lesley stahl on ronald reagan

8/12/2019 Lesley Stahl on Ronald Reagan

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<blockquote>"I would like to acknowledge the end of an era." On July 31, Larry Speaks, in the briefing room, announced my imminent departure from the White House. "Lesley works the telephones probably better thn anybody I've ever seen," hesaid. "She's tough but fair."

Sam [Donaldson] started wisecracking. "I like this," I said. "You be quiet." [laughter]

And then it was my last day. As was the custom for a departing correspondent, Iwas to get a farewell audience with the president. Aaron and Taylor [Husband and daughter] were invited to join me.

We were expecting a little good-bye present from the president in the way of a story. A hole was reserved for me in the Evening News lineup. But on the way to the Oval Office, Larry took my arm and guided me to a corner in the hallway: "Look, no questions. No questions at all, about anything. Those are the ground rules. ANd I swear, if you even try, I'll shoot you on the spot. And you'll be out of there faster than you can think."

"Larry, this is outrageous. Everyone gets a going-away story. You wouldn't daretell The New York Times reporter he couldn't ask a question."

"You're not goin' in there," Larry said. "till you give me your word."

If Aaron and Taylor had not been there, I would have told him to go shove it. "Okay, okay," I said, making sure to leave the impression that this was a disgraceful injustice.

With Larry leading the way, Aaron, Taylor, and I entered the Oval Office. Standing in front of a Remington sculpture of a rearing horse, the president looked stiff and waxy. My anger subsidered. I had a story.

Reagan was as shriveled as a kumquat. He was so frail, his skin so paper-thin, I could almost see the sunlight through the back of his withered neck. His bony hands were dotted with age spots, one bleeding into another. His eyes were coated. Larry introduced us, but he had to shout. Had Reagan turned off his hearing aid?

"Mr. President!" he bellowed. "This is Lesley Stahl." He said it slowly. "Of CBS, and her husband, Aaron Latham."

Reagan didn't seem to know who I was. He gave me a distant look with those milky eyes and shook my hand weakly. Oh, my, he's gonzo, I thought. I have to go outon the lawn tonight and tell my countrymen that the president of the United States is a doddering space cadet. My heart began to hammer with the import. As theWhite House photographer snapped pictures of us - because this was a photo-op -I was aware of the delicacy with which I would have to write my script. But I was quite sure of my diagnosis.

Larry was shouting again, instructing the president to hand us some souvenirs. C

uff links, a White House tie tack. I felt the necessity to fill the silence. "This is my daughter, Mr. President," I said. "Taylor. She's eight." He barely responded but for a little head tilt.

Click. Click. More pictures. A flash. "When I covered Jimmy Carter," I said, "Taylor used to tell everyone that the president worked for her momy. But from theday you moved in here, she began saying, 'My mommmy works for the president.'" I wasn't above a little massaging. Was he so out of it that he couldn't appreciate a sweet story that reflected well on him? Guess so. His pupils didn't even dilate. Nothing. No reaction.

"You know, sir, I've covered the White House more years than you've been here. After I'm out a few weeks, I'll write you and tell you if there's life after this place." Again, only a modest acknowledgement that I was there.

This was just painful. How had he deteriorated so quickly? I had seen him just the week before. There were more mementos. More photos. And then Larry was shouting. "Sir, Lesley's husband, Aaron, writes for Hollywood. He's a screenwriter out there. Wrote a couple pictures for John Travolta."

As Reagan turned his head to find Aaron, the glaze in his eyes cleared, the freckles on his hands faded, the skin on the back of his neck tightened, and color came to his cheeks. Clark Kent. "Aaron, who did you work with?" he asked, jauntyand alive.

He pulled Aaron away from me and walked him over to the yellow couches to discuss a movie idea he had in which he would star, not as himself, not as the president.

I was left over by the Remington, clearly cut out of this and too astonished tomove. "Sir, it's time for them to leave," said Larry. We'd been budgeted for ten minutes. But the president brushed him off. He wanted to talk Hollywood. Five minutes later Larry became insistent. As the president shook my hand to say good-bye, he siad, "Lesley, you don't have to write me. I was governor of California

for eight years, so I already know what it'll be like when I leave here." He was beaming, as engaged as he'd been disengaged ten minutes before. "The first night Nancy and I were back in our own home," he said grinning, "we were invited toa big fancy party. Well, we got all dressed up, went out,g ot in the backseat of our car, and waited!" We all roared. I could see that Aaron, who had been railing for years at this man and his policies, was a puddle. Reagan had cast a spell. My husband was enchanted.

