Reagan: The Life (99 page)

“I’m often accused of being an optimist,” he continued. “And it’s true I had to hunt pretty hard to find any good news in the board’s report. As you know, it’s well-stocked with criticisms, which I’ll discuss in a moment.” But there was good news amid the bad. “I was very relieved to read this sentence: ‘The board is convinced that the President does indeed want the full story to be told.’ ” There had been no cover-up. And there
would be no cover-up. “That will continue to be my pledge to you as the other investigations go forward.”

Regarding the bad news, Reagan didn’t blink. “I’ve studied the board’s report,” he said. “Its findings are honest, convincing, and highly critical; and I accept them.” There would be no buck-passing in this administration. “I take full responsibility for my own actions and for those of my administration. As angry as I may be about activities undertaken without my knowledge, I am still accountable for those activities. As disappointed as I may be in some who served me, I’m still the one who must answer to the American people for this behavior. And as personally distasteful as I find secret bank accounts and diverted funds—well, as the Navy would say, this happened on my watch.”

Reagan addressed the issue that had generated the greatest controversy. “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. As the Tower board reported, what began as a strategic opening to Iran deteriorated, in its implementation, into trading arms for hostages. This runs counter to my own beliefs, to administration policy, and to the original strategy we had in mind. There are reasons why it happened, but no excuses. It was a mistake. I undertook the original Iran initiative in order to develop relations with those who might assume leadership in a post-Khomeini government. It’s clear from the board’s report, however, that I let my personal concern for the hostages spill over into the geopolitical strategy of reaching out to Iran. I asked so many questions about the hostages’ welfare that I didn’t ask enough about the specifics of the total Iran plan.”

Reagan remained concerned about the hostages. “Let me say to the hostage families: ‘We have not given up. We never will. And I promise you we’ll use every legitimate means to free your loved ones from captivity.’ ” But there would be no more trading arms for hostages. In what amounted to a significant concession of presidential impotence, Reagan said, “Those Americans who freely remain in such dangerous areas must know that they’re responsible for their own safety.”

The other part of the report involved the money diverted to the contras. “The Tower board wasn’t able to find out what happened to this money, so the facts here will be left to the continuing investigations of the court-appointed independent counsel and the two congressional investigating committees. I’m confident the truth will come out about this mat
ter, as well.” And he would live with the truth. “As I told the Tower board, I didn’t know about any diversion of funds to the contras. But as president, I cannot escape responsibility.”

Reagan introduced the new personnel who would forestall future transgressions. “Former senator
Howard Baker, my new chief of staff, possesses a breadth of legislative and foreign affairs skills that’s impossible to match,” he said. “
Frank Carlucci, my new national security adviser, is respected for his experience in government and trusted for his judgment and counsel.” Reagan’s nominee for CIA director,
William Webster, awaited confirmation by the Senate. Reagan had previously nominated
Robert Gates to replace William Casey, who had at length resigned, still gravely ill. But the nomination ran into trouble when many senators questioned the swap of one CIA insider for another, and Reagan and Gates agreed to withdraw it. Reagan expected no such difficulty with Webster. “Mr. Webster has served as director of the FBI and as a U.S. district court judge. He understands the meaning of ‘rule of law,’ ” he said.

The president said he had ordered a review of covert operations, to ensure that they clearly supported American policy and values. “I expect a covert policy that, if Americans saw it on the front page of their newspaper, they’d say, ‘That makes sense.’ ” He had forbidden the NSC staff to undertake covert operations. “No ifs, ands, or buts,” the president said. He had created a new position of NSC legal adviser to ensure compliance with the law. And he pledged to keep Congress informed. “Proper procedures for consultation with the Congress will be followed, not only in letter but in spirit.”

Reagan hoped the country could get past the problems that had compelled the Tower report. “What should happen when you make a mistake is this: You take your knocks, you learn your lessons, and then you move on. That’s the healthiest way to deal with a problem.” He didn’t deny the importance of the continuing investigations. “But the business of our country and our people must proceed.”

