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| Speaker: | Richard N. Gardner, Professor of law and international organization, Columbia University; senior counsel, Morgan Lewis LLP; author, Mission Italy: On the Front Lines of the Cold War |
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| Presider: | Douglas G. Brinkley, Professor of history and director, Theodore Roosevelt Center for American Civilization, Tulane University |
October 6, 2005
Council on Foreign Relations
Council on Foreign Relations
New York, NY
DOUGLAS BRINKLEY: Good evening. Welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations. I’m supposed to say a few early things at the outset. Just to keep in mind make sure you shut off all cell phones, and we will be doing a Q&A after about 20, 25 minutes with Ambassador Gardner.
I just got into town. I’m a history professor in New Orleans. Our city was hit hard, and I want to thank my wife for coming up with me. We moved out of our house and we’re in Houston right now, but we came up to New York. And, Anne, thank you for coming. (Applause.)
And what we’re here—the conversation we’re going to have with Ambassador Gardner is about his stint as our ambassador to Italy in the Carter administration. We could talk about many other things. I notice some of the key people of the Kennedy administration are here: Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and Ted Sorensen. Dick Gardner was part of that. We could really—tracking his history in foreign affairs and international relations, it’s tracking that second generation of Cold War wise men that Walter Issacson and Evan Thompson talked about, that first wave of Acheson and Lovett and McCloy, George Kennan. And then you get into this other group—“Chip” Bohlen of course is part of that group, many others—but you move into a group where I think Dick Gardner belongs in.
And he’s been nothing but a treasure and a resource to our country. And he’s been an extraordinary ambassador not just to Italy, not just to Spain, but to Europe, and that is the crux of our conversation today. It’s going to be taking a look at Ambassador Gardner’s view of the Carter years; European policy, NATO, European Union, communism and—the Communist Party in Italy, and then shifting and talking about what does it all mean today? We’ll look at the Carter presidency, foreign policy with Europe from a historical perspective, talk a little bit what it means today, and then open it up for Q&A.
My first question to you is how did you meet and convince to marry such an incredibly beautiful woman—(laughter)—as Danielle, who I’ve long believed has been your secret weapon in your special relationship you forged with Italy? I’m just wondering how you two ended up meeting and got together. (Laughter.)
RICHARD GARDNER: Well, that’s a question I had not expected. (Laughter.) I’ll answer it, but before I do, I want to thank so many dear friends for coming, to the council for organizing this.
And this is a hero because he is a twice-displaced person—displaced from his home in New Orleans and then Houston. And the fact that he kept this engagement is, you know, a tribute to your friendship for me, and I’m simply grateful.
Well, many of you know I owe my meeting with Danielle paradoxically to one of the worst scoundrels in world history, modern history, and that is Benito Mussolini, who with his racial laws made it impossible for her family, which had lived for 400 years in the—(inaudible)—to continue, and that brought her to me. And I met her in New York. Shall I say when?
DANIELLE GARDNER: (Off mike.)
GARDNER: Well, I—
MS. GARDNER: (Off mike.)
GARDNER: And Don Lincoln (sp) introduced us as a matter of fact—(laughs, laughter)—we should give him full credit.
Danielle was making a career as an actress, and I—she made the great sacrifice to give up the stage and marry me. But we had our own little stage in these various embassies and, as you may notice in the book, I dedicate the book to Danielle as my co-ambassador. And in every sense she was the co-ambassador.
And I’ll just tell one quick story since you opened—you didn’t know what you were opening up here. (Laughter.)
Because, of course, she was of Italian background and spoke the language as her first language and knew everybody, she was very, very helpful in helping me learn about things. For example, one day she came home, she said, you know, at the hairdresser, I was with the mistress of Minister X and she told me—and it was an important minister—that he is going to resign on Friday. (Laughter.) So at my staff meeting—ambassadors, as you know, twice or three times a week have their senior staff, and there were—they and the CIA and the political section and economic—and I said, I have it on good authority—(laughter)—that Minister X is going to resign. And the CIA and political counselor said, “Ambassador, that’s never going to happen.” Never going to happen. Well I don’t know, I’m just telling you what I’ve heard. Of course, Friday he resigned. (Laughter.) Monday staff meeting, they’re appalled. “Ambassador, what was your source of information?” (Laughter.) And I took great joy in saying to the CIA, “I never disclose sources.” (Laughter, applause.)
BRINKLEY: Did you speak Italian before you met?
GARDNER: Yes. Not brilliantly, but we had spent—well first of all, after marrying Danielle, we were in Italy frequently. I began to speak it. I took lessons during an “ano sabatico,” a sabbatical year as visiting professor at the University of Rome, ’67, ’68. So yes, when I arrived, I spoke it serviceably and continued to take lessons on the job.
