 The first question which is, goes like this, Bismarck once said that history is quite simply a piece of paper covered with print and the main thing is still to make history and not to write it. But my question to you is whether the U.S. president can still make history with this needle-threading micromanagement of Congress of our foreign policy? Well, they've made it more difficult and it goes back before my presidency for a long time. I think there has been a constant effort on the part of not all the members of Congress but enough of them to create a problem to reduce the powers of the presidency. And I think presidents have basically fought against that as much as they can. Now they haven't been able to completely stop things. We felt that some students had to be made safe that were down in Grenada and we made them safe. But that was some time ago. It seems to me that the present rate of congressional encroachment, Mr. President, on your prerogatives and constitutional obligations in the field of foreign policy were headed for a constitutional crisis of major magnitude. Well, and I think a president has to fight and there's one thing a president has got to remember and I intend to fight that, not just for myself but for those who will come after me. And that is that you have to do everything you can to preserve this difference in the powers of the two bodies. And I'm not going to give up on it. I'm going to continue to fight for that. And you have to take, I think the basis is you take the case to the people about that because the president is the only elected official who is elected by all the people. All others have to remember a particular obligation to, if in the Senate, a state or in a congressman, to a district. And the president is the only one who must look at the problem in front of him with all of the nation in mind. Well, hasn't the time come, Mr. President, to test, for example, the constitutional alibi of the War Powers Act by taking it up all the way to the Supreme Court? Well, if that has to be done, but right now I'm refusing to invoke those because I don't think that, first of all, I don't believe that it was constitutional either. So why not test? And that may be the thing that you have to do. But right now, I'll continue to, I'll observe it if it, being the law, if I think that the situation warrants, but the things that they are now demanding, some elements in the Congress that they say it should be invoked for some of the things going on now, I don't agree at all. Well, at which point, since it is still the law of the land, do you feel, Mr. President, that it should be invoked? If we get a shit hit by some terrorists and you have to retaliate, would that be sufficient reason, do you think, to invoke it? I think I'd almost have to see the issue. I would think that what it really would be intended for is the sending of armed forces into an attack against another force or another nation, or a situation of that kind. Not retaliation. No. Every place I have ever asked our forces to go, I have said they go there with the knowledge that if they are attacked, they defend them to. In recent years, Mr. President, Congress has voted down arms sales to foreign countries, proposed, in fact, imposed in some cases arms control negotiating positions on you, on your predecessors, which have automatically weakened your bargaining leverage. They've tied strings to foreign aid. They've reduced foreign aid. They've circumscribed COVID intelligence operations. And I'm asking you in a historical perspective whether that doesn't mean that we are somehow transforming our presidential system, which our founding fathers intended, into a parliamentary system. Well, whether it's going to wind up as a parliamentary system or not, with its advantages and disadvantages, I don't know. But I do know that what you say is true about these other things, and if we look at the whole record, and the record maybe should be presented to the people, the media can be helpful in that, let's just look at what they've done and what the record is. Vietnam. We finally, the president came in and negotiated an end to the war in Vietnam. For peace terms, we had to sell the South Vietnamese on accepting the peace terms. We had built up and trained a very sizable army of South Vietnamese. We left, but we left our, we left weapons there, helicopters, tanks, jeeps, all of this. We knew that the North Vietnamese had still not withdrawn. They were still in South Vietnam territory. They had agreed to the peace settlement also, but we said to the South Vietnamese, if they violate this agreement and attack, we will provide the fuel and the ammunition for those weapons that we have left with you for your army to defend yourself. Well, they did violate the treaty. They did attack. And when that president asked the Congress for the money to provide those things, the Congress denied them. And today we see a communist empire extending all the way from North Vietnam clear across to the border of Thailand. Now Angola and Portugal gave up their colony there and it allowed it independence. There was factions started competing as to, well like an election here, as to who was going to set up the government and so forth. And one faction appealed for help, the Soviet Union and Castro. And today, well, these years later, they are fighting there. The then president asked the Congress to allow them to provide weapons for and help to the more democratic faction there so that they at least could fight back. And again, the Congress denied that. And so today we see a government with 37,000 Cuban military personnel in there fighting this other faction, which I think every bit of evidence indicates is more representative of the people of Angola than is the present government. If the people could actually choose, I think they would choose Mr. Savimbi's United Forces. But you can go back way before that or you can come up to the present with the things that they're doing in Central America and all the rest. And so you've mentioned, Mr. President, very quickly you've mentioned half a dozen congressional amendments that we've seen since Cambodia that have, in effect, made the world safer for the Brezhnev doctrine. We see this over and over again, and