A. B. Culvahouse: Bill O'Reilly's 'Killing Reagan' revives debunked myth

Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard have exhumed a long-ago discredited myth about Ronald Reagan’s fitness to hold office as President again in their book, Killing Reagan. The authors accurately state that the late Jim Cannon (a friend of mine) in February 1987 prepared a memorandum reporting his conversations with outgoing White House aides to the effect that President Reagan was inattentive, disinterested and isolated to the point he no longer was performing the functions of his office.

Cannon summarized those conversations to Howard Baker, the newly-appointed White House chief of staff, Tom Griscom, who later was to serve as President Reagan’s communications director, and me, the new White House counsel, at Baker’s home on a Sunday night before we were to assume our White House duties.

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Howard called the meeting to discuss his three priorities as the new chief of staff (aggressively defending the president in the Iran-Contra investigations; implementing the president’s goal of negotiating a nuclear arms agreement with the Soviet Union; and finish winning the Cold War by electing a Republican president to succeed Ronald Reagan). Jim Cannon interrupted Howard to suggest that our first priority, according to his sources, should be to assess whether President Reagan should be removed from office under the provisions of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution. Howard, rather out of character, barked that the out-of-touch person described to Jim was “not the Ronald Reagan” he had met with the previous two days, that he had “no question” about the president’s mental competence, and that if any of us thought otherwise after our lunch with the president the following day, we would reconvene. We then proceeded to discuss the priorities outlined by Howard.

Yes, as first reported in 1988 in the book Landslide and now recounted by O’Reilly and Dugard, at our lunch with the president the four of us sat across from the president, but the 25th Amendment was not even remotely in mind, and the subject never was raised again. What I did think about was my discussion earlier that day with the president about getting our arms around the Iran-Contra facts and documents. ‎And, Howard already was working with the president on rebuilding public trust by acknowledging the folly of the arms sales to Iran. The Ronald Reagan presiding at the luncheon was, well, Ronald Reagan. In the words of Jim Cannon: attentive, alert, and charming.

During the next four months, one of my deputies and I met with President Reagan in 13 two-hour sessions to discuss his recollection of the arms sales to Iran and to substantiate his lack of knowledge about the diversion of arms sale proceeds to the Nicaraguan Democratic Resistance. The president, who began each session with a joke about lawyers, was engaged and frustrated at outrageous press reports attributed to former NSC staffers. He provided information from his diary to clarify dates and events confused by the recollection of others, emphatic about being unaware of the diversion of funds (“there wasn’t supposed to be any extra money”) and angry about acts committed in his name without his knowledge.

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The day after a particularly grueling session in which the president obviously was impatient with my repetitious and somewhat adversarial questions, I entered his office with some trepidation. Ronald Reagan looked at us with a smile, raised both hands, and declared himself “not guilty.” That, too, was not the Ronald Reagan described to Jim Cannon.

Any and all concerns I heard about Ronald Reagan’s fitness to hold office during my 22 months as his counsel consisted entirely of the statements from outgoing staffers described by Jim Cannon that Sunday evening. The myth that Howard Baker and I, at the Monday luncheon or otherwise, were contemplating whether President Reagan should be removed from office under the 25th Amendment was thoroughly discredited when it first appeared 27 years ago. It should be returned to the dust bin of fiction masquerading as history.

A.B. Culvahouse, who was Counsel to the President from 1987 to 1989, is a lawyer in Washington, D.C.

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