It helped a lot because in those days in Italy, most political leaders did not speak English. And if you didn’t—if you were talking to them through a translator, they didn’t feel comfortable; there was someone else in the room. So it was very important to have the language. And I would say, if I can make an obiter dicta, we ought to spend more attention to the language skills of our ambassadors. It is still a very important thing. (Applause.)
BRINKLEY: Amen. Now because our focus is on the Carter administration, I’ll skip over your long history in the Democratic Party. But how did you get to know Brzezinski, who wrote the introduction of this book? And how did you get to know Jimmy Carter? Was it through Brzezinski, or what’s the story that you got involved with those guys?
GARDNER: Zbig and I were colleagues at Columbia. I was in the law faculty; he was in the political science and school of international affairs. We were very close friends. And people thought we were an odd couple because they said, well, gee, Zbig is more of a hawk and Rick is more of a dove. But that was not true because we were strong anti-communists, we believed in strength as well as principle in foreign policy. But he was a specialist on Russia, the Soviet Union, so naturally he was, you know, outspoken and tough on that. I was talking U.N. and economic issues. But we fitted very well together.
And then, of course, comes the Trilateral Commission. And this may—and I see Charles Heck here, who was one of the pillars—is one of the pillars of the Trilateral Commission. It wasn’t a conspiracy theory, as some people thought; it’s just that one day some distinguished leaders of Japan, Western Europe and the United States said maybe we should get the three centers of the industrialized democratic world together to see how we can improve things. And David Rockefeller sat down with Zbig and said, Zbig, I want you to be my chief expert on this. Who do you think we should invite? And they had the list, and the list, you know, was largely Council on Foreign Relations Northeastern establishment.
So, apparently—this is to Zbig’s recollection—he said, David said to me, we can’t just have the usual suspects. (Laughter.) Don’t we know anybody from the South? Well, that week—and this is how chance enters into these things—that week, Time magazine had a cover story on southern governors. And there were three pictures on the cover of southern governors. One was Jimmy Carter. And it’s said about Jimmy Carter that the first thing he did as governor of Georgia was to open up offices in Europe, in Japan, and in Latin America. And Zbig said, David, he’s very trilateral. (Laughter.) I mean, let’s get him.
So here—then—I’ll make this short—the first meeting of the Trilateral Commission in Washington, Henry Kissinger is speaking to us—they were still the Ford administration—on the top floor of the State Department.
(To Mr. Heck.) I don’t know if you were there, Charles; I remember it.
And Jimmy Carter went around shaking everybody’s hand, and he was saying, in his accent—this is my nearest approximation of a southern accent—he said, “Hi, y’all, I’m Jimmy Carter and I’m running for president.” (Laughter.) And people were looking—who is this guy, you know? (Laughter.) President of what? (Laughter.)
Well, I was enormously impressed with the intellectual and personal qualities of this man, and Zbig was, too. And even when he was 2 percent in the polls, we decided to help him. We called him, offered our assistance, he said fine. We became, de facto, his foreign policy coordinators, and that’s how it started.
BRINKLEY: In your friendship with Brzezinski, did you work through the campaign trail, then, all the way up through the election and—
GARDNER: We prepared a series of foreign policy speeches. The first was given in Chicago at the Chicago Counsel on Foreign Relations.
So in March of 1976, Danielle and I visited him at the Tampa Airport just before the decisive Florida primary. At that point we remember he asked us to get Cy Vance to join on up and telephone Cy and that—you see, there were very few people who took the candidate seriously. But when he started winning primaries, people—some of the big names started to call up and said how well “our” candidate is doing. (Laughter.) And Zbig got very rough with one, who I will not mention. He said, “’Our’ candidate? We have not seen you around.” (Chuckles.)
But anyway, we—I did a speech for him at the United Nations, and we wrote three or four major speeches. And that—but look, he went over these speeches very carefully himself. And I told the story at one page where he went over a speech on nuclear weapons and nuclear energy where I had written in my draft that we have to make sure that nuclear wastes are forever isolated from the biosphere. And being a nuclear engineer, he said you can’t say that, Dick; it’s got to be no nuclear wastes. They have to be in the biosphere. You should say “isolated within the biosphere” because you’re going to put them into the deep holes in the ground. That’s the kind of mind he had—(laughter)—not to be underestimated.
BRINKLEY: When you first arrived in Italy, what were the issues facing the Carter administration regarding the Soviet Union, also NATO policy?
GARDNER: Zbig wrote a memo to President Carter saying that Italy was the gravest political problem we face in Europe. Now that may sound strange to our ears today. Why was it?
The communist party had gone from 19 percent in the first postwar election to 34.4 percent in the elections of June 1976, just before I arrived in the spring of 1977. I was there for the first ambassador to a country appointed because of the priority we gave to the Italian scene.
