Rawhide Down

by Del Quentin Wilber

  Mike Deaver was closest to the president, but he was the antithesis of the hardy cowboy image cultivated by the Reagan White House. A former barroom piano player who grew up near the Mojave Desert, Deaver had a large, nearly bald dome of a head and a soft body, and bowed legs contributed to his shuffling gait. During Reagan’s years as governor of California, Deaver had been his chief scheduler, a job that had brought him into close contact with Nancy Reagan. He and the Reagans had become very friendly, and Deaver stuck with Reagan after he left Sacramento, helping to manage the former governor’s speaking engagements. He knew Reagan so well that others called him “the keeper of the body”; once, during the 1976 presidential campaign, he had even saved Reagan’s life by dislodging a peanut from the candidate’s throat during an airplane flight. Deaver, now forty-two, occupied the office closest to the president’s, just beyond a subtly disguised door in one wall of the Oval Office. A public relations man and an acknowledged master of the media, Deaver was already carefully managing public perception of the president by choreographing outings and events that projected the image of a vibrant and engaged leader.

  Ed Meese, forty-nine, was another member of Reagan’s California inner circle who had followed the president to Washington. An amiable and cautious former prosecutor, Meese had recently retired as a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve. But he did not look like a soldier; instead, with his jowly face and plain gray suits, he resembled a high school math teacher. The tip of his tie usually rode an inch below his belt, and the brown case of his reading glasses almost always jutted from his shirt pocket. Like Deaver, Meese was close to Reagan, but their relationship was more professional than personal. A fourth-generation Californian, he had served as chief of staff while Reagan was governor and was skilled at synthesizing complex ideas. Early on, he’d been considered a front-runner for the post of presidential chief of staff, but his weak organizational skills sank his candidacy. Insiders called his briefcase the Meesecase, or, more explicitly, the Black Hole.

  During the transition, a number of people urged Reagan to look further afield for a chief of staff, and ultimately the president-elect had surprised many by naming Jim Baker to the post. A smooth and shrewd political operator from Texas, Baker had waged two fierce political campaigns against Reagan in the previous five years. In 1976, he had played a key role in President Gerald Ford’s narrow victory over Reagan for the Republican nomination; in 1980, he had managed the primary campaign of his close friend George H. W. Bush. Baker was detail-oriented and disciplined, and though he chewed Red Man tobacco and cussed like a Texas cattle rancher, he expertly played the role of quintessential Washington insider. Still youthful-looking at fifty, he spoke in a silky southern drawl and always wore nicely tailored suits and bold ties. To many, it was a sign of Reagan’s supreme confidence that he would hire a man who’d been a political rival and award him such a key position. The choice proved wise, too: Baker went on to become one of the most effective presidential chiefs of staff in modern history.

  Just weeks after the election, Baker and Meese hammered out a power-sharing arrangement, which the careful lawyers then put on paper. Baker controlled paper flow and personnel; Meese was responsible for domestic and national security policy. Each had the authority to walk into the Oval Office at almost any time; each also had the right to attend any meeting between the president and other government officials. Both men relied on Deaver to read and understand the president’s moods, and they nearly always ran scheduling decisions by him. Thus far, the three men—each with competing interests, skills, and agendas—had been working well together. Their efforts had already earned the aides an apt nickname that described their symbiotic relationship: the Troika.

  Nearly every morning, Baker hosted a daily breakfast with Meese and Deaver so they could review the day’s schedule, policy issues, and political challenges. At about 7:30 on March 30, the three men had gathered in Baker’s spacious office, just down the hall from Reagan’s. Among other matters, they discussed a recent trip to China by former president Ford, who had carried a secret note from Reagan to that country’s leaders. They also discussed how to lift the controversial grain embargo that President Carter had imposed on the Soviet Union. Though taking a tougher line on the Russians, Reagan had announced during the campaign that he wanted to lift the trade restrictions because he believed they hurt U.S. farmers more than they did the Soviets. But the geopolitical situation was making the pledge difficult to fulfill: in recent weeks, the Soviet Union had been applying intense pressure to one of its western neighbors, Poland, where the Solidarity labor movement was beginning to crack the country’s communist regime, and now American irritation with the Soviet Union was once again on the rise. It was just the sort of dilemma that faces every new administration as it tries to reconcile the realities of governing with promises made during a campaign.

