Jack Barsky

My interaction with my handlers in Moscow indicated to me that they were really afraid of Ronald Reagan.

And there was some element of cultural misunderstanding because Reagan was a believing Christian.

Mm-hmm.

And he sometimes quoted the Bible, particularly the Book of Revelation.

The scariest book of the Bible.

Right.

So in a communist country, nobody had any kind of idea, particularly the ones in the decision makers.

They didn't have context as to what, when you quote the Bible, what that means.

And clearly, Ronald Reagan was not...

He didn't think he was appointed to accelerate the end of the world.

But, you know, Andropov and, you know, the central committee of the party, they were really afraid of this man.

They believed that Reagan wanted to end the world?

Is that what you're saying?

He wanted to start a war.

And the war would have been the end of the world, yes.

Well, of course, of course it would have been Armageddon.

But what, how do you know that?

What signals were you getting that Andropov really thought Reagan wanted to start a war?

Obviously, I never had a conversation with Andropov, but I had conversation with people that were in his organization and they were all like deathly afraid of Ronald Reagan.

Wow.