Killing Reagan (31 page)

Without knowing that he has done so, Ronald Reagan has passed a test.

There will be no invoking the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.

But another stern trial is just two days away.

 

28

W
HITE
H
OUSE
O
VAL
O
FFICE

W
ASHINGTON
, DC

M
ARCH
4, 1987

9:00
P
.
M
.

Ronald Reagan is in trouble.

Wearing a dark blue suit and speckled blue tie, the president prepares to speak to the nation. His face is drawn and lined, with a red flush. His eyes look just to the left of the camera as he reads off a teleprompter.

“My fellow Americans:

“I've spoken to you from this historic office on many occasions and about many things. The power of the Presidency is often thought to reside within this Oval Office. Yet it doesn't rest here; it rests in you, the American people, and in your trust. Your trust is what gives a President his powers of leadership and his personal strength, and it's what I want to talk to you about this evening.”

Since January, the president has testified before the Tower Commission twice. Both times he looked confused. During his second appearance Reagan was so lost that he made the blunder of reading from a top secret memo when asked what he knew about Iran-Contra.
1
The media, sensing that Reagan could soon be facing the same fate as Richard Nixon, are now on the attack. Ben Bradlee of the
Washington Post
openly compares Iran-Contra with Watergate.

“For the past three months, I've been silent on the revelations about Iran,” the president continues. “And you must have been thinking: ‘Well, why doesn't he tell us what's happening?'” He continues: “Others of you, I guess, were thinking: ‘What's he doing hiding out in the White House?' Well, the reason I haven't spoken to you before now is this: You deserve the truth. And as frustrating as the waiting has been, I felt it was improper to come to you with sketchy reports, or possibly even erroneous statements, which would then have to be corrected, creating even more doubt and confusion.”

Many watching the Reagan broadcast know the president has denied committing any illegal acts, but now he seems to be admitting his denial was false.

“A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.”

These devastating words do not seem to affect Reagan very much. In fact, a paternal grin now crosses his face. For the first time in his presidency, he is about to admit some level of memory loss. This passage of the speech has been written very carefully—the message coming across is that the problem does not lie with him but with the people who work for him.

“One thing still upsetting me, however, is that no one kept proper records of meetings or decisions.” He speaks into the camera. “This led to my failure to recollect whether I approved an arms shipment before or after the fact. I did approve it; I just can't say specifically when.”

The speech is Reagan at his paternal best, letting the nation know that he is still in charge and is managing merely a clerical situation.

“You know, by the time you reach my age, you've made plenty of mistakes. And if you've lived your life properly—so, you learn. You put things in perspective. You pull your energies together. You change. You go forward.”

With that simple statement, Reagan is putting Iran-Contra behind him once and for all. He will move forward.

“Good night, and God bless you.”
2

*   *   *

Three weeks later, Ronald Reagan's political soul mate is trying to save her own skin. Margaret Thatcher is in Moscow for meetings with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Thatcher, who is in the midst of a bitter reelection campaign, now sits with Gorbachev in the Kremlin, speaking to him about his recent capitulation to America in reducing his arsenal of nuclear missiles. It is the first time a British prime minister has come to Moscow in more than a decade.

Gorbachev has been in power two years. He is different from former Soviet leaders, more open to closer relations with America and Britain, simply because he has to be. The Soviet economy has been destroyed by years of military buildup and failed Communist economic policies. The Soviet Union is on its knees financially. Only by aligning himself with the West can Gorbachev ensure the viability of his country.

Mikhail Gorbachev is a bureaucrat. He worked his way up through the Politburo by holding positions such as secretary of agriculture and chairman of the Standing Commission on Youth Affairs. But his rise through the Soviet system has been an unlikely one, for he was born the son of peasants and once seemed destined to live out his life as a farmer. It was his father who encouraged him to attend Moscow State University, from which Gorbachev graduated cum laude with a law degree in 1955. As he went on to a career in politics, Gorbachev displayed a skill for organization and diplomacy that helped him move from unknown to general secretary within thirty years. Unlike his predecessors, the fifty-six-year-old Gorbachev is not a ruthless killer, nor is he a heavy drinker or womanizer. A balding man with a wine stain birthmark high on his forehead, he has enjoyed the favor of the Soviet people, who have rallied behind his youth and warmth. Even Ronald Reagan trusts him, believing “there is a moral dimension in Gorbachev” that was lacking in previous Soviet leaders.

Gorbachev is trying to find solutions to the problems his country faces. He has not given up on socialism, but he is introducing market reforms and individual freedoms through “glasnost” and “perestroika”—“openness” and “restructuring.” But even openness has its limits. Gorbachev knows he cannot appear weak before Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan. So the Soviet leader scolds Margaret Thatcher. He is angry that she has referred to his nation as evil, a phrase that Ronald Reagan has also used. Gorbachev thinks this makes him look weak.

“No, you can't have thought that!” Thatcher answers through her interpreter. Gorbachev and Thatcher each has a small number of advisers witnessing the conversation. “Nobody thinks that the Soviet Union is weak. The Soviet Union has enormous power. You have superior intermediate-range weapons and strategic offensive weapons, if we count warheads, as well as chemical and conventional arms. You are very powerful, not weak.”

