by H. W. Brands
This understanding became the basis for the hostage release. The Americans were taken to Syria, where they boarded a U.S. Air Force plane that flew them to West Germany. The Israelis freed the Shia prisoners over the space of several weeks, saying the decision had nothing to do with the hijacking.
Reagan discreetly celebrated a victory, offset by sorrow at the loss of Robert Stethem. He placed flowers on Stethem’s grave at Arlington National Cemetery, then flew to Andrews Air Force Base to greet the hostages and their families. “It was a nice homecoming ceremony and a heartwarming one,” he recorded.
But the seven original hostages remained in captivity. And Reagan continued to ask his advisers if there was any progress toward their release.
76
REAGAN’S FATHER-IN-LAW, Dr. Loyal Davis, had long preached the virtues of regular physical exams. As Reagan aged and then became president, he gave the advice the weight it deserved. A colonoscopy in 1984 resulted in the discovery of a polyp, which was excised and found to be noncancerous. A follow-up exam in March 1985 revealed another polyp, and his doctors scheduled a removal procedure for Friday, July 12, at Bethesda Naval Hospital. The president prepared for the procedure by abstaining from solid food and by drinking GoLytely, a laxative that uncomfortably but thoroughly flushed his digestive system.
Reagan’s brush with death in 1981 and the questions that had arisen regarding the chain of command during his surgery sensitized the White House to such matters, and so before being sedated, this time he signed a letter temporarily transferring power, under the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, to Vice President Bush.
The anesthesia took hold, and the surgery went forward. The operating team removed the polyp but in the process discovered another, larger one. Nancy sensed the consequence of the discovery before she heard it. “I sat in the waiting room and talked with Larry Speakes,” she remembered of that afternoon. “Ronnie was alert and fine afterwards, and making jokes as usual. But I noticed that the doctors weren’t laughing. I also had the feeling they were looking at me funny, especially John Hutton”—Reagan’s regular physician—“who seemed to be avoiding my eyes. The doctors suggested that Ronnie lie down, and that I come with them into the other room. Then one of them pulled up a chair and said, ‘We have some bad news for you.’ ”
Since March 1981, Nancy had feared obsessively for her husband’s physical well-being. She had gradually managed to fight back the fear, but now it seized her again. “I felt as if I had been hit by a ten-ton truck,” she said. She insisted that the doctors tell her all they knew.
They explained that they had discovered a mass the size of a golf ball on the side of the colon. It looked cancerous, though they wouldn’t know for sure until the completion of a biopsy. But it had to be removed in any event, lest it turn cancerous. They also had to test Reagan’s other organs to see if they showed signs of cancer.
“It was all so sudden I had trouble believing it,” she recounted. She listened while Dr. Hutton explained the options. She and Reagan could proceed to Camp David for the weekend, as they had planned, and return Monday to Bethesda for surgery. Or they could wait for ten days, until a scheduled visit by Chinese president Li had been completed. Or they could hold Reagan in the hospital and remove the polyp the next day.
Nancy gave the first two options scarcely a thought. “All I cared about was getting the operation over with as quickly as possible,” she said. “Now that we knew about the polyp, I couldn’t stand the prospect of letting it stay in Ronnie any longer than we had to.”
She took matters into her own hands. “I want to be the one to tell him,” she said to the doctors. “And please, when we go in to see him, don’t mention cancer. We don’t know for sure that it is cancer, and there’s no point in using that word unless we’re positive.”
She knew her husband hadn’t liked the presurgery preparation, especially the GoLytely flush. And so as she explained the need for a second procedure, she cast her argument in those terms. “As long as we’re here, why don’t we do it tomorrow and get it over with? Because if we come back next week, you’ll have to drink that Go Lightly [sic] all over again.”
Whether because he hated GoLytely or because he loved his wife, or simply because he wanted to get the operation over with, Reagan assented. The surgery was scheduled for the next morning.
“NANCY REAGAN STAMMERS slightly when she is upset,” Don Regan recalled. “And her voice was unsteady when she called me from Bethesda Naval Hospital.” Regan remembered the sequence of decisions regarding Reagan’s care differently than Nancy did. “In illness of this kind speedy treatment is essential, and so I was concerned—apprehensive would be a better word—when she told me that the operation might be delayed for a day and a half. ‘I’m reading something into this,’ I said, speaking cautiously because we were on the telephone. ‘Am I on firm ground in doing it?’
