Diptych: Reagan
President Reagan greets a young boy while touring Moscow’s Red Square with Mikhail Gorbachev during their summit meeting in the Soviet Union. Gorbachev had escorted the President to groups of Russian “tourists” stationed in the Square. They all asked very pointed questions of the President, including about human rights violations in the United States. I mentioned later to a Secret Service agent how surprised I was that the tourists had asked such issue-oriented questions. The agent informed me that they weren’t tourists at all, they were all KGB officers and their families. Fifteen years later, I received an email from someone who claimed that the man with the camera around his neck was a young Vladimir Putin. I passed the information on to the Bush White House and the Reagan Library. A national security official later contacted me to say they couldn’t confirm or deny that it was Putin, but that he did look a little like Putin, and it fit his age and timeline (Putin was in the KGB then). I made the mistake of mentioning this incident to NPR when I did an interview years later as I started my job with President Obama, and insinuated that Reagan had unknowingly met Putin. Not long thereafter, I received an anonymous postcard at my home address with this picture on the front. Someone had circled the man who looked like Putin, writing the word “spy” above him. The back of the postcard contained my verbatim quote to NPR. Through his spokesman, Putin later denied that it was him in the picture.
May 31, 1988
20.0 x 24.0in
Image courtesy of Pete Souza, 1988