Killing Reagan

by Bill O'Reilly

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

    1. The memo concerned efforts to coach Reagan through the Iran-Contra affair.

    2. Ronald Reagan was never held accountable for Iran-Contra. In 1990 he testified behind closed doors to Iran-Contra prosecutor Dan Webb, in the federal trial of former national security adviser John Poindexter. Reagan’s defense was that he could not remember any details of illegalities. Poindexter and Oliver North were among the thirteen members of the Reagan administration indicted for Iran-Contra. Both men were found guilty of several felony charges, but their convictions were overturned. Not a single person went to jail for the Iran-Contra conspiracy.

    3. The wall was actually two walls, separated by 160 meters of open ground. This space was mined, contained trip-wired machine guns, and was patrolled by guard dogs. Watch towers overlooked this no-man’s-land, and East German soldiers shot on sight all who tried to escape into West Berlin.

    4. John F. Kennedy spoke to the people of West Berlin on June 26, 1963. He expressed solidarity for their freedoms and disgust about the newly built Berlin Wall, telling the crowd, “Ich bin ein Berliner” (“I am a Berliner”).

    5. Reagan noted in May 1975 that “Communism is neither an economic or a political system—it is a form of insanity—a temporary aberration which will one day disappear from the earth because it is contrary to human nature. I wonder how much more misery it will cause before it disappears.” By the time Reagan entered office it was clear that the Soviet Union was struggling economically and that its people were becoming unhappy with the ever-increasing hardships. Reagan’s presidential foreign policy of “peace through strength” was a master plan to bankrupt the Soviet economy by building up America’s military, forcing the Russians to keep pace—knowing all the while that they could not.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

    1. As an orator, Reagan is managed by the Washington Speakers Bureau and earns fifty thousand dollars per speech, minus a 20 percent agent commission. In addition to speaking with corporate groups in America, Reagan made $2 million on a ten-day speaking tour of Japan shortly after leaving office.

  Chapter Thirty

    1. Thatcher’s popularity was in such decline by the late 1980s that her reelection appeared all but impossible. A poll tax she advocated led to widespread rioting, and she was deeply mistrustful of Britain’s participation in the European Union, thinking it eroded its power. Opinion polls showed her approval ratings to be below 40 percent at the time her party pushed her aside. Voters said that she had grown out of touch with the people.

  Chapter Thirty-One

    1. Nixon’s last residence was not in California, but in Park Ridge, New Jersey. His stroke occurred as he was sitting down to dinner on April 18. After his death four days later, his body was flown to California aboard the same Boeing VC-137C that transported the casket of John F. Kennedy back to Washington, DC, after his assassination in 1963. As with his departure from the nation’s capital following his resignation in 1974, Nixon’s plane landed at El Toro Marine Corps Base. Nixon’s body was then transported by motorcade to his final resting place twenty miles north.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

    1. Ronald Reagan’s home is watched over by a Secret Service detail. There is also a day nurse and night nurse, along with a full cooking and housekeeping staff. There are bedrooms for two servants, a wine cellar, an exercise room, and a hothouse for growing flowers outside near the pool.

  Afterword

  In January 2015, the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease published a study examining the press conferences of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Researchers were looking for changes in his vocabulary that might have signaled an early onset of dementia. They found three specific symptoms: Reagan’s use of repetitive words increased, as did his habit of substituting “it” or “thing” for specific nouns. Meanwhile, use of unique words declined. The study’s authors also noted that trauma and the use of anesthesia can hasten dementia. They specifically mentioned that the 1981 assassination attempt could also have played a pivotal role in Ronald Reagan’s decline.

  * * *

  The man who shot Reagan, John Hinckley Jr., remains at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, DC, to this day. More than thirty years after being found not guilty of attempting to assassinate the president by reason of insanity, Hinckley may not remain in custody much longer. In December 2013 a federal judge declared he was “not a danger” and authorized unsupervised visits of up to seventeen days at his mother’s home in Williamsburg, Virginia. Hinckley is allowed to drive a car but not to talk to the media. The judge requires that he carry a GPS-enabled cell phone in order that they can track his movements. In time, he may become a completely free man, following in the footsteps of attempted presidential assassins Squeaky Fromme and Sara Jane Moore, who were released in 2009 and 2007, respectively. Both women served more than three decades in prison for attempting to kill President Gerald Ford.

