7

RETURN OF THE JEDI

Starring:	Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Frank Oz
Directed by:	Richard Marquand

WARGAMES

Starring:	Matthew Broderick, Ally Sheedy, Dabney Coleman
Directed by:	John Badham
Viewed by the Reagans:	June 2–4, 1983

The Films That Stirred the President’s Imagination

The year 1983 saw some of the tensest moments in the Cold War since the Cuban Missile Crisis. The president, long a fervent anti-Communist, bluntly and repeatedly made plain his view of the Soviet Union and its dangerous ambitions. He spoke often of his deep and abiding concern for the well-being of the American people and our way of life, his fear that Soviet expansionism was like a cancer that could eventually rob millions of their freedoms, and his belief that if he could just get his Soviet counterpart in a room and talk to him man-to-man, he could convince him that the United States had no hostile intentions, and there was no need for the nuclear brinksmanship that had characterized the relationship for so long.

On March 8, 1983, Reagan dubbed the Soviet Union “an evil empire.”^I That speech, which seemed to wipe away decades of US policy seeking a long-term peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union, changed the course of the Cold War more than any other, and probably more than any speech ever delivered since Abraham Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg and Franklin Delano Roosevelt responded to Pearl Harbor. It outraged many of the president’s political opponents, who called it dangerous warmongering. It also outraged the Soviets, who feared such an obvious departure from the policies and views of Reagan’s immediate predecessors. A new Soviet president, the stern-faced former KGB chief Yuri Andropov, who replaced the late, long-serving Leonid Brezhnev in 1982, did not ease concerns about a blistering standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union. He may have been disappointed, but Ronald Reagan was undeterred.

Two weeks later, in a historic address from the White House, the president announced his support for research and development of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a missile defense system that Reagan hoped would render nuclear weapons obsolete.^II The total elimination of nuclear weapons and their potential to destroy the world was something to which Ronald Reagan was devoted. It bothered him that some people viewed him as anything less than committed to achieving that goal.

Critics such as Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts attacked the vision as “reckless Star Wars schemes.” Reporters soon dubbed the missile shield Reagan’s “Star Wars” plan. The idea was to associate the plan with wacky science fiction. Of course, it also connected it to one of the most beloved film franchises of all time. It just so happened that the third and latest outing in the Star Wars universe, Return of the Jedi, was being shown in the presidential lodge at Camp David the first weekend of June.

The president had grown quite comfortable with the routine and rhythms of Camp David as well as with the personnel who spent so much time with him. In warmer months such as this, he and Mrs. Reagan often enjoyed going to the swimming pool behind Aspen. This was where one of the great Camp David traditions during the Reagan era—essentially a “rite of passage” for new Secret Service agents joining the Presidential Protective Division—took place.

Whenever a new agent joined the detail, he was told to bring a bathing suit to Camp David and to be ready to stand post.

When the president went poolside, the new agent would put on his bathing suit and get ready to go. At that point, before the new agent left the Secret Service cabin, a senior agent would stop him and hand him a pair of goggles, a snorkel, and fins.

Too nervous to ask any questions, the new agent would put them on and waddle out to the pool, in full view of the president.

The first time this happened, as an agent headed toward Ronald Reagan dressed like a deep-sea diver, the chief executive was startled. But he was too polite to say anything. So he greeted the agent, asked his name, where he was from, and so on.

Later, Reagan asked the senior agent in charge, “What’s with the new guy?”

Once he was informed that this was a prank for every new agent, the president was amused (and relieved) and looked forward to a new one waddling along.

The first few times the prank happened, the president had been by himself at the pool. Mrs. Reagan was in Aspen Lodge, probably on the phone or reading. But eventually the prank took place in front of the First Lady. After observing an agent waddle by in goggles and large flopping flippers, she whispered to the president, “Honey, what was that?” Without looking up from his papers, he replied, “New guy.”

Jedi was intended to close out the Star Wars trilogy. (This was many years before producer-director-writer George Lucas filmed three prequels.) It reunited the main cast—Harrison Ford’s Han Solo, Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia, and Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker—and was a guaranteed blockbuster even before its release. The film earned $500 million worldwide.

