THE LOST SUMMER 205an American of Russian descent working as a Moscow correspondent.
They charged him with being a CIA agent. The American administra-
tion denied that Daniloff had any such role and warned that there
would be no summit between Reagan and Gorbachëv unless he was
released. A blistering exchange of accusations took place. Though it
was strictly true that Daniloff was not a spy, he had undoubtedly
passed sensitive messages from a Soviet citizen to the American
embassy. Unbeknownst to him, the CIA had become involved. Strom-
baugh, the CIA station chief in Moscow, had imprudently mentioned
Daniloff ’s name when on the phone in the Soviet capital. The KGB
concluded that Daniloff was an intelligence agent. Gorbachëv wrote a
short letter to Reagan arguing that they should not permit the affair to
disrupt negotiations on disarmament. The CIA’s bungling appalled
both Reagan and Shultz. But Reagan was also determined to secure an
innocent American’s liberation from captivity. On 12 September a
compromise was agreed for Daniloff to be consigned to the American
embassy while a Soviet spy, Gennadi Zakharov, was let out of prison
and taken into the care of the USSR’s diplomats in New York.
On 18 September Shevardnadze flew to America, where he was to
give a speech to the UN General Assembly. He held discussions with
Shultz in Washington over the next two days and delivered over
Gorbachëv’s letter to Reagan. Gorbachëv focused on the desirability of
reinforcing the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and confining the Stra-
tegic Defense Initiative programme to the research laboratories. He
stressed how flexible he was being in excluding British and French
nuclear missiles from his immediate proposals. He asked to meet
Reagan in advance of their full summit later in the year – he suggested
London or Reykjavik as a suitable venue.^46
Shultz assured Shevardnadze that Reagan appreciated Soviet con-
cerns about the Strategic Defense Initiative. He described how shocked
the Americans were by the Chernobyl tragedy; he said that everybody
understood that any kind of nuclear war would be a catastrophe. Shultz
jested that there could be unanimity if only he could convince Perle –
he added that he would break Perle’s head if he caused any trouble.^47
When Perle joined the meeting, Shevardnadze quipped that the heavy
artillery had arrived. True to form, Perle asked why the Kremlin was
breaching the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in building the Krasnoyarsk
early-warning station. Shevardnadze said only that the Soviet Union
would talk about this if the American would discuss its own station in
Greenland.^48 He asked Perle to reconsider his hostility to Castro’s Cuba.