GETTING TO KNOW THE ENEMY 265reaction to Gorbachëv ‘leans much more to the positive’.^46 Although
Shultz disliked the idea of mavericks getting access to the President, he
made an exception for Massie. He welcomed her reports on the signs
of a Russian religious revival. He liked her emphasis on the reality of
rapid change in Moscow as well as her help in countering the case
against conciliation with the USSR.^47
This was not everyone’s attitude. Massie’s influence worried
National Security Adviser Carlucci enough for him to ask to sit in on
their conversations. Reagan consented; he correctly foresaw that Car-
lucci would discover that she was not pumping the President’s ears full
of nonsense.^48 Basking in the presidential endorsement, however, she
started to criticize the way that the administration was dealing with
the USSR. She disapproved of the arrest of Gennadi Zakharov in retal-
iation for the imprisonment of Nicholas Daniloff. Carlucci replied that
America could not ‘let the KGB have the run of our country’.^49 Her
technique was to flatter the President while finding fault with his offi-
cials. She always congratulated him on his handling of Gorbachëv;^50
but she tried even Shultz’s patience with her gripes about the Ameri-
can embassy in Moscow. Massie criticized the diplomats for their poor
Russian. Shultz commented that even when they spoke the language
fluently, she would still insist that they lacked ‘an understanding of the
great Russian soul’. He doubted that the messages she brought back
from Moscow really did come from Gorbachëv.^51 In late 1986 Reagan
too concluded that she was getting a mite out of hand when she made
a brash pitch to succeed Hartman as Moscow Ambassador. Reagan
responded that while she remained his trusted adviser, he had already
nominated Jack Matlock for the post.^52 Massie was disappointed, but
had to accept the decision. She reasoned that the President should
nevertheless meet her more often.^53
No Soviet leader or agency knew about the President’s curious
tutorials with his favourite scholar in Russian studies. But Gorbachëv
was definitely pleased about the progress that he himself was making
in winning over Western opinion:
In contacts with America in its diversity we’ve seen that our pere-
stroika has reached even a society such as American society which
has been carried to the extreme of anti-Sovietism. People were
upset, for example, that we’re backward in some aspects and
have difficulties with our economy. What has interested them is
the fact that [Soviet] society has moved forward, is revealing its