 We don't trust you, it's that if you need to transcript, we'd be very happy to provide. Very good. Well, I will need that. Sure. We're going to thank Ken Collins and down with him. So the head of VOA, who is now the Reader's Digestive President down there, you're having a very good time. Yes. And then our editor-in-chief thought that it might be more effective just one-on-one. So Ken deferred to me. I remember an interview once I had there at your... Have you ever seen their headquarters? No, I haven't. Well, it's kind of a beautiful country home. Out spacious lawns and so forth. It is indeed. The president absolutely captivated Dwight Wallace, our founder, for about four and a half hours. And then you finally had to leave to go make a speech, but it was a memorable lunch. So what we would like to do here, sir, is to ask you some questions so that our readers here in abroad, about 100 million of them, can have a better idea of President Reagan the man. And I'd like to start off by asking what has surprised you the most pleasantly and unpleasantly about being inside the government that you've had for so long observed from the outside? Well, first of all, I guess one surprise, whether pleasant or unpleasant, was at how little I was surprised. Because the eight years as governor of California, I realized when I came in here suddenly it wasn't a great shock as becoming governor had been, but the discovery of the kind of the routine, the scheduling, all of that. And while there was added the international situation, the rest was, as I say, not too shocking. There was, however, there was a surprise having to do with being the commander in chief and things of that kind. One part of it that shocked me a little bit was the first time, only weeks after we were here, the Jack Hill Patrick invited us down to a Sunday lunch at his house and the helicopter picked us up here in the lawn and very shortly we landed there at his farm. And he told me that they'd been there for several days installing the phones. And I said, what do you mean installing the phones? And that was when I found out that I can't even go across town to a lunch or a private dinner without phones are installed. And it was explained to me, well Jack explained it as they had explained it to him that wherever I was I had to have the ability to communicate any place in the world. And in telling him this they told him that they could reach anyone for me and he challenged them on that. And they said name someone. Now Jack is telling me all this. And he named a son of his who was on embassy guard in a country in Africa. And they got him on the phone and he and his wife got to talk to their son. So they asked him, anyone else? And he said he had another son who was a quarter master on the U.S.S. Pratt, a destroyer out in the sixth fleet, the Mediterranean. And when he said, well, do you get him? And they said no. Well, he said you said you could get anyone. Well, they said no. The fleet is on maneuvers. And the only one who can get the fleet when it's on maneuvers is the president. So Jack was telling me all this and we got there and we got in the house. I met the young man's wife, a very sweet young lady. Hadn't seen her husband for months. And I excused myself and went back out and I said, is this right that I can get someone in the U.S.S. Pratt in the sixth fleet? And they said, oh yes, sir. And I said, well, get quarter master, kill Patrick. And I went back in and got her. She got to talk to her husband whom she hadn't seen as I say for all those months. And I didn't realize what I'd done. It was a surprise to find out that with just a few words from me, I have to think a little better because I got a letter from quarter master, kill Patrick. And he told me that I would be surprised what air traffic was like. I hadn't even thought it through that the last portion of that call would be by radio. And he said that the air was talking to admirals, ships talking to ships constantly out of this. And then a voice on the air said, White House calling. And another voice said, what code is that? And another voice said maybe it's no code, maybe it's the White House. And he said even Hollywood could not have silenced the air as quickly as it was silenced. Then he said they came down and got a lowly quarter master on a destroyer to come to the phone. And he wrote this line, which I'll never forget. He said it was as if God had called the Vatican and asked for an altar boy by name. That's great. Making that call was obviously not the toughest decision you've had to make. What has been the toughest decision in the four and a half years? Well, there are a lot of the tough decisions, the ones in which there's so much right on both sides. I make the cabinet go over and over these things in front of me there. And I hear when there's differences of opinion because of the split between right and wrong. And when I've heard enough, I make the decision. I've always used the cabinet, as I did as governor, as a kind of a board of directors, except for one thing. They don't vote. I have to make the decision. But I think the hardest ones will always be those instances where you have to, or you order our young men in uniform to go someplace where their lives will be endangered. That is without doubt the most difficult. When you became president, you didn't have any foreign policy experience. Has your view of the world changed in the four and a half years? Well, I have to tell you that the premise is a little wrong. Not that I had been a diplomat in any way, except that, again, having been governor of California, while it didn't have a foreign policy, if California were a nation, it would be the seventh-ranking economic power in the world. So you had some interest in that. And it is, I guess, the biggest percentage of trade in and out of our country, is by way of California. But it wasn't that. I had always had an interest in international affairs, particularly because of