Killing Reagan (11 page)

A few months later, in a controversy that trails him almost all the way through his first year in the governor's office, Reagan learned that two of his top aides are engaging in homosexual relations. He tries to defuse the situation by quietly letting the men resign. Homosexuality is still illegal in many areas of the country, and there is very little public support for gay rights in most parts of California. But Reagan's Hollywood background infused him with a tolerance for homosexuals. While he will go on record as condemning gay behavior, he is not personally bothered by it. In fact, Carroll Righter, an astrologer on whom he and Nancy depend, is openly gay.

The matter might have subsided if
Newsweek
magazine had not run an item on October 31, 1967, that made Reagan's problem into a national scandal. Making matters even worse, Reagan lied about it, telling the press that the homosexual aides were not fired for their private conduct. By the time the scandal died down, there were many who believed that Reagan's hopes of running for president in 1968 were long gone.

And they were right. In May 1967 it appeared that the battle for president of the United States might be a contest between Ronald Reagan and either Robert Kennedy or Lyndon Johnson. Now Johnson is done, Kennedy is dead, and Reagan's presidential hopes have vanished. In the ultimate irony, the Republican nomination goes to Richard Nixon. In just a few weeks' time, Americans will elect Nixon president over Hubert Humphrey.
6

*   *   *

Now, on this October night in 1968, taking a break from the Studio City party to clear his head by the pool, Ronald Reagan is relaxed and loose. It helps that Nancy is not here. As much as Reagan adores his wife, she is extremely jealous. Nancy gets outraged if he so much as hugs a woman he knows. Reagan has to be very careful in Nancy's presence.

The young woman sitting before him is just eighteen years old. She looks at Reagan but does not recognize him as the governor. Perhaps feeling some sympathy, Reagan sits down.

The girl's name is Patricia Taylor. Years later she will try to capitalize on her relationship with Ronald Reagan by taping interviews suggesting that intimacy soon followed. Reagan's personal behavior as governor, however, is so exemplary that few question his clearly stated traditional values.

 

9

W
HITE
H
OUSE

W
ASHINGTON
, DC

A
UGUST
9, 1974

7:30
A
.
M
.

A barefoot Richard Nixon wears blue pajamas as he eats his breakfast of grapefruit, wheat germ, and milk. He is alone in his bedroom, having just walked upstairs from the White House kitchen, where he ordered the morning meal. His forty-five-year-old Cuban-born butler Manolo Sanchez delivered the food, opened the drapes, laid out Nixon's clothes for the day, then left the president alone to eat.

Nixon does not sleep with his wife, Pat.
1
He is prone to talking during the night and gets up at all hours because of insomnia. It's not unusual that Pat Nixon does not sleep with her husband in the White House. The Kennedys and Johnsons before him did not sleep in the same bed, either. Pat Nixon has an adjoining bedroom, separated from her husband's sleeping quarters by a door.

Nixon's high-ceilinged chamber has a fireplace in one corner and two large south-facing windows with views of the Washington Monument. Outside, the morning dawns muggy and overcast. This same bedroom once housed presidents Wilson, Harding, Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson.
2
World-changing decisions have been made within these walls. Yet none of those men has come to the shattering conclusion that Nixon reached just yesterday. In fact, none of the thirty-five men to hold the office of president has ever done what Richard Nixon is about to do.

Nixon strips off his pajamas, showers, and changes into the dark blue suit, white shirt, and maroon tie that Sanchez has laid out for him. He is just moments away from walking downstairs to the Oval Office and affixing his signature to a one-line document: “I hereby resign the Office of President of the United States.”

*   *   *

The scandal that would bring down a president begins over two years earlier, on June 17, 1972. Richard Nixon is seeking reelection. His first four years in office have been a triumph, marked by significant efforts to end the war in Vietnam and the historic moment when American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. Sixty-two percent of Americans approve of Nixon's job performance. No matter whom the Democrats select to run against him, he should win the election handily.