There was a great debate in this house, at the council and in other places—what was Italian communism? Was it Euro-communism that sounded—you know, you call it Euro-communism, sounded rather benign? Was this fellow, Berlinguer really a social democrat? Or were these people really so tied to Moscow and so linked to Marxism and Leninism that if they took over it would be a real threat to NATO?
The previous administration—and I want to be careful here because we shouldn’t speak badly of previous administrations; we have too much partisanship. But the fact is that under Graham Martin, who was one of my predecessors, money was thrown around by the CIA—and all of this is in the Pike Report. Some of it ended with a man named Micelli, who was head of the secret services, who then ran for the parliament of Italy on the neo-fascist ticket.
And the image—and this is the response to your question. The problem was not just the growth of the communist party but the decline of American prestige and the view that the Italians had of the United States as unreasonably opposing the communist party and using methods which were not appropriate. And Jimmy Carter in his acceptance speech said something—and you as a great historian of Jimmy Carter will appreciate this. He said, and I think if I can find it—we will not behave—this is in his inaugural address. Carter said, “we will not behave in foreign places so as to violate our rules and standards here at home. For we know that this trust, which our nation earned, is essential to our strength.” That maybe should be read in Washington today.
I took that very seriously. I said, we are going to combat the communists, but using public diplomacy. We’re not going to finance political parties. We’re not—there are going to be no dirty tricks. We’re not going to manipulate events. Carter and Brzezinski insisted on that as well. And that was the way we approached the problem.
BRINKLEY: Did you encounter—in history, people make a great deal of the Brzezinski-Vance sort of different approaches to solving some of the world’s problems. In your case, you were friends with the head of the National Security Council, but yet you were working at the State Department. Did you ever fall in the middle of—between the (Boers?)—(inaudible)?
GARDNER: If it was a sensitive issue. Cy Vance was a wonderful man. And through the Council on Foreign Relations and through the U.N. association and other—I worked on him on a number of projects. I have great respect for Cy.
So, yes, it—once it became public that the two were disagreeing—and they were disagreeing on arms control issues, how to deal with the Soviet Union—I had to be very careful not to give Cy the impression—he knew if my long friendship with Zbig—that I was disloyal. And, of course, with Zbig I had to maintain relations.
And therefore, every time Cy Vance came to Rome, I wanted to make sure—and Danielle too with Gay Vance, a wonderful person—that we were loyal to them and that there was—we were not getting involved in this difficult relationship.
BRINKLEY: You were talking when you imitated Carter in the way with his—in the way he would say things, I remember—this is about maybe a decade ago. I was working on a book on Jimmy Carter and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. had mentioned that one of the things that worried him about Carter is the way he would always put the country after the city. So, he’d say, London, England; Paris, France; Rome, Italy. It was a sheer indicator that he wasn’t—didn’t know much about those places by the way he said it.
Did you find that—or did you find—how did you find President Carter himself when he came to understanding the complexities of European affairs?
GARDNER: Well, I want to put it on the record, and I hope the book reflects this. Jimmy Carter is one of the smartest men I ever met. A lot of people underestimate him—partly because of the way, you know, his southern background, the way he talks, he describes himself as born again, and so on. But he’s a very smart man. I think—he wrote a book. You know, Doug wrote a book called, “The Unfinished Presidency”—a wonderful book about Carter after he was president.
And many people say of Jimmy Carter, he was the best ex-president we ever had—the implication being, he was a total failure as a president. And I hope my book will lead to a reevaluation of his presidency. He was very smart. Was he an expert on Europe? No, how could he be, given his background as a—in Georgia and so on. But he was an incredibly quick learner, and you never had to tell him anything twice.
And he also was a voracious reader. I was flattered. I—you know, probably in an excess of pride, but that’s the way people are. I sent him my first speech in—as ambassador—not thinking, you know, poor man, he has a ton of paper to read. I get a letter back, which is reprinted here—photographed—in which he says, I read your speech. It’s a great speech. You know, he was that kind of person. And he absorbed everything.
BRINKLEY: When you were—how serious was the threat—what would have happened if the communist party had taken over?
GARDNER: Now, we’re getting to the, you know, heart of the problem. I truly believe that if the communists had gotten into the government, it would have been a disaster for the United States and for NATO because—don’t forget, this political party was receiving large financial subsidies from the Soviet Union throughout this whole period. In fact, the subsidies didn’t stop until the late 1980s.
Berlinguer, despite the reputation he had in some quarters as being very evolved towards social democracy, repeatedly affirmed his links to the Soviet Union, to the Soviet foreign policy, to Marxism-Leninism. I quote all those speeches here. And what really annoyed me—and I think you’ll understand why—how annoyed I was—was when Berlinguer and leaders of the communist party, after the kidnaping of Aldo Moro, tried to convince the people of Italy that behind the Moro kidnaping was the United States. And the argument was, Moro was going to bring the communists to power, which was not true. He assured me many times—Aldo Moro—that he wasn’t going to do that. And therefore, the Americans did this to prevent the communist entry into the government.