  * * *

  In January 2015, prosecutors declined to press additional murder charges in the August 2014 death of Reagan press secretary James Brady—despite the fact that Hinckley’s bullets were directly responsible for the wounds that ultimately killed Brady at age seventy-three. Brady never fully recovered from the ordeal, spending the second half of his life dealing with constant pain, slurred speech, paralysis, and short-term memory loss. As a result, his wife, Sarah, who sat with Nancy Reagan in the hospital chapel on the day of the assassination attempt, became a ferocious advocate for gun control. Sarah Brady died of pneumonia at the age of seventy-three in April 2015, less than a year after her husband passed away.

  * * *

  Tim McCarthy, the only man in Secret Service history to take a bullet for a president, currently serves as the chief of police in the Chicago suburb of Orland Park. “I’m glad I got to do it,” he told the Chicago Tribune in 2011. “I’m glad to do what I was trained to do.”

  District of Columbia policeman Thomas K. Delahanty, Hinckley’s final victim, sued the gun manufacturer whose bullet ended his police career. He also sued John Hinckley, though the courts ruled against him in both cases. Delahanty made cameo appearances in two movies about the assassination attempt but never returned to police work.

  * * *

  As of this writing in August 2015, Nancy Reagan still lives in the Bel-Air, California, home she once shared with Ronald Reagan. The former First Lady, who in the words of one reporter “rescued the Reagan presidency,” laid a wreath on his tomb in 2011 to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of his birth. She has endured her own health problems, including a fractured pelvis in 2008 and broken ribs sustained in a fall four years later. Yet while often confined to a wheelchair and in declining health, Nancy Reagan continues to be an advocate for Alzheimer’s research.

  * * *

  The Reagan children remain in the public eye. Patti Davis once again posed nude, this time for More magazine in 2011, at the age of fifty-eight, and continues to make a living as a freelance writer.

  Ron Reagan Jr. lives in Seattle, where he currently works as an advocate for atheism and for stem cell research. In March 2014, he lost his wife of thirty-three years, Doria Palmieri Reagan, to a progressive neuromuscular disease. Ron Reagan continues to be a liberal advocate, often appearing on cable news programs.

  Michael Reagan is a longtime conservative radio talk show host. He called his adoptive half brother, Ron, an “embarrassment” for suggesting in a book that their father suffered from Alzheimer’s disease while serving as president. Michael Reagan’s life has not been easy, as he has been involved in a variety of civil lawsuits.

  The only child of Ronald Reagan to attempt a political career, Maureen, died of melanoma in 2001 at the age of sixty. She is buried at Calvary Catholic Cemetery in Sacramento.

  * * *

  Jodie Foster not only survived the media scrutiny that came with the Reagan assassination attempt but has thrived. After graduating from Yale in 1985, sh
e went on to a distinguished Hollywood career as an actor, director, and producer. Foster has won two Academy Awards for Best Actress, the first in 1989 for her role in The Accused and the second in 1992 for her signature lead role in The Silence of the Lambs. John Hinckley was reportedly outraged when Jodie Foster came out as a lesbian in 2013.

  * * *

  Two thousand thirteen was also the year Margaret Thatcher died, at age eighty-seven. The former British prime minister was elevated to baroness in 1992 and made a member of the House of Lords after a lifetime as a commoner. Her memory began to fail her in 2000, but it was a series of small strokes in 2002 that led her to withdraw from public life. Her taping of Ronald Reagan’s eulogy was the last public speech she ever gave. The ashes of Margaret Hilda Thatcher are interred on the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea in London, next to those of her husband, Denis, who died in 2003.

