Reagan: The Life (97 page)

She hated to see her husband in such a fix. “Ronnie was genuinely baffled,” she wrote. “He kept expecting that everything would fall into place, that there was a rational explanation for all this. But he couldn’t stop it, and he couldn’t control it.” He couldn’t even address it. After appointing the investigative commission he had promised, he imposed silence on himself pending the commission’s report. But the silence didn’t come easily. “Ronnie was in an impossible bind,” Nancy explained. “Holding a press conference would have created the risk of being contradicted by new information, but not holding one created a vacuum and gave some people the impression that Ronnie had something to hide.”

The agony wouldn’t end. “It was a dark and hurtful time, and it lasted for months,” Nancy wrote. “Every time I opened a newspaper or turned on the television, there was the same drumbeat.” And it was echoed among the public, where Reagan’s credibility and approval remained at record lows. “No matter how often he said that he hadn’t known about the diversion of funds, the same message kept coming back:
Oh yes, you did
.”

Nancy did what she could to ensure that Reagan received sound advice, separate from what Don Regan was giving. She contacted
Michael Deaver, who brought in
William Rogers, secretary of state under Nixon, and
Robert Strauss, a Democrat but one of the shrewdest of Washington graybeards. “I didn’t normally attend meetings with Ronnie,” Nancy observed, “but this was a special situation, and it was held in the residence, and I wanted very much to be there.”

Rogers said little beyond predicting that the storm would pass. Nancy found his words unhelpful. Strauss was more to her liking. “Mr. President, let me tell you about the first time I was up here in the residence,” Strauss
said. “LBJ was in office, and a few of us came to see him about Vietnam. When my turn came to speak, I held back. I didn’t tell the president what I really thought. Instead I told him what I thought he wanted to hear. When I went home that night, I felt like a two-dollar whore. And I said to myself: If any president is ever foolish enough to invite me back, I hope I show more character. I came to see Carter on many occasions, and I always told him what I thought.”

Strauss paused, then continued. “Now, I have no quarrel with Don Regan. But you’ve got two serious problems right now, and he’s not helping you with either one. First, you’ve got a political problem on the Hill, and Don Regan has no constituency and no allies there. Second, you’ve got a serious media problem, and Regan has no friends there, either. It makes no difference how earnest he is, or how much you like him, or how well the two of you get along. He’s not the man you need. You’re in a hell of a mess, Mr. President, and you need a chief of staff who can help get you out of it.”

Nancy Reagan was gratified by Strauss’s words. She called him that evening to thank him for being so direct. “Unfortunately, Ronnie wasn’t responsive to Bob’s message,” she recalled.

Nor did he respond to her. “I said to him: I was right about Stockman. I was right about Bill Clark. Why won’t you listen about Don Regan?” Reagan loved his wife but on this subject heeded his own instincts. “Until the very end, Ronnie continued to believe that the problems with Don were going to work themselves out,” she wrote.

D
ON
R
EGAN SAW
the end coming. Recalling the news conference at which Reagan and Meese revealed the diversion of funds, Regan wrote, “
As revelation followed revelation and the reporters, shouting and leaping and gesticulating, began to understand the magnitude of the event, their excitement created an atmosphere that can only be described as primal. Fundamental emotions came into play. The many minds in the briefing room seemed to be thinking a single thought: another presidency was about to destroy itself. The blood was in the water.”

The blood wasn’t Regan’s, but he didn’t think the sharks could tell the difference. The media speculated how long he could last, with the balance of opinion predicting days or weeks rather than months. The Democrats predictably demanded his resignation, but so did many Republicans.

Regan thought he could survive the criticism from outside the White
House, but he wasn’t sure he could stand the carping from within. He recalled the novel about the Roman emperor Claudius by
Robert Graves, in which Claudius asks his grandmother, the scheming
Livia, whether she prefers fast poisons or slow ones. She replies that slow poisons are better, as they give the appearance of ordinary disease. “
Without stretching things too far,” Regan remarked later, “it can be suggested that the most popular poison in twentieth-century Washington is bad publicity. In massive doses it can destroy a reputation outright. When leaked slowly into the veins of the victim it kills his public persona just as certainly, but the symptoms—anger, suspicion, frustration, the loss of friends and influence—are often mistaken for the malady. The victim may realize that he is being poisoned; he may even have a very good idea who the poisoners are. But he cannot talk about his suspicions without adding a persecution complex to the list of his faults that is daily being compiled in the newspapers.”

