Killing Reagan

by Bill O'Reilly

    2. More than sixty-eight thousand dollars in today’s money.

    3. Blair House is a 120-room, 60,600-square-foot mansion across the street from the White House. Built in 1824, it was originally the home of Surgeon General of the U.S. Army Joseph Lovell. Francis Preston Blair Sr., adviser to several presidents, including Abraham Lincoln, purchased the home in 1836. The United States bought the property in 1942 to avoid having guests of the president sleep in hotels.

    4. Gerald Ford once noted that Reagan’s hair was “prematurely orange.” This occasional side effect is often seen as evidence of the use of Clairol hair dye, and in 2009 a former Clairol executive stated to the New York Times that the Reagans brought their own personal hair colorist into the White House. However, it has never been confirmed.

    5. Ron Reagan Jr. made these comments in an interview with New York magazine in December 1980.

    6. On January 19, 1981, the Algiers Accord resulted in the freeing up of $7.9 billion in Iranian assets that had been frozen by the United States once the hostage crisis began. This paved the way for the hostages’ freedom.

    7. This American tradition of welcoming home prisoners of war and soldiers was revived by the 1973 song “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree,” by Tony Orlando and Dawn. The practice dates to the nineteenth century, when American women wore a yellow ribbon to show their faithfulness to a husband or sweetheart serving in the U.S. Cavalry.

    8. This occurred at precisely 5:08 p.m. on January 20, 1981.

    9. It was Richard Nixon who introduced the price controls on gasoline, in an attempt to stimulate greater domestic oil production. Carter instituted a levy known as a “windfall tax” against the oil companies during his administration, which promptly led to a decrease in domestic output. He later signed an executive order that would phase out price controls by October 1981. Reagan’s lifting of the controls before that scheduled date caused production to soar, leading to a 50 percent drop in the price of oil.

  Chapter Seventeen

    1. Dr. John Hopper will be sued by Hinckley’s many victims, saying that Hopper should have known he was dangerous and placed him in a hospital. The case was dismissed.

  Chapter Eighteen

    1. Cronkite considers Hoover’s presidency to have been “damned” by the Great Depression and Franklin Roosevelt to be a man of great charisma and personal strength. He considers Harry Truman one of the great presidents and was surprised by Dwight Eisenhower’s total recall about the World War II D-Day landings more than a decade later. He thought John F. Kennedy handsome and sometimes arrogant; Lyndon Johnson larger than life; Richard Nixon an oddball; Gerald Ford a nice, straightforward guy; and Jimmy Carter to have been the smartest president he ever met.

    2. The Soviet Union had no nuclear warheads at the end of World War II, when Gen. George Patton urged Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and Undersecretary of War Robert Patterson to prolong that conflict by pushing for a show of strength against the encroaching Russian influence. Patton believed the Soviet Union was just as dangerous as the Third Reich. By 1981, as Reagan takes office, the Soviets have 32,146 nuclear warheads aimed at America, and the United States has 9,000 fewer aimed at Russia.

    3. Reagan made this comment from his hotel suite during the 1976 Republican National Convention. He was lamenting his loss to Ford and the missed opportunity to implement his own foreign policy. His words continued: “I wanted to become president of the United States so I could sit down with Brezhnev. And I was going to let him pick out the size of the table, and I was going to listen to him tell me, the American president, what we were going to have to give up. And I was going to listen to him for maybe twenty minutes, and then I was going to get up from my side of the table, walk around to the other side, and lean over and whisper in his ear, ‘Nyet.’ It’s been a long time since they’ve heard ‘nyet’ from an American president.”

    4. KGB, for Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti, translates from the Russian as “Committee for State Security.”

    5. Gulag is short for Glavnoe Upravelenie Lagerei, or “main camp administration.” Though often thought to have existed only above the Arctic Circle, in Siberia, they were located throughout the Soviet Union. These were prison, labor, and psychiatric camps designed to break the will of dissidents through torture, hard labor, and exposure to extreme cold. Sentences were determined in advance by Brezhnev’s hierarchy. Trials were conducted in secret, with no chance for an appeal.

