Reagan: The Life

by H. W. Brands

  He almost spoiled the mood with a swipe at the Soviet Union. “We don’t hide our space program,” he said. “We don’t keep secrets and cover things up.” America was different. “We do it all up front and in public. That’s the way freedom is, and we wouldn’t change it for a minute.”

  His short speech was nearly over. Some in his audience caught the reference to “High Flight,” a favorite poem among aviators, but others simply appreciated the lyricism of the closing lines: “The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey, and waved goodbye, and ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.’ ”

  SPEECHWRITER PEGGY NOONAN, the principal drafter of Reagan’s speech, watched with proprietary interest. “When the president finished, he looked lost,” she recalled. “I knew: He didn’t like what he was given.”

  Reagan thought the speech had been a bust. “I just had this feeling that I’d failed,” he told Noonan. But he blamed himself. “I thought that I’d done badly and I hadn’t done justice,” he said.

  Reagan’s audience took a different view. Perhaps sorrow and decorum stilled critical voices. But the response was strongly positive, and it grew overwhelmingly so. Before long, Reagan’s Challenger eulogy was being cited as one of the best speeches he or any other president had ever given.

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  ONE OF THE secrets of Reagan’s success as president was his ability to concentrate on the most important issues, leaving lesser matters for subordinates to handle. By 1986 his agenda in foreign affairs was focused on a single item: arms control with the Soviet Union. He hoped for an agreement on intermediate-range missiles, preferably his zero option, and for at least a start on cuts in long-range missiles and bombers. He continued to insist that any such agreements come without constraining SDI.

  Yet he found himself compelled to deal with foreign policy issues having nothing to do with arms control. For more than a decade Washington had eyed Libya’s mercurial leader, Muammar Qaddafi, with deepening distrust. A 1974 arms deal with Moscow had marked Libya as a Soviet surrogate in the eyes of those, like Reagan, who were inclined to see Kremlin mischief in the nonaligned world. Qaddafi’s rhetorical and apparently logistical support for terrorist activities in the Middle East and elsewhere pushed him further beyond the pale.

  Reagan decided, shortly after becoming president, to teach Qaddafi a lesson. Vaguely implicating Qaddafi in a murder in Chicago, he summarily shut the Libyan embassy in Washington, and in response to Qaddafi’s assertion of Libyan authority over the Gulf of Sidra, the president ordered the U.S. Sixth Fleet into the gulf. “He’s a madman,” Reagan wrote to himself. “He has been harassing our planes out over international waters and it’s time to show the other nations there—Egypt, Morocco, et al.—that there is a different management here.”

  Qaddafi challenged the American presence in the Gulf of Sidra, sending fighter planes against the task force. The aircraft carrier Nimitz scrambled some of its F-14s to meet the Libyans; when the latter fired on the American jets, they fired back and shot down two of the Libyan planes.

  The incident evoked comment in the American media, not least because Reagan’s aides didn’t inform him immediately of what had happened. The president waved aside the criticism. “There’s been a lot of talk and the press has been very concerned because six hours went by before they awoke me at 4:30 in the morning to tell me about it,” he said to reporters. “And there’s a very good answer to that. Why? If our planes were shot down, yes, they’d wake me right away. If the other fellow’s were shot down, why wake me up?”

  Qaddafi responded with bluster and what American intelligence considered credible threats to kill Reagan. “It’s a strange feeling to find there is a ‘contract’ out on yourself,” Reagan observed. The threats gained additional credibility in October 1981 when Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, a bitter opponent of Qaddafi, was assassinated. Reagan privately asserted, working from intelligence reports, that Qaddafi had readied a celebration of Sadat’s death ahead of the news. “In other words, he knew it was going to happen.”

  The threat against Reagan seemed to grow more specific. In November the Secret Service got wind of a possible attack at the National Press Club in Washington, where Reagan was giving a speech. Reagan donned a bulletproof vest and gave the speech, and nothing happened. New reports at Thanksgiving suggested that a band of assassins had crossed into the United States from Canada. The Secret Service was sufficiently alarmed that it vetoed a scheduled appearance by Reagan at Arlington National Cemetery.

  The president convened the National Security Council to consider retaliation against Qaddafi. William Casey recommended laying out publicly the evidence of Libya’s involvement in terrorist activities, starting with a Qaddafi plot to assassinate the American ambassador to Egypt in 1977.

