Rawhide Down (24 page)

“I would think so, you might want to talk to Al [Haig] about that, but I think we don’t want to have any thought of any kind of a vacuum,” Meese said.

An aide handed Allen a draft statement that the administration intended to issue to U.S. embassies around the world; the statement would then be delivered to foreign governments. Allen began to read it to Meese. “‘You will have heard that on March 30th there was an attempt on the life of President Reagan,’” Allen read. “‘Although he was injured in that attack, his condition is stable. You should inform the government that in spite of this terrible event, the government in Washington continues to carry out its obligations to its people and its allies.’

“Is that statement all right,” Allen asked, “for a temporary?”

“Yeah, okay,” Meese said.

Weinberger didn’t like it. “I wonder if the last sentence is more alarmist than it should be,” he said.

Meese suggested that they simply leave it out and then added that they should include a line indicating that the president “was stable and conscious following the injury.”

After finishing the call, Allen and Weinberger returned to the Situation Room, where Allen informed Haig and the others that doctors were about to operate on the president. “But it’s not for publication,” Allen added.

Concerned that they might need the country’s nuclear war plans and codes, Allen requested that a duplicate nuclear football be brought to the Situation Room. When it arrived, he stashed it by his feet. He also obtained an authentication card. (Reagan’s military aide had the president’s football at the hospital, and the FBI had recovered Reagan’s nuclear code card. On Air Force Two, Bush had his own authentication card and his own military aide carrying a football.)

Just as Allen and Weinberger began discussing the alert status of U.S. forces, David Gergen appeared on the television mounted on the room’s wall. He was at the podium in the White House press room, before a large crowd of reporters.

“This is to confirm the statements made at George Washington hospital that the president was shot once in the left side this afternoon as he left the hotel,” said Gergen, who stumbled over a few of his words and looked a bit shaky as he read his notes at the podium. “His condition is stable. A decision is now being made whether or not to operate to remove the bullet. The White House and the vice president are in communication.… We have been informed by Jim Baker that the president walked into the hospital. I would also like to inform you that in the building at the moment are the secretary of state, the secretary of the Treasury, and the secretary of defense, and the attorney general, as well as other assistants to the president.”

“What building, the hospital?” a reporter asked.

“No, in this building,” Gergen replied.

“Do you have any condition on Brady?”

“I’m sorry, we do not.”

To Allen, it was like watching a train wreck. Gergen looked wide-eyed and nervous. In a crisis such as this one, Allen knew, it was imperative that the government project confidence.

When Gergen started taking questions, the normally unflappable advisor seemed to struggle to provide useful answers and then had trouble bringing the session to a close. Watching, Allen said aloud, “Don’t take any more questions. He’s not in any state for that. Get off the platform.”

Haig swiveled in his chair to look at the TV screen. “I didn’t think he was going to do that,” he said. “I thought the press guy was going to.”

“He
is
the press guy,” Allen said. “We haven’t got a press guy.”

As Gergen carried on, Haig and Allen turned their attention back to the message they were preparing for foreign governments.

“Al, they want something about the president being stable,” Allen said.

“That’s right,” Haig said. “‘His condition is stable and he is conscious.… The vice president…’”

“We don’t need to say any more,” Allen said. “‘The vice president is en route—’”

“‘From Texas,’” interjected Weinberger.

“No, we’re not saying from Texas,” Allen said. “‘The vice president is en route.’”

“‘Will return to Washington this afternoon,’” Haig said.

“‘At 6:30,’” said Dan Murphy, Bush’s chief of staff.

“‘Is returning to Washington,’” Haig said.

“‘Is returning to Washington,’” Allen repeated.

Sitting at the end of the table and reviewing some notes, William French Smith, the attorney general, abruptly changed the subject. “Anybody interested in who did it?” he asked.

*   *   *

J
OHN
H
INCKLEY
,
LEANING
against the wall of a small white interview room in Washington police headquarters, stared blankly at a Polaroid camera held by Secret Service agent Stephen T. Colo. It was 3:50 p.m., and as Colo took seven instant photographs of the would-be assassin, he pondered the young man standing before him. Hinckley was unlike any suspect the agent had ever confronted. He didn’t seem crazy: he wasn’t ranting or twitching or wearing a tinfoil hat. He didn’t seem hardened, sad, or scared. He looked boyish but strangely plain, and his face was utterly without emotion.

Hinckley was silent while the photos were being shot, but as Colo turned to leave he spoke, complaining that his throat and wrists hurt.

The agent said nothing and continued out the door.

Colo, who was detailed to the service’s Washington field office, had been one of the two dozen agents assigned to guard Reagan at the Hilton. That morning, however, he had been told that, instead, he should finish the paperwork documenting an accident involving his government-issued car. After the shooting, Colo had been dispatched to police headquarters to act as a liaison among local authorities, the FBI, and the service.

His supervisors couldn’t have picked a better man for the assignment. Colo, a native of New Jersey, had spent three years on the D.C. police force before joining the Secret Service in 1976. Since then, he’d remained in Washington, where he had investigated fraud artists, hardened criminals, and a number of men and women who wanted to kill the leader of the free world. He had also questioned scores of suspicious and unstable characters who appeared at the White House. His work for both law enforcement agencies had given him considerable insight into troubled minds.

When he arrived at D.C. police headquarters soon after the shooting, Colo was surprised by the acrimony and chaos in the homicide office. FBI agents were battling with police officers over jurisdiction, and the officers were yelling back. Several officers who clearly hadn’t visited homicide in years wandered among the desks, curious about the man who had shot the president. Police radios crackled with news from the scene at the Hilton.

