“HOLY ALLIANCE”
Although much of the correspondence within this historic partnership remains classified, with numerous documents fully redacted or not released at all, leaving a multitude of unanswered questions, this much is certain: The meeting launched a deliberate and coordinated effort on behalf of both the White House and Vatican to end Communism. The major players included Clark, Casey, Pipes, Ambassador Vernon Walters, Pio Cardinal Laghi, and Agostino Cardinal Casaroli. Clark’s deputy at the NSC, Robert McFarlane, says that almost everything that had to do with Poland was handled outside of normal State Department channels and went through Casey and Clark. He adds, “I knew that they [Casey and Clark] were meeting with Pio Laghi [the apostolic delegate to Washington], and that Pio Laghi had been to see the president, but Clark would never tell me what the substance of the discussions was.” Clark and Laghi met regularly to discuss developments in the Polish situation. Crucial decisions on funneling aid to Solidarity and responding to the Polish and Soviet regimes were made by Reagan, Casey, and Clark, in consultation with Vatican officials.14
Working in close proximity to each other in Washington, a close relationship developed between Casey, Clark, and Laghi. “Casey and I dropped into his [Laghi’s] residence early mornings during critical times to gather his comments and counsel,” says Clark. “We’d have breakfast and coffee and discuss what was being done in Poland. I’d speak to him frequently on the phone, and he would be in touch with the pope.” On at least six different occasions, Laghi came to the White House and met with Clark and Reagan. Each time, he discreetly entered the White House through the southwest gate to avoid the notice of the press.15
Former Carter National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, a strong anti-Communist and native of Poland, talks of Casey’s role in the effort: “Casey ran it…and led it; he was very flexible and very imaginative and not very bureaucratic. If something needed to be done it was done.”16 Casey shared Reagan’s sense that they faced a grand juncture, and that the pope could help enormously. In his biography of John Paul II, which he coauthored with Marco Politi, Bernstein wrote:
Intuitively, they [Casey and Reagan] understood what the pontiff might accomplish and how his acts might push forward their own global policies…. The highest priority of American foreign policy was now Poland, he [Casey] informed the Pope. In Washington, Reagan and Casey had discussed the possibility of “breaking Poland out of the Soviet orbit,” with help from the Holy Father.17
Intelligence, namely information-sharing, played a central role in the Reagan-Pope collaboration. The Reagan administration fueled an intelligence shuttle between Washington and the Vatican, through which Casey and Walters clandestinely briefed the pope on a regular basis.18 Between them, they paid fifteen secret visits to John Paul II over a six-year period. Walters visited at roughly six-month intervals.19
Both Reagan and the pope eagerly anticipated the information gained from these briefings. The pope benefited from the mighty, long arm of U.S. technical intelligence, receiving some of the nation’s most guarded secrets and sophisticated analysis. He was able to pour over satellite imagery that was detailed beyond his conception.20
Vatican representatives and the pope were consulted on U.S. thinking in world affairs.21 This consultation, and subsequent influence, swung both ways: To cite just one later example, in February 1984, Vice President Bush held a fifty-five-minute meeting with John Paul II at the Vatican. He briefed the Holy Father on Lebanon, on his meeting with Soviet General Secretary Konstantin Chernenko the previous day, and more. Following those items, reported Bush in a cable sent to the White House Situation Room, declassified in July 2000, “I then asked him if he had any advice for us on Poland.”22 Bush said that John Paul II reacted by discussing the Poland situation “for some time.” “The Holy Father said people are getting hurt,” said Bush, referring to the punitive effect of U.S. sanctions. The pope told him, “This must be changed.” The pope said that both he and the Holy See agreed there should be a change in sanctions policy.23
The pope also told Bush of how Poles had suffered under totalitarianism. Even if Polish Communist leader Jaruzelski wanted to improve the situation, he was limited in what he could do. “He is limited by the neighborhood—namely GDR [East Germany], Czechoslovakia, etc.,” Bush translated. That meant the Reagan administration and Vatican needed to assist. Relaying the pope’s words, Bush continued: “We must do something to help the [Polish] people. So many times in the past they have defended themselves against oppression.”24
As evidence of how Bush’s report influenced Reagan, the president wrote a February 22 follow-up letter to John Paul II, also declassified in July 2000, which began:
Vice President Bush has informed me of his recent meeting with you. I want you to know that I deeply appreciate your counsel and that, following upon it, I have decided to take the following steps concerning Poland. Our Charge in Warsaw will inform General Jaruzelski, through a most confidential envoy, that we are prepared to lift the ban on regularly scheduled LOT flights to the United States, permit the resumption of travel under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Travel Fund, and begin an official—but highly confidential—dialogue. This dialogue would include all aspects of our relations and set forth what we would expect from the Polish side in return for positive actions on our part.25
Clearly, the briefings, advice, and influence between Washington and the Holy See swung both ways. In the letter, Reagan linked his sanctions modifications to a positive Polish response;26 he also listed his own specific human-rights concerns:
These steps would, however, depend upon Warsaw’s willingness to release the eleven KOR and Solidarity activists without any onerous conditions or harassment. I am also conveying to the General my strong interest in the situation of Lech Walesa and his family and my concern that they not be subjected to officially-inspired harassment…. I sincerely hope General Jaruzelski will respond positively to our approach and agree to take steps which will lead to the reconciliation in Poland for which we all hope and pray.27
Finally, there were several meetings, not to mention an obvious special bond, between not just the principals but the two men at the top. Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II met together probably at least seven times.28 Some of the most telling moments from those meetings can be encapsulated into a single enduring image that Nancy Reagan describes as one of her favorites, captured by a photographer: “The pope is sitting with his head bent, listening, and Ronnie is half way out of his chair and talking to the pope, and his hand is out and his finger’s out. Obviously he’s telling him something. And you wonder, what in the world is Ronnie saying? The pope is listening very carefully to him.”
It was a common image derived from two men who respected one another and engaged a world they yearned to transform. John Paul II told Nancy that there was a psychological and emotional tie between the two that he never had with another president.29 And it all started with that meeting on June 7, 1982.
In the years following the end of the Reagan administration, much of the discussion regarding the pope centered on the nature of this relationship between the two prominent men. The defining characteristics of the collaboration became a subject of dispute after Carl Bernstein’s article, “The Holy Alliance,” ran in 1992. Some on both sides of the Atlantic resented the implication that there was collusion unifying the two sides. One high-level Reagan foreign-policy official was so contemptuous of Bernstein’s characterization that he unfairly maligned the former Watergate reporter as a “slimeball” and “scumbag.”30 This official apparently feared that such a term did a disservice by trivializing what happened, perhaps making it less believable to serious observers. He insisted there was no Holy Alliance, nor “conspiracy,” but mainly “shared interests”—“two groups going down the same path.” Likewise, one historian of this episode, a sympathetic one to both the pope and Reagan, personally told me that Bernstein’s claim of a conspiracy of two is “horseshit.”31