  The Troika entered the Oval Office at precisely nine that morning. During this daily summit, Reagan and his advisors conferred about both the day ahead and any pressing issues that had been raised earlier at the Troika breakfast and at a subsequent larger staff meeting. The aides tried to keep these get-togethers brief, not least because Reagan detested long meetings and often started doodling when he became bored. Today they kept it short for another reason. In fifteen minutes, Reagan had an important call to make about the increasingly tense situation in Poland.

  * * *

  JERRY PARR FOUND his colleague Johnny Guy in his small office next to W-16, the agency’s command post in the White House basement, directly under the Oval Office. A balding and burly agent who looked like a football lineman, Guy was one of Parr’s top assistants, and the two men were quite friendly. Guy was due to travel with Reagan to the Washington Hilton that afternoon.

  “I’d like to work the president today,” Parr told Guy. “I feel like I need to get to know him better.”

  “Not a problem,” said Guy. He understood the point of Parr’s request; although agents were discouraged from becoming friends with their so-called protectees, they needed to understand a person’s quirks and habits in order to protect him or her effectively. Conversely, it was important that the president—whom agents referred to casually as “the Man”—trust the members of his Secret Service detail and even take their orders when necessary. The only way to build that bond was to spend time with the man himself.

  Guy had been granted such an opportunity when he and platoons of agents were sent to California to guard the president-elect after his victory in November. For more than a month, Guy had watched Reagan up close—lounging about his house in a robe, on official trips to the airport and at press briefings, and during private dinner parties. The agent even got a surprise preview of the president-elect’s inaugural address.

  One afternoon, Reagan asked Guy if they could ditch the press and visit his tailor in Beverly Hills. Reagan was restless and did not like the idea of being stalked by a horde of reporters while being measured for a new suit. Guy didn’t think an “off-the-record” movement would be a problem, so he put a hat on Reagan and seated the president-elect next to him in the back of an unmarked and unarmored Secret Service sedan. Before they drove off, they stopped briefly at an encampment of reporters staking out Reagan’s house for news stories.

  Rolling down the window, Guy asked, “Can we get you guys some sodas or something?”

  No thanks, the reporters replied.

  As the car pulled away, Reagan laughed and clapped his hands. “That was just great,” he said. Then, still chuckling, he reached inside his jacket pocket and extracted a sheaf of papers. “This is my inaugural address,” he told the three agents riding with him. “I’d like you guys to listen to it and tell me what you think about it.”

  Oh no, thought Guy. This was anything but good. Guy was hardly an expert on politics, let alone historic speeches, and he knew it would be hard to give the president his full attention while trying to keep an eye on both the surrounding traffic and the follow-up car that was ta
iling them.

  “Oh,” Reagan added quickly, digging into a pocket and pulling out a stopwatch and handing it to Guy. “Do you mind timing me?”

  “Sure, sir, no problem,” Guy said.

  The president-elect then read a draft of his first inaugural address to Guy and the other two agents while the unmarked car traveled, as inconspicuously as possible, through ten miles of heavy Los Angeles traffic. Continuously scanning the freeway outside his window and checking to ensure that they didn’t lose the follow-up car, Guy had a hard time paying attention to what Reagan was saying. On an off-the-record trip like this one, his goal was to avoid any kind of incident that would draw unwanted attention to their passenger. The last thing they needed was an unscripted event or, God forbid, a car accident, especially on one of Los Angeles’ notoriously congested freeways.

  “So, how was it?” Reagan asked when he finished.

  “Excellent,” Guy said. “Just excellent.”

  Guy’s outing with Reagan that afternoon was exactly the sort of informal encounter that every security detail leader hopes to have with a protectee. He’d learned that Reagan liked to have fun; he also appreciated the fact that Reagan didn’t treat him or the other agents like hired help. To his surprise, Reagan seemed like an ordinary guy.

