I was assigned to the State Department in then West Berlin. Reagan’s visit had us being very very busy. However, those who worked on his trip got to be at all of the events and were treated very well by White House advance. I was at that speech, and the speech at Templohof Airbase. When Reagan called for Gorbachev to ‘Tear Down This Wall’ there was a brief pause before polite applause from the Americans in attendance. After all, we knew that he didn’t mean it, surely, just rhetoric…why, there was no way that he could possibly understand the intricacies and subtle diplomacy required here in West Berlin!
It turns out that there was a huge fight between State and Reagan on whether that section of the speech should stay in. State tried to remove it, so did the other agencies. Reagan kept it in.I got to read the telexes over that issue and it was a fascinating insight in to the way DC works.
There was one person at State in West Berlin who believed that the collapse of Communism was at hand and for the life of me I can’t remember his name. He worked in the econ section though. On November 10th 1989 he calmly went into work at The US Mission West Berlin and issued a rather nicely worded ‘I Told You So’, and then took the rest of the day off.
Tags: Berlin Wall, Ronald Reagan
