Killing Reagan

by Bill O'Reilly

  Shockingly, Hinckley still pines for Jodie Foster, telling the New York Times in a bizarre letter, “My actions of March 30, 1981 have given special meaning to my life and no amount of imprisonment or hospitalization can tarnish my historical deed. The shooting outside the Washington Hilton hotel was the greatest love offering in the history of the world. I sacrificed myself and committed the ultimate crime in hopes of winning the heart of a girl. It was an unprecedented demonstration of love. But does the American public appreciate what I’ve done? Does Jodie Foster appreciate what I’ve done?”

  Hinckley continues: “I am Napoleon and she is Josephine. I am Romeo and she is Juliet. I am John Hinckley Jr. and she is Jodie Foster. The world can’t touch us.”

  * * *

  Ironically, one of the first things Ronald Reagan did when he came into office was slash federal funding for the treatment of mental illness, trimming the budget for the National Institute of Mental Health and repealing the Mental Health Systems Act of 1980. Yet, as the definition of mental impairment grows over time to include not just the insane or psychotic like John Hinckley but also those whose faculties are diminished by age, there are signs that the president himself may be sliding into this spectrum. The New York Times reported as early as 1980 that his “penchant for contradictory statements, forgetting names and general absent-mindedness” were considered by some to be a sign of Alzheimer’s disease. This very specific form of dementia displays itself as confusion, impaired thought, and impaired speech.

  In truth, Ronald Reagan can be sharp at times. Often, he spins entertaining yarns, adding dialects and jokes to his presentations. But on other occasions, the president gets lost mid-story. Sometimes he will tell a tale about some event in his life, when in fact he is confusing it with a movie role he once played. His staff is fond of saying that Reagan “has his good days and his bad days,” and they know that the president tends to think more slowly in the evening than in the afternoon. In addition, Reagan has developed an “essential tremor,” a slight shaking of the hands and nodding of the head. Though not a sign of brain impairment, it will grow worse with age.

  Ronald Reagan has admitted to journalists that his mother died of “senility” and said that should such a condition ever affect him, he will resign the office of president of the United States.

  But today, as his speechwriters rise promptly from their seats at 10:10 and file out of the Oval Office, nobody is realistically suggesting that Ronald Reagan is senile.

  Or that he should resign.

  Not yet.

  23

  WHITE HOUSE SITUATION ROOM

  WASHINGTON, DC

  OCTOBER 26, 1983

  1:28 P.M.

  Relief has arrived. Ronald Reagan wears a brand-new hearing aid, allowing him to make out the voice on the other end of the transatlantic hotline quite clearly.1

  “Margaret Thatcher here.”

  The prime minister has excused herself from a parliamentary debate to take Reagan’s call. The Iron Lady, just as Reagan’s mother, will eventually live out the last dozen years of her life in a state of dementia.

  But that confusion is seventeen years away.

  Right now, Margaret Thatcher is completely furious.

  Yesterday, on Reagan’s orders, American troops invaded the former British colony of Grenada, an island in the south Caribbean. On October 19, Marxist commandos overthrew the government, and there are fears that the new Grenadian leaders are aligned with Fidel Castro. The Cuban dictator has long sought to spread communism throughout the Western Hemisphere. Even as Reagan talks with Thatcher, there are civil wars under way in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Under the pretense that the lives of eight hundred Americans attending medical school in Grenada are at risk, eight thousand American marines, Navy SEALs, and Army Rangers have invaded the island.2 Reagan’s popularity among U.S. voters is soaring, and the president has bipartisan support in Congress for this bold move.

  Unfortunately, Ronald Reagan never informed the Thatcher government. In fact, his advisers told Margaret Thatcher’s foreign secretary there would be no attack. That information was then relayed to the British press. In the hours leading up to the American assault, Thatcher attempted to phone the president to warn him against military action but was told he was unavailable.

  Ronald Reagan lied to the British, and now Thatcher wants an explanation.