Regan didn’t identify his Livia explicitly, but he didn’t have to. Everyone in Washington knew that Nancy Reagan distrusted and despised him; most assumed she was trying to have him fired. Regan interpreted a series of leaks damaging to himself as coming from the First Lady and her staff. “
Longtime Reagan Advisers Seeking Regan’s Ouster,” a typical headline asserted in the
Los Angeles Times
. The accompanying story, citing “sources close to the president,” explained that
Michael Deaver and
Stuart Spencer would be meeting with the president. “Deaver and Spencer, supported by First Lady Nancy Reagan, plan to advise Reagan that his presidency will be seriously hampered during his final two years unless he ousts Regan and takes other strong steps to address the Iranian arms-and-hostages scandal, the sources said.” The article added helpfully, “Deaver, Spencer and Nancy Reagan have collaborated in the past on crucial personnel problems confronting the president.” And it quoted one of the unnamed sources as saying of Regan, “He’s got to go because absolutely nobody’s for him. Even some of his own staff would like to tell him he has to go, but they don’t dare. Everybody’s on board on this one except the ‘old man’ ”—Reagan.

The sniping had a temporarily paradoxical effect. Regan had been planning to resign after the midterm elections, but he didn’t want to yield to media pressure or give Nancy the satisfaction of driving him from the administration. And he judged that resignation under fire would seem an admission of guilt.

T
HE PRESIDENT, FOR
his part, was equally reluctant to have personnel decisions made for him by others. He continued to blame the media for the scandal—for spoiling a worthy initiative and grossly exaggerating some venial offenses by his staff. “
There is a bitter bile in my throat these days,” he told
Time
magazine. Switching to the metaphor du jour, he continued, “I’ve never seen the sharks circling like they now are with blood in the water.” Switching again, he added, “What is driving me up the wall is that this wasn’t a failure until the press got a tip from that rag in Beirut and began to play it up. I told them that publicity could destroy this, that it could get people killed. They then went right on.” Asked whether he felt betrayed by Oliver North, Reagan roundly rejected the idea. “Lt. Col. Oliver North was involved in all our operations,” he said. “He has a fine record. He is a national hero. My only criticism is that I wasn’t told everything.”

Reagan told some visiting Republican lawmakers that he wasn’t going to fire people to appease the media or his critics. “
So far, only two have been named”—Poindexter and North—“and those two have been let go,” he said. “If others are named I’ll take action, but I’m not going to change my team.” Following the meeting that had been leaked to the
Los Angeles Times
, the president wrote in his diary, “
Stu Spencer dropped by with Mike Deaver. They are good friends and honestly want to help me but I can’t agree with their recommendation—that the answer to my Iran problem is to fire my people—top staff and even cabinet.”

A
N UNEXPECTED COMPLICATION
distracted the president from questions about his chief of staff. Even as the special commission appointed to investigate the Iran-contra affair commenced its work, the Senate and the House launched their own probes. The Senate committee called William Casey to testify, supposing that if anyone knew about secret activities linked to the contras, it would be the CIA director. But the day before Casey was to appear, he suffered a seizure and had to be hospitalized. Doctors diagnosed and removed a brain tumor, which proved malignant. Casey lost most of his ability to speak. Certainly he could not testify.

Reagan treated the situation matter-of-factly. “
Have to begin thinking of a possible Director for CIA,” he wrote. “The prognosis on Bill Casey is not too good. Will now have to have radiation in addition to chemotherapy. If we must, our U.N. ambassador
Vernon Walters might be a very good choice.”

Nancy Reagan wanted her husband to move at once. “
With Casey in the hospital, the CIA was left without a director,” she said later. “It seemed to me that this especially sensitive position ought to be filled as quickly as possible, especially during a government crisis.”

Don Regan pushed back. “
It seemed unwise as well as inhumane, I told Mrs. Reagan, for the president to fire a man who was known to be one of his closest friends while the man was lying on what was almost certainly his deathbed,” Regan recalled.

