Three Days in Moscow

by Bret Baier

  In early 1987, Don Regan was on the ropes, and relations had deteriorated such that the president had had no choice but to ask for his resignation. In the months after Reykjavík, Regan had continued to alienate everyone with his imperious grip on power. The thing that bothered Reagan loyalists most was the way Regan’s manner was contaminating the president’s optimistic, open image and damaging his relationships with members of Congress. Worse, he didn’t seem to care about protecting the president, and he was recklessly burnishing his own image at the president’s expense. Aides were horrified when a New York Times article quoted Regan saying after Reykjavík, “Some of us are like a shovel brigade that follow a parade down Main Street cleaning up.”

  What was he talking about? Was he saying he’d had to clean up Reagan’s messes? It sure sounded like it.

  Aides thought that Regan took advantage of the president’s even-tempered leadership style by being a brutal enforcer behind his back, setting up a cabal of his own loyalists and cutting others off from access to Reagan. He was mean and abusive, in a way that was so different from Reagan that it left aides feeling gobsmacked.

  “He chewed me out all the time,” Friedersdorf said. “He hung up the telephone, slammed the receiver down when I’d give him a vote count. I was honest with him, ‘I don’t have the votes on that’—bam. So I knew right then. I’ve agreed to stay for a year, I’m going to do it, I’m not going to walk out. I’ve never walked out of any job in my life, but this administration is not going to work.” Similar stories abounded, leaking out to the press, whose reporters were delighted to play up the anti–Don Regan narrative.

  With two years remaining in office, Soviet relations on life support, Democrats winning both houses of Congress in the 1986 election, the growing pressure of Iran-Contra, and a physical setback from prostate surgery in January, it was the most critical period of Reagan’s presidency. His grand agenda seemed to be in a holding pattern, yet the White House was a daily pressure cooker. Reagan struggled to stay above the fray and keep his spirits high and his agenda moving, but he was bruised by the daily hammering he was taking in the press over Iran-Contra. And when he learned that his own staff was in a near mutiny over Regan, he was stunned.

  There was no shortage of people angling for Don Regan’s ouster, but his biggest mistake may have been alienating Nancy. Some people have portrayed Nancy as having a personal grievance against him—and yes, he did once hang up the phone on her—but according to the first lady, she wasn’t the only one with a problem. In fact, when staffers first started coming to Nancy with their complaints about Regan, she had repeatedly demurred, saying “What are you telling me for? You ought to be telling my husband.” But staffers were afraid to tell Reagan, even if they could get in to see him, so Nancy got an earful. “In spite of what’s been said or written, I did not mastermind a plot to get rid of Don Regan,” she wrote, trying to set the record straight in her memoir. “There was no cabal. I wasn’t in cahoots with anybody to bring about his downfall. By the end of 1986, half of Washington wanted him out.”

  Reagan was resistant—Nancy thought it was because he never saw the “other” side of his chief of staff; Regan was always jovial and complimentary around the president, a fellow Irishman who connected personally. But Nancy kept up the pressure, and other advisors soon joined her. If there was one thing Reagan couldn’t abide, it was the idea that the people working for him suffered from abuse and low morale. Eventually, he came to see that Regan had to go, and he put in the call to Baker.

  At the end, it was messy. Frank Carlucci, who was now national security advisor (having replaced John Poindexter, who had been forced to resign because of his role in Iran-Contra), was surprised to see a news report on CNN that Regan was out and was being replaced by Baker. Someone had prematurely leaked it to the media. He picked up the phone and called the president at the residence.

  “Mr. President, this is all out on TV,” he said.

  “Oh, oh.”

  “Have you said anything to Don Regan?”

  “No,” admitted Reagan. “I have not.”

