NEW YORK -- Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II secretly plotted in 1982 to keep Poland's outlawed Solidarityunion alive and destabilize Soviet control of Eastern Europe, according to a report released Sunday.
Time magazine, in its Feb. 24 cover story 'A Holy Alliance,' said in the eight years after the labor union was outlawed in 1981, the network established by Reagan and John Paul II enabled Solidarity to flourish underground.
The union's legal status was restored in 1989.
'Tons of equipment -- fax machines, video cameras, photocopiers, telex machines, computers, word processors -- were smuggled into Poland via channels established by priests and American agents and representatives of the AFL-CIO and European labor movements,' Time said.
Reagan has confirmed the alliance with the Roman Catholic leader, established in their first meeting in the Vatican Library on June 7, 1982, Time said. The pope is a native of Poland, which is predominantly Roman Catholic.
'We both felt that a great mistake had been made (in the division of Europe) at Yalta and something should be done,' Reagan told Time. 'Solidarity was the very weapon for bringing this about, because it was an organization of the laborers of Poland.'
High-ranking Vatican and Reagan administration officials, such as one of Reagan's national security advisers, William Clark, former Secretary of State Alexander Haig, and Reagan's first ambassador to the Vatican, William Wilson, confirmed the existence of the plan, Time said.
'This was one of the great secret alliances of all time,' Richard Allen, Reagan's first national security adviser, told the magazine.
Reporter Carl Bernstein interviewed more than 75 former Vatican and Reagan-era officials in preparation of the report, Time said.
Reagan, Clark and former CIA chief William Casey made the major decisions on the funneling of aid to the labor union, with Casey stopping in Rome on almost all trips to Europe and the Middle East to meet with John Paul II to exchange information, the magazine said.
The alliance was part of a larger strategy by the Reagan administration and the Vatican aimed at bringing about the collapse of the Soviet economy, fraying ties that bound the Warsaw Pact and forcing reforms inside the Soviet empire, Time said.
'There was a real coincidence of interests between the United States and the Vatican,' Agostino Cardinal Casaroli, the Vatican secretary of state, told Time.