    6. Reagan begins keeping a journal on the very first day of his presidency. He will not miss a single entry over the course of his administration. Several days after the incident, he even took the time to write about the day he was shot.

  Chapter Nineteen

    1. A button featuring the image of his hero John Lennon is in his left pocket. Lennon was shot dead by an assassin just four months previously. Hinckley attended a vigil for Lennon shortly afterward. His father, Jack Hinckley, was actively involved in a Christian relief organization known as World Vision during the mid-1970s. Some believe the global missionary group was engaged in espionage on behalf of the U.S. government. The Catholic human rights group Pax Christi accused World Vision of being “a Trojan horse for U.S. foreign policy.” The fact that Lennon’s assassin, Mark David Chapman, also worked for World Vision has led some to suggest a link between the two shootings. However, a link between the two assassination attempts and World Vision has never been proven.

    2. Eighteen years before, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy suffered through the same ordeal, entering a hospital emergency room to await the outcome of surgery on her husband after JFK was shot. Jackie Kennedy first handed doctors pieces of his skull she’d retrieved from the presidential limousine, then stood patiently in a corner of the trauma room as doctors tried to revive him. Her pink suit was still drenched in the blood of her husband.

    3. Vice President George H. W. Bush was slated to give a speech in Austin, Texas. When news came that Reagan had been shot, he returned to Washington.

    4. Haig never recovered from the public perception that he had become unglued in this time of crisis. He was fired as secretary of state fifteen months later and ran unsuccessfully for president in 1988.

    5. The FBI asked for the physical examination as a precautionary technicality. The exam was performed by Dr. William J. Brownlee.

    6. Maureen Reagan has just announced her candidacy for the U.S. Senate from California, against her father’s wishes. Several weeks before the shooting, Michael Reagan was accused by California investigators of felony stock fraud. He will be cleared of the fraud charges in November. Without her father’s backing, Maureen’s Senate bid is ill-fated, ending when she finishes fifth in a field of thirteen candidates during the primary election. The protective Nancy Reagan sees both actions as a betrayal on the part of Reagan’s children from his first marriage.

  Chapter Twenty

    1. Known as Dupuytren’s contracture, this disorder is found most often in older males of northern European descent, which is why it is also known as Viking disease.

    2. After the shooting, it was Senator Bill Bradley (D-NJ) who proclaimed from the Senate floor that America was a “sick society.”

    3. Columbia was launched April 12, 1981, twenty years to the day after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. Designed as a reusable platform, the Space Shuttle rocketed into space and landed back on Earth with wheels down, like a traditional airplane. Its versatility allowed its crew to actually live in space. The astronauts could float free of the spacecraft to explore and to deliver supplies to the International Space Station. They could even make repairs of existing satellites. In the words of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Space Shuttle “fundamentally changed our understanding of the universe.”

    4. Reagan expressed a willingness t
o sit down at the negotiating table with Brezhnev, as the Soviet premier had demanded. However, Reagan also made it clear that “a great deal of tension in the world today is due to Soviet actions.” He took Brezhnev to task for the Soviet nuclear and military buildup and for its ongoing attempts to use force directly and indirectly to increase its sphere of influence.

  Chapter Twenty-One

    1. The Argentines call the islands the Malvinas and have laid claim to them since the nineteenth century, protesting British occupation multiple times since.

    2. Thatcher was born Margaret Roberts, in the eastern England town of Grantham. Her father, Alfred Roberts, served as town alderman, a lay minister, and mayor of Grantham, in addition to owning two grocery stores. He was accused on several occasions of groping, fondling, and taking other sexual liberties with his young female employees, which was one plot thread of a thinly veiled 1937 satirical novel of Grantham, Rotten Borough. Some believe these accusations were false, spread by political opponents of his daughter. Neither of Margaret Thatcher’s parents lived to see her rise to prime minister. Alfred Roberts died in 1970; Thatcher’s mother, Beatrice, died in 1960.