  “If I were there, Margaret, I’d throw my hat in the door before I came in,” the president sheepishly apologizes.3

  “There’s no need to do that,” Thatcher answers in a calm but firm voice. She knows not to antagonize the American president because there is too much at stake. Soviet president Leonid Brezhnev died almost a year ago, and since that time the Cold War has intensified. The threat level of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union, now led by former Soviet spymaster Yuri Andropov, is at its highest point in twenty years. U.S. nuclear missiles in West Germany are pointed at Moscow, even as Soviet mobile rockets in East Germany are aimed at America’s allies in Europe, among them Great Britain. To combat this threat, Thatcher is currently lobbying for American Tomahawk cruise missiles to be based on her island nation. But public opinion in Britain is heavily against such a deployment. Now, at a time when the Reagan-Thatcher relationship needs to be stronger than ever to confront the new Soviet regime, the British are being treated like powerless American vassals.

  “We very much regret the embarrassment caused you,” says Reagan, his voice soothing, a trait learned from his radio years. “We were greatly concerned, because of a problem here—and not at your end at all—but here. We have had a nagging problem of a loose source, a leak here. At the same time we also had immediate surveillance problem [sic]—without their knowing it—of what was happening on Cuba to make sure that we could get ahead of them if they were moving—and indeed, they were making some tentative moves. They sent some kind of command personnel into Grenada.”

  “I know about sensitivity,” Thatcher responds, alluding to her experience during the Falklands crisis. “The action is under way now, and we hope it will be successful.”

  “We’re sure it is. It’s going beautifully.”

  “Well, let’s hope it’s soon over, Ron, and you manage to get a democracy restored,” she replies in a cold tone.

  “We think the military part is going to end very shortly.”

  “That will be very, very good news. And if we return to democracy that will be marvelous.”

  “As I say, I’m very sorry for any embarrassment that we caused you.”

  “It was very kind of you to have rung, Ron.”

  “Well, my pleasure.”

  “I appreciate it. How is Nancy?”

  “Just fine.”

  “Good. Give her my love.”

  President Ronald Reagan and British prime minister Margaret Thatcher share a private conversation.

  “I shall.”

  “I must return to this debate in the House. It is a bit tricky.” The debate, in fact, is a wholesale attack on Thatcher by her Labour Party enemies—all because of Grenada.

  “All right. Go get ’em. Eat ’em alive.”

  “Good-bye.”

  * * *

  Ronald Reagan may have succeeded in calming Margaret Thatcher, but new problems continue to emerge all over the world. Even as U.S. forces wrest Grenada from the Marxists, the United States has fallen victim to a new form of warfare: terrorism.

  It is 6:22 a.m. on October 23, 1983. This Sunday morning in Beirut, Lebanon, is quiet as the sun rises to the east of the Mediterranean Sea and the nearby Chouf Mountains. American soldiers are just waking up in their four-story barracks at the Beirut International Airport. The First Battalion, Eighth Marines, are part of a multinational peacekeeping force sent to this former “Paris of the Middle East”—a once-beautiful, cultured city now reduced to rubble after years of fighting. The antagonists are the Lebanese, Israelis, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and an Iranian-backed group known as He
zbollah. The sectarian struggle for power in Lebanon is chaotic and furious.

  The U.S. Marine unit has a glorious past, having distinguished itself in combat on such famous battlefields as Guadalcanal and Saipan. But today they are not the aggressors.

  Outside the barracks, a yellow Mercedes truck approaches the structure nicknamed the Beirut Hilton from a nearby access road. The truck turns into the parking lot in front of the building. At first, the vehicle appears harmless, even as it proceeds to make a single counterclockwise lap around the lot. A five-foot-high wall of concertina wire separates the truck from the marine compound. Beyond that, a six-foot wrought-iron fence also provides a barrier. Just inside that fence is a sentry shack, surrounded by sandbags, where armed marines guard the main barracks entrance.

  Six months earlier, in the heart of downtown Beirut, an Iranian suicide bomber rammed a delivery truck loaded with explosives into the U.S. embassy. The blast killed sixty-three people, among them top intelligence agents.

