Regan Was Dad’s Only Mistake, Maureen Says

In typical Ronald Reagan fashion he tried to keep up a good fighting front, even though inside he was hurting something fierce. During the weeks of the Tower Commission investigation, he was determined that it would be all business as usual in the White House. He tried not to let it get to him, but it got to him. It got to all of us.

I remember that at the height of all the speculation there was a meeting in town of the party’s major donors. The group was concerned that the scandal would make it difficult to sell tickets to their fund-raisers.

“Horseshit,” I exclaimed, getting up to say my piece. I couldn’t stand to listen to any of it anymore, particularly not from these good people who counted themselves among Dad’s earliest and most enthusiastic supporters. I wanted to grab their attention and shake them back to something resembling reality. With an opening line like that the floor was all mine, so I continued: “These are not trying times. The President of the United States did not do anything wrong.”

Of course, word got back to the President of my ringing defense on his behalf, particularly the part about the emphatically colorful language I’d used to open my remarks. This he needed to verify.

“You didn’t?” he said one night at dinner, only sort of asking.

“I did,” I said.

Now I will leave to others the task of re-creating a blow-by-blow account of the entire Iran-Contra mess. I am not a journalist or historian. I didn’t have a front-row seat to this particular piece of history, but I was sitting in the orchestra.

First, let me point the finger--at Donald Regan. Whether the President’s chief of staff was directly responsible for the Iran-Contra negotiations I can’t say, but I am certain that he was aware of them and that he allowed them to continue.

Yes, I’ll admit that the ultimate responsibility for the conduct of his own government does indeed rest with the President. Ronald Reagan will admit to you the same thing. But I am utterly convinced that the only failing in this particular President, throughout this particular scandal, was in his placing so much trust and authority in a man like Donald Regan.

Let me tell you a little bit more about this guy. When he first came on the scene, during Dad’s second term, there were nervous rumblings about his management style almost immediately. I went to check him out for myself, and to tell you the truth he seemed pleasant enough; I wasn’t particularly uncomfortable with him. I did, however, remark to Nancy that I hoped he was as good as he sounded.

By our second meeting I had deduced that Donald Regan didn’t think much of politicians or politics and that he didn’t think much of me. He seemed to suffer from that rare snobbery of the greedy rich, the attitude that suggests, “If you’re so smart, how come you ain’t rich like me?” It wasn’t long before he started to annoy the hell out of me. He had his offices remodeled to include an outdoor patio similar to the President’s. He also took it upon himself to refer to my father as Cousin in public, a habit he quickly abandoned after the President pointed out that “the Chief” might be accused of benefiting from nepotism. (Good going, Dad!)

The folks, though, were blind to the real Donald Regan. Every time I tried to demonstrate to them what this man was doing to his office and to the office of the President, they would come up with some logical explanation in his defense.

Pity the poor person who made Donald Regan angry. His “explosions” quickly became the stuff of White House legend, though I was not on the receiving end of one of his tirades until the close and controversial Contra vote.

I offered my opinion on what I thought was a poorly planned “pep rally” to drum up enthusiasm for the Administration’s support of the freedom fighters. Before I could get another word out, he erupted. “Goddamn it!” he began. “Who the hell do you think you are? You have been trying to run the West Wing for too long, and I’m going to stop you! You are a pain in the ass.”

I was not at all surprised then, to learn that the President had not been kept fully informed about the Iran-Contra negotiations. I was furious but not surprised. When the story broke, Dad was put on the point to make a speech, which proved to be factually inaccurate, and he subsequently had to call a press conference to explain the inaccuracies.

Nancy was out of town the night before the press conference, and so the President and I dined alone in the study, on tray tables in front of the television. We were watching the news, which of course featured the latest developments in the Iran-Contra scandal at the top.

“Dad,” I said, “do you think you are totally up to speed on this thing?”

He paused for a moment and looked up from the television and then down at the briefing books in front of him. “Yes,” he said slowly. “I think so.” As it turned out, the second set of briefings prepared for the President by Admiral Poindexter was as inaccurate as the first set; the press conference was a disaster.

Meanwhile, the President had formed the Tower Commission to investigate the National Security Council staff, and he announced he would not comment further on the scandal until he read the commission’s report. The timing worked out well for the President in that the investigation coincided in part with his recovery from prostate surgery; it was the perfect opportunity for him to regain his strength while the national press attention was focused on the investigation.

Donald Regan, though, didn’t see it that way, and he insisted that the President resume a harrowing travel and appointment schedule the week following his operation. Nancy was in a snit. The “Prime Minister” had already made headlines when he hung up on the First Lady--not once but twice--and now he was getting in the way of her husband’s health. That was just too much!

On the Monday of President’s Day weekend when they returned from Camp David, Nancy called me down the hall for a talk. It seems (my brother) Ron had filled the folks in on my most heated altercation with the “Prime Minister,” which I had related to him just a month before. They wanted to hear it from me. I re-created the story for them as best I could--complete with Regan’s street-level language--and they listened in shock.

Dad was horrified. All week long he had been hearing horror story after horror story about his chief of staff, and this one seemed to ice it all for him. At last!

No matter what we’ve learned about his role in the mess since and no matter what we will learn about it in the future, I will always be convinced that it was Donald Regan--with his smug insistence that he knew better than the President what was best for the President--who allowed it to happen.

The fallout from Iran-Contra was widespread and swift. The most troubling piece of news came that February, when we learned of Bud McFarlane’s near-fatal overdose of Valium--an apparent suicide attempt. The President had always liked and respected McFarlane and valued his advice a great deal. “I feel just terrible about this,” he said to me that night. “Bud is one of my favorite people.”

“I always think of Bud as a fatherly type,” I let on. “You know--someone who will make things all right.”

“And now this,” Dad said.

“And now this,” I concurred.

There was nothing else to say.

I don’t know that we’ll ever get all the way to the bottom of the Iran-Contra scandal, but I hope we get there soon. If there’s one thing I know as sure as sunshine, it’s that Ronald Reagan was not doing business with the Ayatollah.

There’s a part of me that won’t rest easy until everyone else knows that too.