    3. Shortly after the crisis began, Leach insisted that Thatcher back a swift counterattack. “If we do not,” Leach explained to the prime minister, “or if we pussyfoot in our actions and do not achieve complete success, in another few months we shall be living in a different country whose words count for little.” Thatcher agreed.

    4. The French-born Colbert was born Emilie Chauchoin. She is best known for her role opposite Clark Gable in the 1934 comedy, It Happened One Night, for which she won the Best Actress Oscar. A staunch conservative Republican, Colbert died at Bellerive on Barbados on July 30, 1996. She had lived there alone ever since her husband of thirty-two years, a California surgeon named Joel Pressman, passed away in 1968 at the age of sixty-seven.

    5. First explored in 1775 by British sea captain James Cook, South Georgia was named for King George III and has been a British protectorate ever since. The remote island earned lasting fame in 1916, when Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance was crushed by ice and he saved the lives of his crew by piloting a small boat across the Southern Ocean to the safety of a South Georgia Island whaling port. After his death in 1922, Shackleton was buried on South Georgia Island. Somewhat poignantly, one of the British vessels involved in retaking the island in 1982 is a modern vessel also christened Endurance.

    6. Great Britain’s version of the White House, 10 Downing Street is the official residence and workplace of the prime minister. While appearing relatively modest from the outside, it contains more than one hundred rooms and offices, along with the third-floor living quarters. Originally a collection of three houses built by Sir George Downing in 1682, it was first used for official state business in 1732 by Sir Robert Walpole and is within walking distance of the Parliament, Buckingham Palace, and Trafalgar Square.

    7. Among the few countries that backed Great Britain were Ireland, New Zealand, and Argentina’s antagonist neighbor, Chile.

    8. “They disagreed over the Falklands, but that didn’t hurt their friendship at all,” Nancy Reagan will later comment.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

    1. Reagan began using a hearing aid in his right ear in September 1983. He began wearing one in his left ear in 1985.

    2. There is evidence that the invasion was planned long in advance of the coup. The overthrown regime was also pro-Cuban. Since 1979 the United States had sought to destabilize Grenada by discouraging U.S. tourism and offering little economic assistance. The Reagan administration escalated tensions by urging the World Bank to block funding to Grenada’s government. In August 1981, U.S. troops rehearsed a mock invasion of Grenada on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques.

    3. Reagan is alluding to an old Irish custom of tossing a cap through a doorway before entering, to see if the visitor is welcome. It was later adapted in the American West as the habit of throwing a hat through a doorway to see if it would draw gunfire.

    4. A second suicide bomber strikes the nearby French military compound, killing fifty-eight French paratroopers and six civilians.

    5. Buckley was buried in Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors, Section 59, Lot 346.

    6. The United States captured Grenada at a cost of 19 American killed and 116 wounded in the seven-week war. Its primary opposition on the island came from a joint Grenadian and Cuban force, which suffered casualties of 70 dead and 417 wounded. They were aided by an additional contingent of Soviet, East German, Bulgarian, North Korean, and Libyan troops, which suffered no casualties.

