Advisor: Reagan Threatened War Over Poland

After forming a close alliance with Pope John Paul II, Ronald Reagan was prepared to go to war with Russia to stop a planned invasion of Poland, one of Reagan's top advisers tells NewsMax Magazine.

Judge William P. Clark, President Reagan's National Security Adviser (1982-1983), revealed just how close the world came to the brink of war and possible Armageddon in the early 1980s.

Clark made his revelations in NewsMax Magazine's latest edition "The Pope's Final Battle in These End Times."

After Archbishop Karol Wojtyla's rise to the papacy in 1978, he soon ignited a prairie fire for freedom in his native Poland.

The Russians had become unnerved by the discontent brewing in Poland, a nation that had remained a Soviet satellite since Russia "liberated" her from Nazi occupation after World War II.

As early as 1981, the Reagan administration had warned both Moscow and the Polish government against taking action against Poland's growing Solidarity movement.

When the Russians appeared to be on the brink of an invasion – similar to ones they had launched to crush freedom movements in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, President Reagan's White House made clear the U.S. would not be acquiescent again.

Judge Clark told NewsMax bluntly, "We in the Reagan administration were prepared to recommend the use of force if necessary to stop such an invasion."

In the end, however, the Russians backed down. Soviet domination of Poland and Eastern Europe ended, along with the Soviet Union itself, without a shot being fired, thanks to that alliance that was formed in June 1982 between two men who understood the evil nature of communism and knew how to bring it down.

It was a pact that once put the U.S. on the brink of a war with the Soviet Union.

It began on June 7, 1982 at a private Vatican meeting between President Reagan and Pope John Paul II. The two men were alone for 50 minutes and the subject of their discussion was Poland and the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.

Writing in "The Holy Alliance, Ronald Reagan and John Paul II," one of the Pope's biographers, Carl Bernstein, described what happened: "Reagan and the Pope agreed to undertake a clandestine campaign to hasten the dissolution of the communist empire … Richard Allen, Reagan's first National Security advisor [was quoted as declaring] ‘This was one of the great secret alliances of all time.' "

Judge William P. Clark, Reagan's national security adviser, said that the alliance between the two men emanated from a shared common view on the nature of the Evil Empire.

"The pope and the president shared the view that each had been given a spiritual mission – a special role in the divine plan of life," Clark told NewsMax. "The two men shared the belief that atheistic Communism lived a lie that, when fully understood, must ultimately fail."

Both also shared the remarkable experience of almost dying at the hand of an assassin – and miraculously surviving the ordeal.

In October of 1982, President Reagan took the first open step to exert pressure on Poland's Communist masters.

Solidarity was the weapon that the Pope and the U.S. would use to batter down the tyrannical Polish Communist government.

The trigger was an unemployed electrician, Lech Walesa, who had worked at the Gdansk shipyards. He was one of the leaders in a clash there in December 1970, was fired in 1976, and in 1980 became leader of the labor movement that became Solidarity.

Under the iron hand of the Communist regime, that movement could not survive on its own.

The mastermind of the U.S.-Vatican strategy was Reagan's CIA director, William J. Casey. A famous World War II spymaster and also a devout Catholic, Casey saw the Vatican as a secret conduit to supply the Solidarity movement with the financial resources it needed to survive and grow.

The clandestine U.S. support using the Vatican's Catholic network grew to $8 million a year during the mid 1980s. High tech communications equipment was smuggled in along with printing equipment, supplies, VCRs and freedom tapes.

Thanks to the Vatican's covert pipeline, over a seven year period 1,500 underground newspapers and journals and 2,400 books and pamphlets were circulated.

Using CIA supplied equipment Solidarity was even able to insert slogans and messages at breaks during soccer matches.

By 1988 Solidarity was strong enough to stage nationwide strikes in 1988 which forced the government to open a dialogue with it.

In April 1989, Solidarity was legalized and allowed to participate in the upcoming elections. In these limited elections, union candidates won an astonishing victory which sparked a succession of peaceful anti-Communist counterrevolutions in Central and Eastern Europe starting on June 4.

By the end of August, a Solidarity-led coalition government was formed and in December Walesa was elected president, resigning from his post in Solidarity.

As Jesuit scholar Thomas J. Reese, S.J. has written, the Pope's "support of Solidarity in Poland began the avalanche that swept Communism from Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union."

During Solidarity's years of confronting both Moscow and the Polish government the danger of armed Soviet intervention in Poland in the face of the growing anti-Communist movement was always present.

In the end, however, Soviet domination of Poland and Eastern Europe ended, along with the Soviet Union itself, without a shot being fired, thanks to the alliance between Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II – an alliance formed between two men who understood the evil nature of communism and knew how to bring it down.

Not to mention the ussr in 1920, and, throughout Poland's history, Swedes, Turks, Tartars, Kossaks, more Russians, Prussians, Teutonic knights, etc.

They just keep trying to crush Poland.

The American people have no idea how many instances occurred that brought us to the brink of war with the Soviet Bloc in the 1950s to the end of the Soviet Union. It was only our superior electronic/photographic intelligence, the existence of our SAC aircraft/missiles and the forces of USAFE and USAEUR and a national policy willing to use them that prevented the ultimate conflict from occurring. MAD was an effective non-partisan policy only because we were willing to spend what was needed to construct the force.

The critical factor in each of the events that I am personally aware of as an intelligence type between the end of Vietnam for me and 1985 was the Soviet civilian government cooling down the "let's go to war" rants of the East Germans. The Kremlin knew that the Chinese would exploit any disruption of the delicate balance that existed in central Europe and that the Soviet economy and forces would be squeezed from both west and east.

