An American Life

by Ronald Reagan

  Even now, I’m still a little annoyed at how my operation was reported. “The president has cancer,” they wrote. In fact, the president had cancer. Yes, doctors found an object in my body that was cancerous. But they removed it, and, because they couldn’t take any chances that malignant cells might have penetrated beyond the polyp, they also took out a portion of my intestine. But they learned that no cancer cells had entered the rest of my body at all; there was no cancer beyond the polyp, and it was removed. Yes, it was major surgery, but it was a minor situation.

  It happened again barely ten days later, shortly after I left Bethesda.

  For years, I had had a tiny bump on my nose that I thought was a pimple. When I got home from the hospital, it was a little more inflamed than usual. I blamed it on irritation from the tape that had fastened the tube in my nose at the hospital. When Nancy’s dermatologist saw it, he clipped off a little piece, and a biopsy showed that it was a low-level carcinoma—not something to be ignored, but by no means life-threatening.

  Once again, however, some of the papers reported that I had cancer. Such carcinomas, the doctors said, are fairly common, a result of spending too much time under the sun. Nancy had had one removed from her upper lip the year before. For me, it was a result of a lifetime spent outdoors. From the day I started those summers working as a lifeguard, I’d enjoyed being outside and getting a tan; I tanned easily and seldom got sunburned. When I got into pictures, I had to stay tanned. I couldn’t wear makeup, so I was always the first one out under the sun working on a tan. Now, the doctors told me, either I had to stay out of the sun or button up and wear a hat when I did go out. That night I wrote in my diary: “First I have to give up popcorn and now sunbathing.” During my colon operation, the surgeons found evidence of diverticulitis, an inflammation of the intestine that can be easily irritated by small particles of food, and they said: No more peanuts and popcorn. I’d been a popcorn fiend since childhood; if I’d had to, I could have lived on popcorn. I often went into the kitchen and cooked it myself. I didn’t think I could ever give it up, but now I did.

  Three weeks after I left the hospital, the doctors gave their okay for Nancy and me to finish my recuperation at the ranch.

  It was more beautiful than ever at Rancho del Cielo, and for almost three weeks we had picture-perfect weather—too perfect for certain kinds of pictures: These were days when we might have enjoyed a little fog.

  We had always loved our privacy on this piece of ground, but this time out, on our first evening, we turned on a television set and saw ourselves. The networks had found a spot on a mountaintop, up a fire trail, almost three miles away, from which they could aim their cameras at the ranch and keep an eye on us—literally. We didn’t like it very much.

  As I’ve said, aside from Camp David, the ranch was the only place where we had any privacy—where we could just go for a walk and be ordinary people. During the previous four years, we’d come to prize that above almost anything. Now the whole world could watch as we walked around the ranch. The lenses were so powerful that they could even see us through the windows of the house!

  Nancy got back at them, though. When she knew the cameras were looking down on us, she waved a sign with three little words on it, the slogan of her antidrug campaign: JUST SAY NO.

  66

  DURING BUD MCFARLANE’S visit to Bethesda Naval Hospital and in following meetings, he informed me that representatives of Israel had contacted him secretly to pass on information from a group of moderate, politically influential Iranians. These Iranians, described as disenchanted members of Iran’s government, wanted to establish a quiet relationship with U.S. leaders as a prelude to reestablishing formal relations between our countries following the death of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Bud asked my approval to meet with the Iranians to see if it might lead somewhere.

  At that time, there were reports worldwide that the ayatollah was extremely ill. Iran’s protracted war against Iraq had reached a stalemate, the Iranian economy was in bad shape, and intelligence reports indicated that several factions had formed to jockey for control of Iran after the ayatollah’s death. From our point of view, reestablishing a friendly relationship with this strategically located country—while preventing the Soviets from doing the same thing—was very attractive. Under the shah, Iran had played a pivotal role in our efforts to keep an eye on its neighbor, the USSR. We wanted to ensure that the next government in Teheran was moderate and friendly.