the Soviet Union, and when I was president of the Screen Actors Guild, the effort of the communists to move in on the motion picture industry. And all I can tell you is that when I was running for governor, some of the press editorial lines that if I didn't stop talking about international affairs, I would never become governor. But I did have that interest. And then, as governor, four times the president asked me to do some missions and errands for him abroad that took me to 18 different countries in the world, and some of them several times, more than once. And so that has always been an interest of mine. And there wasn't much that had to be changed in my opinion about the good guys and the bad guys and what our responsibility was. Did it bother you that when you came into office, some or maybe even many European intellectuals or elitists viewed you as an actor cowboy with simplistic views about the world scene? And if it did bother you, do you think that view has been altered during your term? Well, it didn't really bother me so much because I had gone through that same thing being governor. There were some people that thought to go straight from the acting profession to governor without having held any other political offices as you've described it. No, it didn't bother me so much. I do think there has been a change now that we've become personally acquainted. When I say we, I mean heads of state of a number of our allies. We were all on a very cordial first name basis in say the economic summit and I don't think that prevails now. What books and what thinkers most influenced you before coming to the White House? That's a tough question because I have been a voracious reader. Whether it's books, non-fiction, as well as fiction, but that and articles, publications and so forth, I try to pick out someone in particular. I just don't think I can. I've opened myself up to just about all the viewpoints there are in that sense. My greatest dread, my nightmare is that sometime I might be caught in a hotel room someplace with nothing to read because I don't think I can go to sleep or shut my eyes if I didn't read myself to sleep at night. You mentioned before just in passing and I'd like to get back to it. Your role as president of the Screen Actors Guild. I've read that that period in your life perhaps more than any other shaped your attitudes and your policies. What did your experiences as a labor leader teach you? I was very proud of the Screen Actors Guild at that time. When I went into the job, I found that it existed on some very firm principles. For one thing, the Screen Actors Guild said the Guild will not be engaged in politics nor will there be politics in the Guild. We believe that our members were of every kind of philosophy and therefore there was no way that by even a majority vote we had a right to take a position politically that might be counter to the views of our members. We also, and for two decades, I was in charge most of the time of our negotiations of the re-institution of the basic contract with the producers and I discovered, I didn't institute it, I discovered it was already there. The Screen Actors Guild had its own rule which was as good a quality as it could be and we stuck to those things and I had the pleasure after some of those years of negotiating to have the head of one of the studios who was always very prominent and their negotiating committee tell me one day that when the Guild was first proposed the idea of an Actors Guild he was one who fought the hardest against it but he said I've come to believe that the Screen Actors Guild is the most constructive force for good in the motion picture industry. Could you describe briefly the fight with the communists over control of the Screen Actors Guild? Yes, and incidentally I was a New Deal Democrat fresh out of the war, out of uniform. We got out and there had been the eve of L.C.I.O. it had pledged, you know, no strikes and yet of the 43 Guilds and unions in the motion picture business most of us were eve of L.C.I.O. unions and this strike was a jurisdictional strike. It was called over whether some 350 people in the whole picture industry should be members of a stage hands union or members of the trade unions. We had that mix and back from the days of a great strike on Broadway in the theater days. There had been a tradition in the picture business to reconcile the differences between stage hands. What had happened in the theaters in the old days was that a stage hand did everything in the theater not just backstage with the stage so that the seat needed fixing out in front he came out like a carpenter and fixed the seat and this had led to the jurisdictional strike on Broadway and the settlement finally was that everything behind the proscenium arch belonged to the stage hands everything in front of it belonged to the craft unions plumbers, electricians and carpenters and so forth. In Hollywood they made the proscenium arch the sound stage door anything in there was stage hands but every studio had mills where they made in sections the sets and you'd see at the end of the day the sets for the next day shooting being wheeled down on rollers down the studio streets huge sections like the whole wall of this room here and all of it and into the sound stage in the sound stage then the stage hands union set erectors put these pieces together that was they were then behind the proscenium arch the issue that they picked for this jurisdictional strike was that the set erectors should be carpenters now carpenters worked in the mill and made those sections these fellows only put them together this led to the jurisdictional strike the then czar of the carpenters union had always had a rivalry with the stage hands so that was the cause of it during the war there had come subversion and infiltration of some of the unions even some of the AFL-CIO unions they had formed a rump group called the Hollywood conference of studio unions