White House Diaries

Thursday, December 15, 1983

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P.M. Pierre Trudeau arrived. He’s been travelling the world trying to arouse interest in a 5 big nation summit to try & reduce Nuclear weapons. He hasn’t been able to get much interest. Actually it isn’t a sound idea but still we support his arousing interest in other nation’s, all of them to talk of eliminating such weapons. I think he went away with some added ammunition. Lunch with V.P. He’s done a great job in Central Am., especially in El Salvador on inspiring more action on human rights. An end of year interview with Time Inc. They are doing a feature on me & Andropov & Soviet-U.S. relations. I did my best to make it plain—we are the side that’s trying to bring about arms reductions & peace. Sen. John Danforth came in—he’s off to Africa—the drought stricken countries. We are planning to triple our food assistance. Personnel time & then admin. time. A Gold Medal to Fred Waring, Rich Colino, 1st Am. Dir. of Intelstat. James Fowler—Pres. of Lions. Rick Eilert to give me his book. A Vietnam Vet. he has had 40 operations on his legs. Capt. Grace Hopper—Navy—77 yrs. old sworn in as Commodore. Editors of Ladies Home Journal with a bound copy of their 100th yrs. edition. Over to the W.H. for the annual Xmas Tree lighting. 7 yr. old Amy Benham—with terminal illness had made public her dream to help me light the tree. She was a sweet little girl—she pushed the button. Another handshaking night—2nd half of Press Corps—about 600 hands. Today the New Jersey fired only it’s 5 inch guns at Syrian Artillery. We intercepted a message between 2 units of Syrians—saying, “We dont want the N.J. to fire anymore.”