Killing Reagan

by Bill O'Reilly

  But there is another reason Reagan is adopting a tone of neutrality in the Falklands situation. The Soviet Union is courting Galtieri by threatening to join Argentina in the conflict against the British. Reagan does not want this to happen, so he is cautious in his public statements.

  Secretary of State Haig’s report from London is flashed to the White House Situation Room shortly after the Reagans finish lunch in Barbados. “The Prime Minister has the bit in her teeth, owing to the politics of a unified nation and an angry parliament,” Haig reports. “She is clearly prepared to use force.”

  Reagan spends part of the afternoon thinking of his response. He finally writes back to Haig just before dusk. The larger problem facing the president is not the Falklands crisis but that he is still in the process of formulating his own foreign policy. In his one year in office there have been stirrings of unrest in Poland, delicate communiqués with the Soviet leadership, and an escalating crisis between Israel and Lebanon that now threatens to blossom into full-scale war.

  “The report of your discussions in London makes clear how difficult it will be to foster a compromise that gives Maggie enough to carry on, and at the same time meets the test of ‘equity’ with our Latin neighbors,” Reagan responds to Haig. “There isn’t much room for maneuver in the British position.”

  Then, knowing his words mean war, Ronald Reagan gets dressed for happy hour.

  * * *

  On April 25, less than three weeks after sailing from England, British Special Forces and Royal Marines retake South Georgia Island.5 The weather is terrible, a combination of force-ten gales and driving snow. Two British helicopters crash while attempting to rescue a group of commandos stranded on a glacier in the severe weather, and initial reports back to London indicate the loss of seventeen British soldiers. Thatcher weeps at the news, only to be told hours later that all the men survived. South Georgia Island is taken without a single casualty. “Rejoice!” she urges the citizens of Great Britain as the news breaks. “Just rejoice!”

  But the Argentines are resolute. They still hold the islands’ main city, Stanley, even as a full-scale British invasion looms. Argentine president Galtieri’s nation, like Great Britain, is engulfed in patriotic fervor. Galtieri, the silver-haired former combat engineer, refuses to back down. He’s been in office just four months, and this test of his administration will be either his greatest triumph or his political undoing.

  On April 30 the British declare a “total exclusion zone” around the Falklands. Any vessel found within a two-hundred-nautical-mile radius around the islands will be considered a ship of war and will be subject to immediate attack. Three days later, with Margaret Thatcher’s complete approval, the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano is sunk by a British torpedo. Its two escort vessels refuse to stay and rescue the survivors, cowardly fleeing back to the mainland. Three hundred twenty-three sailors are sent to their graves in the icy South Atlantic waters.

  Two days after the Belgrano is sunk, Argentina gets its revenge. The HMS Sheffield is part of a British task force patrolling seventy miles off the Falklands. “Shiny Sheff,” as it is known for its highly polished stainless-steel fittings, is a state-of-the-art Type 42 destroyer.

  At 7:50 a.m. on May 4, an Argentine patrol aircraft picks up the Sheffield on its radar. Two hours later, a pair of Super Etendard Argentine fighter jets take off from an air force base at the tip of South America. With French-made Exocet antiship missiles affixed to the bottom of their fuselages, the jets home in on the unsuspecting Sheffield.

  Argentine pilots Lt. Armando Mayora and Lt. Cmdr. Augusto Bedacarratz use caution when approaching the ship, flying just a few feet above the ocean to avoid being detected.

  Despite their stealth, radar operators on board the aircraft carrier HMS Invincible pick up the Etendards when the planes are 180 miles away. But the British fleet has undergone a number of false alarms in the past few days, thinking they see planes where none exists. The officer in charge of Invincible’s electronics ignores the sighting, telling his radar operators that they are “chasing rabbits.” No warning is sent to Sheffield or any other British vessel in the vicinity.

  On board the Sheffield, the mood is calm. The crew is not at battle stations, and the ship’s officers are chatting with their superiors in London via satellite phone. The electromagnetic effects of the phone interfere with the ship’s Type 965 radar, making it all but useless.

  So it is that both Argentine planes fly within twelve miles of the Sheffield before launching their Exocets. Pilots Mayora and Bedacarratz fire their missiles and then split up to avoid detection. The Exocets’ rocket propellant ignites both missiles one second after launch. The missiles drop to just six feet above the Atlantic and race toward the unsuspecting ship at seven hundred miles per hour.

  “The sea was very calm,” British sublieutenant Steve Iacovou will later remember. “We were looking out to sea and I thought it looked like a torpedo was on its way because the sea was shimmering and shaking.”

  With no time to undertake defensive measures, the crew takes cover. “Missile attack. Hit the deck!” is quickly broadcast throughout the ship.

  One Exocet lands harmlessly in the sea.

  The other does not.

  The missile pierces the Sheffield’s hull on the starboard side. Quickly, a fifteen-foot hole opens up and the seawater pours in. Luckily for the men of the Sheffield, the missile is a dud, and the 165-kilogram warhead does not explode. However, flames from the rocket propellant ignite everything in the Exocet’s path. Diesel fuel stored in the Forward Auxiliary Machine Room detonates, sending thick clouds of acrid black smoke throughout the vessel. The heat is so intense that all efforts to fight the fire are in vain. The blaze rages unabated, asphyxiating and burning all those trapped belowdecks. Amazingly, the Sheffield remains afloat, and the crew struggles to guide her into port. The order to abandon ship is given six days later, and the empty ship is towed into port. The Sheffield becomes the first British vessel sunk in combat since World War II.

  “Twenty officers and ratings [enlisted men] died,” the official report will read. “Some personnel, in the Galley area, were killed on impact.”

  This is the message that is read aloud to the House of Commons at 10:56 p.m. on May 4. Margaret Thatcher sits with her head bowed as British defense secretary John Nott tells the members of Parliament the sad news. The one thing she has feared more than any other was the loss of a ship. Now that has come to pass.

  The prime minister does not reveal her emotions until she returns to 10 Downing Street, whereupon she breaks down. Margaret Thatcher weeps. Going to war was easy. But knowing that her decisions cost young men their lives, and that mothers throughout Great Britain are now learning the news that they have lost a son, is devastating. Her own boy, twenty-two-year-old Mark, and her husband, Denis, comfort Thatcher in the sitting room at 10 Downing Street as she sobs.6

  “What are you making all this fuss for?” Denis asks bluntly as the prime minister’s crying continues. He is not always fond of being a politician’s spouse, having suffered a nervous breakdown and abandoned his wife for two months early in her career. Fond of a large drink and a laugh, Denis was unsure of whether to divorce Margaret Thatcher or remain married to this workaholic woman with the buckteeth and frizzy hair who talks politics nonstop. In the end, he came back home, but Denis Thatcher is not one to mince words. “When there’s a war on you’ve got to expect things to not go right all the time.”

  * * *

  The next morning, the Iron Lady is stunned to get a message from Ronald Reagan, who once again suggests that the British consider leaving the Falklands to the Argentines. Reagan believes the conflict is not worth the price.7

  Margaret Thatcher’s mourning is replaced by rage. British soldiers and sailors are dying due to her decisions. Hundreds more are being wounded. In a scathing response, she makes one thing very clear: Great Britain is not backing down.

  The men of the Sheffield will not have die
d in vain.

  * * *

  It is Memorial Day in Washington, DC. Ronald Reagan started his day at Arlington National Cemetery, in a moment of remembrance for the many Americans who lost their lives in war. Now he places a phone call to Margaret Thatcher.

  “Margaret?”

  “Yes, Ron?”

  “Could you hear me all right?

  “We could hear you very well. Can you hear me?”

  “Yes, seems a little echo, but I guess that goes with the line we’re on.”

  Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher are speaking via the transatlantic hotline linking the White House with 10 Downing Street. It is 6:03 p.m. in Washington, close to midnight in London. Four more British ships have been sunk since the Sheffield went down, including her sister ship, the HMS Coventry. More than two hundred British servicemen have lost their lives on land and sea, but British troops have successfully retaken many parts of the Falklands. The war will not be over, however, until the British capture the capital city of Stanley.

  “Could I impose and be presumptuous and give you some thoughts right now on the Falklands situation?” asks President Reagan.

  “Yes, of course,” Thatcher replies with a curt tone.

  “I want to congratulate you on what you and your young men are doing down there. You’ve taken major risks and you’ve shown that unprovoked aggression does not pay.”

  Thatcher thanks the president and then listens in stony silence as Reagan puts forth a plan for a cease-fire to avoid “complete Argentinian humiliation.” He hopes for a withdrawal of British troops and for peace to be maintained by a United Nations peacekeeping force. Thatcher is having none of it.

  “Just supposing Alaska was invaded,” she asks furiously.

  “I have to say that I don’t think Alaska is a similar situation.”

  “More or less so,” Thatcher replies, not backing down an inch.

  “It was always my understanding or feeling that you had in the past been prepared to offer independence to the islands.”

  With that, Reagan completes the last full sentence he will utter in this conversation. Despite the tone of civility, and the awareness that Great Britain is the weaker partner in their special relationship, Margaret Thatcher is uncowed by Ronald Reagan. Even as she speaks, British wounded are beginning the long journey back to Britain. Some maimed, some severely burned, they will bear the marks of the Falklands War the rest of their lives. Margaret Thatcher feels the emotional burden of their sacrifice and that of those who have fallen. She has slept little since the war began. The prime minister’s official study is a short, seventeen-step walk up a staircase from her private apartment. She ascends those steps each night to listen to the BBC World News with her personal assistant, Cynthia Crawford. For the workaholic Thatcher, this is the closest she comes to an actual friendship. Crawford will remember: “We used to sit on the bedroom floor—the heating would have gone off and there was a two-bar electric fire in the bedroom—kick off our shoes and relax.… She had practically no sleep for three months. Just catnapping. She was so incredibly strong and determined. Not once did she flag.”

  After so many of these anxious nights, Margaret Thatcher has absolutely no intention of buckling under the suggestions of Ronald Reagan or any international peacekeeping body. She is not a woman fond of small talk, and her sense of humor is so dry that most people miss it. In a word, Margaret Thatcher is a serious woman.

  So she lets the U.S. president know what’s on her mind.

  “Ron, I’m not handing over the island,” Thatcher tells him. “I can’t lose the lives and blood of our soldiers to hand over the islands to a contact. It’s not possible.” She continues: “You are surely not asking me, Ron, after we’ve lost some of our finest young men, you are surely not saying, that after the Argentine withdrawal, that our forces, and our administration, become immediately idle? I had to go to immense distances and mobilize half my country. I just had to go.”

  “Yes,” says Reagan before Thatcher can cut him off.

  She then launches into a long rant about Britain’s territorial rights. Theirs is a friendship strong enough to endure this disagreement, so she plunges forward with abandon.8

  “Margaret—” Reagan says, trying to get in a word during her tirade.

  “Well—” He tries again.

  “Yes—”

  “Yes, well—”

  “The point is this, Ron,” Thatcher concludes. She has never been one to bully, unlike many politicians. However, she is relentless in making her point. “We have borne the brunt of this alone … we have some of our best ships lost because for seven weeks the Argentines refused to negotiate reasonable terms.”

  “Well, Margaret, I’m sorry I intruded,” Reagan says before hanging up.

  “You haven’t intruded at all. And I’m glad you telephoned.”

  Margaret Thatcher hangs up the hotline. Two weeks later, Stanley falls and Argentina surrenders. “She required guts to do it—her single greatest quality—and she deserved some cross-party support,” liberal British leader David Owen will comment of the war. “Thatcher’s personal resolve made all the difference between victory or defeat.” Owen continued: “Thatcher would not have remained prime minister if General Galtieri’s forces had not been thrown off the Falklands.”

  In the process, the British prime minister has emerged as a global force.

  Her nation, as she has suggested, rejoices.

  22

  WHITE HOUSE OVAL OFFICE

  WASHINGTON, DC

  APRIL 15, 1983

  9:57 A.M.

  Ronald Reagan is struggling. As he presides over a mid-morning meeting of his speechwriters, the president strains to hear the words they are saying. Age is taking its toll. Weakened physically since the assassination attempt, he continues to go deaf in his right ear. His left ear is only marginally better. Reagan tries to keep this a secret, but everyone in the room is well aware that the president’s hearing is impaired.

  Seated in a cream-colored chair with his back to the fireplace, Reagan crosses his legs and pretends to listen as his six-person team sits on two couches in the center of the room. They are there to discuss the president’s upcoming speaking engagements, but the Oval Office’s poor acoustics are making it difficult for Reagan to decipher what is being said. To make matters even worse, the three men and three women often talk over one another.

  Looking on silently, Reagan tries to follow the conversation by reading lips and watching body language to see if a direct question is aimed his way. The meeting is brisk and efficient, just fifteen minutes long. But during longer policy sessions with his senior advisers, Reagan has been known to grow so bored that he gives up all attempts to follow the proceedings, spending his time doodling on a yellow legal pad. This may not be normal behavior for most presidents, but the seventy-two-year-old Reagan knows he must husband his energy carefully in order to make it through the busy days.

  Today, for example, began with breakfast. He dined with Nancy in the second-floor residence, eating his usual bran cereal, toast, and decaffeinated coffee. He said good-bye to Nancy with his usual gusto, pulling her to him as if they would be separated for months instead of mere hours. The president then took an elevator down to the first floor, where he was met by Secret Service agents. He then walked to the armored door of the Oval Office, via the West Wing Colonnade, where he began his workday.

  After a series of morning meetings, Ronald Reagan will have a formal lunch with West German chancellor Helmut Kohl to discuss the growing Soviet threat.

  By two thirty in the afternoon, his work will be done. This being a Friday, the Reagans will fly to Camp David for the weekend. But the time of their departure is always subject to change. As with all the president’s travel arrangements, an astrologer living in San Francisco must first approve. Nancy Reagan keeps the Vassar-educated socialite Joan Quigley, fifty-six years old, on a three-thousand-dollar-per-month retainer secretly to provide astrological guidance. Nancy
remains deeply superstitious, making sure to sleep with her head facing north, and constantly knocks on wood. But her dependence on Quigley runs much deeper. Very few members of the White House staff know that Nancy’s astrologer controls much of the president’s calendar.

  To make sure that White House operators do not eavesdrop on their conversations, Nancy has a private phone line in the White House, and another at Camp David, connecting her directly to the stargazer. “Without her approval,” Deputy Chief of Staff Michael Deaver will one day write of Quigley, “Air Force One does not take off.”

  But there is one item on today’s agenda so minor that Quigley has not been consulted, and Ronald Reagan’s personal assistant Kathy Osborne has not typed it into the schedule. Sometime during the day, Reagan will take a moment to affix his signature to a proclamation naming April 10–16 as National Mental Health Week. The purpose is “to seek and encourage better understanding of mental disorders” and to bring “welcome hope to the mentally ill.”

  * * *

  Eight miles away, in southeast Washington, DC, John Hinckley is finding that it pays to be mentally ill. Rather than suffer a heinous punishment for his attempted assassination of the president and near murder of three other men, Hinckley has been found not guilty of all crimes by reason of insanity. Thus, he spends his days in St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, a century-old brick psychiatric facility. There, Hinckley has a soft life. He resides in a fourth-floor room, eats in the cafeteria, attends therapy sessions, shoots pool, plays his guitar, and watches TV. He can listen to any music he likes, and his hair remains long and shaggy. There are no shackles on his wrists or ankles. The only significant difference between this new life and his previous one is that Hinckley can no longer travel impulsively. His monetary woes are a thing of the past.