So although I came with an open mind in the sense that I said, we should not lock and bolt the door and tell the Italian people, we will never accept the communists in your government—they would have resented that—our approach was rather, we want solidly democratic forces in our western allies. We will look at the communists to see if they meet that test. We will dialogue with them. We will give them visas, which our predecessors never did. And I had secret meetings with Giorgio Napolitano, other leaders.
But I quickly became convinced that their entry into government with ministerial positions would have meant a fundamental reorientation in Italy, both in its domestic economic policy and its foreign policy. And, had they come in, we would never have deployed the cruise missiles, and that’s another part of the story—(inaudible)—I want to get to.
BRINKLEY: Yes, why don’t you talk about that. I mean, how did the deployment of the cruise missiles—it became such an important issue. What’s the background story of that—how Italy finally agreed to that?
GARDNER: Well, we have experts who have arms control here who probably know this at least as well as I do.
But the Soviets began in the middle 1970s a massive—this was Brezhnev, who was one of the blockheads of all time. I mean, he was a disaster. And actually, if you read Gorbachev’s memoirs, he practically says that about Brezhnev.
Brezhnev thought he could intimidate us—and Europe, in particular—by deploying the SS20 missiles, which were very powerful, sophisticated, mobile weapons, capable of hitting anyplace in Western Europe; and the Backfire bomber. And Helmut Schmidt in his famous speech in London at the IISS said, this is changing the whole equation. This is putting in doubt the American deterrent because this is a threat to Europe. And will the Americans risk New York and Washington if we’re hit by these terrible new weapons?
So Helmut Schmidt said, we’ve got to balance this. We have to restore the Euro strategic balance. We must put some weapons in Europe to countervail these weapons. So Schmidt then said, I’ve got a problem politically. I’m a Social Democrat. This is not easy for me. I need one other country in Western Europe, not counting Britain—it’s got to be a continental country—to take something, either the cruise or Pershing missiles.
Well, they asked Belgium, no; Netherlands, no; Denmark, no; Greece and Turkey out to lunch, whatever.
So, they said, my God! We’ve got to get the Italians. And the National Security Council said, the Italians! I mean, look, they’ve got the largest communist party in Western Europe. It will never happen. So I get a telegram—Gardner, the buck stops with you. You’ve got to do it.
Well, by great good luck—by great good luck—in June of 1979, for the first time in the post-war period, the communists lost votes. And the communist threat to enter the government ended. That was a miracle because then the next month, a wonderful man—Francesco Cossiga—became prime minister, formed a government without the communists. I went to see him, gave him a top secret document explaining why we needed Italy to help us.
He said, look, this is not going to be easy in our parliament. But if you tell me it’s required for western security, I will do it. And he went to Bettino Craxi, the socialist leader—and remember, the socialist party had never supported NATO. They were not friendly to the U.S.
One of my political counselors once said, the Italian Socialist Party is a Marxist party. The problem is, they’re more Groucho than Karl! (Laughter.)
Well, despite that description, the Bettino Craxi, who has perhaps a bad reputation with many of you because of the corruption scandals, he took the decision to support it.
So with the government of Cossiga, which was a minority government, and the vote of the socialists, we got the cruise missiles approved in the Italian parliament, against the opposition, of course, of the communists and radicals.
Gorbachev—and this is the end of my overlong response. Gorbachev said in his memoirs, that decision of NATO to countervail our military buildup under Brezhnev convinced me when I became general secretary in 1986, we had to have a wholly new foreign policy—one based on true disarmament and the free choice of political systems, which meant, of course, that the satellites could get out, and the wall came down and the Soviet Union itself collapsed.
I’m not saying it was all done by Jimmy Carter, but I think that when they write the history of the Cold War it shouldn’t be just Reagan and Bush. There ought to be a decent respect for the contribution that Jimmy Carter made—and the Italians.
BRINKLEY: And one of the things I think this book does, it’s a—there is a Carter revisionism that’s going on. I think this is a crucial part of that Carter revisionism, particularly in the realm of foreign affairs, in the way that Carter pushed a human rights policy, which frightened the Soviet Union a great deal. And of course, the Soviet Jews left during Carter’s watch, and he had written that note to Sakharov.
Final question to you -
GARDNER: Well, can I just comment on that?
BRINKLEY: Okay.
GARDNER: No, that’s—I should have said, the other thing that made a different in bringing an end to the Soviet Union was the Carter human rights policy, which encouraged the dissidents in the Soviet Union itself, in Central Europe and, of course, encouraged people all over the world in Latin America.
