About the Program
David Hoffman, former Moscow bureau chief for the Washington Post, recounts the final decade of the Cold War and the nuclear and biological munitions that remained following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Mr. Hoffman reports on Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's disinterest in creating a Stars Wars program that would rival President Reagan's, the Soviet Union's foray into biological warfare, and the 'Dead Hand' a program that would automatically respond to a nuclear strike regardless of whether any Soviet leaders were alive to command it. David Hoffman discusses his book at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC. The Dead Hand was the recipient of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction.