Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Ken Kachigian with us. His book is Behind Closed Doors. Ken.
Speaker 2: Is that you on the cover left of on the
Speaker 2: on the right side of Ronald Reagan.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's me with Ronald Reagan and President Nixon. We
Speaker 3: were in a meeting in nineteen ninety when it was
Speaker 3: when President Nixon was opening his library. You're blenda. He
Speaker 3: asked me to accompany him to a meeting with President Reagan,
Speaker 3: and it was two days before they opened the library,
Speaker 3: and so he asked me to a company. And of
Speaker 3: course it's a chapter twenty five in the book, and
Speaker 3: so I call it the Lions Gathers, the name of
Speaker 3: the chapter. And it was about a forty five minute meeting,
Speaker 3: and I took I took very good notes, and it's
Speaker 3: like a transcription of the meeting. And the two presidential
Speaker 3: giants and political legends of the twentieth century, the last
Speaker 3: quarter of the twentieth century met together. And first they
Speaker 3: just chit chatted, but then they after about fifteen minutes,
Speaker 3: they got to talking about world issues and by Gorbachev
Speaker 3: and foreign policy and foreign affairs, and it was just
Speaker 3: an amazing meeting of the two gentlemen. And you know,
Speaker 3: there were rivals in nineteen sixty eight when Mixon thought
Speaker 3: Reagan would run against them for president. But then they
Speaker 3: became very close. And when we were writing the memoirs
Speaker 3: in San Clemente, as I write in the book, in
Speaker 3: the early chapters of the book, President Nixon said to me,
Speaker 3: he said, you know, Ken, he said, we're going to
Speaker 3: treat Reagan well, he said, because Reagan was loyal to me,
Speaker 3: you know, loyal to me on Vietnam and Watergate. He
Speaker 3: suck by me. And then they became very close. And
Speaker 3: when I was traveling with Reagan in the eighty campaign,
Speaker 3: Nixon used me to send secret memos to Reagan, which
Speaker 3: I reprint in the in the appendencies of the book,
Speaker 3: and for the very first time, fascinating memos to two
Speaker 3: fascinating memos of advice to Reagan. Uh. And so Nixon
Speaker 3: became an unofficial advisor to Reagan, and they became pretty
Speaker 3: close pals as throughout the presidency. And Nixon would call
Speaker 3: me with advice and I'd pass it along. And they
Speaker 3: weren't palsy Wolsey, but but they they became comrades. In
Speaker 3: in in retirement, and as they chitch had it that day,
Speaker 3: it was just it was like if you were in
Speaker 3: the forties and a meeting between the FBR and Truman.
Speaker 3: You know, just these two great giants of American politics.
Speaker 3: I can't imagine, you know. I came from a I
Speaker 3: was raised on a farm Invasi, California, and I went
Speaker 3: to public schools, and I could never imagine being the
Speaker 3: pinnacle of American life like that.
Speaker 2: George one to ten with ten being the best. How
Speaker 2: would you grade Richard Nixon?
Speaker 3: Oh, it depends on what you're grading him on. If
Speaker 3: you're grading him on a political acumen, and he was
Speaker 3: a ten. On foreign policy he was a ten. And
Speaker 3: sometimes in terms of judgment, maybe on judging people, sometimes
Speaker 3: the seven or eight because he picked some of the
Speaker 3: wrong people on it. You know, in terms of staff,
Speaker 3: he failed in terms of some decisions he made, and
Speaker 3: he admitted to that, I think, but he was really
Speaker 3: a genius in terms of the global decisions he made,
Speaker 3: you know, using outsetting China and Soviet Union at a
Speaker 3: critical time in American foreign policy and making the big
Speaker 3: decisions like that. He had a great foresight and by
Speaker 3: just in the discussions we had on the making strategic
Speaker 3: political decisions and the way we analyzed campaigns and everything
Speaker 3: like that. I just find it so just fascinating, the
Speaker 3: reach of history he had from the forties and fifties
Speaker 3: and sixties and seventies. It was just the most fascinating
Speaker 3: person I could ever imagine dealing with in that respect.
Speaker 2: Would you give Ronald Reagan high marks?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yes, I gave him high marks because he had
Speaker 3: he had a great judgment on economics. And I'll tell
Speaker 3: you why. Because he he understood economics from a very
Speaker 3: common sense point of view. And that was because he, uh,
Speaker 3: he suffered it as an individual. He came at it
Speaker 3: from the time from he was because he was taxed
Speaker 3: so much and he made a high he made a
Speaker 3: pretty good income in the in the movie business, and
Speaker 3: they taxed him at ninety percent. He would sit and
Speaker 3: he would sit down and tell me how the tax
Speaker 3: system was punishing and what where he came at it
Speaker 3: was when uh, he learned through the time. He was
Speaker 3: a spokesman for General Electric in the fifties and sixties,
Speaker 3: and he traveled the country as a spokesman for the
Speaker 3: General Electric Company, and he uh, you know, he wrote
Speaker 3: all his own speeches. The crisscrossed the country talking about
Speaker 3: the capital the capitalism and the fre enterprise system. And
Speaker 3: he preached economics, and he's an economics major at Eureka College.
