Ailes’s strategy has revitalized Reagan. “I can sum up the day in one sentence,” he writes in his diary on Saturday, October 20, the night before facing Mondale. “I’ve been working my tail off to master the four minute closing statement I want to make in the debate tomorrow night.”
On the same evening, the president and Ailes have a last-minute discussion about the debate.
“What are you gonna say if they ask you if you’re too old for this job?” Ailes asks Reagan. The two men are standing in a White House hallway, walking to the elevator that will take Reagan back up to the second-floor residence.
Michael Deaver, Nancy Reagan, and all of the president’s advisers have forbidden any talk about the age issue. But Reagan and Ailes are sure the question will be asked tomorrow night.
Reagan stops in his tracks. He blinks and looks hard at Ailes. “I have some ideas,” the president begins.
Reagan tells Ailes what he intends to say. The words are rough and need a rhythm if they are to be effective, but Ailes likes the tone. Once upon a time, Ronald Reagan would have written the line for himself. Even now, he still makes elaborate changes in the margins of the scripts his speechwriters give him. But with his mind filled with debate minutiae, Ailes offers to write the entire response for Reagan.
“Whatever they bring up about age,” he tells the president, “you go to this answer. You have to hit it specifically. Deliver it the way Bob Hope would. Don’t move on the laugh line. If you want to get a drink of water or something and just stare at him, fine. But here’s the line.”
“I got it, coach,” Reagan responds after hearing Ailes’s retort.
* * *
As the final debate edges closer to a conclusion, the inevitable age question finally arrives.
Ronald Reagan is ready.
“Mr. President,” the balding, bespectacled Henry Trewhitt says, “I want to raise an issue that I think has been lurking out there for two or three weeks and cast it specifically in national security terms. You already are the oldest president in history. And some of your staff say you were tired after your most recent encounter with Mr. Mondale.”
Reagan is smiling.
Trewhitt continues: “I recall that President Kennedy had to go for days on end with very little sleep during the Cuban missile crisis. Is there any doubt in your mind that you would be able to function in such circumstances?”
The president waits a beat, surveying the room. He appears to be fully in command of the situation.
“I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign,” Reagan says casually, allowing the moment to build, taking great care not to rush the punch line. “I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”
The crowd erupts in laughter. Even Walter Mondale is laughing. Reagan looks down modestly. He knows that even though there are still forty-five minutes in the debate, he has already won.
* * *
Two weeks later, on November 6, in a historic landslide, Ronald Reagan is reelected president of the United States.1
The next morning, Reagan celebrates the best way he knows how: with a four-day vacation at the ranch, Nancy in tow.
26
WASHINGTON, DC
CHRISTMAS DAY, 1986
6:00 A.M.
The would-be assassin will soon be a free man.
But only for today.
Escorted by the Secret Service, John Hinckley will spend the holiday at his parents’ new home in Northern Virginia. Doctors here at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital feel that Hinckley is making significant progress in dealing with his mental illness. They also believe that a day with his family will further the healing process. Jack and Jo Ann Hinckley have thrown themselves into their son’s recovery, selling their Colorado home in order to move east. Each Tuesday afternoon, they attend therapy sessions with their son and a hospital psychiatrist. The Hinckleys are inspired by the advances John seems to be making. It appears that John Hinckley is “finding his voice,” as his father describes it, even getting elected ward president by his fellow patients.
The Hinckleys and the hospital staff, however, are unaware that their son still secretly conceals pictures of Jodie Foster in his room, which is forbidden. Even more disturbing is that John Hinckley is cultivating friendships through the mail with murderers. He has secretly become pen pals with convicted serial killer Ted Bundy, now awaiting electrocution in Florida for murdering two Florida State University sorority sisters and a twelve-year-old girl.