  Through quiet diplomacy, we had been trying to end the Iran-Iraq war and reduce instability in the Middle East, which we saw as an invitation to Soviet tampering. We had also spent a great deal of time thinking about possible scenarios for Iran’s future once Khomeini was gone. Before becoming president, I had visited Iran, a short time before the shah was ousted, and had met many ordinary Iranian citizens in Teheran and in the countryside. They were not like the fanatics who orbited around Khomeini. It didn’t surprise me when I was told that there were moderates in the government who wanted to oust the tyrannical theocracy imposed on them by Khomeini and his cohorts. Therefore, Israel’s offer to act as an intermediary and help us open a channel to Iran’s potential future leaders seemed very interesting.

  There was another thing that made Bud’s report exciting: The Israelis said that, to demonstrate their sincerity, the Iranian moderates who had made the overtures had offered to persuade the Hizballah terrorists to release our seven hostages. I don’t recall feeling at the time that the Israeli government’s proposal seemed earth-shattering. We’d already been through some disappointments and seen several promising covert efforts to free the hostages die stillborn because of the problems that always made the Middle East such a challenge. But I wanted to explore any avenue that offered the possibility of getting the hostages out of Lebanon. Okay, I said, we would send a team to Israel to confer with the Israelis who’d offered to act as intermediaries with the Iranian moderates.

  And that’s how the Iran-Contra affair got started.

  After the talks began, the Israelis said the Iranians wanted us to permit Israel to sell a small number of TOW antitank missiles to the moderate Iranians; they said that this would enhance their prestige with the Iranians and demonstrate that they actually had connections with high officials of the United States government. (Until then, nothing had been said about weapons.)

  Israel already had a large stock of TOW missiles in its military stockpile. The Israelis requested our permission to ship some of the missiles to the Iranian moderates; then the Iranians would pay for the missiles, and the United States would replenish Israel’s stock of missiles—and be paid for them. As Bud outlined the plan, the transaction was to be solely between Israel and the Iranian moderates and would not involve our country, although we would have to waive for Israel our policy prohibiting any transfer of American-made weapons to Iran.

  My first reply to this proposal was: No, we don’t do business with countries that sponsor terrorism. I told Bud to turn down the proposal.

  But then the Israeli officials, urging us to go ahead with the deal, sent information which they said showed that the Iranians they were talking to opposed terrorism and had fought against it. We had great respect for Israel’s intelligence abilities relating to matters in the Middle East, and, as a result, we gave their assertions a great deal of credence. I was told that Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres was behind the proposal and that the Israelis involved in the secret contacts with Iran were all close to Peres.

  By this time, news reports were saying that the ayatollah was so ill and feeble that he might not even live out the week. I didn’t need any arm-twisting by Bud to convince me that we ought to try to establish a connection with responsible people who might be the future leaders of Iran. Here was a bona fide opportunity to shape the future in the Middle East, take the initiative, and preempt the Soviets in an important corner of the world. As I’ve said, we wanted moderates running the Iranian government. I would not have entertained the plan for a second i
f the Israelis had said they wanted to sell American weapons to the ayatollah or to his militia, which was operated separately from the Iranian army; it did not seem unreasonable that Iranian moderates who opposed the ayatollah’s authoritarian regime would ask for weapons in order to strengthen their position and enhance their credibility with Iran’s military leaders. Iran’s military forces were to some extent independent of the ayatollah. We knew of many cases where factions fighting for control of a country—often trying to introduce democracy to it—had found it necessary to get the country’s military on their side.

  The truth is, once we had information from Israel that we could trust the people in Iran, I didn’t have to think thirty seconds about saying yes to their proposal. What I was saying yes to was the action of another government, Israel. We wouldn’t be shipping any weapons to the people in Iran. I was told that the few TOW missiles would not significantly change the balance in Iran’s war with Iraq, so I said, okay, we wouldn’t stand in the way of this one small shipment from Israel going through to give credibility to the Israelis, allowing them to prove that they were talking with the highest levels of the U.S. government. But I said there was one thing we wanted: The moderate Iranians had to use their influence with the Hizballah and try to get our hostages freed.

