Posted on 04/04/2005 5:29:57 PM PDT by wagglebee
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."
The Secret Alliance
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.
The Casey Plan
In October of 1982, President Reagan took the first open step to exert pressure on Poland's Communist masters.
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.
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.
The East Germans' might have, or more correctly stayed out of the way. They had no love for the Soviets (or the Poles) and wouldn't want to mess up what they had (best economy in the Soviet Block, or close to it) to save the Polish communist's bacon.
Actually it would have been very much in doubt who got air superiority or supremeacy. Probably neither side. We had better stuff, but they had lots more.
"The East Germans' might have, or more correctly stayed out of the way"
In 1981, East Germany's military was a sockpuppet of the Soviet Union. If the Soviets told it to jump, the East German NVA would merely ask "how high?"
I had the good luck to attend East Germany's last October Parade in 1989 in East Berlin.
Equipment was lined up and down the sidestreets, waiting for the parade to begin. All along the streets were these little East German and Soviet flags stuck into the ground side-by-side.
I was walking along with a friend, who was a German linguist, looking at the equipment and we came across a Soviet flag which had fallen over. An East German T72 was parked on the road right next to this flag. As I bent over to pick up the Soviet flag, a tanker on the T72 said something. I just smiled, kept the flag and kept walking.
As we moved away from the tank I asked my buddy what the tanker had said. My buddy said, "He said to take the flag and throw it under his treads." We both got a kick out of it.
Interesting. How did Noriega(sp) get away from the coupsters?
He outlasted them, he was held prisoner in his office for several hours. They asked southcom to come get him, which southcom did NOT. loyalist units took control of the building eventually, the coup people surrendered, and the major leading it was executed.
Polish armed forces would have fought against the Soviets, and commanders that ordered troops to fire on fellow Poles would have been killed by their own troops.
I think tha the Soviets were planning a bit more than Poland, i.e., march west from the InterGerman border. Do a check on Colonel Kuklinski, a Polish army officer who leaked the Warsaw Pact warplan to the CIA. The balloon was about to go up.
If not for being bogged down in Afghanistan anything could have been possible with the Soviet communists. It had always been their dream since Stalin to colonize Western Europe.
Funny how there seems to be more and more of us that were in Berlin or Auggie or others.
Are you on ASA Vet's MI ping list? It's not overwhelming and we see some good stuff.
Well, seeing your username, I think that it will be really interesting lecture for you.
As an O5D in Auggie I knew quite a few of the mechs. As a 98C in Berlin didn't have much of an opportunity to meet them. Kinnard sure sounds familiar though.
Thanks.
I was in Augsburg then. Not at the FS, but in the Signal Bn that included FS support. Good beer and schnitzel at many places nearby!
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