The next morning we helicoptered the Reagans to a ranch in the valley about a mile from church, which happened to be the place where we stabled our horses. The cars were there and we loaded everybody up, but had to wait a few minutes until the advance agent at the church radioed back that it was okay to proceed. We were sitting in the limousine when Mrs. Reagan caught my eye and pointed to her chest. I nodded and said, “Mr. President, would you please come with me. I’m afraid it’s vest time.”
We’d secured a room at this ranch in case we needed a place to go, so I took him there. He took off his jacket and I put it on a chair. Then he took off his shirt and I put the vest on him. He put his shirt back on, and I reached for his jacket, which was suddenly covered in cat hair from the chair. I tried to get as much of it off as I could, but when we got back into the car, Mrs. Reagan saw his jacket and she said, “Ronnie, where did you get all this cat hair?” And she rode all the way to the church brushing his jacket.
I think there were two reasons why they didn’t leave the ranch often. The first was because they were so happy there. The second was that he knew it was a major production every time he went somewhere and was uncomfortable with causing so much disruption. The parishioners at that Easter service were both surprised and excited to see the Reagans, but their presence changed the character of the service, and the president realized that. He also recognized that it took a lot of people to go through a lot of hoops to make this sort of thing happen.
He was a man who thought about things like that.
The only regular commitment they made each summer to leave the ranch was for an annual barbecue near Santa Barbara, hosted by the president’s old friend Fess Parker. He was an actor famous in the 1950s for playing Davy Crockett on television. He was an old-school gentleman, just like the president. In 1985, President Reagan sent Parker to Australia as his official representative for some event, and when he returned, there was talk that he might be appointed U.S. ambassador to Australia. It didn’t happen, and that was Australia’s loss.
It was ostensibly a press party, but Parker always invited the Secret Service agents and their families. My daughter had a little autograph book that she used to carry around, and of course both the president and Mrs. Reagan happily signed it. At her first barbecue, I told Michelle she should ask Fess for his autograph, too. She didn’t know who he was, but I loved the idea of her having Davy Crockett’s autograph. I introduced them, and stood by, a really proud father, as Davy Crockett hugged my little girl. She asked if he would sign her book, and he said, “Sure, but I need to do something first.” With that, he took her autograph book and walked off.
I thought Michelle was going to burst into tears. Her eyes got huge as she watched him walk away. I knew he wasn’t going to keep it or lose it, but eleven-year-old girls don’t know that. She kept saying, “What if he leaves it somewhere?” I promised it would be all right, and about five minutes later, Fess came back and handed the book to her. He’d gone off somewhere to sit down and take the time to pen a very long, very lovely message to her. Caring about an eleven-year-old was exactly the kind of thing that Ronald Reagan would do—and did. That those two should have been lifelong friends should surprise no one. Warm and friendly to a fault, Fess Parker was himself, and Ronald Reagan was himself, and you just can’t fake that.
When the summer ended, the president was visibly sad to leave the ranch. Mrs. Reagan might have preferred more time in Los Angeles, but the ranch was where he was happiest, and obviously that was fine with her.
The routine was that from the ranch they would go to Los Angeles and stay at the Century Plaza for a couple of days to decompress, before heading back to Washington. They’d see their Hollywood pals, and he’d ease himself into the business of being the president. The staff was there, and he’d start having meetings. And yet, with all that entailed, with all the power and all the fame and all the glory that came along with being the president, somewhere in his mind, I know, he really wanted to be on the outside of a horse, or chainsawing brush on a trail.
CHAPTER TEN
HEALING SOME OLD WOUNDS
The shadow of World War II still loomed large in the 1980s. Ronald Reagan joined the other Allied leaders to commemorate the Normandy landings in June 1984, and ten months later, fell victim to an honest mistake when he agreed to commemorate Axis war dead at a cemetery in Bitburg, Germany.
The president’s ancestral home was Ballyporeen, Ireland, and when he showed up there, Ireland went mad for Reagan.
I’d flown to Ballyporeen two hours before him, landed in a field under a pouring rain, and was met by the advance agent, Barbara Riggs. She was drenched to the skin, and I pointed that out to her. She mumbled, “Just wait,” It didn’t take long before I was also soaked. But a strange thing happened. Call it the luck of the Irish. As the two of us stood there, looking like drowned rats, Ronald Reagan’s helicopter landed, and the moment the president stepped out of Marine One, just like that, the rain stopped and the sun broke through the clouds.
They loved him in Ballyporeen, and he loved Ballyporeen. But then, there has never been anybody in the White House who could work an event the way he could. We’d planned a stop at a local pub which had honored him by changing its name to “The Ronald Reagan.” The president strolled in, proud to be the first president ever to have a pub named after him, and ordered a beer. He chatted with the folks gathered around the bar as if he belonged there, as if this were his local hangout. The White House photographer took photos, and a few minutes later we left. One of the photos turned up years later, framed, on the wall of a restaurant I go to in New York.
