Nancy Reagan’s New Book Harshly Critical of Regan

Former First Lady Nancy Reagan says the biggest mistake of her husband’s presidency was allowing Donald T. Regan and James A. Baker III to switch jobs in January, 1985.

Mrs. Reagan sharply criticizes Regan in her soon-to-be-published memoirs. She says Regan, who moved from Treasury secretary to White House chief of staff in the job swap, “often acted as if he were President.”

The book, “My Turn: The Memoirs of Nancy Reagan,” written with ghostwriter William Novak, is excerpted in the Oct. 23 issue of Newsweek magazine.

In an interview that was to be broadcast today on the Associated Press Radio Network, Mrs. Reagan says the book was not intended as an attempt to get even for slights she suffered during the White House years.

Mrs. Reagan said all she wanted to do was “set the record straight about a lot of things that had not been straight during the White House years.”

The former First Lady says her consultation with astrologer Joan Quigley “began as a crutch” to ease her anxiety after her husband was shot in 1981. It eventually became “an enormous embarrassment” to Reagan when Regan revealed it to the press.

In the interview, Mrs. Reagan said she is no longer consulting Quigley or any astrologer. “At the end, it was really just a matter of habit more than anything else,” she said.

In the book, Mrs. Reagan denies that she engineered Regan’s departure from the White House. But she details her role in making her husband aware of growing complaints about him at the height of the Iran-Contra affair.

“I’m not saying Iran-Contra was Don Regan’s doing,” Mrs. Reagan writes. “But it did occur on his watch, and when it came out, he should have taken responsibility.”

Mrs. Reagan also says she believes that former CIA Director William J. Casey was deeply involved in the scandal “when he wasn’t thinking clearly” because of the brain tumor that eventually killed him.

Mrs. Reagan reports that she spoke with former President Richard M. Nixon and then-Vice President George Bush about getting Regan out. She said Nixon “called to say that, if Ronnie wanted him to talk to Don Regan about resigning, he would.”

She says Bush agreed with her that Regan should quit, but quotes him as saying it’s “not my role” to tell him.

“If, by some miracle, I could take back one decision in Ronnie’s presidency,” she says, “it would be his agreement in January, 1985, that Don Regan and Jim Baker switch jobs.”

Baker, now secretary of state, does not escape criticism. “Although Jim did a lot for Ronnie, I always felt his main interest was Jim Baker,” Mrs. Reagan says.

The book renders harsh judgment on several other top officials of the Reagan Administration. Reagan’s first secretary of state, Alexander M. Haig Jr., was “Ronnie’s biggest mistake in the first term,” she says, calling him “power hungry,” “belligerent” and “obsessed with matters of status.”

She calls former Budget Director David A. Stockman “a shrewd and crafty man” who violated the President’s trust.

Former Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, by waiting far too long to resign after getting into trouble over finances, “weakened both the Justice Department and the presidency,” she says.

Mrs. Reagan says she thinks the press made too much of her supposed feud with Soviet first lady Raisa Gorbachev, but she acknowledges that she didn’t like her.

“My fundamental impression of Raisa Gorbachev was that she never stopped talking. Or lecturing, to be more accurate.”