Reagan: The Life (75 page)

“This is a decision for them to make,” Reagan responded. “And the decision isn’t so simple as just trading prisoners. The decision is at what point can you pay off the terrorists without endangering people from here on out once they find out that their tactics succeed.”

“Are you still opposed, then? Are you still opposed to negotiating with terrorists?”

“This has always been a position of ours, yes,” Reagan said.

“So how might this be worked out, then?”

“I can’t comment. I think that we’re going to continue doing the things that we’re doing and just hope that they themselves will see that, for their own safety, they’d better turn these people loose.”

In a formal news conference two days later Reagan spoke more vigorously. “
America will never make concessions to terrorists,” he said. “To do so would only invite more terrorism. Nor will we ask nor pressure any other government to do so. Once we head down that path there would be no end to it, no end to the suffering of innocent people, no end to the bloody ransom all civilized nations must pay.”

Yet Israel insisted on blurring the line between negotiating with terrorists and not doing so. “
The Israelis are not being helpful,” Reagan complained confidentially. “They have gone public with the statement that they would release their prisoners if we asked them to. Well, we can’t do that because then we would be rewarding the terrorists and encouraging more terrorism.” The next day Reagan grumbled that
Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli defense minister, had “
loused things up by establishing a linkage we insist does not exist.”

Eventually, the administration and the Israeli government coordinated their stories. The Israelis convinced Reagan that they had indeed intended to release the Shia prisoners and would have done so if the hijacking had not taken place. Reagan took this as sufficient ground for encouraging Hafez al-Assad, the leader of Syria and a new prospective go-between, to pass along a message. “
It has been the position of the U.S. throughout this event that the hijacking and hostage-taking is preventing the planned release by Israel of Atlit prisoners,” George Shultz cabled the American embassy in Damascus. “Therefore you may inform the Syrians that the President believes that Syria may be confident in expecting the release of the Lebanese prisoners after the freeing of the passengers of TWA 847, without any linkage between the two subjects.”

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.

R
EAGAN
’
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.

“N
ANCY
R
EAGAN 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 need regular tests to see that the cancer had not recurred.

I
N 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.”