  The marine guards watch the Mercedes. They are expecting a supply truck full of fresh water this morning, so they are not on high alert. Their mission in Beirut is to help stabilize the Lebanese government after years of civil war. Several Christian and Muslim militant factions are fighting for control of Lebanon, and all see the United States as a roadblock to their success. Although the marines have engaged in several hellish firefights with armed insurgents, some so bad that the Vietnam veterans among them will claim they have never seen fighting so intense, they must maintain the pretense that firing their weapons is a last resort.

  So under the rules of engagement, the sentries’ weapons are unloaded this Sunday morning. In fact, they have to ask permission from their superiors if they wish to employ live ammunition.

  The circling Mercedes is not, in fact, harmless. Rather, it is packed with the equivalent of twenty-one thousand pounds of dynamite. These are wrapped around butane cylinders to enhance the force of any blast.

  Suddenly, without warning, the driver guns the Mercedes directly at the rolls of razor-sharp barbed wire at the compound’s perimeter. The wire snaps as he blasts on through, aiming for a gate in the wrought-iron fence that has been kept open to allow vehicles to move freely. The young soldiers on guard duty frantically try to chamber rounds in their M16s—but the truck is coming too fast. Within seconds, the driver runs through the gate opening, past the sentry box, and toward the barracks lobby. One brave marine opens fire, while another throws his body in front of the vehicle—to no avail.

  Then the “martyr,” as Iran will one day proclaim this murderer, explodes his ordnance. An enormous fireball engulfs the barracks. A crater thirty feet wide and forty feet deep marks the site of the detonation. The entire Beirut Hilton collapses. Bodies fly through the air, some landing more than fifty yards from the building.4

  It is an explosion so massive that the FBI will proclaim it to be the biggest nonnuclear bomb in history. The 241 American military killed is the worst single-day toll since the first day of the Tet Offensive, fifteen years ago. When rescue workers attempt to evacuate these wounded peacekeepers, terrorist snipers fire at them.

  The violence in Beirut marks the first full-scale use of terror by Muslim factions against the United States. But it is hardly the last. Two months later, the U.S. embassy in Kuwait will be the target of a suicide-bomber attack. And six months from now, CIA Beirut station chief William Buckley will become the fourth of thirty key Americans kidnapped by Muslim extremists in Lebanon.

  * * *

  On March 16, 1984, the fifty-five-year-old Buckley rides the elevator from his tenth-floor Beirut apartment down to the parking garage of the Al-Manara building. It is minutes before 8:00 a.m. The career spy lives alone, and has just finished a breakfast of coffee and cereal, accompanied by a recording of Dean Martin singing “Return to Me.” Shackled to his wrist is a locked CIA burn bag containing top secret documents—and sandwiches he has prepared for lunch.

  One floor down, a well-dressed man carrying a leather briefcase steps into the elevator, then rides wordlessly to the parking garage with Buckley. All at once, the CIA station chief feels a blow to the back of his skull. The assailant’s briefcase is filled with rocks, and the American official crumples to the ground. A white Renault containing two men immediately pulls up to the elevator. Buckley is dragged into the backseat of the car, his captors sitting on top of him. The car speeds away in such a hurry that the back door is still open.

  Within hours, the CIA is aware that the station chief is missing. Soon after, his captors round up his network of spies and informers within Lebanon and murder them one by one. This confirms to the CIA that Buckley was tortured, and has broken.

  But it is not until May 7, almost seven weeks later, that American agents see the real horror. An anonymous videotape is delivered to the U.S. embassy in Athens, showing a naked Buckley being tortured. Ligature marks on his wrists and neck indicate that he has been tied to a rope or chain. Analysts studying the tape note that his body is covered in puncture marks, showing that Buckley has been drugged repeatedly. CIA director William Casey will later remember of his viewing of the video. “I was close to tears. It was the most obscene thing I had ever witnessed. Bill was barely recognizable as the man I had known for years. They had done more than ruin his body. His eyes made it clear his mind had been played with. It was horrific, medieval and barbarous.”