R
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S SPEECH SCARCELY
dented the skepticism. A new poll revealed that
85 percent of respondents believed that the White House had engaged in an organized cover-up of the Iran-contra affair, and half said Reagan himself was part of the conspiracy. By one measure the speech did more harm than good. Its focus on foreign affairs, combined
with the general distrust surrounding the presidency, drove the approval rating of Reagan’s handling of foreign policy to a new low of 33 percent.

Yet Reagan refused to be discouraged, or even to acknowledge the damage he had suffered. His staff continued to cocoon him. “
The speech was exceptionally well received, and phone calls (more than any other speech) ran 93 percent favorable,” he wrote in his diary. “Even the TV bone pickers who follow the speech with their commentaries said nice things about it.”

R
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S RESISTANCE TO
unpleasant reality took other forms as well. He had known
Rock Hudson the way he knew many other Hollywood stars: by reputation chiefly but by occasional encounter as well. And it wasn’t unusual that he had acknowledged the actor’s passing in October 1985. “
Nancy and I are saddened by the news of Rock Hudson’s death,” Reagan declared in a written statement released by the White House. “He will always be remembered for his dynamic impact on the film industry, and fans all over the world will certainly mourn his loss. He will be remembered for his humanity, his sympathetic spirit and well-deserved reputation for kindness. May God rest his soul.”

None denied the graciousness of the president’s gesture, but many found the statement late and lacking. Rock Hudson had been visibly wasting for months. “
He had been to a White House dinner and had been at my table,” Nancy recalled. “I remember sitting across from him and thinking, Gee, he’s thin. I asked if he had been dieting, and he said he had been hard at work on a new picture and had lost weight.” The tabloid press asserted various causes for his decline. Reagan heard the stories and responded privately. “
Called Rock Hudson in a Paris hospital where press said he had inoperable cancer,” Reagan wrote in July 1985. “We never knew him too well but did know him and I thought under the circumstances I might be a reassurance. Now I learn from TV there is question as to his illness and rumors he is there for treatment of
AIDS.”

Hudson confirmed the rumors, revealing that he had been diagnosed with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome a year earlier. The syndrome remained relatively new to doctors and public health officials; not until 1981 had AIDS been clinically described. And because it appeared first in
homosexual men, it carried a stigma among those very many Americans who considered homosexuality sinful, perverted, or merely distasteful.

Reagan was more tolerant than many of his generation. His daughter
Patti Davis (who dropped her father’s last name in favor of her mother’s) later said that he had spoken matter-of-factly about Rock Hudson’s homosexuality, which had been an open secret in Hollywood for years. And she said that Reagan and Nancy had once left her and Ron in the care of a lesbian couple while they vacationed in Hawaii. As former governor of California in the late 1970s, Reagan visibly opposed a ballot measure that would have barred gay men and women from teaching in California public schools.

Yet Reagan headed a party that included powerful groups appalled by homosexuality. In their view the “gay plague,” as they often called it, was the consequence of homosexuals’ defiance of nature and God. “
They have declared war upon nature, and now nature is exacting an awful retribution,” wrote Patrick Buchanan, a conservative pundit (and future Reagan communications director). Televangelist Jerry Falwell declared, “
AIDS is God’s judgment on a society that does not live by His rules.”

Reagan had sometimes catered, if not pandered, to the social conservatives. During the Republican primary season in 1980 journalist
Robert Scheer inquired whether Reagan thought gay people had the same civil rights as everyone else.

“
I think they do and should,” Reagan replied.

Then why, Scheer asked, did some of the candidate’s reported comments suggest otherwise?

“My criticism of the
gay rights movement is that it isn’t asking for civil rights,” Reagan responded. “It is asking for a recognition and acceptance of an alternative lifestyle which I do not believe society can condone, nor can I.”

“For religious reasons?” Scheer asked.