Speaker 3: Especially in I want to talk about that again, promote
Speaker 3: the book shamelessly, the chapter thirteen through of fourteen and
Speaker 3: fifteen where he just talks straight economics, where he explains
Speaker 3: his own sense of economic theory. And I give him
Speaker 3: high marks because he brings economics down to just the
Speaker 3: bottom basic level of trying to help people understand how
Speaker 3: the tax system is punishing the people, regulatory the system
Speaker 3: in America punishes people, and how if you just free
Speaker 3: up people to let them be themselves and release them,
Speaker 3: to release the energy of the human system, to release
Speaker 3: their human potential to their highest quality, and not punish
Speaker 3: them through high taxation and regulation, they can rise above themselves.
Speaker 3: And to that extent, it's just common sense notions that
Speaker 3: he brought to the government. I thought was just brilliant.
Speaker 2: Did you know Henry Kissinger Ken?
Speaker 3: No, I never. That's the one person I never met
Speaker 3: in government and never knew him, so I can't say
Speaker 3: that I ever knew him.
Speaker 2: He died last year, one hundred years old. What a
Speaker 2: statesman he was.
Speaker 3: Huh, No, he was. I knew that. I knew the
Speaker 3: people around him. I knew his staff. He had some
Speaker 3: brilliant people around him, Winston Lord and Peter Rodman. I
Speaker 3: knew them. Peter Rodman, who took all the notes. He
Speaker 3: was the note taker during all the Vietnam negotiations. Of
Speaker 3: hard working Henry. He beat his staff like he beat
Speaker 3: him like mules, I'll tell you that. But when Lord
Speaker 3: and Peter Rodman were great people on his staff, and
Speaker 3: Brent scope Off and those fellows, I knew them all
Speaker 3: really well, Bud McFarlane, but I never knew Henry.
Speaker 2: Were you with Ronald Reagan when the Soviet Union started
Speaker 2: falling apart?
Speaker 3: I did partially at a very important time in nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty five. I was brought in on assignment to help
Speaker 3: him with a speech before the General Assembly, the UN
Speaker 3: General Assembly, when he made the first slight shift in
Speaker 3: policy towards the Soviet Union. And I helped edit a speech,
Speaker 3: and I thought it was he wanted to be the
Speaker 3: old hardline Ronald Reagan, you know, beating the brains out
Speaker 3: of the communists like he used to be in the
Speaker 3: old days, and so I helped write this the real
Speaker 3: hardline speech to deliver to the UN General Assembly, and
Speaker 3: they delivered it to him and we met in the
Speaker 3: Oval office and I thought I was going to get
Speaker 3: a nice ada boy from him, and instead I got
Speaker 3: my real spanking, and I thought, my gosh, what happened here?
Speaker 3: And what happened was that he all of a sudden
Speaker 3: wanted to take a turn in policy. And he told me, Ken,
Speaker 3: if we're going to have a different attitude towards the
Speaker 3: Soviet Union and make a little change in policy, we're
Speaker 3: going to have to soften our tone. And that was
Speaker 3: the first change I ever saw. And only years later
Speaker 3: did I find out. Bud McFarlane told me what happened
Speaker 3: is that Margaret Thatcher had gotten to him, and Margaret
Speaker 3: Thatcher told him, she said, you know, Ron, if you're
Speaker 3: going to make any changes here, you've got to change
Speaker 3: your tone. And that General Assembly speech in nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 3: in the fall of eighty five, he first sentenced signals
Speaker 3: to Gorbachev and and that changed when he met with
Speaker 3: Gorbachev at the Geneva Summit in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 2: What is your favorite part of the book behind closed Doors.
Speaker 3: Oh my, that's that's that's a tough question. Probably it's
Speaker 3: the favorite parts, I guess, or the two campaigns, because
Speaker 3: I write in detail several chapters, the six chapters about
Speaker 3: the nineteen eighty campaign, because I kept a recorded diary
Speaker 3: into a cassette tape recorder. It's the only inside story
Speaker 3: about the eighty campaign that I kept in a recorded diary.
