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The Shadow Dossier — The Handshake That Ended an Era · The Shadow Dossier

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  The Shadow Dossier. Act I, a summit no one expected.
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  In October 1986, President Ronald Reagan and
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  Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev met
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  in Reykjavik, Iceland, for what both sides initially
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  described as a preparatory meeting ahead of a
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  larger summit. Behind the scenes, Both leaders
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  arrived carrying intelligence assessments that
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  shaped and ultimately nearly derailed the encounter.
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  American intelligence had spent years assessing
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  Gorbachev's rise and the internal Soviet debates
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  over economic reform. And analysts believed,
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  correctly as it turned out, that Gorbachev faced
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  genuine pressure to reduce the crushing cost
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  of the arms race. in order to address a Soviet
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  economy in serious trouble. Soviet intelligence,
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  in turn, had extensively studied Reagan's Strategic
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  Defense Initiative, the space -based missile
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  defense system nicknamed Star Wars, and concluded
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  that even an improved version of it represented
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  a serious long -term strategic threat. Over two
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  days of talks, the two leaders moved further
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  toward sweeping nuclear arms reductions than
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  either side's own advisors had anticipated, at
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  one point discussing the elimination of all ballistic
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  missiles, and in an even more startling exchange,
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  the complete elimination of nuclear weapons entirely
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  within a decade. AIDS on both sides. watching
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  proposals unfold that went well beyond their
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  prepared negotiating positions, reportedly found
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  themselves stunned by how far the conversation
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  had gone. The talks ultimately broke down over
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  Reagan's refusal to confine SDI research to laboratory
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  testing, a condition Gorbachev insisted on as
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  the prize for the broader agreement. Reagan,
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  whose commitment to missile defense intelligence
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  briefings had convinced him it represented a
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  genuine chance to render nuclear weapons obsolete
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  rather than merely another weapon, would not
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  yield the point. The summit ended without an
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  agreement, and both leaders left Reykjavik visibly
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  disappointed. What made Reykjavik particularly
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  significant from an intelligence perspective
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  was how much both sides' negotiating postures
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  were shaped by assessments of the other's true
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  capabilities and constraints, many of them imperfect.
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  Soviet intelligence considerably overestimated
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  how close SDI was to functional deployment, treating
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  laboratory research as a more immediate threat
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  than American scientists themselves believed
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  it to be. American intelligence, for its part,
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  had a more accurate read on the depth of the
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  Soviet economic crisis than most Western publics
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  understood at the time, which shaped Reagan's
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  confidence that continued pressure could extract
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  real concessions. Though Reykjavik ended without
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  a signed agreement and was widely reported at
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  the time as a diplomatic failure. The ground
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  cover there directly shaped the intermediate
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  range nuclear forces treaty signed by the same
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  two leaders the following year. In 1987, the
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  first agreement to actually eliminate an entire
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  category of nuclear weapons. Intelligence historians
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  have since come to view Reykjavik less as a failure.
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  Then as the moment, the underlying intelligence
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  assessments on both sides about each other's
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  economies, technologies, and genuine appetite
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  for a change relationship finally aligned closely
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  enough with reality to make a real breakthrough
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  possible the following year. The handshake in
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  Reykjavik didn't end the Cold War, but the intelligence
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  picture it exposed... of a Soviet system under
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  more strain than most outsiders realized, and
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  an American administration more willing to bargain
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  than its rhetoric suggested, marked the point
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  after which the endgame became visible to both
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  sides. This concludes declassified file number
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  062 of the Shadow Dossier, the handshake that
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  ended an era. What dangerous secrets await in
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  our next file? Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
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  RSS .com, and YouTube so you never miss an official
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  declassification. This is the Shadow Dossier.
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  Thank you for listening.