“ ‘Yes, possibly,’ the first lady replied.”
Nancy later asserted that her careful language reflected the gravity of her husband’s case. “I meant, of course, that Ronnie’s condition was probably more serious than I was willing to say over the phone.”
Regan thought he heard spousal concern but something else as well in her evasive answer. “I feared two things—first, that President Reagan’s condition was more serious than his wife had been able to tell me over the telephone, and second, that the first lady was choosing the date for surgery in consultation with her astrologer. Of the two possibilities the second seemed more likely. Virtually every major move and decision the Reagans made during my time as White House chief of staff was cleared in advance with a woman in San Francisco”—Regan did not then know Joan Quigley’s name—“who drew up horoscopes to make certain that the planets were in a favorable alignment for the enterprise.” Regan went on: “She had become such a factor in my work, and in the highest affairs of the nation, that at one point I kept a color-coded calendar on my desk (numerals highlighted in green ink for ‘good’ days, red for ‘bad’ days, yellow for ‘iffy’ days) as an aid to remembering when it was propitious to move the president of the United States from one place to another, or schedule him to speak in public, or commence negotiations with a foreign power.”
In this case Nancy’s astrologer seemed to be influencing the president’s medical treatment. “On the telephone from Bethesda, Mrs. Reagan continued to suggest that the removal of the polyp would be delayed. ‘Tell Larry’ ”—Speakes—“ ‘to say that the president will have surgery next week,’ she said. It was now Friday afternoon. ‘Larry can say the polyp was larger than expected, but he mustn’t say a word more than that.’ ”
Regan sympathized with Nancy but questioned her judgment. “Her tone was insistent and tinged with anxiety. This was not the moment to dispute the wishes of a worried wife. But I did not altogether agree with the advice she was giving me. The risks of withholding the smallest part of this story from the media and thereby creating the suspicion of a cover-up were obvious. So was the danger of making a statement about the timing of the operation that might have to be withdrawn.”
Regan called Speakes at the hospital and cautioned him to tell all he knew but nothing more. “No dissimulation. And no alarms.”
A short while later he spoke to the senior physician on the case and received his first professional briefing. The polyp had to come out, and the president would be hospitalized for a week to ten days.
By Regan’s recollection, it was Reagan who decided on surgery the next day. “Why wait?” the president asked the doctors. “Do the tests and go ahead with the operation. I can function just as well in the hospital as at home.”
The surgery was straightforward, and the growth was removed, along with a short section of the president’s colon. The more troublesome question was whether the cancer, if any, had spread. A biopsy revealed that the mass was indeed cancerous, but additional tests indicated that the cancer had not spread. Reagan required no chemotherapy or other continuing treatment, although he would ne
ed regular tests to see that the cancer had not recurred.
IN HIS DAYS as chief of staff, James Baker had kept in his files a document titled “Rumsfeld’s Rules.” Donald Rumsfeld had been Gerald Ford’s chief of staff, and he shared with Baker what he had learned in the job. Rumsfeld’s first rule was “Don’t play President.” Twelve pages of additional rules followed, culminating in the last: “Don’t play President.” Baker himself added his own précis of what a chief of staff must never forget: “Nobody elected you.”
If Don Regan ever read Rumsfeld’s rules or heard Baker’s version, he didn’t take the lesson. Following Reagan’s surgery, the CEO in Regan grew increasingly evident. “President Reagan’s chief of staff, Donald T. Regan, is the dominant figure in White House plans for operating the government while Mr. Reagan recovers from abdominal surgery, White House aides said today,” the New York Times reported on July 15. “The aides said Mr. Regan’s role has extended beyond what had already become an increasingly powerful one in running White House operations.” The front-page article was accompanied by two photographs, one of Reagan and Nancy in his hospital room, the other of Regan at work.