Speaker 3: And then again in the eighty four campaign, I was
Speaker 3: one of only two people from the campaign who traveled
Speaker 3: with them on Air Force one, and I helped with
Speaker 3: those famous Morning Morning in America ads that we did,
Speaker 3: and I helped script some of those. And then there
Speaker 3: was a very important speech I think that's been described
Speaker 3: as the greatest speech Reagan ever gave in Germany at
Speaker 3: the bergen Belsie concentration camp. I think is probably it's
Speaker 3: chapter twenty in the book is one that I worked
Speaker 3: on where Reagan was that probably in his lowest spirits.
Speaker 3: It was his first personal crisis of the presidency. And
Speaker 3: that's probably one of my favorite chapters and one of
Speaker 3: my favorite speeches I've worked on. But it's hard to
Speaker 3: pinpoint one certain thing, but those are some of the highlights.
Speaker 3: I would say that are favorite to me.
Speaker 2: Was that the speech where he told Gorvaschoff to tear
Speaker 2: down the wall.
Speaker 3: No, No, that wasn't No, that was still yet another speech.
Speaker 2: He had some good ones.
Speaker 3: Oh he did. He really had some terrific speeches in
Speaker 3: his presidency. I did work on his two convention speeches
Speaker 3: at the GOP convention in eighty four, and then I
Speaker 3: did his farewell convention speech in nineteen eighty eight. But
Speaker 3: I have to tell you this, on those speeches, I
Speaker 3: call myself a collaborator, not a speech writer. He loved
Speaker 3: writing his own speeches when he had the time, and
Speaker 3: I would give him a draft, and you know, when
Speaker 3: the Democrats beat him up so bad, he would get
Speaker 3: a little cranky, and so he would start editing his
Speaker 3: speeches and then he would add to them and toughen
Speaker 3: them up.
Speaker 1: A little bit.
Speaker 3: People thought, you know, he was because Reagan was genial
Speaker 3: and had a nice smile on his face all the time.
Speaker 3: That everybody thought he's a softy. But you know, he
Speaker 3: was a competitor and he could get really tough when
Speaker 3: he wanted to. So when those speeches came at convention time,
Speaker 3: he got feisty.
Speaker 2: How would you be advising former President Donald Trump these days?
Speaker 3: Well, for one thing, I think he needs the shortness speeches,
Speaker 3: which would help, and to stay on message and not meander.
Speaker 3: I think he's doesn't help himself when he gets off message.
Speaker 3: I think he's got I think he's got a very
Speaker 3: good message. I think he speaks to There's a There
Speaker 3: was a calumnist and political observer back in the sixties
Speaker 3: named Joe Kraft who who came up the term the
Speaker 3: forgotten man. And I think Trump uh tapped into that
Speaker 3: when he first ran for president. He tapped into the
Speaker 3: forgotten man. And I think Trump often speaks to the
Speaker 3: forgotten man. I say that generically, I don't mean man,
Speaker 3: meaning male. But I think if Trump would just keep
Speaker 3: on that message and instead of meandering into these areas
Speaker 3: where where he criticizes the Georgia governor or talks about
Speaker 3: the size of his crowds and things like that, that
Speaker 3: doesn't help him. And you know, I want him to win.
Speaker 3: So my advice to him is the eighty seventy eighty
Speaker 3: minute speeches don't help. And I have a theory about speeches, George,
Speaker 3: and that is nobody ever left the church complaining about
Speaker 3: a short sermon.
Speaker 2: So that's so true.
Speaker 3: So I think a shorter speeches did to stay on
Speaker 3: message and go to the point are very important.
Speaker 2: Did Richard Dixon get credit for the Apollo eleven moon landing.
Speaker 3: Well, probably not sufficiently, but that was a very important
Speaker 3: time in his presidency. You know, when he greeted him
Speaker 3: on the hornet US. You probably remember that greeted him
Speaker 3: on the USS hornet and that was a wonderful, great
Speaker 3: event during his presidency. And that was just an enormous
Speaker 3: occasion when they returned Neil Armstrong and and the others,
Speaker 3: and what a fantastic event that was during his presidency.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of other things, you know, he didn't
Speaker 3: get credit for back in those days. And one of
Speaker 3: the other things the release of the POWs, the Vietnam POWs,
Speaker 3: which was just a constant He lost sleep over that
Speaker 3: constantly all the time. It was just a nightmare for
Speaker 3: him that they were over there and that he you know,
Speaker 3: he couldn't he couldn't get them out, You couldn't end
Speaker 3: the Warren couldn't get those POW's release. And when they
Speaker 3: came home, all of them, some of them have been
Speaker 3: out there for seven eight years and being tortured all
Speaker 3: that time. It was just a horrible time for him.
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