It seems the Gipper liked his news and briefings in easily digestible video format. So that’s exactly what was prepared for him. The CIA has released a number of those tapes, and they’re rather fascinating. The one below the fold is for the Soviet Space Program.
The CIA youtube channel with more Gipper tapes is here.
Via comments by FeralBoy12: And if the videos were too difficult to comprehend, the next option was a puppet show.
And if the videos were too difficult to comprehend, the next option was a puppet show.
So instead of maybe four pages (plus pictures) of a typed briefing, they had to put together this?
Correct Jufulu. That appears to be the case.
I’m trying to figure out the Disneyseque format. I can’t believe any adult, even a Republican, needed such a simplistic format.
Were they trying to project the kind of tone he’d need to talk to the American public? Was he really so ADD that they were trying to hold his attention?
Perhaps this only represents the examples they declassified. The thought of the intended audience for this with their finger on the button gives me chills.
I… what…. please, please tell me this is just a joke.
It’s not like I have any love for Reagan or faith in the Republican party in general… but… holy crap. We elected a toddler to the post of nuclear commander.
According to reports at (or not long after) the time, when newly-“elected” GW Bush asked for background information on the functions of the Federal Reserve System, the only reader-appropriate literature located was a comic book.
This can’t be real. This is Cain/Bachman/Perry cluelessness, not Reagan cluelessness.
MSNBC tries to defend Reagan here:
http://openchannel.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/09/8722595-exploding-the-reagan-video-briefing-myth
I think the argument is that Reagan wasn’t stupid because he read a lot of other intelligence briefings and these videos were originally intended for in-house CIA use. But that doesn’t change the fact that the videos are written at a fourth grade level and yet they were used to inform the leader of the free world about our rival superpower. It is simply amazing that the Cold War didn’t end in nuclear armageddon.
I also have to add that some of the Soviet propaganda about the US was pretty accurate, especially regarding inequality.
As Paul Krugman says, we’d be shocked to see with how little wisdom the world is ruled. Although I suppose we’ll get used to it eventually.