  “Let me see what I can do.” Carlucci went to Regan’s office and delivered the news, receiving the expected eruption. “Don Regan just exploded,” Carlucci said. “ ‘God damn it! I’ve been his chief of staff, I’ve been loyal’—I can’t remember all the things he said. I went scurrying back to my office. I told the president, ‘You’re going to have to call him.’ ”

  But when Carlucci went back to Regan’s office in time for the call, Regan was threatening not to take it. “For God’s sake, Don,” Carlucci cried. “He’s the president. You’ve got to take the call.” So he did—“Yes, Mr. President. Yes, Mr. President. Goodbye, Mr. President.” He hung up the phone and scribbled a terse note: “I resign as Chief of Staff to the President of the United States.”

  Reagan was kinder and more gracious. In a lovely note to Regan he thanked him for his service and wished him the best. “Whether on the deck of your beloved boat or on the fairway; in the spirit of our forefathers, may the sun shine warm upon your face, the wind be always at your back and may God hold you in the hollow of his hand.”

  After Baker agreed to step in, he started to sweat. He’d never “managed” anything in his life—he’d only been a US senator. He called Ken Duberstein, who’d run legislative affairs early in Reagan’s administration but had returned to private life. “Help,” he pleaded. “Will you come back to the White House as my deputy?”

  Duberstein hesitated. “Howard, if you do a White House tour once, it’s an honor. If you do it a second time, you’re a glutton for punishment.” He wasn’t eager to return. He’d just bought a new house and was making money for the first time in his life. Reagan’s poll numbers were terrible. “He was viewed not simply as a lame duck with two years to go but as a virtual dead duck,” Duberstein recalled. So he said no.

  Two days later, while Duberstein was giving a speech, he was handed a note. Reagan’s assistant, Kathy Osborne, was holding on the line. When he got to the phone, she said, “The president would like to see you at 2:00 this afternoon.”

  When he walked into the Oval Office, Reagan got up from behind his desk, greeted him, and said, “Howard has told me all the reasons why you can’t come back. I just want you to know one thing. Nancy and I want you to come home for the last two years of the administration.”

  “Of course I said yes,” Duberstein said. “And it was the best two years of my professional life.”

  Reagan’s new press spokesman, Marlin Fitzwater, had been Regan’s spokesman at the Treasury in the first year of the administration—happier times for Regan. Fitzwater had gone on to fill that role for Vice President Bush. It had been Regan’s idea to appoint him to replace Larry Speakes at the White House early in 1987. Speakes had been the White House spokesman since James Brady was shot in the assassination attempt. Many reporters disliked Speakes, calling him a bully who would not hesitate to cut a reporter’s access if he was displeased. Reporters such as Chris Wallace found themselves being told, “You’re out of business.” Fitzwater was a welcome relief. With his deprecating sense of humor, sharp mind, and relative openness, he had a much better relationship with the press. “I liked everybody, and I didn’t have any trouble,” he said. “I found it easy to work with the press if they thought I was a straight shooter and honest. It didn’t seem like a very high standard to me.”

  An interesting note: as a sign of his abiding respect for James Brady, who had been critically injured in the assassination attempt, along with hoping that he would one day return, Reagan allowed him to retain his title of press secretary; Speakes was acting press secretary for almost six years, and when Fitzwater came on board, he told the president he was fine with that designation as well.

  Fitzwater had a kinder take on Don Regan’s troubles: “Regan just could not be a staff person. He spent too long in charge of Merrill Lynch and the Treasury Department. He couldn’t be number two.” Actually, Fitzwater almost l
ost his job just as he was getting started because Baker wanted to bring in his longtime press secretary, Thomas Griscom. Reagan balked—he wanted to keep Fitzwater. So Griscom became communications director.

  But it was a bumpy first year for Fitzwater because he landed right in the Iran-Contra mess. In late 1986, Reagan had appointed a commission, led by former senator John Tower, along with former secretary of state Ed Muskie, and former national security advisor Brent Scowcroft, to get to the bottom of what had happened. The Tower Commission published its report on February 26. Its criticism of Regan was scathing, and perhaps it wasn’t pure coincidence that Regan’s ouster occurred the following day. Although the president was exonerated from having played a direct role, his lax managerial style was criticized. The report portrayed him as being distant from the center of decision making, neatly fitting into the opposition’s narrative about Reagan—that he wasn’t running the store.