Its main competition that summer was expected to be the soon-to-open Superman III, a lackluster “threequel” to the two more popular Superman films, starring Christopher Reeve in the title role.

Coincidentally, Reeve had been invited to attend a White House reception the following weekend honoring the Special Olympics, which was also being used as a vehicle to promote Superman III.^III The visit caused some White House aides concern. Reeve, a supporter of the Special Olympics, was one of the most vocal anti-Reagan celebrities in Hollywood and that was a high standard to meet. In a 1982 interview in Playgirl, a magazine neither of the Reagans read, Reeve declared, “I don’t think Reagan knows what he’s doing. I don’t think he has a clue. He’s provoking the Russians in a terrifying way. It seems to come from some sort of misplaced pioneer spirit.”^IV Reeve said that he was an advocate for a unilateral nuclear freeze. That was a popular position of many on the left. They wanted the United States to end its nuclear missile deployment and development regardless of the Soviets’ escalating buildup.^V He also labeled Reagan, as did many in Hollywood, as insensitive to the poor—or, as he told the interviewer, the president was “raping poor people in this country.”^VI

Reeve did appear with Reagan at a Special Olympics event the following weekend. The president seemed to have charmed him—as he did with many opponents. Reeve, in fact, called Reagan—whose name he pronounced “Reegan”—“a wonderful person.”

The president himself later reflected on the visit in his diary: “He’s done some acrimonious interviews about me being a cold fish with a heart only for the rich. I’m just optimistic enough to think he might have changed his mind.” Tellingly, the Reagans had watched Superman II at Camp David with their son, Ron, in 1981. But they skipped the viewing of Superman III.

Ronald Reagan liked many aspects of the Superman view of the world—specifically, truth, justice, and the American way—as well as the Star Wars films, in which good vanquished evil. Star Wars echoed his messages of patriotism perfectly, though it may not have been a message Hollywood or the film’s creator intended. By many accounts, George Lucas held views similar to Reeve’s. He even revealed his true intentions in a 2005 interview with the Chicago Tribune, asserting that the first Star Wars film “was really about the Vietnam War, and that was the period where Nixon was trying to run for a [second] term.” Years later, the Los Angeles Times observed: “For the counterculture, America itself was the Empire to be combated in the name of youth solidarity, just as the Death Star amounted to another name for the military-industrial complex.” Darth Vader and the Empire could be seen as stand-ins for the US government—led by men like Nixon and Reagan—versus the small group of freedom fighters, who were stand-ins for the Vietcong.^VII The Soviets also shared this view. Its official news agency, Tass, compared Reagan to the villainous Vader, dark lord of the Sith.^VIII

Perhaps what was most interesting about the kerfuffle with Reeve was what it said about the differences in the philosophies and outlook of the president and his critics. As Reeve noted in his infamous Playgirl interview, “Reagan seems to dig into this thing of believing in himself no matter what his critics say, which I think is a particularly American trait.” Asked by Playgirl if he had “any problems with Superman’s politics, his role as a defender of truth, justice, and the American way,” Reeve responded, “The way I deal with that is to dismiss it completely.”

“Don’t you think he has any influence on the way kids see the world?” the reporter pressed.

“I certainly hope not,” the actor replied.^IX

But that didn’t come across to moviegoers, or to the Reagans. In a review that year of Return of the Jedi, the Washington Post noted how Star Wars “helped close some of the psychological wounds left by the war in Vietnam. Star Wars tapped into inspirational depths that transcend political allegiance. It reflected politically uncomplicated yearnings—to be in the right, to fight on the side of justice against tyranny.”