now we have the Byrd Amendment being the latest example. Isn't it time for the president himself to explain to the American people there isn't one American and a hundred who understands the history of these amendments and the impact they had? But again, Arnold, present company accepted. I have spoken across this country to audiences of all sizes up to as many as 40,000 in a rally and spoken of things like this. And I don't see it on the TV news after I've made the speech. I see myself on the news saying something like, I'm glad to be here, and then they switch to a voiceover, but also in the print media. No press, maybe. Here's these things, but there are just constant things of that kind, and when you mentioned the foreign aid and all the rest, that is a horrifying thing that we're doing. We're in a contest, the two superpowers here, with regard to which way many of these newer and lesser developed countries are going to go. And we have said that we're going wherever people want freedom and democracy, we're going to try to be of help to them. Soviet Union does it in another way. They do it with military force. And to shut down, as the Congress has, on our ability to help these other countries is literally to be, well, it's in line with the Brezhnev doctrine. How do you presently assess the consequences, Mr. President, if the Congress satisfied with the few cosmetic changes made by Nicaragua's Marxist government, refuses to fund the Nicaraguan resistance? What message does this send to the rest of the world, and couldn't our adversaries, for example, interpret this as some kind of retrenchment that is leading us back to isolationism? Yes, and it's a case of the Congress doing that, of making us once again no longer trusted as not too many years ago we had gotten in that position, that the United States couldn't be trusted when they withdraw this ability to help. We, I think from the very first, have said that we would prefer, as I think everyone else would, a democratic settlement in which the people of Nicaragua would be allowed to choose the government, the form of government, that they want to have. We've been accused, on the other hand, that all we're out for is a military victory. Well, no, what we have said is the threat of force and overthrow is what is needed to bring the present totalitarian government, the communist Sandinista government, to bring them to what everyone is trying to persuade them to do, and that is democratization. And that can only happen if the freedom fighters remain a viable element. Now we're willing to go along with the plans that have been proposed, our own that we suggested with Congressman Wright, and even the Arias Plan, which we think has some loopholes in it that are making it difficult, but we're willing to evidence that yes, if it is possible to bring about a democratic transition, nonviolent, this will do. But we insist on maintaining the freedom fighters as a viable element there in order to try and make the Sandinista government honest in whatever it may pretend to do. So you do believe that the Marxist government could conceivably negotiate its way out of existence? Is that your basic premise here? Only if there is that threat there in which they would see themselves faced with a war and an overthrow, that is your only chance. And then what they have to do is they have to negotiate with the freedom forces and so forth. Now we have to be on guard, and I think that the other Central American countries are pretty much of a mind, to stay on guard that they're not going to fall for just cosmetic changes and pretend democratization. But Mr. President, I think you know better than I do that all they have to do is reopen Radio Catolica and La Prensa and then people up on the hill will say, you see, they've done it, no more for the contrary. I know. But what we have to do is make sure that those other people up on the hill that do believe as we do are there and are aware that there are restraints that have been put on La Prensa and Catolica, the radio program, and that basically the bulk of the press remains totally subservient to the Sandinista government and that they must be aware of this. And again, as I say, if willing to go along with this, they've signed and then either they must truly make good or reveal themselves as being unwilling to abide by the agreement they signed with regard to the peace effort and at that point we must be prepared to help the freedom fighters get the kind of government the people of that country want. But I understand from the freedom fighters or their commanders, sir, that they may have to start pulling their people out by October 15th unless they have assurances that they will be refunding. You know that the Secretary of State has announced our desire for $270 million and we are willing to and I know that the freedom fighters are willing to engage in a ceasefire. But it must be the result of negotiations between them. It can't be just a unilateral declaration of ceasefire with the Sandinistas. In one situation you have what is presently a government and their army is going to remain a factor. The other, the freedom fighters are just that without a government. They cannot be expected to lay down their arms and disappear in any kind of a ceasefire. So it must be a negotiation in between the two. You would surely take more seriously what the Commandantes say for their own internal consumption than what they tell the outside world and I don't know if you know that Commandante Jaime Wielach explaining the Guatemalan peace plan to his own people, to the Cadres, said that our top priority task is to continue to fight the mercenaries until they are liquidated, strengthen the armed apparatus of the state and defend the revolution. So the Sandinistas keep sending signals that their revolution is not up for negotiation. So why didn't you ask for $270 million up in the front? Well, no, wait a minute. This is the one thing. We here in ourself, we understand what we're up against and we don't want failures. We are still deciding the timing of this and our request. But we mean it. Would your hand have been considerably strengthened had you got that in escrow up front rather before the Reagan-Rite peace plan was put forward? I