  The press was out for blood, and Reagan needed to address the matter head-on. At 9:00 P.M. on March 4, he spoke from the Oval Office, accepting full responsibility for Iran-Contra, trying to be as frank as he could be, knowing it would not be enough for some people—knowing, too, that his explanation was awkward and did not put him in the best light: “A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.” With that, the story became not what Reagan had known but why he hadn’t known it. It was an embarrassing reckoning, but he was determined to be strong and reinforce a key principle that he had lived by for most of his life:

  Now, what should happen when you make a mistake is this: You take your knocks, you learn your lessons, and then you move on. That’s the healthiest way to deal with a problem. This in no way diminishes the importance of the other continuing investigations, but the business of our country and our people must proceed. I’ve gotten this message from Republicans and Democrats in Congress, from allies around the world, and—if we’re reading the signals right—even from the Soviets. And of course, I’ve heard the message from you, the American people. You know, by the time you reach my age, you’ve made plenty of mistakes. And if you’ve lived your life properly—so, you learn. You put things in perspective. You pull your energies together. You change. You go forward.

  Reagan needed a way to regain his momentum, to show the nation that he was still the man they knew and trusted. And he needed to get back on track with the Soviets. Despite the stigma of defeat that had surrounded Reykjavík, a critical foundation had been laid on the agreements the two sides were willing to make, and those were substantial.

  Gorbachev knew it, too. “As difficult as it is to do business with the United States, we are doomed to do it. We have no choice,” he told the Politburo in February as he sought their agreement on his latest proposal: a plan to eliminate all intermediate-range missiles. This newly crafted Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty would table the discussions at Reykjavík and allow for a fresh start. In the coming months, Shultz would shuttle back and forth, immersing himself in the effort to come to a common framework for an INF Treaty that could be the basis for the Washington summit, still unscheduled.

  Like Reagan in America, Gorbachev was plagued by his own burdens, which had little to do with the peace process. His ambition was nothing less than a complete reorganization of the Soviet system. That meant implementing perestroika, easing the grip of a dominating central control in favor of a more flexible, market-driven economy; loosening Soviet control of Eastern Europe; and introducing glasnost, a policy of openness and freedom of expression. All those policies were met with savage opposition, and even those who nominally supported Gorbachev’s efforts were worried that he was moving too far too fast.

  By the spring, as their representatives labored on the INF Treaty, Reagan and Gorbachev had started reaching out to each other again, resuming their correspondence. On April 10, Reagan wrote Gorbachev that “it has been a long time since you and I last communicated directly,” reminding him, “Together we can make the difference in the future course of world events. Let us pray that you and I can continue our dialogue so that the future will be one of peace and prosperity for both our nations and for the world.”

  Gorbachev responded in a similar spirit, even noting that the Soviet position on SDI had become less rigid. Unfortunately, he complained, the Americans were not being at all flexible, and that would be necessary in order to reach a final agreement.

  For the time being, Reagan was relying on the diplomats to pave the way to a Washington summit. Meanwhile, he would continue to keep the dialogue with Gorbachev going. But if anyone were to accuse him of softening his stance on the Soviets, he had another act in store: in the summer he would challenge Gorbachev on the most symbolic platform of all.

  REAGAN WAS STILL HAUNTED by the specter of the Berlin Wall, which he had visited almost a decade earlier. Throughout all of his conversations with Gorbachev, the wall had been a silent backdrop, a proof of the error of Communist ways. The previous year, at a news conference following the twenty-fifth anniversary of the construction of the wall, he said it was clearly an issue he wanted to raise with Gorbachev. “Isn’t it strange,” he mused to reporters, “that all of these situations where other people build walls to keep an enemy out, and there’s only one part of the world and one philosophy where they have to build walls to keep their people in? Maybe they’re going to realize that there’s something wrong with that soon.”

