Soviet On August 13, the deputy minister of
Soviet foreign affairs, Valentin Kamenev, told reporters, "I have nothing to say." The next day, President Reagan's leaked comments were denounced by the
Soviet government,
Pravda,
Izvestia, and
TASS as "unprecedentedly hostile", evidence of the United States' insincerity in trying to improve
Soviet–American relations, and as an abuse of the office of president. Western diplomats described the Soviet response as over the top, suggesting that it was an effort to give themselves more leverage in negotiations with the United States. U.S. officials were compelled to mollify the Soviet Union and assure the United States' Cold War adversary that "Reagan's offhand remark did not reflect White House policies or U.S. military intentions." In 2003,
Moskovskij Komsomolets Mikhail Rostovsky said that "
Soviet propaganda then squeezed the maximum possible out of this joke of the state leader." By August 14, the recording of Reagan's joke had become world news. On August 15, someone, whom the
National Security Agency described to
U.S. Representative Michael D. Barnes as "a wayward operator in
the Soviet Far Eastern command", sent a coded message from
Vladivostok that said, in part, "We now embark on military action against the U.S. forces." Japanese and U.S. intelligence decoded the message and raised the
alert state in that part of the world;
Soviet naval vessels in the
North Pacific contacted Vladivostok in confusion. The U.S. never saw any evidence of Soviet attack preparations, and the alert status as promulgated by Vladivostok was canceled within 30 minutes.
Domestic Reagan's
poll numbers took a hit from the
political gaffe, temporarily raising the hopes of
Walter Mondale's supporters in the
1984 United States presidential election campaign. Mondale said of Reagan's joke, "A [p]resident has to be very, very careful with his words." However, in the analysis of Reagan historian
Craig Shirley, the leak of Reagan's joke was poorly used by the
Democratic Party: "[criticism of the joke] actually worked against the Democrats and for Reagan […] as they came across as hypersensitive, and Reagan as calm, cool and collected." In 2010,
Politico journalist Andrew Glass wrote, "Most commentators dismissed the joke as, at worst, poor taste. Nonetheless, it got geopolitical traction because it came at a time of heightened Cold War tensions between Washington and Moscow — which largely dissolved during Reagan's second term." In 2011, the
Deseret News listed Reagan's
microphone gaffe as his sixth-best quote, expressing surprise that it was leaked only 87 days before the election. == Other uses ==