Filmmaker Holds Firm on Reagan Movie’s Accuracy

Former National Security Advisor Richard V. Allen’s criticism of my film, the Showtime drama “The Day Reagan Was Shot,” began in March of this year--long before he ever saw it. So perhaps it is no surprise that upon viewing the film, he claims in The Times that we have “A ‘History’ Woven From Whole Cloth” (Counterpunch, Dec. 17). I think the gentleman does protest too much, for Allen knows there is much more truth here than he would like to admit.

Based on exhaustive research that included accounts from Cabinet members, newspaper and magazine articles, eyewitnesses in the hospital and archival footage, “The Day Reagan Was Shot” makes an undeniable and overwhelming case that there was a constitutional crisis on March 30, 1981.

The 25th Amendment, which allows for the formal transfer of executive power to the vice president, should have been invoked because of the president’s incapacity. There was also a government cover-up regarding the president’s health, as dramatized in the movie.

Allen avoids these issues entirely in his article. He chooses to focus, instead, on the actions taken in the Situation Room at the White House, particularly what he alleges were his actions.

Eyewitnesses, on the public record, state that there was an atmosphere of “tension” and “panic” in the room, focusing on: (a) Soviet troop movements on the Polish border, (b) provocative Soviet nuclear submarine activity off our coast, and (c) the heightened state of military readiness.

Former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger has gone into great detail on the efforts to determine whether a Soviet attack was underway, and has written that he had to cancel a nuclear simulation.

Allen obviously has not bothered to check the facts as he describes them with the colleagues who were in the room with him.

Relying on carefully edited portions of tape recordings he made that day (released after the film was made), Allen has accused me of having the “temerity” to say that his tapes corroborate our movie. Let me suggest that the real temerity here belongs to a public official who records a crisis meeting in the Situation Room of the White House and then locks the tapes away in a drawer for 20 years--only to release transcripts when it becomes obvious a motion picture about the event is to be released, and then only selected minutes out of six hours. Such actions are an arrogant misuse of government property.

The clear solution is to have Allen release the entire unedited tape and allow anyone to make the comparisons and draw whatever conclusions seem warranted.

In April, the CBS news program “60 Minutes II” broadcast a story based primarily on Allen’s tapes that focused entirely on the nuclear threat that day. The evidence is there, in the public record, as well as in selected transcripts published in Atlantic Monthly earlier this year. Conversations take place between Cabinet members about whether to deploy the National Emergency Airborne Command Post, a Boeing 747 specifically designed for continuity of government in case of nuclear attack.

These conversations are especially intense on the tapes. Why this exchange if the men in that room didn’t think the situation was truly dangerous? Allen tries to give the impression that I made it all up. One wonders if Allen bothered to listen to the tapes he released.

Does that mean every word, every shot, every scene in the movie is exactly as it happened? Of course not. No film would claim such a thing. It all comes down to context, interpretation and emphasis. Regardless, I believe the reason the film has received wide acclaim is that it has the ring of truth.

“The Day Reagan Was Shot” provides the first-ever dramatization of a constitutional crisis and government cover-up (both amply supported by facts) and the threat they pose to a nation when a president becomes incapacitated. This is important and relevant and raises issues that should be discussed openly.

Finally, Allen’s attacks on the film and on me are fair game, but it is not fair that he saves his special brand of vitriol for Oliver Stone, one of the executive producers of “The Day Reagan Was Shot.” I find this contemptible because it was made very clear to Allen that while Stone acted as a mentor and a supporter of the project, he left its making to me and the other producers. I am proud that Stone’s name is on “The Day Reagan Was Shot,” but if anyone has criticism of the way events and people are portrayed in the movie, they should direct their criticism at me.

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Cyrus Nowrasteh wrote and directed “The Day Reagan Was Shot.”