Rawhide Down_ The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan - Del Quentin Wilber [74]
Before the surgery got under way, a nurse changed the Pleur-evac container. It now held 2.275 liters of blood, about 35 percent of the president’s total blood volume. David Gens, standing at the foot of the operating table, was shocked. The bleeding hadn’t significantly slowed since they’d inserted the chest tube.
At 3:26 p.m., an hour after Reagan had been shot, Joe Giordano asked for a No. 10 blade and made an inch-long vertical incision just two inches below the president’s belly button. He then sliced through three layers of tissue and fat before poking through the peritoneum, the thin sheet of tissue that encloses the abdomen. Using forceps, he passed a needle trailing surgical thread through the tissue, creating a so-called purse-string suture, like the cord on a duffel bag. He inserted a small catheter into the hole and pulled tight on the thread, drawing the wound taut around the thin tube.
Another surgeon injected a liter of sterile saline solution through the tube and into the president’s abdomen. Nurses and doctors jiggled the president’s body to ensure the saline made its way around all the organs. If the solution came back clear, the president was probably free from abdominal injury. If it came back red or pink, the surgical team would learn that his wound was even more serious than they had believed.
For the moment, there was nothing to do but wait.
CHAPTER 12
A QUESTION OF AUTHORITY
At about 3:30, Richard Allen slipped out of the conference room and walked to his office, just outside of the Situation Room’s communications area. Joining him was the secretary of defense, Caspar Weinberger, who had arrived minutes earlier from the Pentagon. Together, they took a call from Ed Meese at the hospital.
Meese reported that the president was unconscious and that doctors were about to perform surgery, although Meese did not want that information to be made public yet. He then reminded Weinberger that the secretary of defense had command authority over all U.S. forces—that is, in absence of the president and vice president, Weinberger could deploy troops, planes, and nuclear weapons under certain circumstances or in response to an attack. The three men then discussed how to frame statements issued by the White House. They agreed to be as candid as possible, but they also wanted to downplay the extent of the crisis. It would be a mistake, they felt, to unnecessarily worry the American public or to send enticing signals to enemies.
“What we want to do is to mainly indicate that he is not in any major danger,” Meese said.
“You think this an appropriate time now to [communicate] with foreign governments?” Weinberger asked.
“I would think so, you might want to talk to Al [Haig] about that, but I think we don’t want to have any thought of any kind of a vacuum,” Meese said.
An aide handed Allen a draft statement that the administration intended to issue to U.S. embassies around the world; the statement would then be delivered to foreign governments. Allen began to read it to Meese. “‘You will have heard that on March 30th there was an attempt on the life of President Reagan,’” Allen read. “‘Although he was injured in that attack, his condition is stable. You should inform the government that in spite of this terrible event, the government in Washington continues to carry out its obligations to its people and its allies.’
“Is that statement all right,” Allen asked, “for a temporary?”
“Yeah, okay,” Meese said.
Weinberger didn’t like it. “I wonder if the last sentence is more alarmist than it should be,” he said.
Meese suggested that they simply leave it out and then added that they should include a line indicating that