  Their answer was yes, they would—and could—do it. So I agreed to the plan, which called for release of the hostages on a beach north of Tripoli in September. Israel promised to abort the sale and order their delivery aircraft to turn back with the missiles if it became apparent the hostages were not going to be released.

  Only hours after the shipment was made, the Reverend Benjamin Weir, an American who had been held hostage in Beirut for sixteen months, was released. There was a lot of suspense in the White House during the next two days as we waited for the rest of the hostages to be released. We were told their release had been delayed by the terrorists who held them—but that, nevertheless, it was just a matter of time before all six were free. We were disappointed, yes, but we had succeeded in bringing home one of the hostages, and I felt pretty good. Now we all waited for the others to be released.

  It was a busy period at the White House: I was getting ready for my first summit meeting with the new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev; there were important domestic legislative matters to deal with; we were watching events unfold in the Philippines that would lead to the downfall of Ferdinand Marcos; and intelligence people were continuing to get evidence that Libya was financing acts of terrorism—make that wanton murder—in several parts of the world. And the Middle East, seldom quiescent, had heated up again in early October when Israel bombed Arafat’s PLO headquarters in Tunis.

  The attack killed a number of women and children and touched off threats of reprisals from Palestinian radicals against Israel and the United States. Three days later, the Islamic Jihad announced it had executed one of the hostages—CIA man William Buckley—in retaliation for the attack on Tunis. (Later, we determined that Buckley had probably died from the effects of his captivity several months earlier.) And six days after the attack, four heavily armed Palestinians hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in the Mediterranean.

  Once again, we had a crisis in the Middle East in which American lives were hanging in the balance. About one hundred passengers and crewmen, at least half of them Americans, were being held hostage on the ship, and the hijackers announced that they would soon begin murdering them, starting with the Americans, unless Israel released fifty Palestinian prisoners who were held in its jails. We spent much of the next forty-eight hours setting in motion a plan to deploy a crack team of navy Seals to assault the Achille Lauro and rescue the hostages from the terrorists. It was time, I said, to strike back at the terrorists, even though we all agreed that attacking the ship would be a high-risk operation.

  The need for fast action was underlined by the cold-blooded murder of a sixty-nine-year-old American passenger, wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer. After the Palestinians shot him to death, they casually dumped his body at sea.

  Although planning for their mission was nearly complete, the team of navy Seals never got the chance to launch the rescue effort. The hijackers, possibly convinced that they had made their point, directed the cruise ship to Port Said in Egypt, where it had been headed before the seizure. There they surrendered to Egyptian officials. Via diplomatic channels, we urgently requested Egypt to turn the hijackers over to U.S. or Italian authorities for prosecution. But President Mubarak announced that they had already been turned over to representatives of the PLO, who had taken them out of Egypt.

  The following day, I went to Chicago to make two previously scheduled speeches. While I was there, I was told that the hijackers were still in Egypt, and that an Egyptian airliner was being readied to take the hijackers to Tunisia and a heroes’ reception by the PLO. Through intelligence means, we learned exactly when it was scheduled to leave.

  As Air Force One left Chicago for the trip back to Washington, I approved a plan calling for U.S. fighter planes to intercept the airliner and force it to land at a U.S. base in the Mediterranean; we would then either bring the hijackers to America or turn them over to Italy for prosecution. “Of course,” I wrote in my diary as Air Force One headed east, “we will not attack the plane, just signal it to turn and crowd it a bit.”

  This time, I thought, we really had a chance to bring some terrorists to justice. Fortunately, I was right.