“
Ronnie and I were not old friends of the Caseys, although it was said in the media that we were,” Nancy rejoined afterward. And she continued to press her husband to let Casey go.

Regan found her meddling distasteful and annoying. “
Just before Christmas the First Lady rang to ask, for the third or fourth time since Casey’s surgery on December 18, what I was doing to get rid of him,” Regan recalled.

“Nothing,” he responded.

“Why not?” she asked. “He’s got to go. He can’t do his job. He’s an embarrassment to Ronnie. He should be out.”

“But, Nancy, the man had brain surgery less than a week ago. He was under fire before he got sick. This is no time to pull the rug out from under him.”

Nancy said she had spoken to her stepbrother, a neurosurgeon, who predicted that Casey would never be able to work again.

“That may well be,” Regan replied. “But I don’t think anyone has told Bill Casey that. Sophie and the family are taking the illness very hard. It’s Christmastime. It wouldn’t be seemly for Ronald Reagan to fire anybody under these circumstances, much less Bill Casey. We’re not going to do it.”

Nancy grew angry, by Regan’s account. “You’re more interested in protecting Bill Casey than in protecting Ronnie!” she said. “He’s dragging Ronnie down! Nobody believes what Casey says. His credibility is gone on the Hill.”

“All that may be true,” Regan granted. “But Bill Casey got your husband elected, and he’s done a lot of other things for him, too. He deserves some gratitude and a better break than you’re giving him, Nancy. The time will come when he can bow out gracefully. Please be patient.”

Regan’s refusal to fire Casey confirmed Nancy’s judgment that Regan himself had to go. She restated her case to her husband until his patience snapped loudly enough for the media to hear. “
An informed source said the Reagans quarreled over Regan earlier in the week, with the First Lady
pushing for Regan’s dismissal and the president finally saying, ‘Get off my goddamn back,’ ” the
Washington Post
reported. Reagan’s spokesman denied both the quotation and the context. Nancy was less categorical. “
There was some tension between us over Donald Regan, but Ronnie and I just don’t talk to each other that way,” she reflected.

D
ON
R
EGAN SURVIVED
into the new year. In January the president underwent surgery for an enlarged prostate. The procedure was neither unusual nor particularly stressful, yet it triggered Nancy’s anxieties, and she hovered closely about him as he recovered. She tried to persuade him to postpone his State of the Union address, but he said he felt fine and went ahead. His solid performance caused Regan to think he was ready for another news conference, and one was scheduled for the end of February. Nancy exploded at Regan. “
I was furious, and on February 8 we had a heated argument about it on the telephone,” she wrote afterward. “When it was clear that I wasn’t going to change his mind, I said, ‘Okay, have your damn press conference!’ ”

Regan had had enough of Nancy. “You bet I will!” he said. And he hung up.

Nancy was stunned. “It’s quite a feeling,” she wrote. “You’re standing there holding a dead phone in your hand, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do. It’s infuriating. You want to shake the phone and say, ‘Talk to me!’ ”

She didn’t immediately complain to her husband. Once before, following Reagan’s cancer surgery, Regan had hung up on her, and she had kept the matter to herself. This time she waited several days. Regan eventually called with a backhanded apology. “My wife said I shouldn’t have hung up on you,” he said.

“That’s right, you shouldn’t have,” she replied. “Don, don’t ever do that to me again.” By her subsequent recollection, what she really wanted to say was “Do you need your wife to tell you that you shouldn’t hang up on people?” She added, in the later version, “That’s when I finally told Ronnie.”

The fateful conversation took place at
Camp David. “
I talked with Ronnie about Don Regan,” she wrote in her diary for February 13. “For the first time I think he listened. I told him again how disappointed I was in the whole situation, and how morale had sunk very low in the office.”

They spoke more in bed that night and again during the next few days. “I think Ronnie finally understands that he has a real problem, and that something has to be done about it,” she wrote on February 16. Another news story prompted her next day’s entry: “It broke tonight on the news that Don and I are not speaking because I want him to leave. It’s true that we’re not speaking, and it’s true that I want him to leave. But that’s not the reason we’re not speaking.”