Killing Reagan (26 page)

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

W
HITE
H
OUSE
O
VAL
O
FFICE

W
ASHINGTON
, DC

A
PRIL
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.

Shockingly, Hinckley still pines for Jodie Foster, telling the
New York Times
in a bizarre letter, “My actions of March 30, 1981 have given special meaning to my life and no amount of imprisonment or hospitalization can tarnish my historical deed. The shooting outside the Washington Hilton hotel was the greatest love offering in the history of the world. I sacrificed myself and committed the ultimate crime in hopes of winning the heart of a girl. It was an unprecedented demonstration of love. But does the American public appreciate what I've done? Does Jodie Foster appreciate what I've done?”

Hinckley continues: “I am Napoleon and she is Josephine. I am Romeo and she is Juliet. I am John Hinckley Jr. and she is Jodie Foster. The world can't touch us.”

*   *   *

Ironically, one of the first things Ronald Reagan did when he came into office was slash federal funding for the treatment of mental illness, trimming the budget for the National Institute of Mental Health and repealing the Mental Health Systems Act of 1980. Yet, as the definition of mental impairment grows over time to include not just the insane or psychotic like John Hinckley but also those whose faculties are diminished by age, there are signs that the president himself may be sliding into this spectrum. The
New York Times
reported as early as 1980 that his “penchant for contradictory statements, forgetting names and general absent-mindedness” were considered by some to be a sign of Alzheimer's disease. This very specific form of dementia displays itself as confusion, impaired thought, and impaired speech.

In truth, Ronald Reagan can be sharp at times. Often, he spins entertaining yarns, adding dialects and jokes to his presentations. But on other occasions, the president gets lost mid-story. Sometimes he will tell a tale about some event in his life, when in fact he is confusing it with a movie role he once played. His staff is fond of saying that Reagan “has his good days and his bad days,” and they know that the president tends to think more slowly in the evening than in the afternoon. In addition, Reagan has developed an “essential tremor,” a slight shaking of the hands and nodding of the head. Though not a sign of brain impairment, it will grow worse with age.

Ronald Reagan has admitted to journalists that his mother died of “senility” and said that should such a condition ever affect him, he will resign the office of president of the United States.

But today, as his speechwriters rise promptly from their seats at 10:10 and file out of the Oval Office, nobody is realistically suggesting that Ronald Reagan is senile.

Or that he should resign.

Not yet.

 

23

W
HITE
H
OUSE
S
ITUATION
R
OOM

W
ASHINGTON
, DC

O
CTOBER
26, 1983

1:28
P
.
M
.

Relief has arrived. Ronald Reagan wears a brand-new hearing aid, allowing him to make out the voice on the other end of the transatlantic hotline quite clearly.
1

“Margaret Thatcher here.”

The prime minister has excused herself from a parliamentary debate to take Reagan's call. The Iron Lady, just as Reagan's mother, will eventually live out the last dozen years of her life in a state of dementia.

But that confusion is seventeen years away.

Right now, Margaret Thatcher is completely furious.

Yesterday, on Reagan's orders, American troops invaded the former British colony of Grenada, an island in the south Caribbean. On October 19, Marxist commandos overthrew the government, and there are fears that the new Grenadian leaders are aligned with Fidel Castro. The Cuban dictator has long sought to spread communism throughout the Western Hemisphere. Even as Reagan talks with Thatcher, there are civil wars under way in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Under the pretense that the lives of eight hundred Americans attending medical school in Grenada are at risk, eight thousand American marines, Navy SEALs, and Army Rangers have invaded the island.
2
Reagan's popularity among U.S. voters is soaring, and the president has bipartisan support in Congress for this bold move.

Unfortunately, Ronald Reagan never informed the Thatcher government. In fact, his advisers told Margaret Thatcher's foreign secretary there would be no attack. That information was then relayed to the British press. In the hours leading up to the American assault, Thatcher attempted to phone the president to warn him against military action but was told he was unavailable.