And you—I have to quote you. Can I quote you? You’re always quoting me. (Laughter.) You quoted Robert Gates—who is not a Democrat; I believe he’s a Republican—CIA director under President Bush senior, who said—and you quoted him in your wonderful book—quote, “I believe historians and political observers alike have failed to appreciate the importance of Jimmy Carter’s contributions to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.” That’s a CIA director—and he had in mind the human rights policy as well as the missiles.
BRINKLEY: How—what was it like being in Italy when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan? What kind of fears did that bring you from your perch there?
GARDNER: The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the taking of our hostages in Tehran were two terrible events that shadowed our final year in Rome. And it was a terrible—a terrific challenge because at that very moment, Italy became the president of the European Community. It wasn’t then the European Union; it was the European Community and the rotating presidency, as you know. And Italy’s six-month period came directly after these two traumatic events.
The question was, would the Italians really take the leadership in mobilizing our European allies to react to the taking of the hostages and the invasion? And I would say, the Italians probably did better, frankly, than the French and the Germans. And in here, you’ll find a lot of bitterness expressed by Italian leaders that the French—well, when it came to cutting off credits from Russia and so on, the Italians said, we’re willing to do it, but the French won’t.
So—but they showed constructive leadership, except on one thing, which I can’t entirely forgive them for. I lost the battle—I wanted them to boycott the Olympics, but they refused to do that.
BRINKLEY: Well, look, I want to stop so we have a little bit of time for Q&A right now. And there’s the hand-held microphone in the back. So we’d like to take a few questions.
We go right over here. Yes, ma’am, just use the mike, if you would.
QUESTIONER: (Off mike.)
GARDNER: Oh, I love that question. Thank you, Martha Blyer (ph).
They were very different. Italy was a crisis post—a front-line post. People ask me—my Spanish friends—when are you going to write the book about us, you know? (Laughter.) And I have to say, look, it’s not a question of hurting your feelings, but there isn’t that much history in the four years that we had in Madrid. There was a a lot of—it was a—Madrid was wonderful because I was able to see the fruits of the post-Franco democratic evolution.
Here was a country that was out of the picture. They weren’t really part of Europe under Franco. They were considered not a democracy. And after Franco died in 1975, thanks to the king and some wise political leaders, there was this amazing Spanish rebirth. And you know, these last years, Spain has had the fastest growth of any European country outside of Ireland. And they’re a solid democracy.
And so, I had the great privilege of working with a socialist leader, Felipe Gonzales, and a great foreign minister of Spain who—
QUESTIONER: (Off mike.)
GARDNER: No, no. Who is the current foreign minister of NATO?
QUESTIONER: (Off mike.)
GARDNER: No, of NATO.
QUESTIONER: (Off mike.)
GARDNER: Solanas, sorry. I just couldn’t come up with the name. Javier Solanas was the foreign minister, and he’s now Europe’s foreign minister. He was head of NATO.
But working with the Spaniards was a tremendous experience. They are a great people. And they have played a wonderful role, but it was a different experience.
There is one contrast between these two countries. Now, the Italians present will get angry for me for this. The Italians—the Spaniards have a great sense of pride in being Spanish. They have a great sense of the state. The Italians are proud to be Venetians, like my wife, or Florentines or Romans or whatever. But are they proud to be Italians? Do they have a great sense of national history? Not the same way because, after all, they’ve only been a country since 1860.
So that’s one difference. And Spain doesn’t have so many different political parties. They have two mainstream political parties—they have the problems with the Basques and the Catalans, which are an annoyance—but two mainstream parties, whereas Italy today has eight parties on the left and four parties on the center right. And it’s just harder to get things done.
So I have great respect for the Spaniards. But the story—there isn’t as much of a story there.
BRINKLEY: Great. Yes, sir. Here you go.
QUESTIONER: Hi there, Jeff Laurenti at the Century Foundation.
You just observed a moment ago that Gorbachev had pointed to developments on the Pershing Missile front as part of the—of what led him to rethink the Soviet Union’s role in the world.
I wonder if you could explore for us a bit the interplay between the Italian communist party—the developments that were going on there—and its kind of relations with inside the communist parties of Eastern Europe—the changes that happened that we saw coming to fruition in the ’80s.
Carter had begun his term saying that the Americans had to get over their, quote, “inordinate fear of communism,” end quote. And you suggest that a change in policy regarding the Italian communist party in the government as being a little more open if you can prove such and such.
To what extent were first the Italians and then the French communist and others actually the harbingers of a fundamental change in the hard-line left-wing that eventually was going to bear fruit with a different U.S. policy in the Soviet block itself?