  Three weeks later, another gruesome video arrives. This one is far more graphic than the last. Finally, after five more months of torture, a third and final video finds its way to the CIA. Buckley is clearly on the verge of insanity, a drooling mess uttering gibberish and rolling his eyes like a crazy man.

  But his ordeal is not over. Bill Buckley must still endure almost another year of captivity before he is executed by Hezbollah. Although his Islamic jihadist captors announce the spy’s death in 1985, his corpse will not be located until 1991.5

  * * *

  Ronald Reagan was powerless to help Buckley. But he exercised his power by bringing Grenada to its knees.6 And while the tiny island nation may have been an easy target, Muslim extremists are not.

  However, CIA station chief William Buckley does not die without consequence. Reagan will be tormented by his kidnapping and death. The result will be National Security Decision Directive 138, a bold, top secret decision to counter state-sponsored terrorism “by all legal means.” Reagan affixes his signature to the directive on April 3, 1984.

  But “legal means” will soon be set aside. Iran is currently engaged in a fierce war with its Middle East neighbor, Iraq, and has run out of military weapons. President Ronald Reagan will secretly authorize the sales of weapons to Iran, a sworn U.S. enemy and the nation responsible for killing hundreds of Americans. Reagan knows this, but he decides that liberating the American hostages is worth breaking the law. Under a plan masterminded by Marine Corps lieutenant colonel Oliver North, American funds will also be secretly funneled to the rebel Contras fighting communism in Nicaragua whom Reagan admires so much.7

  So it is that after three years in office, the president of the United States has had many successes: he has turned around the economy, bringing an end to the recession and reducing the level of unemployment; he has countered the Soviet threat in Europe by placing attack cruise missiles in Germany and England; and, simultaneously, he has begun urging the Soviets to join him in efforts to reduce the possibility of nuclear war through voluntary arms control.

  But Ronald Reagan still faces problems all over the world. Despite his best efforts, there is growing tension with the Soviet Union. Reagan has invaded the Caribbean island of Grenada with U.S. troops. He has offended his greatest ally, Margaret Thatcher. And just a few days before that, America absorbed a horrific Muslim terrorist attack in Lebanon.

  And if all that isn’t enough, Ronald Reagan must now begin another exhausting undertaking: getting reelected.

  24

  RANCHO DEL CIELO

  SANTA BARBARA, CALIFORNIA
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  AUGUST 1, 1984

  NOON

  Ronald and Nancy Reagan stand before their round leather patio table under a blue California sky, gazing out at the oak-covered hills. Nancy is dressed in a cream plaid sweater vest over white denim pants. The president is even less formal in his blue jeans, boots, and open-necked cowboy shirt. The media form a tight scrum behind a rope line on the gravel parking lot in front of them, separated from the president and First Lady by less than ten feet.

  This is a photo opportunity where the press isn’t supposed to ask questions. Nevertheless, the president often indulges them with a response should they break protocol, though it is something Nancy and his advisers rarely allow. There is too big a risk he might slip up. Normally, the president’s every public movement is stage-managed. He is given a daily set of scripted cards telling him what to say and where to stand for any formal occasion.

  But today there are no cards. No notes. Just the president and the media throwing one-liners back and forth. The time for questions is limited to just five minutes. There is very little that can go wrong in such a short period of time—or so it seems.

  As distasteful as it might be, Ronald Reagan knows he must talk to the media. This is an election year, and the Republican National Convention in Dallas is just three weeks away. After eight months pursuing a Rose Garden strategy, in which Nancy made sure that Reagan barely campaigned, talking to the media will be a nice little warm-up for the months of hard battle that lie ahead in his quest for reelection. The media have been exceptionally generous to him during his first term, leading editor Ben Bradlee of the Washington Post, the newspaper that brought down Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal, to state, “We’ve been kinder to President Reagan than any president I can remember since I’ve been at the Post.”