Hinckley is also corresponding with Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, imprisoned in California for attempting to assassinate Gerald Ford in 1975. Unbeknownst to his doctors or his parents, Hinckley asked Fromme to send him the address for the notorious murderer Charles Manson.1
* * *
Shortly after daybreak, John Hinckley is walked down from his fourth-floor hospital ward by an attendant. He then passes through the locked front doors of St. Elizabeth’s and is rendered to his parents. Two Secret Service agents are in charge of supervising the visit.
But it is not his parents with whom Hinckley is eager to spend time. No, it is his girlfriend, forty-year-old Washington socialite Leslie deVeau. Today will be the first time they have the chance to be alone since they met four years ago.
Like John Hinckley, Leslie is a cold-blooded criminal. She was sentenced to St. Elizabeth’s after murdering her ten-year-old daughter, Erin, in 1982. In an unconscionable act, deVeau placed a shotgun against the sleeping child’s back and pulled the trigger. She then turned the gun on herself, but it misfired. Instead of killing her, the blast tore off deVeau’s left arm. Like Hinckley, she was declared not guilty by reason of insanity and placed in the mental hospital.
At a hospital Halloween party in 1982, Hinckley sidled up to the petite brunette and began flirting. “I’d ask you to dance if I danced,” he said. The two spent the rest of the party in deep conversation, sharing their life stories. Leslie deVeau, who comes from an old Washington, DC, family, did most of the talking. In vivid detail, she told Hinckley about how she’d murdered her daughter. When it came time for Hinckley to talk about his crime, he showed no remorse. Instead, he led deVeau to a hospital bulletin board where a newspaper clipping about his evil deed was posted.
“He was still operating under the delusion it made sense what he did,” deVeau would later remember. “That he was supposed to do this to prove his love for Jodie Foster.”
Although deVeau knew that Hinckley was still infatuated with the actress, her unlikely relationship with him blossomed. “I was lost until I met Leslie,” Hinckley will later write. “Leslie made me want to live again, and she is the sunshine of my life.”
Hinckley and deVeau resided on the same floor, but contact between them was restricted. Still, they found ways around the rules in order to communicate. They ate in the cafeteria at different times, but each furtively taped love letters underneath the dining table for the other to find. On the occasions that they actually saw each other in person, they used sign language to message “I love you.”
In time, deVeau was granted the special privilege of being let outside to wander the hospital grounds. Hinckley, who had no such privilege, would shout to her from a window, and she’d answer back. In this way they conversed, not at all concerned that the whole hospital could hear them.
A year before, in mid-1985, deVeau was granted an even greater privilege: doctors decided she should be released from St. Elizabeth’s and be treated on an outpatient basis. Thus, she no longer sees John Hinckley on a daily basis but returns to the hospital to visit him on weekends, where they can talk face-to-face. They sit across from each other at a glass table on visiting day, holding hands and kissing, ignoring the other patients and their guests all around them. During these visits, deVeau confides that she is still haunted by the night that she shotgunned her daughter to death.
In turn, Hinckley confessed that despite his outward bravado and trademark smirk, he had ni
ghtmares about the day he shot Reagan. He went on to tell Leslie that he sometimes dreamed that he was in a wheelchair, like James Brady.
In all the hours spent sitting sharing their feelings, deVeau and Hinckley have always been supervised. All that will change this morning.
As two Secret Service agents stand guard outside, John Hinckley eats Christmas breakfast with his parents and Leslie deVeau. They then spend two more hours in the living room, watching Hinckley home movies.
But as the clock strikes noon, the couple steals away.
Finding a secluded room, deVeau takes the initiative, pressing her body against Hinckley’s and kissing him passionately. Normally demure, she is surprised and invigorated by her forward behavior.
Hinckley is flustered, unsure what to do. He has never had a girlfriend, and his few long-ago sexual experiences were limited to prostitutes. “I think he was startled,” deVeau will later recall. “What is this woman doing to me?”
Suddenly, a voice calls out from the kitchen. Jack Hinckley, suspecting what is going on, interrupts the couple, calling them back to the living room for Bible study.
