GETTING TO KNOW THE ENEMY 263assassinated Olaf Palme. American organizations were said to be
engaged in shipping Guatemalan children to America for use in organ
transplant surgery. It was made to seem that America was the active
source of every evil around the globe.^33
The US Information Agency relentlessly challenged Soviet official
propaganda. Nothing pleased them more than to expose trickery.
Herb Romerstein, with the anticommunist fervour of an ex-commu-
nist, put special markings on important American documents. This
enabled him to ascertain quite a number of KGB forgeries. The accu-
sation that the CIA planned to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi was disproved
by this method.^34
When it came to Romerstein’s attention that a Soviet newspaper
had printed a reader’s letter that claimed that Reagan was using quota-
tions from an old Nazi publication about the USSR, he went on to the
attack at a meeting with Novosti’s director Valentin Falin. The phrase
in question was: ‘Promises are like pie crusts – they are meant to be
broken.’ Novosti went to town about the connections with the Third
Reich. Romerstein told Falin: ‘You insulted us last week, insulted our
President.’ Falin insisted that the phrase came from a pamphlet pro-
duced by Joseph Goebbels. ‘You’re wrong!’ exclaimed Romerstein:
‘Lenin made the remark, not Hitler.’ He adduced the Soviet publication
where Lenin wrote about pie crusts, and Falin had to back down.^35
Moscow’s assault on Reagan had its origins in his reference to ‘the Ten
Commandments’ of Lenin – and it was indeed the case that the Nazis
had brought out a work with this title. It was also true that Reagan’s
comments wrenched Lenin’s pie crust remark out of context. (This was
noticed at the time by the New York Times.)^36 But Romerstein had
shown that it paid to retaliate whenever the Soviet media or the KGB
made indefensible claims – and if the USSR wanted conciliation with
America, it had to change its ways.
The Soviet authorities grasped the opportunity for trusted individ-
uals to speak to the American media about the USSR. The journalist
Vladimir Pozner, affable and fluent in English, appeared on ABC
News in February commenting on a speech by the President. Pozner
had spent most of his early life in America, where he acquired a New
York accent before his family returned to Moscow and he entered uni-
versity. His activities on behalf of the Politburo caused some disquiet
in the Reagan administration. Pat Buchanan, the White House Com-
munications Director, suggested that the situation was as if the BBC in
the 1930s had given airtime to a Third Reich functionary after one of