    7. The scandal became known as Iran-Contra. The administration’s actions were illegal for three reasons: the Boland Amendment of 1982 prohibited funding of the Contras beyond congressionally approved limits; the sale of arms to Iran was prohibited; and it is against U.S. national policy to pay ransom for hostages. Some thirty million dollars were transferred from Iran to the Contras. Eleven administration officials were ultimately indicted for their role in selling arms to Iran and funneling the money to the Contras, including Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and CIA chief William Casey. Nobody went to prison, and George H. W. Bush pardoned many of the perpetrators in the final days of his presidency. Although two key members of the conspiracy, U.S. Marine lieutenant colonel Oliver North and Secretary of Defense Weinberger, made it clear that Reagan knew what was happening, no charges were ever filed against the president. During the 1985–1987 investigations, Reagan’s personal approval rating dropped from 67 to 46 percent but later rebounded.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

    1. Rancho del Cielo (“Ranch in the Sky”) was originally developed in 1841 by Mexican landowner José Jésus Pico. He built the house in 1871. It remained in his family until 1941. Ronald Reagan bought the 688-acre ranch in 1974 for $527,000 from the family of Roy and Rosalie Cornelius. Their daughter, Glenda, had been Patti Reagan’s roommate at boarding school. Glenda Cornelius was an accomplished rodeo rider, and her parents had intended for the home to be her inheritance. However, they sold the land after she was killed in a New Year’s Eve head-on automobile collision.

    2. Nancy’s words are picked up by microphones from the various network television cameras. Ten days later, while still at the ranch, Reagan himself will mistakenly speak into a live microphone, joking that he has outlawed Russia and that “we begin bombing in five minutes.” As a result, Soviet military forces will go on war alert in preparation for an attack.

    3. Springsteen had been politically ambivalent until this incident, aligning himself with veterans’ groups and local food banks but refusing to back political candidates from either party. However, as a result of the “Born in the U.S.A.” incident, he will make it a point to openly endorse liberal causes. In 2004 he will endorse Sen. John Kerry for president, and in 2008 and 2012 Springsteen will make campaign appearances on behalf of Barack Obama. However, the misunderstood legacy of “Born in the U.S.A.” lives on. Attendees at the 2014 Connecticut Republican Convention were asked to name their favorite Springsteen song. “Born in the U.S.A.” was the clear favorite. One delegate even compared it patriotically to “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

    4. Geraldine Ferraro is Walter Mondale’s running mate. The forty-nine-year-old congresswoman from Queens, New York, is the first female vice presidential candidate from a major party.

    5. A 2001 Duke University medical study showed that 50 percent of individuals who underwent open heart surgery suffered immediate memory problems that were often still evident five years later.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

    1. Reagan wins forty-nine states. Mondale captures just his home state of Minnesota and the District of Columbia. The final Electoral College tally is 525 to 13.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

    1. Fromme was a member
of the Manson Family, members of which brutally murdered seven people on a two-day killing spree in 1969. On the second night, pregnant actress Sharon Tate was stabbed sixteen times, even as she pleaded to live long enough to give birth. Tate was married to director Roman Polanski, who was not present when the hideous crime took place.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

    1. Regan was secretary of the treasury during Ronald Reagan’s first term in office. In an unusual move, he and James Baker switched jobs in early 1985 because Baker was exhausted from trying to keep the White House running independently of Nancy. The switch was orchestrated almost completely without the president’s knowledge. He merely gave final approval to the plan when it was presented to him. The president did not seem to think it a big deal.

    2. Hall was later given immunity from prosecution in return for her testimony against Oliver North.

    3. Known as the Tower Commission, it was named after its chairman, former Republican senator John Tower of Texas. The commission completed its three-month investigation in late February 1987. Its three-hundred-page report laid the blame for Iran-Contra on Ronald Reagan, demanding that he “take responsibility” for the illegality. The report also blamed his staff for shielding him from a number of key issues involving the sale of arms to Iran. “Yes, the president made mistakes,” Tower told the press. “I think that’s very plain English.”

    4. Heckler’s very public divorce was played out in the Washington newspapers. That drama, combined with what some considered her ineffective management skills, were factors in her ouster.

    5. Reagan loyalists insist that Reagan was firmly in control of the executive branch at all times. They reject any reportage to the contrary. It should be noted that Ronald Reagan retained his acting skills and rarely showed physical or mental distress to anyone but Nancy, whom he trusted implicitly.