Yakovlev returned to the Central Committee to work on ideology and propaganda, and published several anti-American books. He defended a dissertation dealing with the historiography of US foreign policy, and received the degree of kandidat nauk, the equivalent of a doctorate, in July 1960. In July 1965, he was appointed the first deputy head of the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU by Leonid Brezhnev. In August 1968, Yakovlev was sent to Prague as the representative of CPSU Central Committee, and witnessed the entry of tanks into the city. He later spoke out against removing Dubcek. That same year, he was placed in command of a group charged with drafting the new constitution. Yakovlev served as editor of several party publications and rose to the key position of head of the CPSU's Department of Ideology and Propaganda from 1969 to 1973. In January 1970, he visited the US again and met Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger, and Jane Fonda, who warned him that Moscow "did not appreciate the full danger of American militarism". This trip, again, failed to change his unfavorable impression with US.