The former photograph pleased Nancy; the latter did not. Nor did she appreciate the lionization of Regan in the rest of the article. “White House aides said Mr. Regan, who is 66 years old, is emerging as one of the most powerful chiefs of staff in years, and Mr. Reagan’s illness has placed the chief of staff squarely in the center of decision-making on domestic and foreign policy.” The recent developments consolidated a trend that had been under way since Regan arrived at the White House, the article said. “Even before the illness, Mr. Regan made it plain to the senior White House staff and administration officials that he, and he alone, largely controlled access to Mr. Reagan.” With each passing day, Regan’s grip on the machinery of the administration grew firmer. “Everyone works for Regan,” one unnamed White House aide said.
Nancy resented the general tone of the piece as disrespectful to her husband. But the part that galled her most was a sentence that made it sound as though she herself were subordinate to the chief of staff: “Nancy Reagan, the president’s wife, has come to rely increasingly on Mr. Regan, a factor that further solidifies his position.”
“For the first few months we got along fine,” Nancy wrote of Regan, eliding her anger over the Bitburg affair. “It wasn’t until July 1985, when Ronnie had his cancer operation, that Don and I had our first run-in. Within forty-eight hours of the surgery, Don wanted to bring in George Bush and Bud McFarlane to meet with the president. I thought that was much too soon—and so did the doctors. But Don thought it was more important for Ronnie to resume his schedule of appointments. ‘Let’s wait,’ I told Don. ‘Remember, he’s just had major surgery. I know he’s the president, but don’t forget that he’s also a patient like any other patient. If you push him too hard, he could have a relapse.’ ”
Nancy took pains to puncture what she saw as Regan’s pretensions. “Don came out to Bethesda every day, and he wanted to make the trip by helicopter,” she recounted. “That seemed wrong to me. I thought it was inappropriate for anyone other than the president to use the helicopter except in an emergency. The drive to the hospital took about forty-five minutes, and everybody else who came traveled by car. I must have had some inkling, even then, of what increasingly bothered me about Don Regan, which was that he often acted as if he were president.”
Regan thought Nancy was being overly protective. He perceived the president as far sturdier than the vulnerable invalid of her imagination. Reagan greeted Regan and Fred Fielding, the White House counsel, with a joke when they entered the postoperative recovery room to see if he was ready to reassume the authority he had again surrendered to George Bush during his surgery. “The Russians have dropped the bomb!” Reagan said, referring to the sober expressions on Regan’s and Fielding’s faces. Regan assured the president that they were simply concerned for his health. Tentatively, Regan handed the president the required letter. “Can you read?” Regan asked.
“Let me see that thing,” Reagan said, snatching the letter. He held it at arm’s length, as he didn’t have his reading glasses handy.
“Do you understand it?” Regan asked.
“Yup,” Reagan said. “I’ll sign it now.” He wrote his name with a flourish.
“Then, in an impressive display of alertness,” Regan continued, “he took up where he had left off before he went under the anesthetic.” Reagan’s last words had been criticism of Bob Dole for not supporting the administration on the budget. “What’s the matter with Bob Dole?” Reagan resumed. “He’s got to be a leader on this budget.” Regan had rarely seen him sharper. “He seemed so strong and clear-minded that I took another minute or two to tell him that all was calm on the international scene. He listened, then thought of something that made his cheerful expression change. ‘Any word on the hostages?’ he asked.”
After some discussion of the hostages, Reagan demanded, “How long do I have to stay here?” Reagan’s brother, Neil, coincidentally had recently undergone surgery similar to the president’s and been released from the hospital after just a few days. “I want to get out of here soon, Don,” Reagan said. “See what you can do.”
“Mr. President, forget it,” Regan said. “Just follow your doctors’ orders.”
Though Regan refused to abet Reagan’s early release, the president’s tone and demeanor made him think he could stand occasional visitors, including Bush and McFarlane. The vice president had been at his summer home in Maine when Reagan’s routine procedure turned more serious, and he had flown straight to Washington. He wished to pay his respects to the president, and Regan thought he ought to be allowed to. The visit could take only minutes. McFarlane also wanted a moment of the president’s time. The national security adviser said he needed to tell the president something important. Regan put Bush and McFarlane on the president’s schedule.
