Rawhide Down (44 page)

Dr. David Rockoff had closely
: Interview with Rockoff.

that it was a .38
: Interviews with Rockoff, Aaron, and Gens. This is an astounding blunder. A Secret Service agent seized Hinckley’s weapon at the scene and gave it to the FBI, which kept it in a room at the Hilton while authorities collected other evidence and questioned witnesses. So why was there so much confusion about the type of gun Hinckley used? When the shots rang out, a U.S. Park Police motorcycle officer ran to help tackle Hinckley and dropped his .38-caliber revolver on the ground, right next to Brady’s head. He eventually retrieved the revolver but not before the gun was “mistaken for the weapon used” by Hinckley, according to the Treasury report.

Nancy Reagan had been politely
: Interview with Opfer; Nancy Reagan
, My Turn
, p. 6.

The hospital’s acting chief of surgery
: Giordano narrative; interview with Theodore Tsangaris.

For one thing, they hadn’t completed
: Interview with Giordano; Giordano narrative.

When Mrs. Reagan entered
: Interview with Opfer; Nancy Reagan,
My Turn
, p. 6.

Laxalt, beside her, saw a frightened
: Laxalt,
Nevada’s Paul Laxalt: A Memoir
, p. 331.

“Honey,” the president said
: Gens diary; Giordano narrative; Lyn Nofziger notes, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Nofziger’s notes were provided by Supriya Wronkiewicz, an archivist at Hoover who graciously spared me a cross-country flight or the expense of hiring a researcher to obtain them.

“Please, don’t try to talk”
: Nancy Reagan,
My Turn
, p. 6.

As he considered his options
: Interview with Aaron.

“Mr. President, there is a lot”
:
The Saving of the President
.

“Whatever you think”
: Interview with Aaron.

Even so, Giordano
: Interviews with Giordano and Gens.

Aaron kept his doubts
: Interview with Aaron.

As Gens prepared
: Interview with Gens; Gens tape-recorded interview with Pekkanen, 1981.

11: Operating Room 2

At 2:57
: Gens’s handwritten notes that he prepared for Reagan’s discharge summary; the operating room circulating record notes that Reagan arrived in OR 2 at 3:02 p.m. Many other accounts in newspapers and memoirs provide wildly inaccurate information about the time Reagan spent in the ER and the OR. Even doctors who participated in Reagan’s care got it wrong when writing about the day. Aaron, who has Reagan’s complete medical file in his possession, confirmed the authenticity of the records I obtained from other sources.

A Secret Service agent had already
: Trainor Secret Service report; interviews with Giordano, Gens, and DeAtley about what route the procession took to the OR.

Ben Aaron had informed
: Interview with Aaron; Nancy Reagan,
My Turn
, p. 6; Deaver transcript, which provides the basis for the dialogue between Aaron, Mrs. Reagan, and Deaver. Aaron confirmed it.

clasped his left hand
: Gens diary.

took his place at Reagan’s
: Interview with Edelstein;
The Saving of the President
. Edelstein had arrived at home with his wife and their newborn son just an hour or so before his pager went off and he learned the president was in his emergency room. He then raced to the hospital.

“Watch your legs”
: Gens diary.

might be bleeding to death
: Speakes,
Speaking Out
, p. 10.

Reagan spotted
: Interview with Baker; Nofziger notes.

“I love you”
: Nancy Reagan,
My Turn
, p. 6; interview with Gens.

Only a few minutes
: Interview with Kobrine.

“You have to save him”
: Interviews with Kobrine and Sarah Brady.

“God damn it, I told”
: Interview with Kobrine.

Ben Aaron adjusted
: Interview with Aaron;
The Saving of the President
.

“I just put a chest tube”
: Interviews with Dr. Michael A. Manganiello and Giordano.

Parr had put his scrubs
: Interviews with Parr, other Secret Service agents, and various doctors and nurses.

Parr noticed a windowed observation deck
: Timothy Burns Secret Service report.

A nurse squeezed
:
The Saving of the President
.

“We’re going to be putting”
: Interview with Lichtman.

“I hope you are all Republicans”
: Interviews with Giordano, Aaron, and Gens.

An ophthalmologist was summoned
: Interview with Manganiello; Gens notes.

Lichtman began the
: Interview with Lichtman.

just after 3:08 p.m.
: OR circulating record.