and this was in contrast to the AFL-CIO labor council so they were on one side and we on the other now I was not prepared I wasn't a red-bater so I say I was a New Deal Democrat and I had never gone for all of the stories I'd been told after I got back by some that there had been this kind of infiltration into the picture business I wasn't prepared to believe it I am the one who made the motion on the board of the guild I was a board member at the time as president I made the motion that as long as there was this difficulty that both sides giving a different reason as to why there was a strike why didn't we the actors who weren't involved in any way in that jurisdictional thing why didn't we invite management and both factions to sit down at a table with us present as a labor union to kind of be the mediator there and to protect against a man even who had nothing to do with the strike to sit down and find out because we had to tell our members whether to go through those picket lines or not and how do you take sides when a lot of the unions are in the studios and a lot of them are out on the street picketing and the board bought this idea and we invited them there was great reluctance on the part of the striking unions to join us but they didn't see any way that they could say no we met twice a day as it ended up for almost seven months of trying to settle these things but before long there was no question about it and I was completely converted and I found out that yes this was not a legitimate strike and I learned it even better when we made that decision and called a mass meeting of the screen actors for the Hollywood Legion Fight Stadium and it was voted that I was going to report the result of these meetings to the membership and give them the board's recommendation that we continue to go through the picket lines and honor our contract with the studios and that was to be on a Wednesday night and on a Monday afternoon I was on location in a picture we were making down at the beach and I was called to the phone at an oil station some distance away and came and got me drove me down there and I was told on the phone that if I made that report to the Guild Membership there was a squad that would see that I never worked in pictures again and so I made the report to the Guild and there were pickets outside the Guild meeting and so forth and I had about a three-quarters of a block walk to the parking lot where my car was parked afterward and I felt very comfortable and I found that about eight of the Teamsters Union all about the size of pro football players decided that they'd just walk to the car with me and before that by the time I got back to the studio that day after that call I've never heard of this in the law enforcement before but the Burbank police in which the studio was located and representatives there at the studio and the special police which were the guards of the studio were assigned to my house for 24 hours a day around the clock and they also gave me a permit and a revolver under my arm and a shoulder holster so that was the beginning and I guess you didn't want the whole load on this strike but it did go on for a number of months till finally there was no giving in at all we kept the studios open with the help of the unions in and the management and as long as we were in front of the cameras there wasn't any way they could stop making pictures and finally it just was a case of which we said to the people who were out on strike you can get back into the studio the best way you know how but in some of those meetings with them the strike committee because they weren't all communists I actually sat and heard studio executive I mean union executives of some of the unions speaking to their chairman and saying look we know the communists have got control of this strike and we've got to get it back in our hands they were legitimately fooled they didn't realize and that was the history of it and was in that that I learned something that kind of set the stage for me as governor and later on here during all those months you know there couldn't be help but be times in which I said to myself who am I to be making these decisions for thousands of actors and actresses whose careers are at stake and I found out that what I recommended they would do and then I finally decided the only way I could sleep at night was to make up my mind that if I did what I honestly believed and my heart was right I may make a mistake but if I could honestly believe that that was the right thing to do that's what we'd do and when I became governor I told the cabinet that on any issue that would confront us I did not want to hear any of the political ramifications of the issue I only wanted to hear what was right or wrong for the people and we'd make the decision on that basis not on any political basis and I found I do sleep very well If I can ask you one more Hollywood question as an actor you played many many roles is there any one role you would like to have played but never got an opportunity to Oh I have to tell you there were many such once you're in that business and doing it you see a picture and you think oh boy and you find out the things you said that you would do different and so forth but yes there was one other in a picture called Santa Fe Trail which I played the second lead I was not a star then to Earl Flynn and it was an historical picture and he played Jeb Stewart and I played George Custer and all the others were there and we were just graduated from West Point and into the Cavalry of the capture of John Brown and played that and I always loved those I didn't these people that say cowboy actor good lord my biggest fight with Warner Brothers after I was there 13 years was they wouldn't let me do pictures like that I was doing the drawing room comedies and so forth and then they made they died with their boots on the story of George Custer and once oh boy I wanted to play that part and I went to