just have to plead that we really want this. We want them sustained and with the experience we have in the bargaining with the Hilonor, we're trying to do what we think is the best way to get that end result. There's no sense in going up there and then being defeated, and there it is. Well, you asked me, sir, if you recall in early 1986 what my main concern was, my main fear, and I said that you would return to Rancho del Cielo in early 89 having left as one of your legacies the consolidation of a Marxist-Leninist beachhead in Central America and you said, oh, no, you can bet anything you want against that happening. Would you give me the same reply today? Yes, I would. I'm going to do everything I can to see that what I told you then happens. But is it within your power today, sir? Well, this is what we have to find out. We received quite a setback with the last election and the return to domination of the Congress by the other party. We couldn't have achieved the things that we have achieved economically or anything else if we hadn't had one party, the Senate, for those six years. But now we're back to the thing that we've known for a half a century now is the Democrats' power with both houses of the Congress. So our strategies had to be changed a little bit. Well, Arnold Bauchman talking about what's happening on the Hill, I don't know if you had a chance. I'm sure you had other things to read today, but Arnold Bauchman wrote in our commentary section, Dr. Bauchman from the Hoover Institute says that he expressed concern that people like Newt Gingrich and Bob Dornan and Bill McCollum collectively say that the number of hard left members of the House of Representatives who are now acting as pro-Soviet agents of influence is growing and that they have undue influence on what happens up on the Hill. Yet when this is pointed out, it automatically triggers accusations of McCarthyism, etc. The whole process is becoming increasingly sophisticated in the old days. It was easy to see what was going on. Now it's a much more subtle process. So what is to be done when two dozen pro-Marxists with real political clout can in our own Congress influence great issues of defense, arms control and international security? This is a problem that we have to face and I don't know, it would be easy enough to just stand up and start shouting, but some years ago I happened to know because I've been a student of the communist movement for a long time, having been a victim of it some years ago in Hollywood. A long years ago the communist policy was to, and they used the term calling upon their willing idiots, just liberals who weren't communists, but that they must engage in a campaign that would make anti-communism unfashionable. And they have succeeded. You know that today a voice raised in that even the people that are anti-communist, there is a tendency to say, oh, enough of that. Hey, this is the old term McCarthyism and so forth and all of that. Well, they're taking advantage of this now. Remember there was once a Congress in which they had a committee that would investigate even one of their own members if it was believed that that person had communist involvement or communist leadings. Well, they've done away with those committees. That shows the success of what the Soviets were able to do in this country with making it unfashionable to be anti-communist. So you have to be careful in opposing them to not trigger that reaction on the part of your own people that you're depending on to support you. And it's no fun, but it is true. They have a disinformation campaign we know worldwide. And that disinformation campaign is very sophisticated and is very successful, including with the great many in the media and the press in America. And on the Hill, too. And on the Hill. One question about Iran, Mr. President. Secretary Weinberger, as you saw yesterday, says there's no way to deal with an irrational and fanatical regime like Iran has today. We also know that arms embargoes are not very effective. In fact, they're ineffectual. And the Soviets say they'd rather try the UN flag for warships that don't belong to the region. The French say they're interested in this idea. How do you react? I am willing to hear the details of what it is that the Soviets are proposing. And listen to the details of that. But my own feeling is that what we're doing there is just what we've been doing for many, many years. As a matter of fact, we've had a naval force there for 48 years. Just as we have naval forces in other places that in the event of conflict would be essential to our national security in the Caribbean, in the Mediterranean, or in the Philippines, in the Pacific, in that area. And the same has been true of this body of water. And all that we're doing there is, well, we're carrying out what I have always said that we won't send any of those units any place without giving them the right to defend themselves. And I think that the main issue is not just Iran or not just whether Kuwait ships carry an American flag. What is an issue there is the maintaining of international law and international waters that those waters are open to the traffic of all the nations on earth. And if we ever once give in and back away from one of those waters or areas such as the Persian Gulf, I think we lose any standing that we have in the world. We once again are back an untrustworthy ally. But we also, where does it stop? And someone then, as well as Qaddafi tried, get us to withdraw from the Mediterranean. Cuba say that we can't be in the Caribbean anymore. I don't think we should set a pattern of that kind. If you were dealing with rational people in Cuba, you were dealing with a irrational person in Libya until you heard from you on April 14th, 1986. Yes. Aren't we going to be faced with the same situation in Iran dealing with these people until they learn the hard way that they've got to behave differently? That's right. And that's, you've just said it, what the answer is until they learn the hard way. So when they zap us they can be expected, we can expect that they'll be zap-backed. But you think that will bring them to their senses? Well, the main thing is what we have to do is continue with this effort to bring the war to an end. And