Diary Entry - 12/29/1986

Late morning went downstairs & presented Service Medals to crew of the Voyager Richard Rutan, Geana Yeager & Burt Rutan who designed & built the plane. A fair sized audience—many of them ground crew etc. Then back upstairs to get some allergy tests—Dr. Bookman. Then I taped a New Years greeting for Voice of America—to be beamed to Russia. It was the greeting we’d wanted to exchange with Gorbachev. Found out later—Russian radio then ran it—with several parts edited out.

2:40 in the afternoon went down to the helicopter & on to LAX (airport) & A.F.1 to Palm Springs. Visited with Lee & Walter at Sunny Land. Then dinner—just the 4 of us & watched the evening news. CBS ran the medal presentation & declared I did it to divert attention from Iran.