Hal Wallace and I begged and so forth and I said but I played Custer once and that part's mine now but Earl Flynn played George Custer I didn't get to commentators and some former presidents have talked of the loneliness of the presidency and the burdens of the presidency yet you seem to approach the job with great relish burdensome how would you describe it no I don't I surrounded myself with people that I have confidence in that I believe in I don't think that I sit here all alone and decide everything by myself I as I say I want to hear everybody's viewpoint and I don't give any indication of where I lean while I hear those viewpoints and I've had people in our cabinet who were cabinet officers under other presidents tell me that they had never been in cabinet meetings that were as fruitful before evidently a lot of presidents just simply use their cabinet as kind of a well they'd meet periodically and different members would report what their departments were doing they the word that I've gotten from these others is that they never were in cabinet meetings where everybody regardless of whether it affected their particular agency were involved in the discussion but no I and maybe again it was the the eight years experience I have to believe for many years recently we've taken our presidents from the ranks of the legislators I think the best training the closest job to being president in the United States is being a governor a legislator is used to being in a group and on a committee and making decisions on a voting basis majority rule only a governor has sat there and when finally knows that the final say has got to be his or hers and so maybe that's I attribute part of this to that I don't say it's easy there are a lot of decisions that after I've heard all of that and as I say the ones that where there's so much right on both sides that are very difficult but no I don't I don't have that that feeling every day you receive detailed intelligence briefings on the entire world what information you've received most shocked the well of course the the greatest shock was a telephone call on a weekend about three o'clock in the morning when a couple of us or a few of us were down Regan and George Schultz and our wives were down at Augusta country club I'd never been there before we'd gone down at George Schultz's invitation for a weekend of golf and it was the word about the bombing of the Marines in Lebanon and that there's no way to describe the horror and the grief as the word came in about that and in this other my great concern stems from that same thing the increased use of terrorism which we have to believe is backed by some governments it's so hard to fight because unless you could infiltrate and know in advance what is being planned there's no way to know where they're going to strike next you could retaliate with just outright revenge if you didn't care how much terrorism you caused but until you know where who those individuals are and where they could be reached I've never believed that we have a right to just simply go into an area of people who might be of the same general background and slaughter some of them in revenge so it's it's one of the most frustrating and one of the causing the greatest concern because you know that you can't abandon your positions you can't withdraw ambassadors and diplomatic staff and so forth or the terrorists of one and you can't let them do that but you know that all those people out there are at risk every minute I can ask you for your reactions to two other moments of crisis in your administration what was your feeling when you decided finally to send American troops to Grenada well this again you knew that the final say has got to be his or hers and so maybe that's I attribute part of this to that I don't say it's easy there are a lot of decisions that after I've heard all of that and as I say the ones that where there's so much right on both sides that are very difficult but no I don't I don't have that feeling every day you receive detailed intelligence briefings on the entire world what information you've received most shocked or worried you the well of course the the greatest shock was a telephone call on a weekend about three o'clock in the morning when a couple of us or a few of us were Don Regan and George Schultz and our wives were down at Augusta Country Club I'd never been there before we'd gone down at George Schultz's invitation for a weekend of golf and it was the word about the bombing of the Marines in Lebanon and that there's no way to describe the horror and the grief as the word came in about that and in this other my great concern stems from that same thing the increased use of terrorism which we have to believe is backed by some governments it's so hard to to fight because unless you could infiltrate and know in advance what is being planned there's no way to know where they're going to strike next you could retaliate with just outright revenge if you didn't care how much terrorism you caused but until you know who those individuals are and where they could be reached I've never believed that we have a right to just simply go into an area of people who might be of the same general background and slaughter some of them in revenge so it's it's one of the most frustrating and one of the causing the greatest concern because you know that you can't abandon your positions in the world you can't withdraw ambassadors and diplomatic staff and so forth or the terrorists of one and you can't let them do that but you know that all those people out there are at risk every minute if I can ask you for your reactions to other moments of crisis in your administration what was your feeling when you decided finally to send American troops to Grenada to Grenada? Well this again you knew that there was going to be a hazard and there was going to you were endangering their lives but this again on that same weekend as the blow up in Beirut of all things this also awoke before dawn with a phone call and it seems that the several small island states those that had been or in the commonwealth of the United Kingdom they had this word of what was going on in Grenada and they felt that it was of such importance that action had to be taken they were all in a union together with Grenada but they knew that they didn't you know some of them don't even have an army they knew that they didn't have the military strength to do it and they made an outright request to us I didn't feel that there was any way that they presented to that we could turn down that request and ever be trusted or believed to any place in the free world so sitting there and there was before dawn hours on the phone with George Bush at this end and the emergency group assembled we made the decision that we were going to do what they'd asked we were going to join it was an international thing although we provided the bulk of the force when the chiefs of staff were entrusted with putting the mission together I made only one suggestion I said when you decide how many you think it'll take then double it and this one we managed to keep a complete secret and that it worked there were some deaths but I've never been so proud of anything in my life as I was of those young men in uniform in the four branches of the service that were involved and even more so when about four hundred when our stake was I shouldn't have left this out this was a great consideration of ours we had 800 young medical students Americans on that island and the thought of another hostage situation with 800 young Americans there was no way that we could tolerate that and so that was the big deciding factor in addition to the other thing that I said then when I about 400 of them came here to say thanks to the south lawn and we had about 40 of the returned service men by that time back from the four about 10 each from the four services and to see these young people and there were all young people the people in uniform and the medical students those medical students couldn't keep their hands off them and they'd come back to me and they'd say I never really thought much about the people in uniform before I wasn't in other words they were kind of that rebellious type but not anymore they said they saved our lives and I heard a story of some who in their dormitory had been under the beds for 24 hours the bullets coming through the building and then they said from downstairs they heard a voice and it was an American sergeant a ranger and identified himself and called out for them to come down and they told these were the students telling me they said he was there in the Marines or the Rangers to take them to the helicopters and they told us that when they went to the helicopters those young men in uniform would let themselves between the students and where any fire would come from from the hills from the opposition and literally shielded them with their own bodies and getting them to the helicopters and there so I had a great pride when it was over but it did it made me realize what other presidents who have had to ask for a declaration of war what it meant one other reaction question what was your reaction when you heard about KAL Flight 007 being shot down and how did you hear about it I'm trying to think now where I was I can't remember exactly where I was but and as you'll remember there was some it had disappeared from the radar screen so there was still some question before final verification of what had actually happened to it and that it was gone and the people were dead and then of course it was shocked even though I thought that it was it verified what I've believed about the lack of respect for human life that is felt by those in charge of the Soviet Union and it was following that that I made a statement about an evil empire I wanted to ask you you did call the Soviet Union the evil empire you've seen the Soviets shoot down 007 and murder an American major at other times you suggested that you and Mr. Gorbachev can work together to achieve peace are those contradictory positions no not at all I thought in the beginning of this administration when questions were asked of me in press conferences and so forth about the Soviet Union I spoke bluntly about what I felt that I knew about them and the fact that they are expansionists they are aggressive they have never withdrawn and retracted the Lenin statement that their mission is a one world communist state but at the same time we have to live in the world together and I have to I believe that the only way there will be World War 3 is if the Soviet Union wants a war if they want peace there will be peace because no one else wants a war we certainly don't I've never known of a war my lifetime that we started and so I think that it is necessary that we face each other we know they don't like our system or us and we don't like their system but we have to see if we can't get along in the world and as I say they're the only ones that can cause a war do you expect to be meeting with Mr. Gorbachev? well I'm hopeful that that will come about we've had expressions that yes they're willing the ball's in their court we've invited them and it's our turn to invite and we're ready when they are but it's it's necessary for them to know that we don't have any illusions about them but at the same time we're willing to exist in the world with them and it's time that we set down and found out where the parameters are you noted the other day that the Soviets have spent $500 million to prop up Marxist regime in Nicaragua but the houses refuse to commit even $14 million to help freedom fighters why have you not been able to convince the people that the cause of the Contras and aiding the Contras is the right cause? I think part of it is the sophisticated disinformation campaign apparatus that the communist block has worldwide to where they've been able to confuse a great many of our people even