Somehow Larry managed to ease us out of the Oval Office, but Reagan called out,"Taylor! Taylor!" He was heading toward us down the hallway. When he caught up he said, "Taylor, I can't let you leave without telling you the truth." She was looking up at a tall, robust figure. "Taylor, I worked for your mother too."</blockquote>

You cannot look back on the Reagan years and not wonder if the president had Alzheimer's even then. We will never know for sure. There are those who were closeto him who like to say, "Oh, he was always like that, even when he was governorof California: unprepared, bored in briefings, ignorant of the substance of theissues." But others who were also close say that there was a marked difference,especially in the last two years. They talk about his little vacations from thescene when he would be there, yet not be there. They were concerened, and yet Reagan always seemed to recover. I had seen it in the Oval Office with Aaron and Taylor that day in 1986. White House officials tell me they saw the same glazed-over, spaced-out Reagan that we saw many times. If he was pulling those disappearing acts, who was making the decisions? On what was he basing the decisions he did make?"

I had come that close to reporting that Reagan was senile. I had had every intention of telling the American people what I had observed in the Oval Office. But then I wondered: What had I seen? I recently asked gerontologist Dr. Robert Butler at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York about Alzheimer's. There are two chief forms of dementia, he told me. One is classical Alzheimer's, where there is a steady destruction of the brain cells. The other kind is episodic, involving small, repeated strokes and circulatory changes, which he describe as "aheart attack in the brain." With this vascular kin, he said, "you see breakthroughs of insights, intervals of lucidity." On average, he said, it's a nine-year d



isease, but it can go much faster, or last 18 years.

When I asked if he thougth Reagan had had either kind when he was president, Dr. Butler said he couldn't make a diagnosis because he had never examined him, but that in truth, no one could make a real diagnosis of Alzheimer's until after death.

"What about the early symptoms of Alzheimer's?" I asked.

"It comes in stages. One could go back and forth in a shuttling, episodic slide. It might start with confusion about money, paying the iblls, fumbling with change. They can't calculate the right amount. A president doesn't have to do that."

He went on: "In the beginning, thee are lapses in attention span, in the formulating of speech: in language an concepts." But, I thought, Reagan was rewriting is speeches with clarity and color throughtout this time.

"With dementia, people retain the earlier memories better. Maybe that's why he kept telling the jokes and the anecdotes. That's what he remembered." Was that what the harping on the Hollywood stories was all about?

"He didn't hold many news conferences," I noted. "but it's hard to believe he could pull off even one if he had it, and let's not forget that second debate with Mondale. He came roaring back."

"The disease has its ragged edges," said Dr. Butler. "You can pump it out - neurotransmitters - particularly for a an actor with repeated rehearsals. Patients with it," he said, "maintain a social facade. There are those who are brilliant in disguising it, even to those around the. Judgment," he explained, "is one of the last things to go."

Then he told about a new finding: that dementia may be triggered by major surgery in people over 70. He told me of recent studies showing that anesthesia has aprofound effect on the elderly and that coronary bypass surgery can produce "severe neurological complications, including deterioration of memory, concentration or other intellectual functions similar to Alzheimer's disease." Dr. Butler said that after Reagan had been shot, he had had chest surgery that could have - he

stressed again, he had never examined him - but could have had a major, permanent effect.

"By the way," said Dr. Butler, "the support system makes a big difference."

"Reagan had a very protective wife," I pointed out.

"Yes." He smiled.

Did Nancy suspect? Did she know and help him disguise it? Were there any parallels with Edith and Woodrow Wilson? I asked historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, who said she felt there was a stronger connection with FDR. Starting in 1944, after he was diagnosed with congestive heart failure, she said, "Roosevelt would occasio

nally blank out, his eyes would assume a glassy look, his mouth would droop, and he'd forget what he was talking about. People around him knew something was wrong, but then he'd bounce right back." Even though Roosevelt's doctors said he was in excellent condition, the rumors about his health were rife. Two senators, old friends of his, insisted on seeing him, to check. The first one came out of the Oval Office declaring that the president was funny, charming alert, just like old times. There was nothing to worry about. The second senator went in a minute later, and Roosevelt had no idea who he was.