GARDNER: Well, clearly, there’s a lot of difference between these different communist parties. The French party was much more hard-line even than the Italians. And the Spanish was itself a different story—maybe in-between.
Inevitably, in answering these questions, I’m oversimplifying. These are very complex issues. Let me make clear that my view of the Italian communist party—there were hard-liners, and I mentioned their names here, who were really pro-Soviet. There were people who were truly trying to make the Italian communist party a social democratic, pro-western, non-Soviet party—people like Giorgio Napolitano, whom I became very close to, saw secretly in these meetings.
The problem was that Berlinguer couldn’t choose between his hard-liners and his softer-liners. And he knew that the party would split if he tried to support, let’s say, the missiles. He would have lost half of his party or more.
What happened in the ’80s was—and this is answering your question—when the changes began to take place in Eastern Europe, it put the communist party that the West, particularly the Italian, in great difficulty. They didn’t know what to say about Poland, for example.
And the result of this was that at the end of the ’80s the communist party of Italy collapsed, and out of this came the group called the Democratici di Sinistra, the Democrats of the Left, who broke with communism and Leninism and all that and now are considered a pro-Western party.
Indeed, when Mr. D’Alema, who was a communist, and became part of this new non-communist party was prime minister—and I know this because my son-in-law was his diplomatic adviser—he supported our actions—NATO’s action—in Kosovo. It was not easy for him to do.
So there have been profound changes in the former communists, and I would certainly never say of any political leader in Italy today that I wouldn’t trust him because he was once a communist.
But if he’s still a communist, as if true of Armando Cossutta and others—the Rifondazione Communista—Mr. Bertinotti of Rifondazione Communista—there are two communist parties in Italy today, believe it or not. And together they get six percent. So the myth dies hard.
BRINKLEY: Yeah, in the back row there.
QUESTIONER: (Inaudible)—Johns Hopkins University.
Dick, would you mention or comment on Vatican diplomacy. I missed the section in Washington of the Council on Cardinal McCarrick and Benedict the XVI’s foreign policy. Was it relevant, irrelevant? Did you interact with the Vatican or not? Did they make a difference?
GARDNER: I love that question also. It gives me a chance to say something I wanted to say.
When Pope Paul II passed away, I watched C-SPAN and Fox News, and I was really annoyed because we saw one guest after another from this administration saying, in effect, the Cold War was won by this wonderful pope in collaboration with Ronald Reagan and George Bush.
Carter wasn’t mentioned. Carter was not even invited by this president to go to the funeral. The fact is, Wojtyla became pope in the fall of 1978. When the announcement was made of his election, the phone rang in my office. It was Brzezinski, elated. He said, Dick, I know this man. This is the end of communism in Western Europe.
Zbig came over, met him with President Carter and—but that’s an important part of the story.
So I’m not saying they plotted together anything, but I can—Zbig is the one one should talk to. But I’m sure they talked about Poland and Eastern Europe and how freedom could be brought to those countries.
So, yes, Reagan deserves a lot of credit, so does Bush. But Carter should not be left out when you talk about Vatican diplomacy. The pope understood particularly what Zbig was all about.
BRINKLEY: Yes, sir, in the back there. If you could just grab a mike.
QUESTIONER: Michael Doyle, Columbia University.
Dick sometimes don’t like hypotheticals. But as a law professor you live with them.
And the hypothetical is, what would have happened if the Italian Communist Party, rather than starting to shrink about the time that you arrived, had instead grown, become stronger, and won an election either in a coalition or on its own, democratically? What do you think the United States might have done under those circumstances?
GARDNER: Well, we—again, in the book you’ll find a memorandum that I asked to be prepared answering that very question, what would we do if—
QUESTIONER: (Inaudible).
GARDNER: What’s that? You’ll get to it.
But, look, if they had won that election, in June of 1979, Cossiga would not have become the prime minister. We would have had Andreotti, who by the way opposed—opposed—the stationing of the cruise missiles—this great friend of the United States, Andreotti, who was working to become president of the republic with communist support, undoubtedly.
If they had won that election and increased their vote from 34.4 (percent) up to say 38 (percent) or 40 (percent), it would have been impossible to deny them a role in government. You would have had the compromesso historico, the joining together in government of the Christian Democrats and the Communists. They would have divided up the ministries.
You think the Communist Party with 38 or 40 percent would have been satisfied with just the tourism ministry? No, they would have certainly demanded either foreign affairs or defense or interior. And at that point how could they be brought to NATO meetings? How could we share secrets with them in the nuclear planning group because they would have had people in the party, and we knew some of them were paid agents of the Soviet Union—Cossutta being one.