  At almost the same time that Air Force One was landing at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, four Navy F-14’s from the aircraft carrier Saratoga intercepted the Egyptian Boeing 737 that was carrying the hijackers and forced it to land at an air base operated jointly by the United States and Italy on Sicily. After that, I was up half the night on the telephone, monitoring the operation’s progress, then its aftermath.

  After the airliner landed, our team of navy Seals, who had been rushed to the base on Sicily, tried to arrest the hijackers so that they could be brought to America for trial. But Italian police officials refused and took custody of them. I made a late-night call to Bettino Craxi, the prime minister of Italy, and, citing Klinghoffer’s American citizenship, asked him to allow us to fly the hijackers to the United States for prosecution. But he said he didn’t have authority to release them; under Italian law, he said, magistrates were independent of the government and the fate of the four men was lawfully in their hands. (I think he was also worried about the political ramifications that he would face if hijackers of an Italian ship were released to us.)

  When we broke the news to the press that the hijackers had been caught, I said I hoped the incident had sent a message to terrorists: You can run, but you can’t hide. In my diary, I wrote, “Americans as well as friends abroad are standing six inches taller. We’re flooded with wires and calls.”

  In late November, after I came home from the Geneva summit, Bud McFarlane told me he wanted to resign as my national security advisor at the end of the year. After thirty years of working for the government, he said he owed it to his family to spend more time at home. Bud was an eighty-hour-a-week man. I told him he could stay as long as he wanted, but I wouldn’t try to talk him out of leaving; I sympathized with his desire to spend more time with his family. As Bud’s successor, I appointed his deputy, John Poindexter, who had been in charge of the successful operation that brought down the terrorists who hijacked the Achille Lauro.

  On December 5, 1985, Bud presided over his last briefing as my national security advisor and John took over. According to my diary, the subject of our meeting that day was “our undercover effort to free our hostages held by terrorists in Lebanon. It’s a complex undertaking with only a few of us in on it.” Two days later, I wrote this in my diary:

  Saturday, Dec. 7—Pearl Harbor Day

  Day opened with “Rex” [our new dog, a year-old King Charles spaniel] on our bed. I then had a meeting with Don R, Cap W, Bud M, John P, George S and McMahon of CIA. This has to do with the complex plan which
could return our five hostages and help some officials in Iran who want to turn that country from its present course and onto a better relationship with us. It calls for Israel selling some weapons to Iran. As they are delivered in installments by air, our hostages will be released. The weapons will go to the moderate leaders in the army who are essential if there is to be a change to a more stable government. We then sell Israel replacements for the delivered weapons. None of this is a gift. The Iranians pay cash for the weapons—so does Israel.

  George Shultz, Cap and Don are opposed. Congress has imposed a law on us that we can’t sell Iran weapons or sell any other country weapons for resale to Iran. George also thinks this violates our policy of not paying off terrorists. I claim the weapons are for those who want to change the government of Iran and no ransom is being paid for the hostages. No direct sale would be made by us to Iran but we would be replacing the weapons sold by Israel.

  We’re at a stalemate. Bud is flying to London where the Israelis and Iranian agents are. Britain has no embargo on selling to Iran. . . . The plan is set for Wednesday.

  Dec. 9

  Bud is back from London but not in the office yet. His meeting with the Iranians did not achieve its purpose which was to persuade them to free our hostages first and then we’d supply the weapons. Their top man said he believed if he took that proposal to the terrorists they would kill our people.

  Dec. 10

  Began the day with a meeting, the Dem and Republican Congressional leadership. Spent most of our time on the Gramm Rudman Hollings bill which later in the day I found had made its way out of the conference. Not as good as we would have wanted but still a bill I’ll have to sign. Some of the time we talked tax reform. I’ve done a lot of telephoning all day and still don’t know whether it will pass. Bud M back from England and his meeting with the Iranian “go between,” [Iranian arms merchant Manucher Ghorbanifar] who turns out to be a devious character. Our plan regarding the hostages is a “no go.”