here again we have a number of allies, I think most of the countries in the world, including the Soviet Union in this instance are on that side. And that should continue to be our main effort. You mentioned the Soviet Union and I noticed that I only have three minutes left of your time, Mr. President. Do you really feel that a new dawn for a new detente is upon us with Glasnost? Is that your reading of Glasnost? No. I'm normally an optimistic fellow, but I believe that the record is such that I believe that we must continue. But I think I summed it up in a Russian proverb that I recited, Mr. Gorbachev in one of our meetings. I'm not a linguist, but I learned this one in Russian. Dovya, no provya. Trust, but verify. And that's what must guide us. I think some of the people that think that any effort to, for example, have an arms agreement or whatever with the Soviet Union, that to ever make any such move is wrong, I think those are people that whether they realize it or not down inside have decided that war is inevitable, that someday the end result must be a war. Well, if that's going to be a war with nuclear weapons, where do we live then once they've poisoned the land with radioactivity and we've poisoned their land and where do we all go? But I believe that peace is worth trying for, but not blindly. We know their record and so forth. And so, yes, we'll negotiate, no, but it'll all have to be based on verification. Then why did we make such a big to-do about INF before the fine print of verification was nailed down? Well, because for the first time we have come to what has amounted to an agreement in principle between the foreign ministers. Now they will meet again as the secretary has announced in October. They'll go with another meeting. That should either we'll fail and there won't be or that should pin down the details in which then Mr. Gorbachev and I could sign a binding agreement with verification principles in it. I do believe that it isn't a case of whether someone is suddenly or they'll ever changing its spots or not. But they have some very real problems that could make this desirable to them too, mainly economic. And it has been brought on by their great spending in arms and all. So they're faced with a problem in which it's to their advantage to if we can find a way to reduce these arms. My last question, Mr. President, is that by my reckoning about 12 million people have been killed in 145 conflicts since the end of World War II, none by nuclear weapons. But nuclear weapons have given Europe 42 consecutive years of peace. You seem to be envisaging a denuclearized Europe, which would make war thinkable again, wouldn't it? No, I don't think so. Because let me tell you what, first of all, in all of that peace since World War II ended, part of that, I think, came about because of a very wonderful thing that's 40 years old now and that's the Marshall Plan, which we, every war that I can ever remember in history in Europe or elsewhere, in the settlement of the war, has laid the foundation for the next war, the victor imposing things on the defeated to where one day they have at it again. This time, the Marshall Plan was something that was completely different in that we extended it not only to our former allies, but to those that had been enemies themselves. And isn't it strange that the biggest factor today, the threat of bringing about war again, is by a country that was allied with us in that other war, the Soviet Union. But I think, as I say, I think that there are things going on there that, well, as I've said, a nuclear war cannot be won unless never before. But let me also point out something else that I'm afraid some people don't understand. In this medium range situation, they're giving up, if this is signed, thousands, a few thousand warheads. We're only giving up a few hundred. Now they talk about the great superiority of the conventional weapons of the Soviet Union. I admit that they do have that superiority. But that is countered by the tactical weapons, the battlefield nuclear weapons. Now those are not being touched in this agreement. Before we ever touch those, we must be negotiating on conventional weapons also. We must never take nuclear reductions to a point that suddenly we have left them with a military advantage. So that, for those who think that this is what we're doing, doesn't go. But remember also, in keeping that peace, I departed from this in some of my lecture here, in keeping that peace for all these years, in addition to the Marshall Plan, I should have said this earlier. Remember that when we guaranteed Europe the nuclear umbrella, we were the only ones that really had the umbrella. And it took quite a while before suddenly the other side had a bigger umbrella than we did, or at least a bigger wind for blowing our umbrella away. And this is where I think that the goal must be to rid the world of those weapons. You think it would be a safer world, denuclearized world. Yes, I even wonder if they, this is the first time any Russian leader has ever proposed eliminating weapons they already have. And I wonder if maybe part of that isn't having lived with Chernobyl. And Chernobyl, bad as it was, was less than the effect of one warhead, a single warhead. They must have had some second thoughts about an exchange of nuclear weapons. And whether you call one side a winner or the other side a loser or what. But what has happened to both countries? And where do the people live? 90,000 people still can't go back to their homes at Chernobyl. Totally denuclearized world, Mr. President, means 17 American divisions, 180 Russian divisions. Who would be perceived as a paramount military cow? No, because as I say, before we denuclearize. No, that has not, well, we've been continually negotiating with them, as you know, for years now, not only under our administration and under others, on the conventional weapons. But when it gets down to more nuclear weapons, as I said before, no, those others have to be tied in also. I know that I'm getting lots of signals, Mr. President. Right, thank you very much. I don't know if Charlie Wick passed this onto you. I thought you might give us a couple of chuckles and some useful phrases for people traveling in dangerous terms.