  Now it was Parr’s turn to get to know the president better, and maybe the Hilton trip would provide the right opportunity. “Good luck,” Guy told his boss.

  * * *

  RICHARD V. ALLEN arrived at the Oval Office a few minutes ahead of President Reagan’s 9:15 a.m. call with Chancellor Helmut Schmidt of West Germany, during which the two leaders would discuss the brewing crisis in Poland. Allen, a gray-haired and irascible forty-five-year-old with an oval face obscured by large round glasses, was Reagan’s national security advisor and one of the country’s leading authorities on the Soviet Union. Though not as scholarly as his predecessors Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski, Allen knew as much about the Soviets and their leaders as anyone in government or academia. He had read the complete works of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin and had earned a master’s degree in Soviet studies from Notre Dame before serving as a key foreign policy advisor on the first presidential campaign of Richard Nixon. He was briefly Kissinger’s deputy on the National Security Council, but the two hardheaded policy experts did not get along, and Allen left in less than a year. He ventured into private industry, returned to the Nixon administration for a second stint, and then formed his own business consulting practice. A pilot, he barely survived the crash in 1973 of his small plane in Vermont. Over the years, Allen was occasionally seen as a somewhat controversial figure, but most considered him a good choice for national security advisor in an administration taking a hard line with the Russians.

  A staunch anticommunist, Allen had spent years honing his arguments about the dangers posed by the Soviets. He often spoke in complete paragraphs, and his deep, naturally authoritative voice never seemed to betray any doubt about the correctness of his views. But if he was usually serious and sober, he could also be puckish and charming, especially when he performed what was generally regarded as the best impersonation in Washington of Henry Kissinger, his deep voice, German accent, and all.

  Allen, who supported Reagan in the 1976 primary against Ford, became an ardent admirer of Reagan’s a year later. In early 1977, Allen was mulling a bid for the governorship of his native New Jersey. After Ford’s loss to Carter the previous fall, Reagan was one of the brightest stars on the Republican stage, and Allen knew that Reagan’s assistance could prove critical to his own success on the campaign trail. About ten days after Carter’s inauguration, Allen flew to Los Angeles, rented a car, and drove up to Pacific Pallisades to ask the former governor of California to sign fund-raising letters for his campaign. Sitting with Reagan in his living room, Allen also asked whether Reagan would be willing to come to New Jersey to campaign for him.

  “Why, yes, I’d be happy to do that,” Reagan replied. “But you came all the way out here to ask that? Why didn’t you just call me on the telephone?”

  “Well, it’s not the same thing as meeting you face-to-face, Governor,” Allen said.

  Soon they were sipping coffee, eating sandwiches, and chatting about a wide range of topics. Reagan had read one of Allen’s books—Allen had written or edited several on national security matters and communism—and the former governor peppered his guest with questions about Marxist theory, the Soviet premier, Leonid Brezhnev, and the machinations in the Politburo. The two men also had a long discussion about presidential power and how a president could shape global politics. Allen was impressed that Reagan was so well versed in foreign policy; the perception conveyed by the press was that he knew little about the world outside Hollywood.

  Six hours after their conversation began, Reagan walked Allen to the front door. “Some people say I’m very simplistic,” Reagan told his guest. “But there is a difference between being simplistic and simple. A lot of things are very simple if you think them through. So, keeping that in mind, here is my theory of the Cold War: we win; they lose.”

  The hair rose on Allen’s neck and arms. For years, he had waged a losing battle with American diplomats and officials who thought the Cold War was something to be managed and survived, not won. Now he felt as if he were in the presence of an oracle. Reagan firmly believed that the United States could prevail in the Cold War—but only by beefing up the military and negotiating from a position of strength, not weakness.

  During the ride to the airport and on the long flight home, Allen’s mind buzzed with excitement as he thought about Reagan’s yearning for a decisive victory over the Soviets. The next day, he dropped his bid for the governorship. “Here is a man,” Allen told his wife, Pat, “who can really change things.”