Gorbachev likes her tone. Just like Ronald Reagan, he has tremendous respect for Margaret Thatcher. Despite their ideological differences, he enjoys their verbal jousting.

“Once again I want to emphasize that the most important thing is to remain grounded in reality, otherwise we will all be in grave danger,” he warns the prime minister.

She replies: “It is very important for us that you give up the doctrine of communist world domination.”

“We never proclaimed such a doctrine,” Gorbachev says. “There is the Truman Doctrine, the Eisenhower Doctrine, the neo-globalist Reagan Doctrine. All of these doctrines were publicly proclaimed by presidents. But you will not find our statements about ‘planting the domination of communism' because they do not exist.”

Six thousand miles away, Ronald Reagan pays little attention to the verbal duel. He has spent forty years battling communism, and doesn't much care what Mikhail Gorbachev has to say. That's because Ronald Reagan is already forming the words that will stun the world.

*   *   *

Two months after Margaret Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev meet in Moscow, she is reelected prime minister for the third time. On June 8, Thatcher spends time with President Reagan while both are attending a high-level economic summit in Venice. Both are in agreement that the time is right to strike a blow for freedom, and perhaps end communism throughout Europe forever.

So it is that Ronald Reagan stands before the Berlin Wall giving the speech that will define his presidency—if not his entire life. The date is June 12, 1987. Reagan is fully recovered from the Iran-Contra affair, and is standing in almost the exact same spot where the American general George S. Patton stood forty-two years ago. Back then, Patton warned that World War II would never truly be over until the United States defeated the Soviet Union militarily. The world did not listen to Patton. Not only did the Soviets remain in Eastern Europe, but they built a concrete barrier around West Berlin. The so-called Berlin Wall is a symbol of the Cold War. It divides the democratic West Berlin portion of the city from the Soviet-occupied area known as East Berlin.
3

In 1963, President John F. Kennedy traveled to Berlin and told the world that the Soviet Union was enslaving people. Now Ronald Reagan wants to build on Kennedy's historic speech.
4

Flying from Venice to Berlin, Reagan arrived just before noon and traveled by motorcade through the heart of the city to the historic Brandenburg Gate, where a crowd numbering tens of thousands now awaits his words—“people stretching as far as I could see,” he will write in his diary.

Reagan is theatrical, positioning the Berlin Wall behind him as he stands on an elevated platform. The weather is gray and overcast, with a light wind blowing. Reagan begins his speech at 2:00 p.m.

“Behind me stands a wall that encircles the free sectors of this city, part of a vast system of barriers that divides the entire continent of Europe,” Reagan says. “From the Baltic, south, those barriers cut across Germany in a gash of barbed wire, concrete, dog runs, and guard towers. Farther south, there may be no visible, no obvious wall. But there remain armed guards and checkpoints all the same—still a restriction on the right to travel, still an instrument to impose upon ordinary men and women the will of a totalitarian state.”

At least eighty people have died trying to escape from East Berlin into West Berlin. Communist authorities are ruthless and claim the wall exists to protect people by keeping out subversive capitalist influences.

The president continues: “Yet it is here in Berlin where the wall emerges most clearly; here, cutting across your city, where the news photo and the television screen have imprinted this brutal division of a continent upon the mind of the world. Standing before the Brandenburg Gate, every man is a German, separated from his fellow men. Every man is a Berliner, forced to look upon a scar.”

The president, like Margaret Thatcher, has enjoyed better relations with Soviet leader Gorbachev in the past year. But Reagan has taken a hard line in arms reduction talks, going so far as to walk out of one summit meeting when Gorbachev's terms of negotiation were not to his liking. The Russians respect toughness, not appeasement, and Reagan knows that backing down will be seen as a sign of weakness. He is not afraid of verbally scorching the Communist ideology.

“In the 1950s, Khrushchev predicted, ‘We will bury you,'” Reagan says emphatically. “But in the West today, we see a free world that has achieved a level of prosperity and well-being unprecedented in all human history. In the Communist world, we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards of health, even want of the most basic kind—too little food. Even today, the Soviet Union still cannot feed itself. After these four decades, then, there stands before the entire world one great and inescapable conclusion: Freedom leads to prosperity. Freedom replaces the ancient hatreds among the nations with comity and peace. Freedom is the victor.”

Ronald Reagan standing before the Brandenburg Gate and Berlin Wall, June 12, 1987. With him are Chancellor Helmut Kohl (
right
) and President of the Bundestag Philipp Jenninger (
left
).

Ronald Reagan is in complete control. There is no sign of weakness. His voice rises as he drives home his point. He was warned before the speech that by using the wall as a backdrop, his speech would automatically be “provocative.”

But Ronald Reagan
wants
to be provocative. His message today is so powerful that he will be interrupted twenty-eight times by cheers and applause.

“Are these the beginnings of profound changes in the Soviet state? Or are they token gestures, intended to raise false hopes in the West, or to strengthen the Soviet system without changing it? We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace.

“There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace.” Reagan pauses, knowing the world is hanging on his words.

“General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization:

“Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate!