Rawhide Down (45 page)

It was 3:50 p.m.
: Interview with Colo; Colo Secret Service reports.

The agent said nothing
: Testimony of Colo at a pretrial evidence suppression hearing.

Colo tracked down Eddie
: Interview with Colo.

At 5:15 p.m., FBI agents
: FBI reports and time line.

Richard Allen, however
: Interview with Allen.

some of Reagan’s closest
: Martin Schram, “White House Revamps Top Policy,”
WP
, March 22, 1981, p. A1.

raising the unlikely prospect
: Interview with Baker. Numerous newspaper and wire service stories detailed Haig’s comments about Latin America in the weeks preceding the shooting. Haig even threatened to “go to the source” of arms shipments from Cuba to El Salvadoran guerrillas. White House advisors were upset that Haig “placed public emphasis on El Salvador as the bulwark of the Reagan stand against communism at a time when Reagan was trying to place public emphasis on his economic program,” the
Washington Post
reported on March 26, 1981.

he wasn’t happy either
: Haig details his displeasure with White House staffers in
Caveat
. Allen showed me extensive notes he took of conversations with Haig in the days and weeks before and after the shooting in which the secretary of state sharply criticized Reagan’s top White House aides.

he’d nearly resigned
: Haig,
Caveat
, p. 146.

Afterward, Reagan
:
Reagan Diaries
, p. 29; Haig,
Caveat
, pp. 147–48.

Haig was concerned
: Interview with Goldberg, who shadowed Haig for most of the day and was one of his closest advisors; Haig,
Caveat
, p. 156.

Haig was shocked
: Interview with Goldberg.

watched saline solution
: Interviews with Gens and Giordano.

He’d never seen
: Interview with Gens.

“Does anybody know”
: Interview with Gens; Gens tape-recorded interview with Pekkanen, 1981.

Gens checked the Pleur-evac
: Gens diary; interview with Gens.

2.6 liters
: Gens diary; Aaron reflection; interviews with Gens and Aaron; anesthesia record.

The office was so cramped
: Gens diary; interviews with Gens and Giordano.

Nancy Reagan found
: Interview with Sarah Brady.

The first lady then followed
: Interview with Opfer; interview with O’Neill, the doctor who suggested the chapel; interview with Marie Miller, an executive coordinator at the GW medical library, who used to work down the hallway from the chapel and described it to me.

“All we can do is pray”
: Interview with Opfer.

A little later, Sarah Brady
: Interviews with Opfer, Sarah Brady, and Baker; Nofziger,
Nofziger
, p. 294.

Baker and Meese left
: Interview with Baker.

Olson, the assistant attorney general
: Interview with Theodore Olson.

There were no precedents
: Interview with Olson. In describing the Twenty-fifth Amendment and its history, I relied on John D. Feerick’s
The Twenty-Fifth Amendment.
The first transfer of authority from a president to a vice president under the Twenty-fifth Amendment came when President Nixon resigned in 1974 and Vice President Gerald Ford took over, according to Feerick, the country’s leading authority on the amendment. Without the Twenty-fifth Amendment, Ford would never have been in position to become president. Nixon utilized the amendment in 1973 to nominate the Michigan congressman to replace Spiro Agnew, who had resigned. Ford was then confirmed by a majority vote of both houses of Congress, a requirement under the Twenty-fifth Amendment.

Before the Twenty-fifth Amendment was ratified in 1967, the office of the vice president remained vacant until after the next election. Although the Twenty-fifth Amendment was not invoked on March 30, 1981, Reagan became the first president to use it to temporarily transfer power to his vice president. In 1985, while undergoing surgery to remove a cancerous polyp from his colon, he shifted presidential authority to Bush. In his letter to the Speaker of the House and the president pro tempore of the Senate informing them of his decision, Reagan did not specifically invoke the Twenty-fifth Amendment. In fact, he went out of his way to say that he did not believe the amendment was meant to deal with “such brief and temporary periods of incapacity.” He added that he did not want to set a precedent for other presidents by invoking the amendment in such a situation. Even so, he followed all of the requirements necessary to transfer power to Bush under the amendment. Feerick said in an interview that “there is no question” that this was the first official transfer of power from a disabled president to a vice president. In his memoirs, Reagan wrote that he had indeed invoked the amendment. When Reagan signed the letter transferring authority to Bush, he told Fielding: “Tell George that Nancy doesn’t come with this.”

