran. , the shah was a bad guy. Khomeini is much worse. Ronald reagan comes in, he is sworn in 30 years ago, and that day was when the hostages were released from iran. There was a trauma in the United States about iran. There was a clear evidence that if you go, like carter did, to remove, all too late, the shah, you get something maybe a lot worse. You know what . In iran . You got something a lot worse. People said it could not be worse. By the way, it was. I was very fortunate that, at the inauguration i went to the inauguration. I had a blacktie party at my own house. The night of the inauguration, i had my parents in town, my brothers, my wife, jeanne kirkpatrick, george will, rumsfeld, the cheneys, all kinds of people we were friendly with kid it was so cool, because that night, i left my own blacktie party and went over with jimmy carter, who welcome exhostages, the who had just been released. But the idea of the experience in iran was a gigantic overhang for the human rights situation. During the Reagan Administration. The third point i would make is you have to grade on the curve on human rights. Carter spoke about the human rights policy. I do not know if it was any different than the reagan policy. Iran ased the shah of an island of stability in a turbulent area. I do not think that was great human rights. I do not remember carter taking a stance on south africa, south america, or other places. That was radically different from the reagan situation. Speeches thanmore reagan did on human rights, but i do not see any policy. Do i see the difference is i do not want to give a rap on carter i do not see any differences in other president s. President obama talk to but human rights. For a longto mubarak time, when everyone thought he was on his way out. He had acceptances, certainly the most horrendous Human Rights Violations since world war ii, to tell you the truth, in syria, of which obama did nothing. I cant imagine a human rights situation where you have over a half a Million People in this situation, and an american president is basically mentioning a futile as a few that is atsk tsk, terrible thing but not doing anything about it. I think that is the most horrendous human rights record i have seen since world war ii. Those are my views on the past. Really quickly, i would have to say that working for Ronald Reagan was a delight. I was very lucky, because he was interested in certain things and he was not interested in a lot of things. There was sort of an odd situation in that i was lucky that he cared about my field. And he cared enormous for about my field. The year i was sworn in as arms control director, from the United Nations 1983, a very eventful year of which there were no talks ongoing, i went over to the white house i think withhing like 38 times meetings with the president. Almost once a week. I can imagine what it would be like if we had ongoing talks. There was always something. On the other hand, the reason for these meetings was because Ronald Reagan was interested in something. He liked to talk about it. When you look at the thousands or so Radio Broadcasts he did , thee becoming president years as governor and the for president , you think of the hot button issues that people used to get elected, especially together nomination in the republican party. And they were god, guns, and gays. The 3 gs. Ronald reagan spoke of practically none of them in the thousands of Radio Broadcasts. Abortionned i think was one out of 1000. Gun control may have been one. I do not know. And gays was none. Issuesere the hot button to the electorate. School prayer and all of those things. But they were not to Ronald Reagan. Over half of his talks were about soviet affairs or arms control. Them andd to choose did choose them. So it was i was lucky he was interested in this field. He knew what he knew. And he knew what he did not know. At reykjavik, as i said in my remarks, he asked the experts to get together that night. E gave us the overall view reduce by half. Try to get the soviets to go along. How that would be done. He was happy with whatever solution we came up with to do followed the as we overall thought and guidance we have. On fdi, which was really the hot button issue in reykjavik, he did not ask our opinion. He did not need our opinion. He had his own opinion. And he really led the way on sdi, which was his program rather than our program. Thank you, will. Mr. Inman gerald ford does not get the credit he deserves on human rights. He included that in the helsinki accords. When we talk later to those who survived the time, they said it is what gave them hope that there was external support that would eventually lead to the communist losing power. Minor reminiscences of a very nice individual who was approachable, likable, easy to work with. I First Encountered him at a place called bohemian grove. I was the guest of george h. W. Bush who was making a lakeside appearance. This is critical if you are aiming toward hoping to run for the presidency. There was a luncheon after the speech at bushs camp. Us there ashree of his guest. Us, governor reagan spotted he got the platform and he told barbarytory of the pirates and standing up to fight. When he finished, mr. President bush turned to him and said dam, he is good. Fastforward. The next encounter was the day after he had taken the oath of office. I had been approached in late november. Would i consider being the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence . I said hal, no. Said, hell, no. I was getting ready to retire. I was passing up promotion opportunities for people i had helped along. I went out to australia for a visit, got pulled out of a meeting, and he said you have to take this job. I said i was not going to. And then i got back from that trip and i had my First Encounter with weinberger. He persuaded me to go to the dci, he offered me a job in the pentagon. I