So it was on this date in 2002 that President Bill Clinton’s first chief-of-staff, Thomas “Mack” McLarty, sat for a long discussion with the Miller Center. In his interview, he praised the work of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney who played host, in Vancouver, for the first-ever summit meeting between Clinton and Russia’s Boris Yeltsin in April of 1993. 

“Brian was a pivotal participant in the Vancouver meeting,” McLarty said, adding that Murloney’s experience was crucial in keeping the first-luncheon between his two guests to Canada on track. “My point is, without Prime Minister Mulroney’s fine and skilled and experienced hand at that lunch, I do not believe we would have reached that initial rapport, which obviously was crucial for, really, the security of mankind, without being too dramatic about it.”

I’ll let McLarty finish his description of the Vancouver summit in his own words.

Thomas McLarty:  On Vancouver, we had developed a good relationship with Brian Mulroney, who is impossible not to like and have an affectionate respect for, just wonderful, has a wonderful personality. We went to Vancouver, and I had gotten to know Mulroney pretty well. Of course, he’s very close to President Bush. He was our host. Well, President Yeltsin did not particularly like or respect Bill Clinton during that first meeting. They had met for 15 minutes in the campaign, and he thought Bush was going to win. Yeltsin was older, he viewed Clinton as his junior, and he had some defensiveness in his personality, as well.

So they had lunch, and it was a very stiff lunch. We stayed for the reception time, and you could tell this was not the warm rapport that you would hope. I pulled Prime Minister Mulroney aside, and I said, Brian, this just doesn’t strike me as a warm and engaging encounter here. He said, Well, you’re a great judge of character. I said, That’s not my point. He said, Let me work on it. I see the seriousness of it. He did a superb job during that luncheon of at least not having them isolate and get their proverbial backs up with their position, keep it as warm as they could. He reported to me how it had gone: You needed to wake up worrying about it, but not lose sleep over it. It had at least had reasonably good rapport. Well, Yeltsin took a tour of Vancouver, of the bay, and we had a dinner that night. The dinner was not as well orchestrated as it should have been. It was at a very nice restaurant, and it was overly formal, in my view. But I wasn’t in charge of protocol, so I didn’t try to second-guess it too much. 

Yeltsin had had several drinks touring the bay and had several drinks before we sat down for dinner and several glasses of wine immediately after we sat down for dinner. Secretary Christopher was sitting next to me, or I was sitting next to him, and it was clear after President Yeltsin turned away about three courses of food that he was not going to eat that evening. Chris turned to me and said, I don’t believe we’re going to have a very productive dinner. [laughter] I said, Well, you’re as owl-like and sage as I’ve heard you are. 

So the next day we had a fair meeting at best. [Viktor] Ilyushin was Yeltsin’s Bruce Lindsey—he was not Chief of Staff, but he had worked for Yeltsin for about 20-25 years, very close to him, kind of his executive secretary. I called Victor aside, I had gotten to know him. I said, Victor, we’ve only got six more hours of meetings. We haven’t gotten anything accomplished here, and expectations are very high for this summit. We’re going to have to get down to business and deal with some of these issues and come out with at least a semblance of progress. He said, I agree.

The next morning, Yeltsin walked in, and it was remarkable, because even after these kinds of abuses, he just looked perfect. I mean erect, looked like he had just gotten 12 hours of sleep. I had had one glass of wine and looked haggard. He walked in and said, Mr. President, we’ve got to get down to business this morning, and Victor winked at me, like that was the phrase. During the meeting, the first time that, as Yeltsin discussed a particular matter, he said, Beel. From that time on, it was never President Clinton, it was Beel, my friend Beel. You could see the chemistry was established, and the mutual respect had been established in the meeting. My point is, without Prime Minister Mulroney’s fine and skilled and experienced hand at that lunch, I do not believe we would have reached that initial rapport, which obviously was crucial for, really, the security of mankind, without being too dramatic about it.

Young

Clinton had something to do with it, didn’t he?

McLarty

Oh, no question about it. But Clinton was off-stride in how stiff Yeltsin was. You get into this situation, If you’re going to be rude, I can’t show too much weakness here and be solicitous. So it’s a pretty awkward situation for him, without Mulroney giving him lead-ins to do that. Where President Clinton quickly caught the situation in the earlier meeting was with some of the other people, part of Yeltsin’s group. Yeltsin felt he had constraints on what he could agree to on some of the issues we were talking about, and Clinton quickly sensed that and started to accommodate that in their discussion and gave Yeltsin room to move without putting himself in an awkward situation with his colleagues.

You can read McKlarty’s entire interview at this link: https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-oral-histories/thomas-mack-mclarty-iii-oral-history