So it would have made a big difference. It would have made the deployment impossible, and it would have made—dealing with Italy in NATO, we would have had to decide how to ostracize them from—they would have had to be either not invited or—to certain NATO meetings or what. It was a major—also the threat to our bases. We had an important air base in Aviano in the north—the northeast; a major submarine base at La Maddalena in Sardinia; in Gaeta and Naples, naval bases.
The Communist Party was constantly agitating to reduce those bases, and in the case of La La Maddalena, to eliminate it.
So that would have made a big difference in terms of our ability to station forces in Italy.
BRINKLEY: Yes, sir, go ahead.
QUESTIONER: Hi, Dick.
Human rights.
GARDNER: Yeah.
QUESTIONER: Could you say a little bit more about whether or not that undermined the Soviet regime, how big a factor? What is the relevance of that case to our dealings today with countries like Iran or Saudi Arabia? Or is it moot because legitimacy is fundamentally compromised?
GARDNER: Well, that’s quite a question. I wish Brzezinski were here because I think he really would have more material because he saw the larger picture than I did working in Rome.
Certainly—let’s remember, 1975, we had had the Helsinki agreement, in which the Russians, perhaps without realizing what they were doing, accepted certain basic premises of freedom in that agreement.
Well, of course, immediately, then, Vaclav Havel and others inside the Soviet orbit began to say, well, look, even the Russians have agreed to this. Let’s demand these freedoms.
It was Carter, with encouragement from Brzezinski, who exploited the Helsinki agreement as a way of giving support to the dissidents inside Russia, inside the Czech Republic and Poland.
Certainly it made a difference in the satellite countries. I think it also made a difference in Russia. But you know it would take someone who was at the center of power, which I was not at that time, to evaluate exactly how much of a difference it made.
But in fairness to Bush, you know—I mean to Reagan—when Reagan came to power, his then secretary of State, who I don’t treat very favorably here—the first secretary of state. Who do I mean? Haig—Al Haig said at a Trilateral Commission meeting—I think, Charles, you might have been there. He said in response to a Japanese questioner, he said, human rights, we’re not going to fuss with that. That’s Carter. We’re going to have a different policy.
It was a terrible mistake. But George Shultz, when he came to power, understood the importance of human rights, and Reagan went to the British Parliament and made a wonderful speech about the difference between our system and the Russians.
So I would give Reagan great credit for putting the Russians on the defensive on human rights. But he building on a base that Jimmy Carter had laid.
BRINKLEY: We’ll take one more—we have two questions here. Go ahead, and then we’ll take—
QUESTIONER: This is Shep Foreman (ph).
Dick, you referred to the Iran hostage crisis. And I wonder if you could say a bit about what the range of views were in Italy at the time, from sympathy to glee, perhaps, in some quarters, and how it affected the standing of president in your capacity as ambassador at the moment to deal with critical issues?
GARDNER: It was a wrenching crisis. It was a terrible experience because Jimmy Carter didn’t want those men to die, which would have happened had we just done what some people wanted to do, have an all-out blitz against Iran.
So he tried every means to free them short of armed force, until it became clear that they were not seriously negotiating. So then the hostage rescue operation, and that was a terrible failure.
And I must say, the Italians, and probably most people in Europe and around the world, could not understand how the Soviets—how the United States, with all our military power and technology, couldn’t get six helicopters to Desert One or whatever it was to start this operation.
And that was a terrible blow to the prestige of the United States. And I remember several—even Pertini, who was a socialist and president of Italy, said, why only six helicopters? You should have 10 helicopters. Of course there were only six because they were afraid if there were too many, they would be observed and lose the stealth aspect.
That probably more than any other single event destroyed Jimmy Carter’s presidency. And the fact that when election day came in the year 1980—November, 1980—those hostages were still there, and Ronald Reagan knew how to exploit that fact, and said, no more are we going to accept the weaknesses of this presidency in the face of Islamic militancy.
The question is, what would Reagan have done in that situation? I might remind you that when Islamic militants blew up our Marine barracks in Lebanon two years later, what did Reagan do? He withdrew the American forces from Lebanon, went off to this home in California and issued a press release.
So, you know, no president has yet figured out completely how to deal with Islamic fundamentalism. And poor Jimmy Carter was the first one to be a victim of it.
BRINKLEY: Go ahead, Ted?
GARDNER: Ted, Ted Sorenson was part of the conspiracy to elect Jimmy Carter. We met at your home, as I recall, and watched one of the debates.
QUESTIONER: Well, this is a minor question, Dick, but it goes back to the earlier question about the role of the pope. Many presidents—not all—many presidents going back at least to FDR had two ambassadors in Rome. I’ve forgotten whether Carter did, and if so, is that a good idea, and how did it work out?
