by Bob Spitz
Nothing drove that point home more clearly than an exchange during an Oval Office meeting of the National Security Council on March 19, 1981. It would lead to one of the gnarliest messes Reagan would oversee as president.
One of Haig’s first priorities as secretary of state was the shifting landscape in Central America, where the Soviet Union was actively sponsoring so-called wars of liberation, supporting the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the FALN in El Salvador.
President Reagan had made his intentions clear about the U.S.’s neighbors to the south. “We’re going to turn Latin America into a beacon of freedom,” he declared.
Haig interpreted that to mean: by any means necessary. It seemed to him that the spread of Soviet influence throughout Latin America flowed through Cuba, the hub in the supply chain arming guerrillas in El Salvador and Nicaragua; he saw it as the base for the Soviet Union in the Western Hemisphere. “Right after the inauguration, Al thought the president should take on Cuba,” Bud McFarlane recalls. Haig approached McFarlane with a two-fisted proposal: “We should get a band of brothers from CIA and put together a strategy for toppling Castro.” According to McFarlane, “Nobody thought that made any sense.” Jim Baker and Ed Meese were especially opposed and confirmed in their opinion that Haig was trigger-happy and downright dangerous.
Their fears were magnified during the March 19 meeting, when Haig again raised the subject of an incursion into Cuba. At one point, he turned to the president and said, “Give me the word and I’ll turn that island into a fucking parking lot.” Reagan had said as much about Vietnam during a speech in October 1965—“We could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home by Christmas”—but his attitude toward armed conflict had softened with age and with the recognition that any parking lot under his watch would be his parking lot. Haig’s tantrum sucked all the air out of the room. Deaver told Lou Cannon, “It scared the shit out of me . . . [and] scared the shit out of Ronald Reagan.”
The president was beginning to have doubts about Al Haig, but the situation was not easily reconciled. His secretary of state’s insights and advice on global affairs proved sound, often sage, even as his temperament was manifestly less than stable. As an adviser to the president observed, of the two Al Haigs, “one is the smooth-talking diplomatic machine who represents this country most capably. The other is an angry man who becomes unraveled whenever his mandate is challenged.” In a few short months, Haig had picked fights with half the White House team, accusing them of either misleading him or plotting his downfall. He even fingered the president for lying to him—“not only once, but twice,” as he complained to Bill Clark, the deputy secretary of state.
Alexander Haig still had his admirers in the administration, people who could see past the arrogance and the self-conceit. Even Ronald Reagan, at this stage in the game, was willing to excuse his persistent oversteps. The president had bigger things to worry about. He was still shaping policy, still establishing the tone of his administration. Cynics could scoff at how disengaged he seemed, but he was enjoying enormous public support. Let the media poke fun at his one-page memos, the jelly beans, the TV-tray dinners. Most people could relate. In many ways, he was the first president that they saw on their own level. He wasn’t erudite like Kennedy, wasn’t a master manipulator of Congress like Johnson, wasn’t a policy wonk like Nixon, not a micromanager like Carter. What he did, in these times of upheaval, was to make Americans comfortable. He gave people the impression that things were on the right track, that he had the country’s best interests—their best interests—at heart. Despite some early road bumps, the Reagan presidency appeared to be running smoothly.
On March 30, 1981, that would change.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST
“Honey, I forgot to duck.”
—JACK DEMPSEY, SEPT. 23, 1926
MARCH 30, 1981
Ronald Reagan couldn’t have been very pleased. He was scheduled for an after-lunch appearance in the main ballroom of the Washington Hilton to speak to the AFL-CIO’s Building Construction Trades Department—four thousand labor officials who were likely to vote Democratic in any election. The day had gotten off to an ominous start. Each morning, before heading to the Oval Office, the president perused the daily papers over his cereal and coffee. The news being reported was not very favorable. Those damn House Democrats were holding up his tax cuts, endorsing them for one year instead of the three he wanted, and weighted only to the lower half of the income scale. National business bankruptcies had surged 63 percent in the first ten weeks of the year, due to high interest rates and a sluggish economy. Leaders of the nation’s colleges and universities predicted that Reagan’s cutbacks to student aid would drive working-class students to drop out of college. And the Soviets—leave it to the Soviets to ruin his day—had stepped up their intimidation of Solidarity, the Polish trade union organization.