  In June 1987, he had an opportunity when he was invited to visit West Berlin as one leg of a ten-day trip to Europe. The visit, which would follow an economic summit in Venice and an audience with the pope, would mark the occasion of Berlin’s 750th anniversary. It was squeezed into a tight schedule, an in-and-out landing that would last only a couple of hours. Reagan proposed to use the occasion to give a speech at the Brandenburg Gate, a highly symbolic location. The gate stood in East Berlin at the wall, cut off from the West but rising above the graffiti-splattered wall. There was some debate about Reagan giving his speech there. West German officials were worried that it might seem overly provocative, might anger Gorbachev. The West German Foreign Ministry made a direct appeal to the White House, arguing against it.

  Here again was that old complicity, grounded in fear, that had kept the wall standing for more than twenty-five years. German chancellor Helmut Kohl might speak oratorically about the wall, as he did on the twenty-fifth anniversary, stating that “we will never and can never get used to this monument of inhumanity,” but his criticism was muted by the desire to avoid conflict with the Soviet Union. His administration, it seemed, had learned to live with the wall. Reagan felt differently. A speech at the Brandenburg Gate was just the kind of powerful visual he loved. And the speech would be a golden opportunity to articulate on a world stage the violation of human rights that the wall represented.

  Assigned to work on the speech was Peter Robinson, a young speechwriter who was a dedicated worker in the vineyard of presidential prose. He’d penned dozens of speeches for all occasions, but he didn’t yet have any “major” speeches under his belt—that is, speeches that would make it into the history books. All speechwriters dream of hitting this mark, although it isn’t always clear when an everyday speech might suddenly soar, as evidenced by Anthony Dolan’s “Evil Empire” address. In April, Dolan, now the head of speechwriting, assigned the Brandenburg Gate speech to Robinson.

  Robinson didn’t know much about what the speech should contain. He’d received only the vaguest of instructions. To get a personal sense of the atmospherics, he joined an advance team visiting Berlin in April. There he found himself quickly steeped in the strange aura of freedom versus bondage. In his book about his White House service, How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life, he recounted his first impression of the wall in a flyover of the city: “From the air, the wall seemed less to cut one city in two than to separate two different modes of existence. On one side lay
movement, color, modern architecture, crowded sidewalks, traffic. On the other lay a kind of void.” The East Berlin side of the wall, he wrote, “was lined with guard posts, dog runs, and row upon row of barbed wire.” He was struck by the ugliness of it.

  However, when he met with John Kornblum, the top US diplomat in Berlin, he found the official attitude negative and suspicious. Kornblum lectured Robinson about the tone of the speech. He was anxious not to ruffle feathers, and most of all, he cautioned, don’t say anything about the wall! He implied that the wall wasn’t a big deal anymore, just a fact of life that everyone was quite accustomed to. Why draw attention to it and risk inflaming people?

  But wandering around the city, Robinson found the truth to be quite different. People were upset by the wall. He heard stories of families separated for two decades, of the ominous specter of the armed soldiers planted atop the barrier every day, their orders being to “shoot to kill” anyone who attempted to cross. He heard people say that if Gorbachev were really so interested in glasnost and perestroika, he should do away with the wall. The image took root in Robinson’s imagination—it was “a sudden illumination, almost a detonation,” he said. He knew he’d found the core idea for his speech: an end to the wall.

  When he returned to Washington, Robinson told Dolan about his idea of centering the speech around taking down the wall. Dolan liked it. They then presented it to Tom Griscom. Robinson recalled Griscom saying “The two of you thought you’d have to work real hard to keep me from saying no. But when you told me about the trip, particularly this point of learning from some Germans just how much they hate the wall, I thought to myself, ‘You know, calling for the wall to be torn down—it just might work.’ ”

  Robinson set to work on drafts, fighting a resistant NSC and State Department, which showered him with edits. Finally, a draft was ready to show the president.