Yet the paranoid Nixon is not taking any chances. His reelection committee is undertaking a stealth campaign of political espionage to defeat the Democrats. This operation includes planting eavesdropping devices in the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Hotel complex. On June 18, 1972, the
Washington Post
publishes a curious dispatch noting arrests made at the DNC's offices:

Five men, one of whom said he is a former employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, were arrested at 2:30 a.m. yesterday in what authorities described as an elaborate plot to bug the offices of the Democratic National Committee here.

Three of the men were native-born Cubans and another was said to have trained Cuban exiles for guerrilla activity after the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.

They were surprised at gunpoint by three plain-clothes officers of the metropolitan police department in a sixth floor office at the plush Watergate, 2600 Virginia Ave., NW, where the Democratic National Committee occupies the entire floor.

There was no immediate explanation as to why the five suspects would want to bug the Democratic National Committee offices or whether or not they were working for any other individuals or organizations.

But as the media would reveal over the course of the next 852 days, the Watergate burglars were ultimately working for one very specific individual: Richard Milhous Nixon.

*   *   *

More than three thousand miles away, California governor Ronald Reagan is well into his sixth year in office. Reagan has been extraordinarily successful, despite having survived a recall effort during his first term.
3
Reagan has achieved much as California's leader, cracking down on violent student protests against the Vietnam War, successfully raising taxes in order to balance the budget, and then issuing a tax rebate. In October 1971, Reagan traveled on one of his four trips to Asia as a special envoy of Richard Nixon to calm foreign heads of state who were nervous about the thawing of relations between the United States and China.

Meantime, Nancy Reagan has also prospered as California's First Lady. She has come to enjoy the trappings of power, such as private jet travel, an aide to carry her purse, and the surprise friendship of singer Frank Sinatra. Once an enemy, Sinatra has become a big supporter of Governor Reagan and a close personal confidant to Nancy.
4

Even though her husband has stated publicly that he will not seek a third term as governor, Nancy is not about to give up a life of perks and celebrity adulation. She is working behind the scenes to plan a presidential campaign. The time will come, Nancy believes, when her Ronnie will be ready for the big job.

Her astrologers agree.

*   *   *

But no seer can save Richard Nixon. Nine months after their arrest, the Watergate burglars and the men who helped them plan the break-in of the DNC headquarters are being sentenced. They have all pleaded guilty and have maintained a code of silence as to their motives. All insist they acted without help. At this point, there is absolutely no evidence connecting Richard Nixon or the White House to the break-in.

But John Sirica, the short-tempered, sixty-nine-year-old chief judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, is convinced there is more to the story. He stuns the burglars with sentences ranging from thirty-five to forty-five years in federal prison for charges of burglary, conspiracy, and wiretapping. The sentences, however, are provisional: if the defendants break their silence, prison time will be reduced to months instead of years.

The man in charge of security for the Republican National Committee, James McCord, a former CIA officer, is the first to crack. “I would appreciate the opportunity to talk with you privately in chambers,” he informs Judge Sirica.

*   *   *

Five weeks later, on April 30, 1973, President Richard Nixon inhabits an old leather chair in the White House's second-floor Lincoln Sitting Room. Although it is April, flames dance in the fireplace. Nixon enjoys the fire, and even orders it lit during the hot summer months so that he can sit alone and listen to records.

But tonight the Lincoln Sitting Room is silent. Nixon broods and sips from a glass of twenty-year-old Ballantine scotch. Ever since McCord's confession, Judge Sirica's new grand jury investigation into the Watergate scandal has unveiled damning evidence linking the White House to the burglaries. McCord is naming names. Nixon is frantically working to distance himself from those names, even if it means firing men who have long been loyal to him. Just today, he accepted the resignations of three key members of his administration for their role in the Watergate fiasco and fired another.
5

The phone rings.

“Governor Reagan on the line,” a White House operator tells Nixon.

