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RONALD REAGAN PRESIDENTIAL PAPERS
2,800 pages of Ronald Reagan presidential papers.
Files include documents from the White House Central Files, maintained by the White House Office of Records Management (WHORM), a permanent unit within the White House complex that maintained a central filing and retrieval system for President Reagan and his staff. Documents include: Draft of speeches with hand written notes by Reagan; Material relating to the drafting of Ronald Reagan's June 13, 1987 address at the Brandenburg Gate, West Berlin (the speech which included the statement "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"); Correspondences to and from Leonid Brezhnev and Mikhail Gorbachev; A "hot-line" cable attacking Brezhnev for the December 1981 crackdown on dissent in Poland; Selected correspondence relating to the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.
Files include a draft version of an insert for a nationally televised address on defense. The purpose of the insert was to make public, for the first time, Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI/"Star Wars") proposal. Draft is heavily edited by Ronald Reagan, in his handwriting. The fact that President Reagan would be proposing a Strategic Defense Initiative in this speech was known only to Reagan himself and a few of his close advisers. For instance, the White House Press Office was not informed of the SDI proposal ahead of time.
Files include National Security Council Directives covering many topics including Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) "Star Wars", arms control, nuclear weapons policy, Cuba and Central America, Lebanon, and the space program. National Security Decision Directives (NSDD) were issued by President Ronald Reagan and his Assistants to the President for National Security Affairs to set forth official national security policy for the guidance of the defense, intelligence, and foreign policy establishments of the United States Government. National Security Decision Directives are presidential records in the custody of the National Security Council (NSC).
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