The president was a fan of the films because in many ways they were, like Raiders of the Lost Ark, adaptations of his favorite Westerns, in which the villains were mostly unambiguous, and the good guys always won. And it was easy to see the appeal of Luke Skywalker: a good-looking, optimistic farm boy with big dreams who changes the world. Not much of a departure from Reagan himself. Leia and Han Solo were both quintessential Western characters: he, the swashbuckling daredevil with the heart of gold; she, the tough-talking, rugged pioneer woman determined to make it in a man’s world. As the writer Charlie Jane Anders noted in 2015: “Star Wars starts out in the Wild West, the rough-hewn old frontier, and then it races upward, soaring and expanding its scope, until at last it becomes World War II. It’s the story of drifters and dreamers, who find their purpose out in the absolute dead middle of nowhere, and end up leading the revolution against an Empire. You can’t even imagine a more quintessentially American story than the original Star Wars.”^X

Return of the Jedi offered a special twist, because it included the redemption of one of the most evil characters in movie history, Darth Vader, who sacrifices himself and his ambitions out of love for his son. Reagan was a big believer in redemption stories, as were most people. I suspect he may have reflected on his own father, Jack, who had been tormented by alcoholism and died at age fifty-seven in 1941.

Contrary to some popular notions, Star Wars didn’t give birth to Reagan’s policies. His reference to the “evil empire”—in what sometimes was called “the Darth Vader speech”^XI—was not a phrase inspired by the films. If the line was inspired by anything, it was probably the 1952 anti-Communist book Witness by Whittaker Chambers, an American Communist sympathizer who, beginning in 1932, spied for Russia against the United States. In 1939 a disillusioned Chambers went to the US government and revealed the names of others in the spy ring in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Meanwhile Chambers wound up becoming a vocal critic of Communism and a darling of US conservatives. He was a senior editor at William F. Buckley’s National Review in the late 1950s and died of a heart attack in 1961.

He referred to the Soviet Union as “the focus of institutionalized evil.” (Reagan, in his famous 1983 speech, labeled the Soviets “the focus of evil in the modern world.”)

Nor was his vision of a missile shield rendering nuclear weapons obsolete inspired by Star Wars. It came from his deep belief in the importance of ridding the world of the MAD (mutually assured destruction) policies that nuclear weapons enabled.

Although both Reagans liked United Press International’s White House bureau chief and legendary reporter Helen Thomas personally, the president occasionally expressed annoyance when she referred to his defense system as “Star Wars.”

“I wish whoever coined that expression would take it back again, because it gives a false impression of what it is we’re talking about,” he said once. In an interview with Soviet journalists, Reagan explained that the term was “based on a misconception,” and distanced the actual missile defense system from the movies. “We’re talking about seeing if there isn’t a defensive weapon that does not kill people, but that simply makes it impossible for nuclear missiles, once fired out of their silos, to reach their objective—to intercept those weapons.” His irritation with the “Star Wars” label only caused his “tormentors,” such as ABC News’s chief White House correspondent, Sam Donaldson, among others, to persist in calling it “Star Wars.” (Reagan eventually gave in to the inevitable, at one point telling reporters that for supporters of the missile defense shield, “the force is with us.”)

I have often been asked if the president was aggravated by Donaldson, who was perhaps the loudest and most provocative of the shouting questioners. Not at all. President Reagan got it that television was a performance medium and that Sam was just doing his job. Both Reagans liked Sam, and I think he liked them too.

The Reagans’ feelings were not shared by everyone on the White House staff. On more than one occasion, I got dirty looks from some senior aides when reporters would shout questions at the president during Oval Office or Cabinet Room photo ops. A senior aide once asked me why I could not “control” the press and tell them not to shout questions at the president. I replied that it was fantasy to tell a reporter not to ask a question. Another time, toward the very end of the Reagan presidency, a top aide grabbed my arm during an Oval Office photo op when reporters were shouting questions about some supposedly sensitive national security issue. “Make them stop,” he ordered me. I’d had enough. I had already accepted the Reagans’ offer to join their post–White House staff in Los Angeles, so I was relatively fearless in answering. I turned to the person and said, “If you had adequately briefed the president, this would not be such an issue,” and walked away.