From Ireland, the president went to London for a brief stay, while I went to Bayeux, France, to advance the Normandy trip. I’d been warned that there were problems, but I never expected that French arrogance would put the president’s life at risk. During the survey, some months before, and the preadvance, in May, everything had been agreed. Now, with two days to go, the French decided they weren’t going to play by the rules.
Seven national leaders were attending this fortieth anniversary of the D-day landings, including the president, the queen of England, and the prime minister of Canada. So the logistics were not easy. Still, the French seemed to ignore the fact that the president, who was by far the most popular of all the guests, was also the highest-risk target. And when I sat down with the French security people in Bayeux, I reminded them of that. The man directly across the table from me was Jacques Lejeune, head of the VO—the Voyage Officiel—the French equivalent of our Dignitary Protective Division. He was about my age, and spoke very good English. I knew he understood what I was saying, but instead, he chose to pretend that he did not.
A huge ceremony was to take place at the landing site on Utah Beach, and it had already been agreed that we would have three agents with the president on the beach. Lejeune was now saying only one. I explained why that wasn’t acceptable. The reviewing stand was about a hundred yards from the limousines and twenty thousand people were expected to be there. I reminded him, “This is not a small event. Leaving the president exposed like that so far from cover is a nonstarter.”
However, Lejeune dug in his heels. “The queen of England will have one security agent, President Mitterand of France will have one, and President Reagan of the United States will have one.” I refused to back down, and, in pique, Lejeune declared, “There will be no Americans on Utah Beach.”
He’d crossed the line, and I was furious. “You didn’t say that in 1944, and you’re not going to say it tomorrow. This is nonnegotiable. I am not asking your permission, and I am not looking for an answer. Whether you like it or not, we will have three agents on Utah Beach. One will be at the stage, and two will walk with the president.” It was not what he expected, and sensibly he did not force the issue. In reality, he and I both knew that he didn’t have any choice.
The events of June 6, 1984, began for us at Pointe du Hoc.
The president and Mrs. Reagan arri
ved from London by helicopter, and were both outwardly moved at the majesty of the sheer hundred-foot rock face that 225 American Rangers had scaled in the first hours of D-day to gain a foothold on French soil. The day before, some current Rangers had reenacted the climb up the cliff and took with them two of the original guys, who did it again. Now, with his back to the sea at the Ranger’s “Dagger” monument, the president stood on that windswept point and addressed a small group of sixty-two survivors of Pointe du Hoc.
He told them, “Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith, and belief; it was loyalty and love.”
After the speech, he saluted them, then shook their hands and spoke with each of them. He later wrote of that morning: “With gray hair and faces weathered by age and life’s experiences, they might have been elderly businessmen, and I suppose some of them were; but these were the boys, some of them just starting to shave at the time, who had given so much, had been so brave at the dawn of the assault.”
We took the president and first lady through the concrete pillbox that still stands there from that morning, the place where German soldiers first spotted the invasion fleet. We then helicoptered to Utah Beach and the formal ceremony with the other heads of state. People lined the sand dunes as far as you could see, looking down at the beach. The heads of state assembled near the VIP tent, and then the president, Bob DeProspero, and I walked out onto the beach. As soon as the crowds saw him, they started shouting, “Ron-nie … Ron-nie … Ron-nie …”
François Mitterand was clearly unhappy about this and tried to pretend it wasn’t happening. Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau reached over my shoulder to tap President Reagan on his shoulder and say, “Ron, they’re calling you.” The president’s eyes opened wide, and he gave that familiar sound of surprise, “Oh,” and as he turned around to look, and then to wave, the entire beach erupted into applause.
From Utah Beach, we went to the huge American cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach, where one of the most memorable moments of the Reagan presidency took place.
Michael Deaver was looking for a clean picture of the Reagans in the cemetery, but that was never going to be easy because there were so many people involved with this visit. There was the White House staff, the press, the host committee, the cemetery people, the many guests who’d come along, and, of course, a lot of Secret Service agents. However, by now our relationship with the White House staff was so solid that when Deaver or Henkel told us what they wanted, we could always find a way to make it happen. We placed agents at certain points around the cemetery and indicated to the president and Mrs. Reagan where to walk. It sounds somewhat callous that it had been arranged, but it needed to be planned so that the photo op could be done safely. It’s the best example I can recall of what I’d said when I first met Deaver and Henkel, “Tell me what you want, and we’ll help to make it happen.”
The photograph of the Reagans leaning down to place a rose on a grave, in the midst of all those other graves, is arguably one of the greatest photos of his presidency.
From there, the president and first lady joined President Mitterand at the Omaha Beach memorial, where Ronald Reagan delivered one of the most moving speeches I’ve ever heard.
“Someday, Lis, I’ll go back,” he read from a letter that had been sent to him at the White House by a woman named Lisa Zanatta Henn. It quoted a letter she’d received from her father, Pfc. Peter Zannata, who’d been in the first assault wave to hit Omaha Beach with the 37th Engineer Combat Battalion. “I’ll go back, and I’ll see it all again. I’ll see the beach, the barricades, and the graves.”
