Rawhide Down_ The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan - Del Quentin Wilber [135]
Richard Allen, however: Interview with Allen.
some of Reagan’s closest: Martin Schram, “White House Revamps Top Policy,” WP, March 22, 1981, p. A1.
raising the unlikely prospect: Interview with Baker. Numerous newspaper and wire service stories detailed Haig’s comments about Latin America in the weeks preceding the shooting. Haig even threatened to “go to the source” of arms shipments from Cuba to El Salvadoran guerrillas. White House advisors were upset that Haig “placed public emphasis on El Salvador as the bulwark of the Reagan stand against communism at a time when Reagan was trying to place public emphasis on his economic program,” the Washington Post reported on March 26, 1981.
he wasn’t happy either: Haig details his displeasure with White House staffers in Caveat. Allen showed me extensive notes he took of conversations with Haig in the days and weeks before and after the shooting in which the secretary of state sharply criticized Reagan’s top White House aides.
he’d nearly resigned: Haig, Caveat, p. 146.
Afterward, Reagan: Reagan Diaries, p. 29; Haig, Caveat, pp. 147–48.
Haig was concerned: Interview with Goldberg, who shadowed Haig for most of the day and was one of his closest advisors; Haig, Caveat, p. 156.
Haig was shocked: Interview with Goldberg.
watched saline solution: Interviews with Gens and Giordano.
He’d never seen: Interview with Gens.
“Does anybody know”: Interview with Gens; Gens tape-recorded interview with Pekkanen, 1981.
Gens checked the Pleur-evac: Gens diary; interview with Gens.
2.6 liters: Gens diary; Aaron reflection; interviews with Gens and Aaron; anesthesia record.
The office was so cramped: Gens diary; interviews with Gens and Giordano.
Nancy Reagan found: Interview with Sarah Brady.
The first lady then followed: Interview with Opfer; interview with O’Neill, the doctor who suggested the chapel; interview with Marie Miller, an executive coordinator at the GW medical library, who used to work down the hallway from the chapel and described it to me.
“All we can do is pray”: Interview with Opfer.
A little later, Sarah Brady: Interviews with Opfer, Sarah Brady, and Baker; Nofziger, Nofziger, p. 294.
Baker and Meese left: Interview with Baker.
Olson, the assistant attorney general: Interview with Theodore Olson.
There were no precedents: Interview with Olson. In describing the Twenty-fifth Amendment and its history, I relied on John D. Feerick’s The Twenty-Fifth Amendment. The first transfer of authority from a president to a vice president under the Twenty-fifth Amendment came when President Nixon resigned in 1974 and Vice President Gerald Ford took over, according to Feerick, the country’s leading authority on the amendment. Without the Twenty-fifth Amendment, Ford would never have been in position to become president. Nixon utilized the amendment in 1973 to nominate the Michigan congressman to replace Spiro Agnew, who had resigned. Ford was then confirmed by a majority vote of both houses of Congress, a requirement under the Twenty-fifth Amendment.
Before the Twenty-fifth Amendment was ratified in 1967, the office of the vice president remained vacant until after the next election. Although the Twenty-fifth Amendment was not invoked on March 30, 1981, Reagan became the first president to use it to temporarily transfer power to his vice president. In 1985, while undergoing surgery to remove a cancerous polyp from his colon, he shifted presidential authority to Bush. In his letter to the Speaker of the House and the president pro tempore of the Senate informing them of his decision, Reagan did not specifically invoke the Twenty-fifth Amendment. In fact, he went out of his way to say that he did not believe the amendment was meant to deal with “such brief and temporary periods of incapacity.” He added that he did not want to set a precedent for other presidents by invoking the amendment in such a situation. Even so, he followed all of the requirements necessary to transfer power to Bush under