Colo tracked down Eddie Myers, the homicide detective who had tried to question Hinckley, and Myers gave him permission to take some Polaroid photographs of the suspect. Colo planned to check the pictures against those already in the agency’s files; he also wanted to pass a few of the photos to other investigators who would then show them around town to see if anyone recognized the gunman.

About an hour after Colo took his pictures, the bureau won the jurisdictional dispute with the D.C. police. At 5:15 p.m., FBI agents took Hinckley to their field office in southwest Washington. Two agents, showing professional courtesy toward the Secret Service, asked Colo to join them on the ride. They also invited Detective Myers.

Colo sat next to Hinckley, who spoke not a word on the short trip to the bureau’s field office. Hinckley had still refused to say anything to anyone about the shooting or his motive. Myers and other investigators had grown increasingly sure that Hinckley was a disturbed loner; he had a psychologist’s business card in his wallet, after all. But Colo and the FBI agents were not so sure. Terrorists and killers, many of whom were part of elaborate plots, were often disturbed. And all three agents had seen too many investigations founder when someone rushed to judgment; before reaching any firm conclusions, it was always best to track down every possible lead. And they had no time to waste. Co-conspirators might be hiding in the city and waiting for the right moment to strike again, or they might use the coming hours to flee the country. As they sped toward the FBI’s field office, the agents knew there was only one way to find out quickly whether their suspect had acted alone. They would have to get him to crack.

*   *   *

I
N THE
S
ITUATION
Room, the secretary of state was becoming increasingly agitated. As other officials discussed how to properly calibrate the administration’s public statements or worried about the gunman’s potential associations, Haig remained concerned about how to control the flow of information to the public.

“We’re going to be on a straight line from the hospital,” Haig said. “So anything that is said, before it’s said, we’ll discuss at this table, and any telephone calls that anybody is getting with instructions from the hospital”—his voice rose to a near shout—“come to this table first!”

Then Haig smacked the table hard with a hand—
thwap!
“Right here! And we discuss it and know what’s going on.”

Richard Allen elbowed Fred Fielding and threw a glance over at Haig. The two men had often talked about the retired general’s theatrics and his endless conflicts over turf. Now, in the midst of a crisis, Allen was alarmed by Haig’s aggressive tone and his table slap, which seemed completely out of place at such a sober moment. He wondered if they foreshadowed more problems to come.

To many outsiders, Haig had seemed like the perfect secretary of state when the president nominated him to the post the previous December. During his years in the army, he had risen quickly through the ranks, earning a number of decorations; later, as President Nixon’s chief of staff, he earned the respect of many for his part in holding the government together during the Watergate scandal. From 1974 to 1979, he served as supreme allied commander of NATO forces and became well known in European capitals. A staunch conservative who took a hard line toward the Soviet Union, he was tough, intelligent, and fearless.

Richard Allen, however, was not an admirer. Allen had worked briefly with Haig during the Nixon years and considered him too blunt and bullheaded and volatile. As well, he felt that the backbiting culture of the Nixon White House had permanently damaged Haig’s ability to collaborate with others. On a more personal level, Allen was privately concerned that a heart bypass operation in April 1980 had made Haig even more erratic, if that was possible.

Only weeks into Reagan’s presidency, a number of others in the administration had come to share Allen’s views. Haig was constantly trying to augment his own authority, and he had upset some of Reagan’s closest advisors by raising the unlikely prospect of U.S. military intervention in Latin America and the Caribbean at a time when the administration was working hard to keep the country’s focus on its economic message. As for Haig, he wasn’t happy either. He felt the Troika—in a recent conversation with Allen, he had called them a “three-headed monster”—went out of its way to interfere with his relationship with the president, making it difficult for him to do his job. Only two months into his tenure, he worried that he wasn’t one of Reagan’s confidants. He also didn’t believe that he was the president’s primary foreign policy advisor, which was the role he’d expected to play as secretary of state.

Just a week earlier, Haig’s relationship with others in the administration had grown so acrimonious that he’d nearly resigned. What sparked his frustration was a bureaucratic spat with the White House over who would be in charge in the event of a crisis. Word of the battle quickly leaked out, and Haig didn’t help his cause when he criticized the administration’s policy-making process during a congressional hearing. That same day, the White House issued an official statement declaring that Vice President Bush would play a major role in all crisis planning and would take the lead if a crisis occurred in the president’s absence. Afterward, Reagan and Haig smoothed over their differences—the president even issued a public statement declaring his confidence in Haig—and in his diary Reagan recorded the hope that “the Haig issue is behind us.”

But Haig remained aggrieved, and now, only days later, he overheard a conversation in the Situation Room that immediately got his back up. Speaking to Allen, Secretary of Defense Weinberger said that he would tell his commanders “to get alerts to the Strategic Air Command and such other units that seem … desirable at this point.”

“What kind of alert, Cap?” interrupted Haig, sounding incredulous. Any change in the status of U.S. forces might be detected by the Soviets, and Haig was concerned that they would respond by raising their own alert levels. If the alerts spiraled and the escalation became public, tensions and fears would rise worldwide. In Haig’s view, the potential consequences of raising the alert level were incalculable.

“It’s a standby alert,” Weinberger said. “Just a standby alert.”

“You’re not raising readiness?” Haig asked.

“No, no, no.… The alert, they’ll probably put themselves on alert, but I just want to be sure.”

“Do we have a football here? Do we?” Haig asked.

“Right there,” Allen said, smacking the suitcase at his feet.