Sitting at the conference table
: Interviews with Fielding and various other former White House officials.

“He’s on the operating table”
: There is a distortion on Allen’s tapes at this point in the recordings. This is the only time where Allen and I disagree about what was said in the Situation Room. Allen believes that Haig says, “He’s
not
on the operating table.” And then Gergen responds, “He is on the operating table!”

Fielding turned to his right
: Allen and Fielding recall exchanging glances at this moment.

13: “I Am in Control Here”

At about 4:30 p.m.
: Interviews with Giordano, Gens, and Aaron; Gens notes.

Adelberg boldly asked
: Interview with David Adelberg.

Aaron was determined
: Interview with Aaron.

admired his physique
: Interviews with Aaron, Cheyney, and Adelberg.

he could see the lung
: Interviews with Aaron and Cheyney; Aaron reflection.

he scooped out
: Aaron reflection.

the hole puzzled him
: Interview with Aaron.

“He’s right upstairs here!”
: Darman,
Who’s in Control?,
p. 51.

“Is the president in surgery?”
: Transcript of briefing, RRPL; video of briefing on various television networks.

growing increasingly frustrated
: Interview with Lesley Stahl.

in “over his head”
: Casey memo, RRPL.

“What’s he doing up there?”
: Ursomarso memo, RRPL.

For Haig, this was
: Haig,
Caveat
, p. 159. Haig’s recollections of events in
Caveat
are inaccurate at times but provide insights into his thought process before he dashed to the press room.

Gergen and Ursomarso
: Interview with Gergen; Ursomarso memo, RRPL.

Allen was stunned
: Interview with Allen.

The secretary of defense was baffled
: Weinberger memo, RRPL. The exchanges among the various officials in the next few paragraphs are drawn from White House memos, Regan’s
For the Record
, Weinberger’s
Fighting for Peace
, and Darman’s
Who’s in Control
?

the nearest sub could
: Weinberger explained this conversation with the general to the other officials in the Situation Room, according to Allen’s tapes. Weinberger also wrote about his discussion with the general in
Fighting for Peace
, pp. 87–88.

“Al, are you listening?”
: Allen tapes.

was not the sort to back
: Weinberger, by all accounts, was a fierce bureaucratic infighter, and he rarely lost such battles. A fan of Winston Churchill, the defense secretary hung on his wall a partial quotation from the British prime minister: “Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty.” He was also very close to Reagan. The president called him “my Disraeli,” a reference to another British prime minister.

At 3:25, the plane had
: Treasury report.

scribbling that it
: Copy of card, GBPL.

he wondered aloud
: Diary entry of Rep. Jim Wright, provided by Wright.

The pilots and Secret Service agents
: Interviews with Orchard and Pollard.

Bush’s military aide and a Secret Service agent
: Interview with John Methany, the military aide.

By 4:10 the
: Treasury report.

lobby the vice president
: Interview with Pollard; Bush,
Looking Forward
, pp. 220–22; Untermeyer diary.

Bush then dictated
: Copy of message, which arrived at 4:50 p.m., RRPL.

Aaron eyed a clock on
: Interview with Aaron.

They pumped several other
: Anesthesia record.

an anesthesiologist carefully
: Interview with Lichtman.

Cheyney and Adelberg took
: Interviews with Cheyney and Adelberg.

“I think I might call it quits”
: Interview with Aaron; Aaron reflection.

At one point
: Interview with Cheyney.

“
Having a good time, Ben?”:
Interviews with Lichtman and Aaron;
The Saving of the President
.

his anxiety grew
: Interview with Aaron.

ashtrays scattered
: Photos of Situation Room, RRPL.

sipped Coke, coffee, and Sanka
: Allen tapes.