As he went on reading Mrs. Henn’s words, a stillness settled over everyone there, and eyes began to redden. “He made me feel the fear of being on the boat waiting to land. I can smell the ocean and feel the seasickness. I can see the looks on his fellow soldiers’ faces—the fear, the anguish, the uncertainty of what lay ahead. And when they landed, I can feel the strength and courage of the men who took those first steps through the tide to what must have surely looked like instant death.”
Mrs. Henn’s letter explained, “I don’t know how or why I can feel this emptiness, this fear, or this determination, but I do. Maybe it’s the bond I had with my father. All I know is that it brings tears to my eyes to think about my father as a twenty-year-old boy having to face that beach.”
The president spoke for a few minutes about what had happened there forty years ago, and then, looking straight at the woman who’d written to him about a letter from her father, his voice began to waver. “Lisa Zannata Henn began her story by quoting her father, who promised that he would return to Normandy. She ended with a promise to her father, who died eight years ago of cancer: ‘I’m going there, Dad, and I’ll see the beaches and the barricades and the monuments. I’ll see the graves, and I’ll put flowers there just like you wanted to do. I’ll never forget what you went through, Dad, nor will I let any one else forget. And, Dad, I’ll always be proud.’”
I was standing off stage on the left, not far from Mrs. Reagan. There were tears in her eyes, and in my eyes, and when I looked, there were tears in the president’s eyes. By the time he finished and turned to walk toward his wife, tears were running down his face.
Normandy was a triumph for the president, but the following year’s trip to Bitburg, Germany, turned out to be quite the opposite.
An economic summit had been called for mid-April in the West German capital, Bonn. The chancellor, Helmut Kohl, was in political trouble and had asked the president if he’d consider making a stop in his home district. There was some debate among the president’s staff as to whether he should visit a concentration camp on this trip, and for whatever reason, the staff decided he should not. Instead, with the photo of the Reagans at Normandy so fresh in everyone’s mind, the idea came up that he might lay a wreath at a German war cemetery, symbolically putting an end to World War II.
The Germans suggested Kolmeshohe Cemetery at Bitburg, which was perfect because there was a big U.S. Air Force base nearby, and the cemetery was also in Kohl’s home district.
In February, I was part of the survey team, along with Deaver and Henkel, who visited the cemetery. The original idea was that the president would fly in to the base, meet Kohl at the cemetery, lay a wreath, go back to the plane, and fly on to Strasbourg. The president demonstrating America’s respect for the German military men who died in the war seemed like a simple thing.
When we visited the cemetery, we were struck by how drastically different it was from an American war cemetery. Instead of a field of crosses and stars in lines, the tombstones in German war cemeteries are flush to the ground with iron crosses scattered among the graves. The place had the right security ingredients for us and the right atmospherics for the political part of the visit. We left thinking we’d found the right place. But it was February, and we hadn’t seen many of the tombstones because they’d been covered with snow. When it melted, someone discovered that there were SS graves here. Word got out, stirring up a lot of passion, understandably, within the American Jewish community. It didn’t help to explain that there isn’t a World War II German military cemetery anywhere in that country that doesn’t have some SS graves.
Later, when the snow had melted and the gravestones were clearly visible, I walked around that cemetery looking for the SS graves. I’m not sure exactly how many there are. Some reports say around sixty; the White House eventually said forty-eight. This, in a cemetery that holds more than two thousand war dead. The stones marking the graves that I saw had the soldier’s name, rank, date of birth, and date of death. And I didn’t see a s
ingle SS grave of anybody over nineteen years old. Many were even younger. These were kids who’d been conscripted into the Waffen SS to fight in the Battle of the Bulge. All of them died in that battle. These were not hard-core SS. These were not camp guards. Still, the fact that these soldiers were there created all sorts of dilemmas. There was no way that the White House could get out of the visit to Bitburg without creating a huge political issue for Kohl. So in an effort to minimize the political downside of Bitburg, Deaver, Henkel, myself, and a few other people returned to Germany to find an additional historical site.
The U.S. ambassador to Germany was Lt. Gen. Vernon Walters, U.S. Army, Retired, one of the most distinguished men of his time. A linguist who spoke seven languages, he had served seven presidents in various capacities, beginning with Harry Truman, helping to shape the Marshall Plan. He had been deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, a member of the NATO Standing Group, ambassador at large, and ambassador to the United Nations. He had his staff prepare sites for us. At the top of the list were some very old synagogues and several concentration camps. But when we got to Bergen-Belsen, the camp where Anne Frank died, all of us were so moved that we knew the president needed to go there.
Originally built in 1940 as a prisoner-of-war camp, within three years the Nazis were using it as a concentration camp, cramming tens of thousands of human beings into this place and holding them there under the most appalling conditions. Although the camp had no gas chambers, more than fifty thousand people died there of Nazi brutality, starvation, and disease. Liberated in 1945, Bergen-Belsen became one of the most harrowing symbols of the Holocaust as British army films of trenches filled with bodies were shown around the world.
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