The AFL-CIO wouldn’t be getting one of his showstoppers—just the basic, boilerplate spiel: the economy is killing us, too many workers unemployed, taxes too high, budget out of control. Short and sweet, twenty-five minutes at the most, an olive branch to an otherwise unsympathetic group. “This was going to be a minor speech, so I didn’t go,” Ed Meese recalls. Jim Baker also opted out. Better to send Mike Deaver to chaperone an event that didn’t carry much weight. Even Jim Brady, the press secretary, decided to send his number-two man, Larry Speakes, in his place—that is, until the last minute, when he sized up the sorry-looking B-squad accompanying the president and decided his presence was called for.
The weather was overcast and damp. Washington was suffering through the wettest March in ten years. A light drizzle had been falling all morning, but as the three-car motorcade known as the package pulled away from the White House, the skies delivered a temporary reprieve. At least there was no long travel involved. The Hilton was a ten-minute drive without traffic, which the police had cleared from the president’s route.
The event came off pretty much as expected. Polite if unenthusiastic applause. Nothing new in the president’s remarks. The only thing that got a rise out of the crowd was the opening joke—a trademark opening joke on this day, baseball’s opening day—about the wife of a ballplayer instructing her husband in the art of diapering their baby. “Look, buster, you lay the diaper out like a diamond, you put second base on home plate, you put the baby’s bottom on the pitcher’s mound,” etc. How it had anything to do with building construction was anyone’s guess, but Reagan knew to lead with his best stuff.
In all likelihood he’d get a better reception from members of the media, who had amassed by the hotel’s VIP entrance on T Street. They were seeking his reaction to a report about an American shot by hijackers holding an Indonesian jetliner in Bangkok. The crowd, about two hundred strong, pressed in along a red rope line, as Ronald Reagan emerged through the special door just north of the main entrance. The press jockeyed with the public for position as the president waved and eyed his limousine, which had backed up and parked at an angle to the curb to ensure a fast getaway. Intrepid reporters began barking out questions.
“Mr. President . . .” “Mr. President . . .”
As Mike Putzel, the Associated Press reporter, succeeded in capturing Reagan’s attention, Mike Deaver decided to intervene. “I grabbed Jim Brady by the arm,” he recalled, “and shoved him over to the press to take the question so that Reagan could move, without answering, into the limo.” Not to be upstaged by the AP, Judy Woodruff, NBC’s pool reporter, enlisted Dave Prosperi, the assistant press secretary, to escort her to the front so that she could interrogate Brady, whose bulky frame was blocking for the president in his path to the car. As Deaver cut around behind the limousine in order to get into the opposite side, someone stepped forward with two outstretched arms extended over Deaver’s shoulder.
The fluttery pops, like balloons bursting or a string of ladyfinger firecrackers,
echoed in the air. One . . . two . . . three . . . Six pops in all.
Those in the crowd more familiar with the sound dropped into a protective crouch. One person who understood was Jerry Parr, the Secret Service agent in charge of the presidential detail. “I sort of knew what they were,” he said of the pops, “and I’d been waiting for them all of my career, in a way.”
“What the hell’s that?” the president wondered aloud.
Without answering, Parr tackled Ronald Reagan, pushed him into the backseat of the limousine, and threw himself over the spread-eagled president, oblivious to the fact that Tim McCarthy, the Secret Service agent who had opened the right rear car door for them was lying on the ground with a bullet wound in the upper torso, or that Thomas Delahanty, a Washington police officer, had taken a shot in the neck and was sprawled on the pavement. Or that Rick Ahearn, the White House advance man, was kneeling over Jim Brady, holding a handkerchief to the press secretary’s head where a gaping wound was spewing blood.
