Reagan: The Life (81 page)

Qaddafi prepared to counter by other means, as the CIA reported to the president. “
We learned that in response Qaddafi had directed several
of his ‘People’s Bureaus’ in Europe to plan terrorist operations against the United States,” Robert Gates recalled. “The Libyans informed a number of ambassadors in Tripoli that a ‘state of war’ existed with the United States. We quickly began picking up information on Libyan plans to hit us.” Qaddafi’s agents apparently succeeded in early April, bombing a West Berlin nightclub frequented by American military personnel. One American soldier was killed, along with a Turkish woman. Dozens of Americans were among the hundreds wounded.

Reagan reacted decisively. He ordered air strikes against Qaddafi’s headquarters and other assets. Dozens of warplanes from American aircraft carriers and from a base in Britain pounded targets in Tripoli and Benghazi. Shortly after the planes left Libyan airspace, Reagan addressed the American people and the world, explaining the strikes as retaliation for the Berlin bombing and laying out the evidence of Qaddafi’s guilt. “
On March 25th, more than a week before the attack, orders were sent from Tripoli to the
Libyan People’s Bureau in East Berlin to conduct a terrorist attack against Americans to cause maximum and indiscriminate casualties,” he said. “Libya’s agents then planted the bomb. On April 4th the People’s Bureau alerted Tripoli that the attack would be carried out the following morning. The next day they reported back to Tripoli on the great success of their mission.” The blood of the victims was on Qaddafi’s hands. “Our evidence is direct; it is precise; it is irrefutable,” Reagan said.

The attack on Libya was part of a larger war against terrorism, he continued. “I warned that there should be no place on Earth where terrorists can rest and train and practice their deadly skills. I meant it. I said that we would act with others, if possible, and alone if necessary to ensure that terrorists have no sanctuary anywhere. Tonight, we have.”

The war on terrorism wasn’t an evening’s outing, Reagan said. “I have no illusion that tonight’s action will ring down the curtain on Qaddafi’s reign of terror.” But he hoped it would give Qaddafi pause about committing new crimes against innocent people. In any event, the attack on Libya wouldn’t be America’s last strike against terror. “We will persevere.”

R
EAGAN HAD WON
the White House from Jimmy Carter not least by lambasting the Democratic president for abandoning friendly conservative regimes in the face of radical insurgencies. Conservative columnist
Charles Krauthammer, noting that Reagan had adopted the contrary position, of supporting conservative insurgencies against radical regimes, in
Afghanistan,
Nicaragua,
Angola, and Cambodia, approvingly conferred the label “
Reagan Doctrine” on the policy. Reagan’s own take on his strategy lacked Krauthammer’s theoretical gloss but was easier to implement: communists and their sympathizers were bad, anticommunists and their supporters were good. Thus his support for the contras in Nicaragua against a leftist government, and for the government of El Salvador against a leftist insurgency.

Thus also his support for the
apartheid regime in
South Africa. At a time when much of the world sought to isolate South Africa by economic and diplomatic sanctions, Reagan stood by the government of
P. W. Botha. Reagan and his administration contended that “constructive engagement” with South Africa would promote democratic reform while preserving the country from the
African National Congress, which included elements Reagan deemed alarmingly communist and pro-Soviet. The policy inspired heavy criticism of Reagan; Bishop
Desmond Tutu, a black South African cleric who won the Nobel Peace Price for opposing apartheid, denounced Reagan’s policy as “
immoral, evil and totally un-Christian.” Eventually, Congress approved sanctions against South Africa and, when Reagan vetoed the bill, overrode the veto.

R
EAGAN
’
S POLICY TOWARD
Ferdinand Marcos of the
Philippines initially displayed a similar tolerance for right-wing authoritarianism. Reagan had first encountered Marcos in 1969, when he traveled to the Philippines in the service of
Richard Nixon. Reagan was impressed by Marcos and enchanted by his wife, the beautiful and flamboyant Imelda. He sympathized when Marcos took stern measures against leftist insurgents during the 1970s, and he brought the Philippine president and Imelda to the White House for a state dinner in 1982. “
It’s a nostalgic occasion for us,” he said in his toast. “Nancy and I often think of our 1969 visit to Manila, when we first experienced that unexcelled Philippine hospitality as the guests of our guests here tonight.” Many things had changed in the intervening years, Reagan said. “But one thing remains constant—the basic nature of the Filipino–United States friendship.” America and the Philippines had forged ties in defense, economics, and other areas. “I pledge to you, President Marcos, that the United States will do its share to strengthen those ties.”

Reagan’s support didn’t prevent the opposition to Marcos—and to the increasingly egregious Imelda—from growing. A crisis occurred when opposition leader
Benigno Aquino was assassinated in 1983. Massive protests followed the murder, giving rise to demands that Marcos step aside. Reagan stood by the president. “
I know there are things there in the Philippines that do not look good to us from the standpoint right now of democratic rights,” he said in one of his 1984 debates with Walter Mondale. “But what is the alternative? It is a large communist movement to take over the Philippines. They have been our friend since their inception as a nation. And I think that we’ve had enough of a record of letting—under the guise of revolution—someone that we thought was a little more right than we would be, letting that person go, and then winding up with totalitarianism, pure and simple, as the alternative. And I think that we’re better off, for example with the Philippines, trying to retain our friendship and help them right the wrongs we see, rather than throwing them to the wolves and then facing a communist power in the Pacific.”

George Shultz cringed at Reagan’s conflation of the Philippine opposition with communism. The State Department issued a corrective, explaining that the United States recognized that there were legitimate democratic groups working for change in the Philippines. To Reagan, Shultz argued that unquestioning support for Marcos would discourage the democratic opposition and enhance, rather than diminish, the appeal of the radicals, to the peril of American interests in the Philippines,
including rights to bases at Clark Field and Subic Bay. “
I went through all of these matters with the president,” Shultz recalled. “He agreed with our judgments and our course of action, while hoping, as we all did, that somehow Marcos would shift gears and work with us on reform.” Yet the secretary sensed Reagan’s reluctance to press Marcos. “I could see that Ronald Reagan wanted to support this man who had been a friend of the United States over many years, a staunch anticommunist, and head of a country that was host to important U.S. military bases.”

Reagan listened to Shultz, but he distrusted the State Department as a whole on the Philippines. He thought stories of Marcos’s ill health were being exaggerated for political purposes. “
I suspect an element of the State Department bureaucracy is anti-Marcos and helps the false reporting along,” he wrote in his diary in October 1985. To get to the heart of the matter, he asked
Paul Laxalt, the Nevada senator, to travel to the Philippines as his personal investigator. The visit was supposed to be secret, to spare Marcos embarrassment. “
This was a complete graveyard trip,” Laxalt recalled. But the story leaked. “So, hell, by the time we got there it was public,” Laxalt said. “We had this whole crowd of Philippine reporters there. They’re a pretty intimidating bunch … They obviously didn’t like Marcos, and they wondered what the hell I was doing there, an outsider coming in.”

Laxalt found Marcos perplexing. “Smart as hell, but he had no idea what was going on,” Laxalt said later. “I told him the whole sad story, what our intelligence was revealing.” Marcos didn’t like what he heard, especially coming from the American president’s envoy. “He loved Reagan; it was a long-standing relationship,” Laxalt recounted. Yet Marcos seemed healthier to Laxalt than the deathbed stories suggested. Laxalt subsequently related this assessment to Reagan, who was pleased to hear it.

While in Manila, Laxalt suggested a way for Marcos to steal a march on the opposition. Philippine law allowed the president to call a snap election. Marcos had previously considered doing so but put the idea aside. Laxalt raised it anew. “
He was telling me how strong he was politically,” Laxalt later remembered, “and I suggested to him that maybe he ought to reconsider the snap election. If he’s as strong as he told me he was, hell, go through the election. That will solve a lot of your problems in Washington.”

Marcos took the advice. In a television interview with American jour
nalist
David Brinkley, the Philippine president announced that he would hold a snap election in early 1986, a year ahead of schedule.

Reagan wasn’t sure this was a good plan. “
It’s a touchy mess,” he observed privately. But in public he emphasized America’s support for the democratic process. “
This election is of great importance to the future of democracy in the Philippines, a major friend and ally of the United States in the Pacific,” he declared in a written statement. He stressed the importance of elections in neutralizing the communist insurgency. “The Communist Party of the Philippines, through its military arm, the
New People’s Army, and its front organization, the
National Democratic Front, is pursuing a classic military and political strategy intended to lead eventually to a totalitarian takeover of the Philippines,” Reagan said. “The Communist strategy can be defeated, but defeating it will require listening to and respecting the sovereign voice of the people.” He complemented his words with a promise of new American aid should the election go smoothly and fairly.

R
EAGAN AWAITED THE
elections, hoping for the best. So did the people of the Philippines, many of whom suspected that Marcos would rig the results. Reagan was asked about this possibility. “
Mr. President, will the U.S. do anything if Marcos wins through fraud?” a reporter wanted to know.

Reagan refused to engage. “That’s up to the Filipino people to determine, whether they think they’ve had a fair election or not,” he said.

Reagan hoped Marcos would win fairly, or at least plausibly, as a credible victory would keep him in power and quiet criticism from the American left. But election day reports indicated widespread corruption of the polling. Members of the media sought Reagan’s response. “
You called for free and fair elections,” a reporter said. “How does the United States respond to these reports of fraud from our observers, and can Marcos ever again make a claim to legitimacy after this?”

Reagan didn’t want to be rushed. “Well, I’m going to wait until I have a chance to talk to our observers who are over there,” he responded. “I haven’t as yet. Whether there is enough evidence that you can really keep on pointing the finger or not, I don’t know. I’m sure, you know, even elections in our own country—there are some evidences of fraud in places and areas. And I don’t know the extent of this over there—but also do we
have any evidence that it’s all been one-sided, or has this been sort of the election tactics that have been followed there?”

The next day Reagan met with Senator Richard Lugar and Representative
Jack Murtha, who had traveled to the Philippines to observe the election. They said the evidence of fraud was overwhelming. The challenger,
Corazon Aquino, the widow of the slain
Benigno Aquino, was the apparent victor, though Marcos was claiming otherwise.

Yet the final results had yet to be announced, and Reagan remained publicly neutral. “
The determination of the government in the Philippines is going to be the business of the Philippine people, not the United States,” he told reporters.

This wasn’t quite true. The elections convinced Reagan that Marcos had become more of a liability than an asset. He decided Marcos had to go. But he didn’t want to be seen as throwing Marcos overboard. He preferred discretion. When the
Philippine National Assembly, against mounting evidence from neutral observers, declared Marcos the victor, the White House protested. “
Although our observation delegation has not yet completed its work, it has already become evident, sadly, that the elections were marred by widespread fraud and violence perpetrated largely by the ruling party,” a written statement said. “It was so extreme that the election’s credibility has been called into question both within the Philippines and in the United States.”

Reagan sent Phil Habib, his Middle East fixer, to Manila. Habib soon concluded that Reagan would have to take a higher profile. “
The dominant view here is that Marcos is finished,” Habib telephoned
George Shultz. “But it will have to be the U.S. that gives him the boot.” Habib said he had been handed a list of four generally pro-Marcos notables by an aide to the Philippine president. “I went to see them, and all four told me, ‘Marcos has got to go, and you Americans have got to get rid of him. You’re the Godfather.
You
do it.’ ” Habib said Cardinal
Jaime Sin, the archbishop of Manila, had urged him to persuade Reagan to act. “Tell the president to pick up the phone and tell Marcos to go.”

Reagan still hoped not to have to. But the Philippine people forced his hand. Hundreds of thousands poured into Manila’s streets to protest the election fraud and demand the inauguration of Cory Aquino.

Marcos had caught Reagan’s unspoken drift; amid the protests he wildly blamed the Americans for turning against him. “
He called in panic and said that he thought that Weinberger had set the marines loose, and they were coming down the river after him,”
Paul Laxalt remembered. “I
figured, well Jesus, gunboat diplomacy in Manila, for Christ’s sake. It was a little weird. So I called Weinberger. Weinberger thinks I’m about half-nuts. ‘Hell, no,’ he said. So I called Marcos back to reassure him that the marines were not after him.”