Don't bet the mortgage on it. NATO was configured as a defensive alliance. Any attack on A MEMBER STATE was as an attack on all. But Poland was NOT a member state. Can you imagine France or the Benelux countries joining the US in a war to drive Russians out of Poland?! And West Germany would have had a hard time joining in; her armies would have to march through EAST Germany to reach the Polish border. I don't the ca. 400,000 soviet troops in East Germany and 150,000 or so East German NVA troops would have simply moved out of the way.

Following that government's outlawing of the Solidarity movement, which the Pope had publicly and covertly supported, Reagan suspended Poland's Most Favored Nation trading status, costing cash-strapped Poland some $6 billion a year in sales.
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That was my favorite part. Liberals howl anytime you cut foreign aid, Remember code pink at all those groups protesting the 'deaths of iraqi kids from sanctions'. We still ship grain to north korea.

The hardline stance works nearly every time its tried, and REALLY benefits the citizens of the country.

These dictators destitute their country so much that they actually need the outside world more then the outside world needs them. If the collective force of the outside world works against them they cannot stand.

"I don't know how reliable NewsMax is,"

As soon as I saw Newsmix in this article its credibility factor dropped by about 90%. Your comments on the Order of Battle reinforce my suspicion.

"400,000 soviet troops in East Germany and 150,000 or so East German NVA troops would have simply moved out of the way."

In fact they might have been marching/panzering west.

"For one thing, given the difference in levels of force strength ("order of battle") between NATO and the Warsaw Pact--or even just between the US and the USSR in 1981--there is not much the US could have really done to prevent an invasion if the Soviets were hell-bent on it"

There's quite a bit they could have done from the air. Any invasion would require armor and troops. Both were vulnerable from the air. Mass formations are not possible without air superiority and the Soviets didn't have it.

"The hardline stance works nearly every time its tried, and REALLY benefits the citizens of the country. "

The first exception that comes to mind is the banking and economic sanctions on panama in the late 80's. It made a mess of the banking system (which uses the dollar), hurt any and everyone with a bank account (you couldn'g get your money out, poor or rich), and did not dislodge the target.

Of course, when he was arrested during a coup in 10-89, Southcom also declined to send a unit the 2 miles from Quarry Heights to the Comandancia to pick him up either as the coupmongers requested. This obviously would have been much harder to do than the actually invasion 2 months later. (sarcasm)

Pretty much.

I asked a friend of mine who spend 20+ years in intelligence about the Pope and Poland story. The question was...'without details, did xxx happen?' He said yes.

"Soviets didn't have it."

Say what? The Soviet Union BORDERED Poland. Logistically it would have been simple for the Soviets to maintain armored columns advancing out of their own country! And the Sovs had plenty of airbases with plenty of Mig fighters in western Russia and western Ukraine to run interference with any US fighter/bombers intent on attacking Soviet columns--and this is not counting the substantial Soviet frontal aviation in East Germany on Polands western border. Think of the hard time Russia would have had stopping a hypothetical US invastion of Baja California and you get some idea of the headaches involved.

In fact they might have been marching/panzering west.

Could be. But Reagan was willing to take that chance. You OB "specialists" out there are forgetting one thing:
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NATO asked the United States to deploy intermediate range missiles to Europe in 1978 to counter the deployment of Soviet intermediate range, mobile SS 20 nuclear missiles, and the first Pershing II missiles arrived in the Brigade area in November 1983. By 1985 all three battalions of the 56th Brigade had achieved operational status.
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Ever wonder why the commies in West Germany were always going nutso over the Pershing?

So the Warsaw Pact had a huge numerical advantage over NATO. So why didn't they ever attack? Guesses?

I noticed that to and I have the same question.

Maybe Newsmax is overselling the story a little.

Had it come to that pass, I wonder what Reagan would really have done. Invaded East Germany? Landed marines at Gdansk?

I doubt he would have sat by idly, however.

Unfortunately, Walkure is right. They had unbelievable numbers of planes in the area, and the then-new MiG-29s and Su-27s were being introduced as well, which didn't bode well for an easy air fight against the soviets.

Reagan supported Poland anyways. If Britain and France had half the courage and half the honor of Reagan back in WWII, this discussion would not be neccessary, a huge number of people would have lived their lives happily, and died free, rather than die under the pall of communism(either of old age, or by execution), and millions upon millions wouldn't have been killed, since WWII would have ended really quickly.

God bless the righteous, Reagan and the Pope among them.

"There's quite a bit they could have done from the air. Any invasion would require armor and troops. Both were vulnerable from the air. Mass formations are not possible without air superiority and the Soviets didn't have it."

True, but we'd have to cut our way through the world's densest SAM belt and a few hundred Soviet all-weather fighters in Wast Germany to get there.

Might have been possible, but it would have been costly.

Unfortunately, I fear that our economic interdependence with the Chicoms makes that nearly impossible. Unlike the Soviets who we were able to spend into extinction, we have made the tragic mistake of bankrolling the Chicoms.

" So the Warsaw Pact had a huge numerical advantage over NATO. So why didn't they ever attack? Guesses?"

The actual issue posed was regarding the US ATTACKING the warsaw pact to intervene in an 'internal' matter of soviet invasion of poland. Therefore the question is regarding getting through the DDR and Soviet forces in east germany to even put troops on the ground in poland. My point was that if the US started world war III it was very possible W Germany itself would be invaded. Did we have the hardware on the ground in germany to invade and pass through East Germany?

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