Reagan understood the role that the press played in informing an American public that was still very tense in the later days of the Cold War. It is easy to forget now, but even in the 1980s, the specter of nuclear war still hung closely over the United States and the Soviet Union. President Reagan and all of us in his administration understood the stakes, as did the members of the press corps. We all had our jobs to do in keeping the country safe and informed.

But while Reagan may not have appreciated clever film-inspired nicknames for defense programs, this is not to say that films and dramatized depictions had no influence on his views regarding the Cold War. Anxiety over the prospect of a global nuclear war at the time was a common theme in acclaimed movies such as Threads in Great Britain and Testament in the United States. They were both stark depictions of people suffering and dying amid a global nuclear fallout.

One TV movie that reached the greatest audience was The Day After, a 1983 ABC-TV production watched by a record one hundred million people. The film, starring Jason Robards, JoBeth Williams, and John Lithgow, dramatized the nuclear destruction of Lawrence, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri. It shocked and depressed many, including Ronald Reagan. When asked his opinion of the film, he replied, “Any drama or any motion picture or any play is based on one thing. It isn’t successful unless it has or evokes an emotional response.”^XII And it definitely provoked one in the president. “It’s very effective and left me greatly depressed,” he recalled. “My own reaction was one of having to do all we can to have an effective deterrent and to see that there is never a nuclear war.”^XIII

Indeed, the commander in chief’s determination to support a missile defense system may have been bolstered further by the second film we saw that weekend: WarGames, which had just hit movie theaters on Friday, June 3.

WarGames, starring a twenty-one-year-old Matthew Broderick in a breakthrough performance along with 9 to 5’s Dabney Coleman, received glowing reviews. The film’s premise was fanciful. An air force computer in charge of America’s nuclear arsenal goes haywire and is on the verge of launching a preemptive missile strike against the Soviet Union, only to be averted at the last minute through the resourcefulness of a teen computer whiz played by Broderick.

Like most suspense films, the pacing brings viewers into the action. And it certainly did for us. At one point, a general standing in a conference room at the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD)—a photo of President Reagan visible on the wall behind him—picks up a red phone and barks, “Get me the president!” At that moment, everyone gathered in the Aspen living room to watch the movie, including President and Mrs. Reagan, turned to look at the phone next to where he was sitting. Laughing, we half expected it to ring.

There were other edge-of-the-seat moments, such as when Broderick’s character has no money to make a crucial call from a pay phone. He improvises, using a ring top from an aluminum soda can, thereby saving the world from a nuclear holocaust.

When the movie ended, the entire Aspen cabin was uncharacteristically quiet. We rose from our seats, pondering the possibility of rogue computers triggering a global catastrophe.

Mrs. Reagan finally broke the silence, asking no one in particular, “Could that really happen?”

There were several high-ranking military people in the room who had watched the film with the Reagans. They kept their silence.

Then the president’s doctor, Dan Ruge, a civilian, answered calmly, “Yes, that could happen.” After a long pause, he added, “In fact, I’ve done it.” Dr. Ruge, a distinguished neurosurgeon, had been a partner of Mrs. Reagan’s stepfather, Loyal Davis, in Chicago. He and his wife, Greta, had known Nancy Reagan for a very long time.

There was another long pause, with stares and silence.

Then Dan said with a smile, “I’ve used a ring top to make a call at a pay phone.”

The room erupted in laughter, with none heartier than the Reagans’.

The film’s dire warning of the dangers of an accidental nuclear launch clearly made a lasting impression on President Reagan. Just two days later, as Lou Cannon describes in his biography, Reagan met with a group of Democratic congressmen to discuss his missile defense program. At one point, he put aside his notes and talked about WarGames and the dangers an inadvertent launch might pose to the United States. His concern, like the film itself, was dismissed by some in the room as far-fetched, even absurd. Yet only a few months later—on September 26, 1983, to be exact—the Soviet Union’s early warning system malfunctioned twice, alerting Russian generals of a launch of US nuclear missiles. Fortunately, a senior official in the underground bunker near Moscow deduced that the computer was in error, and a nuclear crisis was averted. Life, it turned out, imitated art—and it might have had dire consequences.