The people around FDR, said Goodwin, closed their eyes to his lack fo focus and



lapses in lucidity. They put more store in his rebounds because they had a vested interest in his surviving. Was this also true of Reagan's aides?

"Was he senile?" I asked one of his chief advisers.

"Maybe there were symtpoms," he conceded, "though I say that in hindsight. He would come to life for the cameras. He was on/off, on/off."

When I told him about our meeting with Reagan in the Oval Office, he smiled. "Isaw that come-to-life phenomenon many times. His eyes would brighten, blood would rush to his cheeks ina nanosecond." But then he said, "Look, my first meetingwith him: he fell asleep, and that was before he was shot."

I asked Peggy Noonan, who admitted that even though she had been his favorite speechwriter, she had rarely seen him. "He was a distracted man, shy, never surly. He could always ignite the engines."

"Alzheimer's?" I asked.

"People with Alzheimer's don't take down the Soviet Union."

Jim Rentschler of his NSC staff told me emphatically, "Reagan wasn't out of it.The stereotype that he was just a man with a script was total bull. He had a steely inner core with three to four concepts that he would bounce his feelings and

sentimentality off." He said he was sure Reagan did not have Alzheimer's. "No.At Cabinet meeetings when he'd get that dull look in his eye, I always thought it was a sign of mental health. Great mental hygiene."

Another former aide said, "Reagan was selectively engaged. When he didn't care,he'd float. At Cabinet meetings, he'd check out. But when he cared, he'd get deeply in."

"When you heard he had Alzheimer's, what did you think?"

"That explains a lot," he said. "He turned out - a lot."

"Did anyone back then ever say, 'This just isn't right?'"

"People didn't talk about it," he said. "People treated him with very special care. You had to explain things in elemental terms, but because he was so likable, everyone had so much personal regard for him - everyone protected him."

"Didn't you whisper around the water cooler that the president was zoned out? And that the public had a right to know?"

"No. He was treated with a reverence because of his personal qualities, especially after he was shot. The shooting transformed him...inside and outside the White House. We all became very solicitous. He was intellectually vacant, but I never felt the country was in any danger."

The people who had been close to him late in his second term, in 1988, suggested that there had been more symptoms. One told me that his yeelids had seemed incapable of staying open in any meeting after lunch. Another left the impression that he had worried every day about whether Reagan grasped what was going on. Hisstaff never knew whether they were going to confront a with-it or out-of-it manwhen they entered the Oval Office.

"DId you ever think about the 25th Amendment?" I asked an official who saw him regularly in 1988. "Did you ever think you had a duty to question his mental health and viability?"

"Well, you could never be 100 percent sure about him, because he always recovered. He always came to life."

"Didn't you ever discuss it - what was obviously clear to many of you?"

"No. You have to understand, we all loved him."

Whatever was going on - Alzheimer's or something else - Reagan held on to his good common sense ("Judgement is the last to go") and was able to "break through"when he really had to. I'm convinced that Nancy Reagan suspected something and many on the staff did as well, and they chose to protect him and keep silent. The president's doctor, Burton Lee, was quoted in USA Today on November 29,1996, as saying that late in his second term, "it was noticeable that there wassomething wrong there, but we figured it was just the natural aging process. Nancy was going to protect him and she did. She kept him further and further out of the flow." I now believe they covered up his condition; and may continued to as they wrote their memoirs.

But then the public knew something wasn't right. There were all sorts of signs,We all looked the other way.

When Reagan had a competent and steady staff, things ran smoothly, if not always brilliantly. And a great deal of the credit for that goes to Nancy Reagan who,

I suspect, did far more than we'll ever know to hold him, the White House, and by extension the country together. We'll never know exactly what Mrs. Reagan did, because she has chosen, as always, to protect her husband's image, which I think she will to the end. But I am quite certain we owe her considerable thanks.

lesley stahl on ronald reagan

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