A Letter from the Publisher

By John A. Meyer

When the superpower leaders sit down to talk and try to understand each other, it is a powerful moment. This week TIME features a unique and intimate view of the summit meeting between President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. In a series of exclusive photographs by David Hume Kennerly, the reader goes behind closed doors to view not only the solemn scenes at Geneva but the lighter moments of intimacy and shared laughter. Shortly after the summit was announced in July, Photographer Kennerly proposed to the White House that he do an inside look at the historic meeting. Leaving for Geneva with word only that there would be "a good chance to get something," Kennerly found on his arrival that he would be the sole photojournalist allowed to observe Reagan and Gorbachev during their meetings inside the Fleur d'Eau chateau and their walk by Lake Geneva. Says Kennerly: "As a result, the TIME photos capture something other news organizations were unable to see: two world leaders right in the midst of their very serious business."

Kennerly was near Reagan and Gorbachev as they got acquainted Tuesday morning and started their talks. He observes: "Within minutes they sat down and got to the matters at hand with very little small talk. It was a relaxed, businesslike situation. They seemed to get comfortable in a hurry." Kennerly, who was the official White House photographer during the Ford Administration and who has been grantsed more than 20 exclusive sessions with Reagan, had never before seen Gorbachev. Says he: "Gorbachev was not at all bothered by the picture taking, but he does appear a bit brusque. He's not as smooth as he's sometimes portrayed by the press."

Washington Bureau Chief Strobe Talbott, who was in Vienna in 1979 for the previous U.S.-Soviet meeting, between Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev, coordinated coverage of the American negotiators by White House Correspondents Laurence Barrett and Barrett Seaman, Washington Contributing Editor Hugh Sidey and State Department Correspondent Johanna McGeary. Paris Bureau Chief Jordan Bonfante, Correspondent Adam Zagorin, Robert Kroon and Moscow Bureau Chief James O. Jackson tracked the Soviet and European sides of the story. All the correspondents had to contend with a two-day news blackout, during which diplomats failed to show up at receptions for fear of being buttonholed. But, Talbott says, "a number of our sources continued to talk to us, and after the finale on Thursday people began to open up again. That enabled us to produce a combination of in-depth reportage and analysis of history in the making."