How did this translate into direct policy results? It was at the NSC that Bill Clark provided his lasting contribution: it was there that he and his president laid the foundation to undermine the Soviet Union. Paul Kengor and Pat Clark Doerner tell that story at length, from Clark’s input into overall policy to his unreported role in various sensitive overseas missions like Suriname, in policy initiatives like the Strategic Defense Initiative, in trying to halt the terrible problem of leaking of classified information by certain White House staff, in our tremendous and still unappreciated program of public diplomacy, and in the significant role he played as principal liaison to Pio Cardinal Laghi and Pope John Paul II’s Vatican, of which only a small few of us knew about.

But while the Cold War component of this book will understandably garner the most attention by reviewers, I would like to point to Clark’s role in another episode chronicled in this biography: the way he came to his defense of all of those accused of wrongdoing in the scandal that became known as Iran-Contra. Clark understood that Iran-Contra was, in essence, a classic war-powers dispute between the executive and legislative branches over which had the right to make foreign policy, and at its core was an attempted criminalization of a policy dispute by the president’s congressional opponents.

This is not the place to revisit the details of the controversy or to argue its merits, but it is the place to highlight how Clark once again, as he always had, came to the defense of his friends when The Judge was sure that an injustice had been served.

For the first time, in this book, historians will see the letters that Clark wrote to Ronald Reagan urging pardons for those involved, as well as a draft of an unused speech that Clark personally wrote for Reagan explaining the pardons to the American public. Clark believed that Reagan “was inclined” to act on those pardons and in fact probably would have done so if not for the intervention of Nancy Reagan, as Lou Cannon and others have recorded. Clark came to the defense of his friends.

This is just one example of the many new things that readers will learn in this biography of a very important individual. Clark today is 76 years old and spends his final years at his ranch in Paso Robles, California, where The Judge has not retired from defending the occasional case of local injustice—from a young teen in town to a group of nuns in need of legal assistance (all pro bono)—to coming to Ronald Reagan’s defense on issues like embryonic research on the New York Times op-ed page. He continues to promote the Reagan legacy in many ways. The two of us are proud to serve as the co-chairs of the Reagan Ranch, which we prevented from commercial development and which has grown into a larger center that is becoming an important educational resource on the Reagan life and presidency. I’m proud to join Bill Clark as one of the remaining Sacramento stalwarts still carrying the Reagan torch today. I’m also pleased that at long last this moving and significant untold story has finally been revealed.