GARDNER: Again, I’m grateful, because in answering a previous question I didn’t make clear that I had nothing to do with the Vatican officially. Danielle and I went as private citizens to see the pope. I naturally listened carefully to things that were said to me by Brzezinski after he and Carter saw the pope. But I was the ambassador to the Republic of Italy. We had in those days not a full ambassador to the Holy See; we had a special representative. Rabbi Schneier (ph) knows the whole story.
It was—the first one when I arrived, believe it or not, was Henry Cabot Lodge. Yes, he was doing a great job, and he loved the job. But because he was a Republican—and I felt badly about this—he was removed by Carter. And I felt that was a—was not a good thing to do.
And then we had Mayor Wagner, who did a great job. But it was very important that we separated the two functions. The Vatican did not want to deal with me, and rightly. They wanted to deal with the envoy to the Vatican; that was his job.
And that bifurcation of function worked rather well.
BRINKLEY: Very good. Anyone else? We’ve hit our time limit. We’ll take one more question at the end.
GARDNER: Johnny—(inaudible)—is a great Italian journalist, you should all know if you don’t already—(Italian phrase). And he always asks hard questions, so I—
QUESTIONER: Thank you. Simply—a couple of points.
I think a lot of people here miss the step in the improvements in the Italian-American relationship that happened after your tenure at the Italian American Embassy in Via Veneto because of distrust that had sewn between the two countries was very, very, very deep. And you managed to improve it a lot, and the fruit still are working very well in Italy.
On the Olympics, you are not completely disappointed because you remember we found the solution (on Italiana ?). The military athletes didn’t go—just went the—to boycott the Moscow Olympic Games. Just went the—the amateurs went.
GARDNER: But not only that—I love this story because this is a Italian solution. When I went to Cossiga, and he announced to me with sadness, Dick, I’m going to be very upset. We’re going to the Olympics, but we are going without the national anthem and without the Italian flag. (Laughter.)
And I said, Mr. Prime Minister, if you would just say without shoes, it would also be all right. But that was (al Italiano ?). That’s right.
QUESTIONER: The question is this: Few weeks ago I had to renounce signing a very nice screenplay for Italian TV about the Moro kidnapping just for the usual CIA plot, because there was this actor that—was CIA plotting everything. He said, like, but, that wasn’t there.
Can you tell us what exactly you saw from the embassy? How did the kidnapping (parted ?)—why it was impossible to find Moro? Tell us your story from inside the embassy. Thank you.
GARDNER: Well, the hour is late. And, again, there’s a whole chapter on this.
The fact is, I don’t—I think it is unnecessary to say to this audience, the United States had nothing to do with the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro—nothing. And it is an outrage that in Italy even today certain circles are promoting the big lie.
I describe how shocked I was when I learned about this. I was on a speaking tour down South. We were immediately brought back in a military aircraft. People thought that we would be hit. We were afraid for the safety of our children.
I was wondering—I was responsible for 1,000 people in Rome and six consulates. I was afraid we would be hit. We were hit two years later under another ambassador, when General Dozier was kidnapped.
I wanted to help the Italians. But here we want up to a typical American kind of legal problem. Because of the resentment in the Congress for our intervention in Chile and other places, a law had been passed, the Hughes-Ryan act, which forbad us to intervene in the police activities of any other country.
And I wanted to, you know, do something to help the Italians. Well, we did give them bulletproof cars, and we gave, you know, them advice. But at one point the Italian government said, we need secure walkie-talkies so that as we look for Moro and we get maybe to his—near his hideout, these are not overheard by the Red Brigades.
I couldn’t get permission, because of the Hughes-Ryan, to do this. And you know what I did? Terrible admission—I sent them anyway. I had our CIA station chief just give it to them. We won’t even tell Washington because it was ridiculous that we couldn’t make that kind of assistance.
Why did it—was it so difficult for the Italians to find Moro? You can’t imagine what state the secret services were in in Italy at that time—total disorganization. They did not have a file of the Red Brigades leaders. In addition, you had people in Italy who were so alienated from the Christian Democratic-led government—and these were leading intellectuals, like Leonid Shasha (ph) and others who said, neither with the Red Brigades nor with the government.
So you had a large part of the population that just said, we are not part of this argument. It was a terrible, terrible situation.
BRINKLEY: We are going to wrap it up. I have one final question for you, which is a tough one. You need to recommend a single, wonderful Italian restaurant in New York—(laughter).
GARDNER: Whenever I am asked that kind of question, the diplomat comes out.
For example, I was asked by the White House to find an escort for Amy Carter, 11 years old, in Venice. When I get questions like the one you asked or what to do with Amy Carter, my co-ambassador takes charge. (Laughter.) He’ll tell you the restuarant.
BRINKLEY: I want to thank Ambassador Gardner so much for being here. Thank you so much. (Applause.)
I just want to make—(audio break)—mention Italy. And it really is an important chapter in understanding foreign policy in the Cold War.
Thank you.
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