“Hello,” Nixon responds coldly. Nixon has a famously low tolerance for alcohol and gets drunk quickly. Tonight is no exception.

“Mr. President?” says Reagan.

“Hello, Ron. How are you?” Nixon replies in a booming voice.

Reagan's is a courtesy call, one Republican to another. But in truth, the two men are battling for control of their party. Nixon is threatened by Reagan's popularity and his brand of staunch conservatism. He is vehemently opposed to the idea of Reagan succeeding him as president and has hand-picked former Texas governor John Connally as the man he will back for the Republican presidential nomination in 1976. Knowing this, Connally is preparing to switch over from the Democratic Party.

“Just fine and how are you?” Reagan responds. His words ring hollow because both men know that Nixon is in trouble. Earlier this evening, Nixon went on national television and lied to the American public, telling the country that he had nothing to do with Watergate. Furthermore, Nixon insisted he would be relentless in finding who was responsible.

“Couldn't be better,” Richard Nixon says bitterly, then he immediately changes the subject. “You must have—the time is so far different. You're about only seven o'clock, or eight o'clock there.”

“Yes. Yes,” Reagan says.

“How nice of you to call.” Again Nixon's voice is tinged with sarcasm. In his drunken state, he has a hard time hiding his loathing for Reagan.

“Well, I want you to know we watched,” Reagan tells Nixon. “And my heart was with you. I know what this must have been, and all these days and what you've been through, and I just wanted you to know that, uh, for whatever it's worth, I'm still behind you. You can count on us. We're still behind you out here, and I want you to know you're in our prayers.”

“How nice of you to say that,” Nixon answers. He is determined to change the subject again. “Well, let me tell you this. That we can be—each of us has a different religion, you know, but goddammit, Ron, we have got to build peace in the world and that's what I'm working on. I want you to know I so appreciate your calling and give my love to Nancy. How—how'd you ever marry such a pretty girl? My God!”

Nixon is being disingenuous. He has confided to his staff that “Nancy Reagan's a bitch. A demanding one. And he listens to her.”

Ronald Reagan knows none of this. “Well, I'm just lucky,” he says, chuckling.

“You're lucky. Well, I was lucky.”

“Yes. Yes. You were.”

“How nice of you to call. You, you thought it was the right speech though?”

“I did. Very much so. Yes.”

“Had to say it. Had to say it.”

“Yeah. I know how difficult it was. And I know what it must be with the fellas having to do what they did. And they—”

Nixon cuts him off. “That's right. They had to get out.”

“And I can understand—”

Again, Nixon interrupts to change the subject. “Right? Where are you at now? Are you in Sacramento?”

“No. Los Angeles.”

“Ha, ha. Good for you to get out of that miserable city.”

“Yeah.”

“Right. Rod,” Nixon says, unintentionally mangling Reagan's name. “Damn nice of you to call.”

“Well—”

“OK.”

“This too shall pass,” Reagan says, trying to console the president.

“Everything passes. Thank you.”

“You bet. Give our best to Pat,” Reagan concludes.

The line goes dead.

*   *   *

Throughout 1973, the evidence that Richard Nixon funded acts of political espionage and engaged in a cover-up continues to grow. A brand-new cloud of scandal settles over the White House when it is revealed that Vice President Spiro Agnew has been taking bribes while in office.
6
In order to escape prosecution for conspiracy, extortion, and bribery, Agnew resigns on October 10, 1973.

Richard Nixon is torn about a successor. He would like to nominate John Connally for vice president, but the lifelong Democrat switched political parties only five months ago. There is still animosity among Democrats about the defection, and Nixon feels that they will block Connally's congressional confirmation.

The second choice is Nelson Rockefeller, the liberal Republican governor of New York. Given their long-ago Treaty of Fifth Avenue, which led to a blending of their personal political views into a road map sending the Republican Party on a more moderate course, Nixon fears that this choice will alienate the conservative elements of the party.