"The American intelligence agencies strengthened contact with political dissenters in eastern Europe. Agents brought messages of support and helped to publicise cases of official abuse. They also brought money. Ronald Reagan, President from 1980 to 1988, wanted to do what he could to pull down the Iron Curtain shrouding eastern Europe. He had an ally in Pope John Paul II, who as Karol Wojtyła had been Archbishop of Kraków until 1978. In the past it had been difficult for rebels against communism to subsist without gainful employment because the authorities might bring charges of ‘parasitism’. The CIA and the Vatican got to work at offering discreet assistance. Informal bodies, some of them being tiny in membership and short of funds, were doing the same. This was exactly what the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was doing to help the world communist movement. Thus, as dollars arrived in Rome from Moscow, dollars departed Rome and Washington for Warsaw. The finance helped, but it was not the crucial factor in weakening communism in eastern Europe. If money had been the key to political change, Italy would long ago have acquired a communist government (and the Pope would have been ejected from the Vatican). Financial subventions could only accelerate an existing motion. The same had been true in 1917: ‘German gold’ had been an aid to the Bolsheviks in preparing to seize power but nothing like the main resource at their disposal."