  Reagan was skeptical, saying the American media would never believe the administration, regardless of how much evidence it provided.

  Casey pressed the issue, suggesting the release of a map showing terrorist training camps in Libya, with the caption “Terror is Libya’s second largest industry” (after oil).

  Reagan remained reluctant. Nearly two thousand Americans resided in Libya; most were connected to the oil industry. Reagan was as sensitive as ever to the possible taking of more American hostages, and he feared that any strong action might prompt Qaddafi to seize some of the Americans.

  Al Haig, still secretary of state, discounted the likelihood of hostages. “A hostage situation would alarm other Westerners in Libya,” Haig said. Libya required those Westerners to keep the oil flowing. Haig suggested economic sanctions. These might include an embargo on oil imports from Libya, a ban on exports to Libya, and seizure of Libyan assets in the United States.

  Donald Regan replied that the seizure of Libyan assets could destabilize American relations with other countries of the Middle East. “The Saudis, for example, may get the wrong idea from U.S. sanctions against Libya,” he said. Regan added that the big oil companies with operations in Libya wouldn’t sit idly while Washington adopted measures that damaged their bottom lines.

  Haig answered that the Saudis were among those urging strong action against Qaddafi and that they were prepared to increase their own oil production to offset any losses the United States suffered from a ban on Libyan oil.

  Jeane Kirkpatrick reported that international action against Qaddafi, as by the Organization of African Unity, was unlikely. “Qaddafi has intimidated the leaders of black African states,” Kirkpatrick said. None dared to oppose him.

  Reagan interjected, “The United States dares to oppose him.”

  But not yet. The meeting ended without a decision. Reagan still worried about the Americans. And he still blamed the media for its distrust of the intelligence the administration shared about Libya. “The press is beginning to charge that we are making up the Qaddafi threat because we won’t tell them the sources of our information,” he muttered. “I’ve come to the conclusion that they are totally irresponsible and won’t be satisfied (if then) until someone is gunned down by the ‘hit men.’ ”

  The Secret Service took the threat seriously, though. When Reagan and Nancy flew to Camp David in early December, the Secret Service rerouted their helicopter. Reports indicated that Libyan sympathizers might have secured heat-seeking missiles that could shoot down the aircraft.

  NOTHING CAME OF these reports, either, leaving the president and his aides to wonder whether Qaddafi was simply engaged in disinformation. Yet they continued to monitor Qaddafi’s behavior and counter his mischief. When Qaddafi lent support to rebels in Chad and the French government dispatched troops to counter the rebels, Reagan ordered American warplanes and AWACS reconnaissance aircraft to keep an eye on Libyan planes. When Qaddafi was reported to be readying planes to back a coup in Sudan, Reagan sent AWACS to help prepare the Egyptian air force to shoo
t down the Libyan planes.

  Tensions with Libya reached a new height in December 1985 when Palestinian gunmen opened fire at the Rome and Vienna airports. Qaddafi praised the attacks, which killed nineteen and wounded more than a hundred, as vengeance for the massacres of Palestinians at the Lebanese refugee camps three years earlier. American intelligence indicated that Qaddafi’s support went beyond cheerleading to funding and perhaps training.

  Reagan decided he’d had enough of Qaddafi. After a long meeting with his national security team, he issued an executive order telling the Americans in Libya to leave the country. He froze Libyan assets in the United States. He directed the Sixth Fleet to increase its presence off Libyan shores. Reagan hoped Qaddafi would get the message, but he was ready to do more. “If Mr. Q. decides not to push another terrorist act—O.K., we’ve been successful with our implied threat,” Reagan noted. “If on the other hand he takes this for weakness and does loose another one, we will have targets in mind and instantly respond with a h--l of a punch.”

  Qaddafi decided to test Reagan’s resolve. Libyan batteries fired surface-to-air missiles at American warplanes in the Gulf of Sidra, and Libyan missile-armed patrol boats menacingly approached American ships.

  Reagan delivered the promised punch. American planes acting on the president’s orders rocketed the missile batteries and sank the boats. “U.S. forces will continue their current exercises,” Reagan declared in a letter of notification to the speaker of the House and the president pro tem of the Senate. “We will not be deterred by Libyan attacks or threats from exercising our rights on and over the high seas under international law. If Libyan attacks do not cease, we will continue to take the measures necessary in the exercise of our right of self-defense to protect our forces.”

  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.”

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  REAGAN 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.

  REAGAN’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 pe
ril 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.