For the Record

Ronald Reagan arrived in Geneva with heartening news from the pollsters. His mid-November approval rating was up to 65 per cent (New York Times/CBS News), 67 per cent (Washington Post/ ABC News), higher than at any time since spring of 1981 (following assassination attempt). … A poll taken by Penn & Schoen for Committee on the Present Danger found 78 per cent of Americans want to go ahead on SDI research; 73 per cent think system should be deployed if it works. Le., the President has won Space Shield argument here at home. . . . Also of interest (from NYT/CBS poll): Does nuclear-weapons stockpile keep U.S. and Soviet Union out of war? Yes: 54 per cent. Does it mean they will destroy each other? Yes: only 38 per cent. . . . The freeze/disarmament crowd had a ball: Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign and SANE collected a million signatures (they said) on petitions asking for permanent ban on nuclear-weapons testing; the Union of Concerned Scientists (les savants préoccupés, in French) spent $60,000 on sleek TV spots telling President Reagan (but not Mikhail Gorbachev): “Don’t blow it.” . . . And Joanne Woodward was all over the radio urging sanity, sanity, sanity, paid for by [Mad]Women for a Meaningful Summit. . . . Russia prepared for Summit by telling Yelena Bonner she could see a good doctor, and by informing ten men and women married to Americans that they will be permitted to join their spouses. (One couple waited 11 years for that news.) . . . But nothing for the Jewish community because, as Gorbachev told French TV this fall: “I would be glad to hear of Jews enjoying anywhere such political and other rights as they have in our country.” . . . Among U.S. journalists, George Will and James Jackson Kilpatrick kept their cool. Commented Will: “There is never a shortage of Westerners eager to assure the West that Soviet leaders do not mean the menacing things they say, that what they really mean is . . .” Said Kilpo: “Reagan will be facing a Soviet leader who has so far made no move to ease repression at home or reliance on force abroad.” . . . Going the rounds in Geneva, that Raisa Gorbachev asked to visit a “poor Swiss farm” to show her sympathy for poor people—but they couldn’t find her one, not even a reverse Potemkin village.

Neatest trick of the week: Back in Moscow multi-defector Vitaly Yurchenko held press conference at which he declared he had never been associated with KGB (makes one wonder why CIA would bother to kidnap, drug, and torture him). … In Washington, incidentally, Washington Times reporters were barred from Yurchenko press conference at Soviet embassy. … In Managua, according to State Department spokesman Charles Redman, Nicaraguan employees of U.S. Embassy are being systematically harassed by secret police. . . . Nicaragua may be the first Central American country to break diplomatic relations with Taiwan following visit to region by Chinese Prime Minister Zhao Ziyang. . . . The abandoned followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, back in the Oregon commune, will try to make ends meet by selling the guru’s 93 Rolls-Royces.

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Ronald Reagan arrived in Geneva with heartening news from the pollsters. His mid-November approval rating was up to 65 per cent (New York Times/CBS News), 67 per cent (Washington Post/ ABC News), higher than at any time since spring of 1981 (following assassination attempt). … A poll taken by Penn & Schoen for Committee on the Present Danger found 78 per cent of Americans want to go ahead on SDI research; 73 per cent think system should be deployed if it works. Le., the President has won Space Shield argument here at home. . . . Also of interest (from NYT/CBS poll): Does nuclear-weapons stockpile keep U.S. and Soviet Union out of war? Yes: 54 per cent. Does it mean they will destroy each other? Yes: only 38 per cent. . . . The freeze/disarmament crowd had a ball: Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign and SANE collected a million signatures (they said) on petitions asking for permanent ban on nuclear-weapons testing; the Union of Concerned Scientists (les savants préoccupés, in French) spent $60,000 on sleek TV spots telling President Reagan (but not Mikhail Gorbachev): “Don’t blow it.” . . . And Joanne Woodward was all over the radio urging sanity, sanity, sanity, paid for by [Mad]Women for a Meaningful Summit. . . . Russia prepared for Summit by telling Yelena Bonner she could see a good doctor, and by informing ten men and women married to Americans that they will be permitted to join their spouses. (One couple waited 11 years for that news.) . . . But nothing for the Jewish community because, as Gorbachev told French TV this fall: “I would be glad to hear of Jews enjoying anywhere such political and other rights as they have in our country.” . . . Among U.S. journalists, George Will and James Jackson Kilpatrick kept their cool. Commented Will: “There is never a shortage of Westerners eager to assure the West that Soviet leaders do not mean the menacing things they say, that what they really mean is . . .” Said Kilpo: “Reagan will be facing a Soviet leader who has so far made no move to ease repression at home or reliance on force abroad.” . . . Going the rounds in Geneva, that Raisa Gorbachev asked to visit a “poor Swiss farm” to show her sympathy for poor people—but they couldn’t find her one, not even a reverse Potemkin village.

Neatest trick of the week: Back in Moscow multi-defector Vitaly Yurchenko held press conference at which he declared he had never been associated with KGB (makes one wonder why CIA would bother to kidnap, drug, and torture him). … In Washington, incidentally, Washington Times reporters were barred from Yurchenko press conference at Soviet embassy. … In Managua, according to State Department spokesman Charles Redman, Nicaraguan employees of U.S. Embassy are being systematically harassed by secret police. . . . Nicaragua may be the first Central American country to break diplomatic relations with Taiwan following visit to region by Chinese Prime Minister Zhao Ziyang. . . . The abandoned followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, back in the Oregon commune, will try to make ends meet by selling the guru’s 93 Rolls-Royces.