“Take off!” Parr shouted to the bewildered driver, who stomped on the gas pedal, swerving around a stalled police car, then sped up T Street turning left onto Connecticut Avenue toward the safety of the White House.
Ronald Reagan let out a muffled groan followed by an expletive. “Jerry,” he begged the Secret Service agent, “get off, I think you’ve broken one of my ribs.”
The pain that shot through the president’s upper back was “excruciating”—he could barely breathe. “No matter how hard I tried to breathe, it seemed I was getting less and less air,” he recalled. He struggled to sit up, noticing blood smeared across the palm of his hand. “You not only broke a rib, I think the rib punctured my lung,” he complained.
Parr gave Ronald Reagan a cursory once-over and announced over walkie-talkie, “Rawhide”—the code name the Secret Service used to identify President Reagan—“is okay.” But when he saw bright-red blood coming from Reagan’s mouth, Parr changed his mind and instructed the driver to head for George Washington University Hospital, located only minutes from their position in the tunnel beneath Dupont Circle.
* * *
—
The scene outside the Hilton had erupted in chaos. People ran in every direction, dodging a cluster of police who were swarming through the crowd. There had been no more shots since the president left the scene, but a shaggy-haired young man standing next to the ABC-TV cameraman continued to pull the trigger on an empty gun. One of the spectators, Alfred Antenucci, jumped on the shooter, while two Secret Service agents dived into the fray and wrestled the weapon away. A pair of paramedics who happened to be at the hotel rushed to give medical assistance to the two wounded officers, but James Brady’s condition was beyond their abilities.
The injured press secretary was facedown in a heap of blood while Rick Ahearn applied pressure to the side of his head. Ahearn’s handkerchief was soaked through and practically useless. Dave Prosperi, who was darting back into the hotel, stopped to hand over a spare handkerchief. “Jim was in bad shape,” Prosperi recalls, “moaning and writhing, while Rick tried to keep him still.” Prosperi was determined to notify the White House of the shooting. In those days before cell phones, he was dependent on public phones, but the bank of five just inside the Hilton was occupied by hotel guests unaware of the scene outside. As one came free, Prosperi called the press office and demanded to talk to Larry Speakes.
“Larry, the president’s been shot at and Jim’s been hit,” he said.
“Got it—thanks,” Speakes replied and hung up.
The news raced through the White House, which instantly went into lockdown mode. But even as officials followed procedures long in place for just such an emergency, information about the president’s condition remained unknown.
* * *
—
A little before 2:30 p.m., the white Princess phone sitting on the corner of a desk in the nurses’ station of George Washington University Hospital began to ring. Wendy Koenig, the nurse on duty, was startled by its distinctive sound. That phone never rang. Well, hardly ever. It was a direct link to a signal board at the White House, and to date it had rung only once, when Amy Carter scraped her knee in a fall. Nurse Koenig answered it immediately and was told only: “The presidential motorcade is en route to your facility.”
Three minutes later, the black limousine with an American flag flapping on the antenna pulled into the ER driveway facing Pennsylvania Avenue. An ER nurse rushed out to greet it and was awestruck when the President of the United States stepped out. “I’ll walk in,” Reagan had told Jerry Parr. Mike Deaver, who was in a car following behind, felt some relief to see the president on his feet. “Reagan had a habit—if he’d been sitting in a plane or car, or even on a podium—when he got up, he would cinch his pants up and then he’d button his coat,” Deaver recalled. “And that’s exactly what he did. He looked all right to me.” He cut a strapping figure in the brand-new blue pinstriped suit he wore for the occasion, but his face was a giveaway. To the skilled eye—and there were several sets trained on him between ER personnel, Deaver, and Secret Service—it was a mask of extreme discomfort mixed with panic; the color had drained from his always-rosy face. “I was having trouble breathing,” he recalled. “Then all of a sudden my knees turned rubbery.” As he pushed through the sliding glass doors into the trauma bay, his eyes rolled upward, he went slack, and began to collapse to his knees. Parr and a paramedic grabbed the president under the arms and loaded him onto a gurney while the trauma staff converged, responding to the alert—“Trauma team to the emergency room . . . stat!”—that blared over loudspeakers.