the terms we use and I wish we hadn't I wish we'd started doing something I'm going to do later on if we had referred not to the Sandinistas but to the communists not to the Contras but as to the freedom fighters that these are Nicaraguans fighting for freedom in their own country against a communist takeover when you say those terms polls have revealed that a lot of our people out there you know most people are not who they are what they are and so forth and hearing these terms Sandinista government Contras and so forth most people aren't quite sure which side we're on or what's at stake and after Vietnam there is a holdover of the Vietnam syndrome there is a feeling well is this the United States sticking its nose in something none of our business yet when you ask them in polls questions about do you want another Cuba on the mainland of the Americas here a communist then the people will say no they don't want that so I think part of it is the disinformation and we haven't been able to overcome it but also our lack of outright explanation to them we found after I made that one speech on Nicaragua on the air there was a great turn around but that was one speech the disinformation kept on and on and just like advertising constantly it wore it away and gradually it went back again to the people thinking oh maybe we're doing the wrong thing in Nicaragua what's the significance of last question pardon me well two questions I'll make them good and Mr. President if we could do what we did when we interviewed you in 81 still some more questions if I can leave them with Pat and if he can get to you in the next couple of days to do those that would be very happy to do fine let me see being a reader of Reader's Digest well thank you your first accomplishment in 1981 was to push through a huge tax cut now you're fighting for revamping of the entire tax code when did you first start thinking about what you call the disgraceful inequities of the tax system well I've always believed in those are always well for a lot of years I think it has gotten so out of line so complicated I've thought that most of our people or many of our people discussed with the tax system wasn't based on the size of the tax but on the complication the confusion of it and in 81 we had we were faced with the emergency we felt of the recession then and what had to be done so we couldn't think reform but if you remember in talking about our first tax program many times we said this is only the first stage this isn't the end we want to come back and what we wanted to come back with was a reform to make it more fair more simple so that's been in our minds from the very beginning one last question and then I will leave the extra questions with Pat it's been four years since you were shot how has that attempt on your life changed your life the way you look at things I don't know whether it's changed my life or not I'm a pretty good boy about minding the security people when they told me not to go there and not to go there it has changed their life physically in a number of ways well now that coupled with the whole terrorist thing it wasn't just that with the whole terrorist thing there are things that I can't do anymore and I recognize it for example we can't go to church and I miss that but I recognize it's not just me I'm a threat to other people if I go to some place like that with the various terrorist practices carbons and everything else I could be responsible for the lives of a lot of other people so I'm reconciled to that the the whole thing of that shooting though you know I went all the way to the hospital and walked into the emergency room on my own not knowing I'd been shot I was shot in mid-air when the secret service behind me I thought it was firecrackers and I had just finished saying what the was that when I was grabbed and thrown into the limousine the door was open and as it turns out that's I was shot on the way in the bullet came through the gap between the door the hinge gap between the door and the side of the car the reason is they showed me the bullet after they got it out and it was flattened out and covered with black paint from the car but I thought because then he did what his secret service practice he dived into the car on top of me to shield me and it was then for the first time that I felt pain I always assumed after all those movies where if you were shot you grabbed yourself and looked agonized and fell down I always thought that you felt it when it hit you it didn't it was after he landed on me so I thought he'd done it and I thought what had happened the only thing I could reconcile with a paralyzing pain was that he must have broken my ribs and I told him get off I think you and he did very quickly and we got up by that time the door was closed and we were moving and he said sit back I said I can't it hurts too much by this time I had sat up and suddenly I coughed and I had a handful of blood well that's again I still said I must have broken and they punctured my lung and by this time he was saying George Washington Hospital and I used up my handkerchief and then I used up his that continued coughing I got a little scared because it seemed to me I was having that I was getting less air every time I breathed in and it wasn't until they peeled me because there was no great flow of blood or anything in the outside and then it was explained because when they found it back here it was just a narrow slit that flattened bullet had gone in edge wise and it hit a rib and then it tumbled down through the lung and stopped just short of the heart but that it afterward and with the time of recovery also I feel self-conscious saying this well I had a feeling that whatever was left in time to me belonged to somebody else thank you Mr. President thank you very much thank you sir very much thank you good to see you again thank you Mr. Jeff Kitts now sir I'll get him I'll walk Bill won't you wait a second yeah we'll get him