Nancy was outraged when she learned of it. “Why are you doing this?” she demanded of Regan by phone. “It’s too much. He needs rest.” Regan explained his thinking. She was not persuaded. She took the opportunity to express her displeasure at his plan to use the presidential helicopter for the trip from the White House to Bethesda. Regan replied that the helicopter would conserve valuable time. She brushed his answer away. She said the president’s helicopter was for the president.
Regan retreated tentatively. He said he would consult with the presi dent’s doctors before allowing the visit by Bush and McFarlane. And he would reconsider the use of Air Force Two.
He had scarcely put down the phone when he received a call from Edward Hickey, who handled White House transportation and had known the Reagans for years. “I’d cancel the helicopter if I were you, Don,” he said. “The first lady’s staff are talking about it.”
“Why should they talk about it?” Regan responded. “I’m just trying to save time. I’ve got to go out there seven days a week and it’s forty minutes by car each way. That’s more than ten hours down the drain in a single week.”
“That would be good reason to fly instead of drive under normal circumstances,” Hickey said. “But right now circumstances aren’t normal. The buzzards are out, Don. Be careful what you’re doing.”
Regan later recalled being surprised at this comment. He had grown used to gossip around the West Wing, though he didn’t like it. But gossip from the East Wing, the realm of the First Lady, was something he hadn’t expected. He liked it even less. Yet he sensed that it might be more troublesome than the West Wing whispers.
“Okay,” he told Hickey. “Cancel the damn helicopter.”
77
BEFORE HE BECAME president, Reagan derided the potential of personal diplomacy, especially with leaders of communist countries. The godless commissars were immune to charm, humor, persuasion, or appeals to a shared humanity; they responded only to force or its threat.
But as president, Reagan took a different view. He was supremely confident o
f his own ability to find common ground with foreign counterparts, even the leaders of the Soviet Union. He wanted to get into a room with Brezhnev, but the longtime Kremlin boss ignored his invitation to a summit and then died. Andropov and Chernenko shortly followed him to the grave.
Then Gorbachev came along, and Reagan thought he would finally get his wish. Gorbachev responded cautiously at first to Reagan’s suggestion of a personal meeting, but as he gained his footing with the Politburo, he indicated that a summit would indeed make sense. Date and location would have to be determined, but the principle of a face-to-face meeting was one he could embrace.
THE POSSIBILITY OF a summit triggered a battle within the American foreign policy establishment. Henry Kissinger visited the White House to urge Reagan to move slowly. An opportunity existed, the co-architect of détente declared, but it must be handled very carefully. “Let it mature,” Kissinger said. Zbigniew Brzezinski warned against Soviet tricks at a summit. “They will spring a surprise so as to put the president on the defensive,” Brzezinski told Don Regan. “This is a contest.” The president needed to be thoroughly prepared.
The battle raged most heatedly inside the administration. The hard-line anticommunist wing, headquartered in the Defense Department and the CIA, was as opposed to summitry as Reagan once had been. “Caspar Weinberger was utterly convinced that there was no potential benefit in negotiating anything with the Soviet leaders and that most negotiations were dangerous traps,” Jack Matlock recalled. Matlock was a Soviet expert from the foreign service who had been pulled from the diplomatic ranks to head the National Security Council’s Soviet and European division. He became Reagan’s right-hand man in dealing with the Kremlin. He found Weinberger’s opposition to summitry irksome but bureaucratically predictable. The business of the Pentagon was weapons development and procurement, not diplomacy and negotiation; the Pentagon’s chief could be expected to promote the former and oppose the latter. But Matlock thought Weinberger pushed the opposition too far, for even after Reagan made clear he wanted to meet with Gorbachev, Weinberger resorted to leaks that undermined and implicitly insulted the president. Matlock thought Reagan thought so too, though Reagan rose above the issue. “When leaks that represented his ideas turned up in the press, most often in the Washington Times or in comments by columnists and television pundits Rowland Evans and Robert Novak,” Matlock said of Weinberger, “Reagan was annoyed, sometimes even infuriated, but he usually tolerated them. He disliked direct confrontation with cabinet members, particularly old friends like Weinberger. He also understood that he would need the acquiescence, if not the active support, of the hardliners in his administration if he was to implement a positive agenda with the Soviet Union.”