“I feel so bad,” Reagan moaned. He was gasping for air. Blood-tinged spittle formed at the corners of his mouth.
Nurses suspected he’d suffered a heart attack and wasted no time with small talk. Following time-honored protocol, they began cutting away his clothes, laying waste to that natty suit and monogrammed dress shirt. “You’re ruining my suit!” the president protested. Within seconds, the whole ensemble lay in shredded scraps on the floor. Anyone within the vicinity of the scene would have gotten an eyeful: the President of the United States lying naked as a jaybird. “It was an unforgettable sight,” says Robert Roubik, a nurse anesthetist who barreled in and jabbed an eighteen-gauge needle in an area around the elbow. He began an IV drip with a solution called Lactated Ringer’s, a glorified Gatorade. Simultaneously, Nurse Koenig attached a blood-pressure cuff to Reagan’s upper left arm and listened for the response in her stethoscope.
“I can’t hear anything,” she yelled above the ruckus in the overcrowded room. A cacophony of voices had crescendoed to a near-deafening roar, making it difficult for the attendants to consult one another. “I can’t get a systolic pressure.” A second test provided the same result: nothing. She began to panic. Was the president arresting? In desperation, she stimulated an artery with the tips of her fingers, hoping to jump-start pressure. Ah, there it was: she detected a slight but definite throb, enough to let her know Reagan was probably just in shock. But—from what? His body appeared unblemished. There wasn’t any sign that he’d been physically wounded. But the blood on his hand and at the corners of his lips were evidence that something more was amiss. Not a heart attack. The president was injured. They needed doctors—fast.
* * *
—
Nancy Reagan and her press officer, Sheila Tate, had been at a luncheon in Georgetown for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, one of those worthy civic organizations that First Ladies are inclined to support. She left the affair early, bothered by a feeling of anxiety she couldn’t pinpoint. To avoid reporters, the two women returned to the White House via the back door and went their separate ways—Mrs. Reagan veering left to the residence and Tate taking a right toward the East Wing. As Tate arrived at her office the phone was ringing. Jennifer Hirshberg was calling from the Washington Star. “The police radio is saying there was a shooting at the
Hilton,” Hirshberg said. “Has the president been hurt?”
Tate hung up without answering and ran, nearly colliding with Nancy Reagan, who came charging down the hall from the opposite direction. One of the Secret Service agents had told her that there was a shooting at the Hilton, that Jim Brady had been hit, and that the president was on his way to GW Hospital. “Take me to the hospital,” the First Lady demanded of her Secret Service detail. It wasn’t necessary, the agents assured her. The president was fine; he hadn’t been hit. “I’m going to that hospital! If you don’t get me a car I’m going to walk.” Her limo and follow car were still parked outside, and she was already climbing in while the agents conferred.
“It was completely quiet in the car,” Tate recalls. “She held my hand but never said a word.” They’d been given no information; nothing was being reported.
At the hospital, the two women pushed through the knot of reporters and onlookers that had amassed outside the emergency room doors. One of the Secret Service agents stationed at the entrance grabbed Nancy Reagan and headed toward the trauma bay. Mike Deaver came out to meet her.
“He’s been hit,” Deaver said.
* * *
—
The trauma bay at George Washington University Hospital, unlike the ER, was state-of-the-art, a gleaming jewel box of medical devices. Ronald Reagan lay on a gurney with a sheet draped over him and a strap across his knees. To provide a higher concentration of oxygen, he was fitted with a breathing mask.
The first two doctors to arrive on the scene were senior resident Wesley Price and intern William O’Neill. According to Bob Roubik, who was handling the IV, “If you were to call Central Casting and said, ‘Send me two guys who are really nice folks and look like they might be surgeons,’ these are the two they would send.” Neither of them was what nurses referred to as hotheads—the ego-driven yellers and screamers who preside over ERs like dictators. Still, as one nurse recalls, “That day, everyone’s blood pressure and heart rates were elevated, not only because it was the president, but because he was so badly wounded.”
