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Herbert Meyer, a senior CIA official during the Reagan years and occasional contributor to Ricochet, suffered a serious bicycle accident recently and remains hospitalized. Herb was one of the first persons in the Reagan Administration who began to think out loud what Reagan had thought more privately—we can win the Cold War with the Soviet Union! With several new books about Reagan and the Cold War in recent months, Steve Hayward decided to dust off some archival recordings with Herb from a few years back that hold up better than ever, and provide lessons for today on how good intelligence work is done. Please keep Herb in your thoughts and prayers as you listen to this remarkable man and his fascinating stories.
(Closing bumper music this week is "Forgiven, Not Forgotten" by The Corrs.)
Steve Hayward
Discussion (6)
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If you want to know what Ronald Reagan got right about the Soviet Union, while everybody else was getting it wrong, this podcast will explain it.
There’s a great line in there about how the optimists in the West thought the Cold War will go on forever, while the pessimists hoped we could lose elegantly.
Caution: The first interview is like a short version of the second interview, so there is some repetition.
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Thanks, @johnhinderaker.
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Gratitude and Prayers!
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This was fascinating. Best wishes to Mr. Meyer.
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There were a couple of allusions to the current situation that were hard to interpret. When were the interviews done?
I remember that back then the Left was happy to trust the CIA's analyses that the USSR was an economic success while "capitalism" was suffering from a malaise.
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