White House Diaries

Wednesday, January 15, 1986

View the President's Schedule

As usual after a St. Dinner it was a short night & an early morning. I could have slept longer. Had a meeting with Deputy Sec. of St. John Whitehead who is off on a 10 day 9 nation trip to persuade our allies they should join us in clamping down on Kadhafi. The press has a story today about the variety of spellings they are using of his name. I notice I use the last one I’ve read so this book has it a dozen ways.

Then I was off to “Martin Luther King Jr. High” to speak to the student body. This is the school the White House adopted as a partner & where Ruddy Hines my 3rd grade pen pal attends. I really enjoyed it & wound up my remarks telling a story about “Burky” my black friend in college F.B. The theme of the day was Kings birthday.

In the afternoon an interview with Trudy Feldman for the Jewish press. I’m not sure I pleased her—she seemed to want me to ramble on about what my coming birthday meant to me. I was expecting more direct & specific questions.

A bill signing ceremony for a bill to have states provide sites for disposing of radioactive waste. Then a long meeting with Geo. Shultz & John Poindexter on our Khadafi problem, also our response to a letter from Gorbachev who surprisingly is calling for an arms reduction plan which will rid the world of nuclear weapons by yr. 2000. Of course he has a couple of zingers in there which we’ll have to work around. But at the very least it is a h--l of a propaganda move. We’d be hard put to explain how we could turn it down. Then we moved on to the Middle East. We’re sending Crocker over & we have to get the peace talks between Jordans King Hussein & Israels P.M. off dead center & moving again.

A lengthy taping session, a rub down & days end.