The two men also together established the vital Cold War relationship with Pope John Paul II’s Vatican, with Clark being the principal liaison.

V&V: How did Clark manage to get praised by the likes of Time and Michael Reagan, by the New York Times and Cap Weinberger, by Edmund Morris and Ed Meese, by tree huggers and Cold Warriors? You believe this is the only book on a Reagan official, or maybe anyone, endorsed by both Presidents George H. W. Bush and Jimmy Carter. Was there anyone who didn’t like Clark?

Kengor: People liked him as a person. Politically and ideologically, however, he had his opponents, such as the moderates and pragmatists in the Reagan White House. Among them were Mike Deaver and Nancy Reagan, who wanted Clark fired. Some of these folks thought that if only hard-line Bill Clark would quit backing Ronald Reagan in his primitive desire to bankrupt the USSR, the Nobel Committee would show up at the Oval Office one day with the Peace Prize.

V&V: How did you convince him to tell his story?

Kengor: I can’t say I really did. I appealed to his sense of duty to Ronald Reagan and to the historical record. He still regrets the attention this has brought to himself. He has a striking faith-based humility, stemming from a devout Catholicism begun as a young boy on the ranches and vistas of California, connecting to God through nature—as did his favorite saint, Saint Francis—and through years of contemplating the priesthood at seminary, which he left for another mission: to fight atheistic Soviet communism—to win the Cold War. The fulfillment of that mission would require that he meet an ex-actor named Ronald Reagan. The “DP” ultimately had precisely that in store.

V&V: So, in the end, you say that Clark rode off into the sunset?

Kengor: I will quote Roger Robinson, probably the most significant NSC aide. He says of Clark: “You talk about a dark horse in history…. There may have never been a greater dark horse than Bill Clark. He and his president were all about some 300 million people going free. And isn’t it poetic, isn’t it fitting, that this quiet rancher, this unassuming guy, gave everyone else the credit? He wanted no credit for himself. And then he just walked away.”

Death, alas, in 1991, came to the doorstep of the Kremlin. And somewhere, at some point, when no one was watching, Bill Clark quietly returned to his ranch in California.

There are a number of photos of Clark and Reagan on horseback together. One, however, seems especially poignant. It has a special inscription from Reagan: “Dear Bill: ‘And As The Sun Slowly Sank in the West’—Don’t Ride Too Far Into the Sunset. Ron.” Well, as that sun sank slowly in the west, Bill Clark one day put all those achievements behind him and silently did just that.

Bill Clark was Ronald Reagan’s secret weapon in winning the Cold War—period. This is the unheralded, enigmatic figure who, more than any other White House official, helped President Reagan undermine atheistic Soviet communism, and then, quite literally, one day saddled his horse in Washington for the final time, and rode off into the sunset.