  By 1978, Allen was Reagan’s unpaid foreign policy advisor. He and another aide, Peter Hannaford, escorted the former governor on a trip to Asia in the spring and one to Europe in the fall to burnish his international credentials.

  In Britain, they were shunned by the prime minister, James Callaghan, who apparently didn’t want to offend President Carter. After a meeting with a lower-level official, Reagan was surrounded by a swarm of female office workers, many of them asking for autographs and peppering him with questions about Hollywood, actresses, and actors. Beaming, Reagan took out a pen and began signing his name and telling stories. Finally, Allen realized that he had to cut the unplanned encounter short: they were late for a meeting with the leader of the British Conservative Party, Margaret Thatcher, whom Reagan had met at least once before.

  “We have to go, Governor,” Allen said.

  “Take it easy, Dick,” Reagan replied, smiling. “These are my friends.”

  During the meeting with Thatcher, Reagan and the future British prime minister further cemented a bond that would fortify the two leaders through various domestic and international calamities in the years ahead. After the visit to Britain, the next stop was France, and then Reagan and Allen continued on to West Germany, where they visited the Berlin Wall.

  Standing in front of the concrete barrier that separated free West Berlin from communist East Berlin, Reagan turned to Allen. When he spoke, his voice was full of passion. “You know, Dick, we have to find a way to knock this thing down.” The future president’s words, which he would later echo in one of his most famous speeches, hung in the air for a moment as the two adversaries of communism studied a wall that symbolized everything that was wrong with the world behind the Iron Curtain.

  Since that visit to West Berlin a few years earlier, the struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union had only grown more intense. The Russians invaded Afghanistan in 1979. The United States boycotted the 1980 summer Olympic Games in Moscow. A historic arms limitation treaty died in Congress, and the United States imposed a grain embargo to protest the Soviet presence in Afghanistan. In recent weeks, Reagan and his officials had begun to ratchet up their rhetorical attacks on Moscow, accusing the
Soviets of meddling in Central America and the Middle East. In January, at the president’s first news briefing, a reporter asked Reagan about the “long range intentions of the Soviet Union” and wondered whether the president believed the USSR was “bent on world domination.”

  Reagan answered by saying that Soviet leaders had long promoted “world revolution and a one-world Socialist or Communist state.” Continuing, he said, “Now, as long as they do that and as long as they, at the same time, have openly and publicly declared that the only morality they recognize is what will further their cause, meaning they reserve unto themselves the right to commit any crime, to lie, to cheat, in order to attain that, and that is moral, not immoral, and we operate on a different set of standards, I think when you do business with them, even at a détente, you keep that in mind.”

  Allen, standing at the back of the room, cracked a grin. Reagan’s sharp words sent the Soviets a clear signal that he heartily endorsed. But during the preparations for the press conference, Reagan had carefully avoided using just this kind of inflammatory language, knowing that some of his advisors would insist he tone it down.

  Shortly after the press conference, Reagan turned to Allen as they both headed for the Oval Office. “Say, Dick,” Reagan said. “The Soviets—they do lie, cheat, and steal to get everything they want, right?”

  “They sure do, Mr. President,” Allen replied.

  Reagan chuckled and said, “I thought so.”

  Now, in March 1981, there was serious labor unrest in Poland, a country that had been a flashpoint in World War II and whose ruling communist regime was closely allied with Moscow. Intelligence reports were suggesting that the Soviets might use their military to put down the dissent, and Allen knew there was little the United States could do to stop them. Reagan was not going to start a war over Poland—this was just one step in the long waltz of the Cold War. But before the White House switchboard connected Reagan and Schmidt, Allen advised the president to ask the German chancellor to join him in sending a stern warning to the Soviets that any intervention in Polish affairs would have serious consequences. The national security advisor understood that foreign policy was not a primary focus for the new administration; given the weak economy, Reagan’s first priority was to enact tax cuts and slash spending. But Allen also knew that Reagan’s most important job was keeping the country safe, and that history would ultimately judge his presidency on how he handled the Cold War and confrontations like the one over Poland.