"We have outlawed Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes". It was just an unscripted joke by US President Ronald Reagan but it terrified ordinary Russians. Reagan's advisor Morton Blackwell tells Dina Newman about the president's love of anti-Soviet jokes and his determination to destroy Communism.

Photo: American president Ronald Reagan in the 1980s at his desk in the White House, Washington DC. Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images