thought it was exciting until my wife asked me if i was crazy. I turned it down and thought things were behind us. I was so immersed with president carter on the final negotiations for getting the hostages out. In fact, my last conversation with carter as president as the president elect is sitting next to him in the limo was to tell them that hostages were in the aircraft but not permitted to take off until carter was no longer president. Next morning, the secretary runs in and says the president is calling. I thought it was carter following up, but it was the president. He could not have been more charming. He went through the whole rationale. When they lost new hampshire, he invited bill casey to run his political campaign. He asked me what job i would like in the administration. Responded, if i cannot be secretary of state, director of Central Intelligence. They laughed. Go forward to tuesday night in november, and it is clear he won. Ey and says, are you ready to be director of Central Intelligence . He said, only if i cannot be secretary of state. [laughter] about an hour later, the phone rang. It was congratulations for winning the elections. He had one were crossed one request. I have a candidate for the director of Central Intelligence. He responded that he had already given the job to bill casey. There was a long silence. They thought about how to deal with it, and the president said i got more calls generated by about you than anyone else. Someone suggested doing a shotgun marriage where inman was the deputy. So, we did that. Now, we are in office, and speaking as your commanderinchief, i need you to take the job as bill caseys deputy. Under the circumstances, mr. President , i would be honored. Hopefully no more than 18 months, two years. He agreed to that, and then he thanked me. That is how this ersatz career ended up. It was very strange. I was confirmed on the 13th of february. When i took up the job, i was still the director of the National Security agency until the 30th of march, and we saw more problems between those two agencies in that six weeks. I learned about sending letters back and forth by the doe. Casey wanted to run totally different than any past director. Normally, the director deals with the outside world, and the deputy runs the agency. That was not what he wanted to do. He wanted to personally run the clandestine service, covert operations, and the analytical side. He did not want to do anything with a science, technology, administration, any of the community stuff. I had been in the job for six days, and i got a call that the president wanted to see me. I go down, and it was very simple and direct. It was the first time he ever called me by my first name. He said, bobby, bill told me you were going to do everything with regard to budgets and the rest, rebuild the Intelligence Community, and spend whatever you need to spend. Frank, you decide where to put it in the Defense Budget to make it happen. You could not have had more clear or simple guidance. We made a fiveyear plan and found that the drawdowns have limited the Training Establishments and had no real limits about how much you could rebuild or at what pace. Because he had asked for cabinet status, bill had been granted that which meant i was subcabinet. Casey never went to a Cabinet Meeting or an nsc meeting in the 18 months i was there. I went all of them. The only thing he went to was the National Security planning group, where they had the approval of covert offenses that were done. It was fascinating to sit up at the angle and watch the president. He was amazingly relaxed. What i picked up by the second or Third Session was the role meese was playing. You had 10 minutes ago, and he would ask questions. The president would pick up his pencil, and the president would summarize the meeting. When he summarized were the ses questions. He knew he would get the essence of what was important. There were so many encounters. He loved to tell jokes. He did not need joke writers. He was natural. Early on, there was still separate men and womens press corps. Had six press corp new members, and they were all trying to be funny. The senator from new york said that the president knew i was going to solve the budgets deficit and show his old movies at the white house. They all finished, the president goes up, looks down at them, and says, if my movies made that kind of money, i wouldnt he here. [laughter] that was just his nature and his ease with dealing with them. He was not interested in the details unless they were pertinent to something that was on his mind, and he would pursue them, grasped them, and hold onto them. We were meeting about a year in, and he made a comment that nothing useful to the u. S. Had ever come from arms control agreements. Mr. President , i would like to suggest maybe sometimes there were. What . I talked about how they made the decision, given the limit, to do ssbns and do more mobile missiles as you came to deal with. He said no one has ever told me that. He picked it up and used it. It was classic. When he saw something, he would change his mind if he accepted the plausibility and move with it. The shift in his dealing with the soviet union posed a substantial debt to margaret thatcher. Gorbachev had come to power. Thatcher was the first one to meet gorbachev. She called the president and said, ronnie, this is someone we can work with. That began a process. At this point, i was on my way week,ut, my departing mrs. Thatcher had called. They had concluded that they urgently needed to be able to stage to Ascension Island to be able to support the foreign the forward deployment. It was an island that had been leased out to the nsa for collection purposes. We were being told this, and ambassador kirkpatrick at the u. N. Said, oh, mr. President , you cannot approve that. Oh, mr. President , you cannot approve that. It would destroy the hemisphere sol