  * * *

  James Baker III, Ronald Reagan’s chief of staff during his first term in office, is still active as a political adviser at the age of eighty-five, as is his fellow member of the Reagan troika, Edwin Meese. At age eighty-three, Meese lives in Virginia, where he serves on a number of educational boards and public policy think tanks.

  * * *

  Reagan’s third adviser, Michael Deaver, fell prey to pancreatic cancer on August 18, 2007. Deaver left the Reagan White House after the first term, opening a successful Washington lobbying agency. On March 18, 1987, he was convicted of five counts of perjury during an investigation into his use of insider influence and power with his new firm. His crime was perjuring himself to Congress and a federal grand jury. For that, Deaver was sentenced to three years’ probation and fined one hundred thousand dollars. Despite Deaver’s request, Ronald Reagan did not extend the offer of a pardon before leaving office. Nancy Reagan did not attend Deaver’s funeral, but she issued a statement saying that Deaver was “like a son.” Michael Deaver was sixty-nine years old when he passed away.

  Nancy’s feelings were obviously not as warm toward Don Regan. After the White House chief was fired because of her, Regan turned to landscape painting as a way to pass his days. He was content in his artistic endeavors, often spending as much as ten hours a day painting. Don Regan died of cancer on June 10, 2003. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

  * * *

  Ronald Reagan’s first wife, Jane Wyman, lived to be ninety years old. After divorcing Reagan, Wyman went on to have one more husband, bandleader Fred Karger, whom she married and divorced twice. By the time of her death in 2007, she had become such a devout Catholic that she was laid to rest in the habit of the Dominican Sisters religious order. Jane Wyman is buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.

  * * *

  Ronald Reagan’s mother, Nelle Reagan, died on July 25, 1962. She was seventy-nine years old. Her husband, the hard-drinking Jack Reagan, died in 1941 at age fifty-seven. Both are buried at the Calvary Cemetery in East Los Angeles. Ronald Reagan’s lone sibling, his older brother Neil, died in 1996 of heart failure. His body was cremated.

  * * *

  Ronald Reagan’s beloved Rancho del Cielo was sold in 1998. But the property has not been developed or subdivided, nor has the white adobe ranch house been torn down. Rather, the property remains exactly as it was during the time Ronald and Nancy Reagan owned it. A conservative group known as the Young America’s Foundation purchased the land from Nancy Reagan, who lowered her asking price significantly to make the sale possible. A museum in Santa Barbara, California, recounts the history of the ranch, while also displaying a number of items of Reagan memorabilia. There are a limited number of tours of the property, allowing visitors to comprehend firsthand exactly why Ronald Reagan knew such contentment at this mountaintop retreat.

  To this day, there are those who contend that the ghost of Ronald Reagan is present on the property.

  Last Word

  In researching and writing this book, Martin Dugard and I were extremely careful to use only material we could confirm through at least two sources, and even then we tried to be very fair in presenting facts that might put certain individuals in a bad light.

  In the last year of his presidency, Ronald Reagan was aware that some close to him were questioning the way he was running his administration. Critical books by daughter Patti, Donald Regan, former spokesman Larry Speakes, and others apparently wounded Reagan, who valued loyalty. The president, however, kept his own counsel, rarely saying anything in public.

  On May 16, 1988, he finally let loose in a private letter to his friend and adviser John Koehler. That letter is now owned by me and so it is fitting to publish it in this book, thereby giving Ronald Wilson Reagan the last word.

  He deserves it.

  BILL O’REILLY

  Long Island

  New York

  Sources

  Ronald Reagan lived his entire adult life in the public eye. This media scrutiny could be burdensome to him at times, but it worked very well for our purposes, greatly assisting our research process. One particular advantage is the enormous supply of video documenting his acting and political careers. The reader is encouraged to look at the many press conferences, inaugurations, speeches, presidential debates, and myriad other public appearances, and even Saturday Night Live sketches, available online.