“Well,” Reagan said, “you could find that in the Bible it says that in the eyes of the Lord, this is an abomination.”

“But should that bind the rest of the citizens who may not believe in the Bible?” Scheer asked. “Don’t we have the right to separation of church and state?”

“Oh, we do, yes we do,” Reagan affirmed. But he added, “Look, what other group of people demands the same thing? Let’s say here is the total libertarian—or libertine, I should say—who wants the right to just free and open sex.”

Scheer expressed puzzlement that self-proclaimed conservatives should want government to intrude in the private lives of consenting adults.

Reagan clearly didn’t like the path he was going down. “No one is advocating the invasion of the private life of any individual,” he said. “I think Pat Campbell said it best in the trial of Oscar Wilde. She said, ‘I have no objection to anyone’s sex life so long as they don’t practice it in the street and frighten the horses.’ ”

Reagan spoke little more about gay rights after he secured the nomination and then the election. He quietly allowed money for AIDS research to be included in the federal budget, but he let others in the administration do what little talking executive branch officials did on the subject. He maintained presidential silence on AIDS throughout his first term, even as the death toll mounted into the many thousands.

But eventually reporters flushed him out. “
Mr. President,” one asked at a news conference in September 1985, “the nation’s best-known AIDS scientist says the time has come now to boost existing research into what he called a minor moon shot program to attack this AIDS epidemic that has struck fear into the nation’s health workers and even its schoolchildren. Would you support a massive government research program against AIDS like the one that President Nixon launched against cancer?”

“I have been supporting it for more than four years now,” Reagan answered. “It’s been one of the top priorities with us, and over the last four years, and including what we have in the budget for ’86, it will amount to over a half a billion dollars that we have provided for research on AIDS in addition to what I’m sure other medical groups are doing. And we have $100 million in the budget this year; it’ll be $126 million next year. So, this is a top priority with us. Yes, there’s no question about the seriousness of this and the need to find an answer.”

The reporter was skeptical. “The scientist who talked about this, who does work for the government, is in the
National Cancer Institute,” he said. “He was referring to your program and the increase that you proposed as being not nearly enough at this stage to go forward and really attack the problem.”

Reagan defended his policy. “I think with our budgetary constraints and all, it seems to me that $126 million in a single year for research has got to be something of a vital contribution.”

Several months later, when Reagan sent his budget to Congress, it included AIDS research as a “
high priority” program. On the same day
he declared, in remarks to the employees of the Department of Health and Human Services, “
One of our highest public health priorities is going to continue to be finding a cure for AIDS. We’re going to continue to try to develop and test vaccines, and we’re going to focus also on prevention.”

In the spring of 1987 Reagan announced the creation of a special commission to study AIDS and seek a cure. “
AIDS is clearly one of the most serious health problems facing the world community, and our health care establishment is working overtime to find a cure,” he said. “The commission will help us to ensure that we are using every possible public health measure to contain the spread of the virus.”

That May he gave his first important address on AIDS. The
American Foundation for AIDS Research held a fund-raiser in Washington and invited Reagan to speak. If the audience expected him to be tentative or uncomfortable, they soon discovered their mistake. “
Fundraisers always remind me of one of my favorite but most well-worn stories,” he began. “I’ve been telling it for years, so if you’ve heard it, please indulge me. A man had just been elected chairman of his community’s annual charity drive. And he went over all the records, and he noticed something about one individual in town, a very wealthy man. And so, he paid a call on him, introduced himself as to what he was doing, and he said, ‘Our records show that you have never contributed anything to our charity.’ And the man said, ‘Well, do your records show that I also have a brother who, as the result of a disabling accident, is permanently disabled and cannot provide for himself? Do your records show that I have an invalid mother and a widowed sister with several small children and no father to support them?’ And the chairman, a little abashed and embarrassed, said, ‘Well, no, our records don’t show that.’ The man said, ‘Well, I don’t give anything to them. Why should I give something to you?’ ”