An hour earlier, Richard Allen
: Interview with Allen; Allen notes.

The complex had been built
: Interview with Michael K. Bohn, former director of the Situation Room, and author of
Nerve Center: Inside the White House Situation Room
. The Situation Room is technically in the White House basement but has windows that look out on the lawn between the West Wing and the Old Executive Office Building.

no other televisions or even a phone
: Allen had at least one secure telephone installed in the room as the day wore on.

At about 3:15 p.m.
,
Allen
: Allen notes; Allen brought a personal tape recorder into the room and began recording at 3:24 p.m.

the hospital’s phone lines
: Interviews of participants and Secret Service reports; Secret Service agent Patrick Miller, a supervisor in the Washington field office, told inspectors that agents encountered “significant problems … with telephone and radio communications.” The “telephones available at the hospital were overburdened to the extent that they were virtually useless on many occasions,” the report said. “He in fact recalls having attempted to use the phone where there was no dial tone. The phones appeared to be dead.” As the day wore on, communications improved, especially between the Situation Room and a command post established at the hospital.

had heard from Jim Baker
: According to Allen’s notes, Baker called at 3:17 p.m. That was more than fifteen minutes after Reagan was taken to the operating room but still nine minutes before the belly tap began. I suspect that Baker and Meese did not want to alert anyone to Reagan’s surgery until it had officially started.

“Remind me to tell you a sensation”
: Allen tapes; Allen notes.

Jim Baker knew that the administration
: Interview with Baker.

“We have this information”
: Television video footage of press briefing.

He had ordered that a heart bypass machine
: Interview with Cheyney.

2.275 liters of blood
: Gens notes; Aaron reflection.

Joe Giordano asked for
: Interview with Giordano.

12: A Question of Authority

At about 3:30
: Interview with Allen; Allen notes and Allen tapes. Caspar Weinberger arrived at about 3:30 p.m. He was late, in part, because he had sent his military driver on an errand for his wife, according to Bobby Inman, a former navy admiral and deputy director of the CIA. Inman and his driver gave Weinberger a ride to the White House.

Meese reported
: Interview with Allen; Allen notes. At times, Allen put his tape recorder up to the phone’s receiver.

He then reminded Weinberger
: Weinberger memo, RRPL. In relaying this conversation in his memo, Weinberger wrote: “He then said to me, ‘Under these circumstances, it is my understanding that National Command Authority devolves on you.’ I said that I believed the chain started with the Vice President. Ed Meese said the Vice President was on a plane in Texas, which was being diverted back to Washington and that it would take him approximately two hours to get here. I asked about the communication to the plane, and which plane it was, and Ed said that he did not know but he did not think there was secure communication. He mentioned again the chain of leadership under the National Command Authority and I confirmed I was the next in line after the Vice President.”

The National Command Authority is distinct from the order of presidential succession. The details of National Command Authority are classified but generally concern procedures that “cover certain delegations from the president to the vice president and the secretary of defense in the event of specific circumstances,” according to a memo drafted by White House counsel Fred Fielding the day after the shooting.

Concerned that they might need the
: The football contains the nuclear war plans and attack options; the laminated code card has a series of alphanumeric codes that the president uses to authenticate his identity in the event he wants to launch a nuclear weapon. If the president cannot be reached, the military finds the next person in the chain of command—the vice president and then the secretary of defense, who also have authentication cards. The FBI seized Reagan’s card when it collected evidence from the hospital. This set off a fight between FBI agents, who considered the card to be evidence, and military officers, who wanted it back because it was a national security secret. The FBI took the card and put it in a safe. It was eventually returned to the military after Attorney General William French Smith mediated the dispute. The clash became public in December 1981, when the
Washington Post
published a story about the FBI’s seizure of the card. Fischer said in an interview that he was questioned by FBI agents at the hospital after the shooting. During the interview, an agent pulled the nuclear code card out of a plastic bag and asked Fischer what it was. “It is critical to national security and it should immediately be turned over to the military aide,” Fischer responded. When the FBI agent pressed for more information, Fischer simply told the agents that the card was classified and they did not have the necessary clearances to possess it.

The agent took off his shoe, put the card in it, placed the shoe back on his foot, and left the room.

Just as Allen and Weinberger
: Allen tapes.

John Hinckley, leaning
: Interview with Stephen T. Colo.