By nightfall, a frustrated Hinckley is back in his hospital room alone. It has been an eventful Christmas.
If only Jodie Foster had been there to spend it with him.
27
WHITE HOUSE CABINET ROOM
WASHINGTON, DC
MARCH 2, 1987
10:58 A.M.
Ronald Reagan is being watched very closely.
The president sits in his high-backed chair at the center of the mahogany table. His son Ron Jr. is a guest at today’s Cabinet meeting, which has put Reagan in a jovial mood. Since their father’s being reelected three years ago, the president’s children have been cashing in on his fame. Ron Jr. has written articles for Playboy and even appeared in his underwear on Saturday Night Live, but he has always been loyal to his father. This is not the case with Reagan’s other children. Daughter Patti has written a book savaging her father and the entire Reagan household. And soon, son Michael’s painful tell-all is due in stores. Meanwhile, the national press has begun a scathing series of broadsides against Nancy Reagan, blaming her for masterminding the recent firing of White House chief of staff Don Regan.
It was a battle so vicious and so public that Saturday Night Live lampooned the schism between the First Lady and Regan. All of this has led to growing criticism that the White House is out of control.1
That is why, in addition to Ron Jr., there are four other special guests at the morning’s Cabinet meeting.
The new chief of staff, former Tennessee senator Howard Baker (no relation to James), is one of those in attendance. He has asked the White House counsel, A. B. Culvahouse, and director of communications Thomas Griscom to observe the president. The final member of the group, sixty-nine-year-old Washington insider Jim Cannon, is the author of a recent report detailing the inner workings of the White House. Commissioned at Howard Baker’s request, Cannon conducted formal interviews with employees throughout the West Wing.
He was shocked by what he learned.
The battle between Nancy Reagan and Don Regan is just the beginning. Cannon has uncovered evidence that the White House is in chaos at all levels. Ronald Reagan’s aides are forging his initials to documents, Cabinet members are ignoring presidential policy to push their own agendas, and down in the White House basement, Marine lieutenant colonel Oliver North has spent years illegally selling arms to Iran and then diverting the cash to Contra fighters in Nicaragua. North knew he was breaking the law.
But Ronald Reagan is not engaged in many day-to-day White House activities. He delegates much power to Nancy. Occasionally, he avoids the Oval Office altogether, spending hours during the day watching television reruns in the upstairs residence. Even more troubling, it is no longer a given that the president will take the time to read important policy papers.
After reporting that information to Baker yesterday, Cannon went on to suggest that Ronald Reagan may no longer be fit to serve as president of the United States.
This bold statement is more than mere rhetoric.
The Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the Constitution states that if “the president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the vice president shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as acting president.”
But Vice President Bush doesn’t know anything about what’s going on.
Only if the four observers decide that Ronald Reagan is impaired will Bush be told.
As radical as this might sound, the Twenty-Fifth Amendment has already been invoked during Reagan’s presidency. On July 13, 1985, the president underwent a colonoscopy to remove a precancerous lesion. At 10:32 that morning, he signed a document handing the presidency over to George H. W. Bush. For eight hours, the vice president ran the country but ceded power back to Reagan as soon as the president emerged from the anesthesia.
But now Reagan seems to be in permanent decline. In addition to the colon surgery and his hearing aids, Reagan recently underwent surgery for an enlarged prostate, which forces him to use the restroom frequently. He will soon undergo another procedure to have a cancerous melanoma removed from his nose. The president is now visibly frail, no longer the robust older gentleman who entered the White House six years ago. His energy level is lower. He naps frequently. His eyes often have a dull look, and he sometimes has trouble recognizing people that he has known for years.
Little does the president know it, but even loyal and uncritical Ron Jr. believes his father is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.