  And while this book is about Ronald Reagan, the powerful historical moments that defined the careers of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Alexander Haig, Margaret Thatcher, and so many other towering figures are also available for all to see. Video does not go as deep as letters and diaries, but it does allow the researcher to see the anguish or joy on an individual’s face (Margaret Thatcher’s eulogy of Reagan is heartbreaking in this regard), to hear the rhythm of spoken words, and to know the context in which those words were delivered. Reagan’s “Tear Down This Wall” speech is all the more powerful when watching him deliver those words.

  As with the other books in the Killing series, we consulted a wide variety of sources to tell Ronald Reagan’s story in vivid detail. In addition to video, sources included books, magazine articles, archives, newspapers, FBI and CIA files, online databases, presidential libraries, and transcripts of interviews with people who worked with him in a personal and professional capacity. The Zillow website, for instance, allowed us a tour of the Reagan home in Pacific Palisades, which was recently on the market. It was also very helpful that the Margaret Thatcher Foundation (margaretthatcher.org) and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library (reaganlibrary.gov and reaganfoundation.org) have catalogued not only the letters of these great leaders but also the transcripts and even audiotapes of their discussions, allowing us to listen in.

  The Miller Center at the University of Virginia (millercenter.org) is a treasure trove of information about all things presidential. Reagan’s diary entries and daily White House schedule can be found online at reaganfoundation.org. On a different note, the White House Museum (whitehousemuseum.org) takes readers throughout the entire building, with behind-the-scenes photos of the West Wing and the residence through the years.

  Travel, as always, was vital to adding great descriptive detail, sending us to locations in the United States and around the world that were pivotal to Reagan’s personal and political life. Most pivotal was the day spent at Rancho del Cielo, just north of Santa Barbara. Thanks to Andrew Coffin of the Young America’s Foundation for the lengthy and engaging private tour.

  What follows is a brief list of the many books, magazines, and newspapers that we used in the writing of this book. Much thanks to the world of Google Books, which allows writers to research a library’s worth of great reference works without leaving the home office. These meanderings drew in a number of other historical figures and unchronicled events. Hundreds of books, magazine articles, and newspaper stories were bookmarked and cross-referenced as we wrote. We have chosen to list the ones most crucial to this research. The books include: All the works of Kiron K. Skinner, Annelise Andersen, and Martin Anderson, part
icularly Reagan: A Life in Letters and Reagan, In His Own Hand: The Writings of Ronald Reagan that Reveal His Revolutionary Vision for America; Edmund Morris, Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan; Kitty Kelley, Nancy Reagan: The Unauthorized Biography; Jane Mayer and Doyle McManus, Landslide: The Unmaking of the President, 1984–1988; Nancy Reagan, My Turn: The Memoirs of Nancy Reagan; John R. Barletta, Riding with Reagan: From the White House to the Ranch; Del Quentin Wilber, Rawhide Down: The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan; James W. Clarke, Defining Danger: American Assassins and the New Domestic Terrorists; Peter Schweizer, Reagan’s War: The Epic Story of His Forty-Year Struggle and Final Triumph over Communism; Stephen Vaughn, Ronald Reagan in Hollywood: Movies and Politics; Jimmy Carter, White House Diary; Lou Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime; Michelangelo Capua, William Holden: A Biography; Marc Eliot, Reagan: The Hollywood Years; David Gergen, Eyewitness to Power: The Essence of Leadership; Jonathan Aitken, Margaret Thatcher: Power and Personality; Patti Davis, The Long Goodbye: Memories of My Father; and the very emotional Breaking Points, by Jack and Jo Ann Hinckley.

  We also consulted a broad number of magazines and newspapers marking the passage of Reagan’s life and career through the many stories published in their pages. Listing each of the hundreds of articles would have been unwieldy; instead we’ve given the publications upon which we relied most: the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Time, the National Review, the Washington Post, the Daily Mail (London), the Daily Telegraph (London), the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Boston Globe, the Atlantic, Billboard, Variety, Forbes, and the Pittsburgh Press.

  The authors would also like to thank Roger Ailes, Pat Caddell, Lou Cannon, and Lesley Stahl for their personal insights. In addition, Dr. Jimmy Byron at the Richard Nixon Foundation was particularly helpful.

  Illustration Credits