A ‘History’ Woven From Whole Cloth

“The Day Reagan Was Shot,” the just-released Showtime film by executive producer Oliver Stone and writer-director Cyrus Nowrasteh, invites viewers to the conclusion that they’ve just seen a little slice of inside history, stuff the public rarely gets to see. Some, especially those under 30, may think they have been served up an accurate rendition, but Stone and Nowrasteh have pulled all the stops, turning history on its head by substituting fantasy and sheer fabrication for what really occurred in the White House on March 30, 1981, the day President Ronald Reagan and three others took bullets from would-be assassin John Hinckley.

I know, because as the president’s national security advisor, I was there, and conducted the entire crisis meeting in the White House Situation Room.

What makes it bad for Stone and Nowrasteh in this case is that they proceeded to write the script and shoot the film of this 20-year-old event without doing accurate research, and apparently never bothered to interview the principal participants. Nor did they have an inkling that, just as they completed shooting the film last spring, there would appear in the Atlantic Monthly an accurate and irrefutable account of what was said and done in the White House that afternoon.

Times critic Howard Rosenberg poses the question correctly in his review of the movie (“Film on Reagan Shooting Plays Loose With Facts,” Dec. 7): “When does dramatic license become unacceptable historical dramatic distortion?” The answer is: When an important national emergency, the shooting of the president and its aftermath, is twisted into an unrecognizable and grotesque fable, one that knowingly misleads, creates scary and ridiculous scenes depicting events that never occurred and suggests that senior government officials engaged in imprudent and impulsive behavior that threatened our safety and security.

How do I know that these two gentlemen are pulling a fast one by claiming their movie is accurate? That’s easy: Minutes after the shooting, when I arrived back at the White House, I found a milling crowd of staffers and a couple of Cabinet officers in the office of Chief of Staff Jim Baker, who had departed for the hospital. The sensible thing to do was to choose essential senior staff as a crisis working group, and that could be done only in very secure conditions. The Situation Room, adjacent to my office on the ground floor of the West Wing and under my supervision, was the proper place, and so I brought Secretary of the Treasury Donald Regan, Secretary of State Alexander Haig, White House Counsel Fred Fielding, communications director David Gergen and a few others down to the Situation Room, instructed the guards not to permit entry to anyone past the cyberlocks without my express permission (except a Cabinet officer), and then initiated the crisis management activity. Shortly, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, CIA Director William J. Casey and a few other senior officials joined us.

Taping in the Situation Room is generally not permitted, so as to preserve the confidentiality of what’s said there. But this was a national emergency, not a secret policy discussion, and so I placed my personal tape recorder in the center of the table and recorded the entire proceedings. These tapes were in my possession for 20 years, and portions were first revealed in March of this year.

Stone and Nowrasteh portray the White House meeting as beginning with Haig’s decision to convene it (wrong), his arrival through a (nonexistent) underground entrance, his demeanor as disturbed, excitable and very aggressive (it was not), his language as foul and abusive (it was not), Weinberger as uncertain and obsequious (he was not) and Casey as a mumbling sleepyhead (Casey, as always, was sharp and on the point).

They have pompous generals obstructing Weinberger and siding with Haig, himself a former general (there were no generals in the crisis meeting; Weinberger deliberately kept them at the Pentagon), place a telephone repairman under the Situation Room conference table (preposterous, and it did not happen), identify a “NORAD Red Alert” (there was none), create a telephone call from the Soviet ambassador complaining about weapons systems pointed at the USSR when those systems were chosen by the president only months later, and so on.

The underlying theme is that rash behavior in the White House somehow nearly brought us into a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union. In fact, the Soviets did nothing during our hours of uncertainty.

Stone’s track record as a revisionist of recent history and a leading conspiracy theorist may explain his distrust in government. That is his personal choice, but the presentation of history carries with it certain minimal responsibilities, not least an attempt to be accurate.

The only option for Stone and Nowrasteh at this point is to come out into the open and debate the accuracy of “The Day Reagan Was Shot.” My colleagues and I will be ready, at any time and in any forum.

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Richard V. Allen, former national security advisor to Ronald Reagan, is senior counselor at Apco Worldwide in Washington and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, Stanford University.