So it is that Howard Baker, Jim Cannon, A. B. Culvahouse, and Thomas Griscom sit along one wall scrutinizing the president’s every action. Reagan does not know about Cannon’s report, and the Cabinet meeting does not seem unusual to him.
But it is unusual. If the president shows signs of incoherence, he might not be president much longer.
* * *
Ronald Reagan’s mental and physical woes, however, are not the greatest crisis of his presidency. The real test of his leadership began four months earlier, on November 3, 1986. An Iranian cleric leaked news that the United States was selling arms to Iran in exchange for the release of American hostages throughout the Middle East. Faced with the embarrassing report, Ronald Reagan appeared live on national television and explained that his administration has sold “small amounts of defensive weapons and spare parts” to Iran. But the president denied any knowledge of trading arms for hostages.
“Those charges are utterly false,” he told the massive TV audience.
“We did not—repeat—did not trade weapons or anything else for hostages—nor will we.”
But the people do not believe him. In a poll taken shortly after the appearance, 62 percent of Americans believe the president is lying.
One week later, Attorney General Edwin Meese confronted Reagan in the Oval Office. Meese knows that Lt. Col. Oliver North and his secretary, Fawn Hall, have destroyed hundreds of documents connected to the so-called Iran-Contra scandal. In fact, North and Hall shredded so many files that the machine jammed, forcing Hall to smuggle documents out of the office in her boots and panties.
But North and Hall were sloppy, overlooking one key memorandum linking the Reagan administration to the illegal arms sale.2 In hushed tones, Meese informs Reagan of the smoking gun.
Edwin Meese is a Reagan loyalist. Along with Michael Deaver and James Baker, he has advised Reagan on almost every important issue confronting his presidency. Now serving as attorney general, Meese warned Reagan that he faced impeachment if he did not publicly acknowledge that America sold arms to Iran.
Reagan was stunned but admitted nothing. Instead, he convened a presidential commission to investigate Iran-Contra.3
Nancy Reagan was livid. She did not blame her husband for the illegal scheme that took place with his permission.
She blamed Donald Regan.
The sixty-eight-year-old former marine is a tough Bosto
n Irishman who rose to head the Merrill Lynch investment firm. From there, he became secretary of the treasury and eventually White House chief of staff. He likened his job to that of “a shovel brigade following a parade down Main Street.” He said this because he was constantly fighting Nancy Reagan and the messes she created. Nancy’s determination to control the president’s schedule and her reliance on an astrologer to chart her husband’s every move struck him as madness. But she had the president’s full backing, so Regan was powerless to stop her.
Early in his White House tenure Don Regan discovered just how strong an adversary Nancy Reagan could be when she insisted that he fire Margaret Heckler, the secretary of health and human services. Heckler was one of only two women holding high positions in the Reagan administration. She was a timid person, but Nancy despised her, feeling she was an embarrassment to her husband.4 Yet neither the First Lady nor the chief of staff has the power to fire a Cabinet member, especially one who is sitting in a hospital undergoing a hysterectomy.
“I want her fired,” Nancy told Regan in a call to his home one night. The president was completing his regular evening workout. This was her favorite time to call Regan, who got three times as many calls from Nancy as from her husband. Very often, Regan could hear the sound of the president’s rowing machine in the background when he picked up the phone.
“But she’s recuperating from a hysterectomy,” Regan replied.
“I don’t care. Fire her.”
“I can’t do it while she’s in the hospital.”
“I don’t care. Fire the goddamned woman,” Nancy Reagan said, seething.
Regan gave in, and Margaret Heckler suddenly became the ambassador to Ireland—far away from Nancy Reagan.
The same fate befell Secretary of Labor Ray Donovan, White House communications director Pat Buchanan, and CIA director William Casey. Nancy insisted that Casey be fired even as he lay in a hospital bed dying of a brain tumor. “He can’t do his job,” she argued with Regan, who once again questioned the humanity of the decision. “He’s an embarrassment to Ronnie.”
Killing Reagan Page 21
