thedrifter
05-03-07, 07:00 AM
May 3, 2007
History Made Intimate Through Reagan’s Diaries
By MOTOKO RICH
Ronald Reagan’s private diaries, once the subject of argument over whether excerpts would be produced as part of the Iran-contra trial of John M. Poindexter, the former national security adviser, are being published for all the world to see later this month.
Five volumes of handwritten diary entries in 8-by-11-inch leather-bound maroon books have been edited by the historian Douglas Brinkley to produce an abridged version. HarperCollins will publish the 784-page “Reagan Diaries” on May 22. For $35 readers can glean insights into the president’s character and get a ringside seat on his contemporaneous takes on world events. “Funny — I was talking peace but wearing a bullet proof vest,” he wrote on Nov. 18, 1981, after addressing the National Press Club and calling for the elimination of medium-range nuclear weapons in Europe.
Excerpts from the diaries were published on Tuesday on the Web site of Vanity Fair and also will be published in that magazine’s June issue. HarperCollins paid seven figures for the world rights to publish the diaries from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library two years ago. A complete edition will be published in several volumes in the next year or two, said Tim Duggan, executive editor at HarperCollins.
Fred Ryan, chairman of the Reagan Library, said that about a decade ago Mr. Reagan had given the library permission to publish the diaries. “They contain tremendous amounts of information about the presidency, Ronald Reagan and America at that time,” Mr. Ryan said. “We thought that now would be a good time to release these.”
In terse entries that span the eight years of Mr. Reagan’s presidency, the diaries range from the prosaic details of his days (“I must be getting better — my naps are getting shorter,” he wrote on April 29, 1981, a month after being shot by John W. Hinckley, Jr.) to the details of governing (“More meetings with Cong. These Demos. are with us on the budget and it’s interesting to hear some who’ve been here 10 years or more say it is their 1st time to ever be in the Oval office,” he wrote on May 6, 1981) to the emotional fallout from some of the most tragic events of his tenure (“I called the parents of the 2 Marines — not easy. One father asked if they were in Lebanon for anything that was worth his son’s life,” the president wrote on Sept. 6, 1983).
And readers can get a retroactive sense of being in on some classified information. On Oct. 24, 1983, the eve of the United States invasion of Grenada, Mr. Reagan wrote: “So far not even a tiny leak about the Grenada move. This was one secret we really managed to keep.”
As for the Iran-contra scandal, the excerpts released on Tuesday show the president denying any knowledge. “It is complete fiction,” he said of a tape delivered to the Tower Commission, which the president had appointed to investigate the scandal. According to a diary entry on Feb. 11, 1987, the tape recorded Lt. Col. Oliver North saying that he had met with the president at Camp David, and that the president “was willing to go all out with arms deliverys in order to get our hostages back & I wanted Iran to win the war.”
Apart from politics President Reagan emerges as a father troubled by the petulance of his son, Ron, but a devoted husband to Nancy. When she was away, he wrote, “As usual I’m lonesome & so is Rex,” the family dog.
Ellie
History Made Intimate Through Reagan’s Diaries
By MOTOKO RICH
Ronald Reagan’s private diaries, once the subject of argument over whether excerpts would be produced as part of the Iran-contra trial of John M. Poindexter, the former national security adviser, are being published for all the world to see later this month.
Five volumes of handwritten diary entries in 8-by-11-inch leather-bound maroon books have been edited by the historian Douglas Brinkley to produce an abridged version. HarperCollins will publish the 784-page “Reagan Diaries” on May 22. For $35 readers can glean insights into the president’s character and get a ringside seat on his contemporaneous takes on world events. “Funny — I was talking peace but wearing a bullet proof vest,” he wrote on Nov. 18, 1981, after addressing the National Press Club and calling for the elimination of medium-range nuclear weapons in Europe.
Excerpts from the diaries were published on Tuesday on the Web site of Vanity Fair and also will be published in that magazine’s June issue. HarperCollins paid seven figures for the world rights to publish the diaries from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library two years ago. A complete edition will be published in several volumes in the next year or two, said Tim Duggan, executive editor at HarperCollins.
Fred Ryan, chairman of the Reagan Library, said that about a decade ago Mr. Reagan had given the library permission to publish the diaries. “They contain tremendous amounts of information about the presidency, Ronald Reagan and America at that time,” Mr. Ryan said. “We thought that now would be a good time to release these.”
In terse entries that span the eight years of Mr. Reagan’s presidency, the diaries range from the prosaic details of his days (“I must be getting better — my naps are getting shorter,” he wrote on April 29, 1981, a month after being shot by John W. Hinckley, Jr.) to the details of governing (“More meetings with Cong. These Demos. are with us on the budget and it’s interesting to hear some who’ve been here 10 years or more say it is their 1st time to ever be in the Oval office,” he wrote on May 6, 1981) to the emotional fallout from some of the most tragic events of his tenure (“I called the parents of the 2 Marines — not easy. One father asked if they were in Lebanon for anything that was worth his son’s life,” the president wrote on Sept. 6, 1983).
And readers can get a retroactive sense of being in on some classified information. On Oct. 24, 1983, the eve of the United States invasion of Grenada, Mr. Reagan wrote: “So far not even a tiny leak about the Grenada move. This was one secret we really managed to keep.”
As for the Iran-contra scandal, the excerpts released on Tuesday show the president denying any knowledge. “It is complete fiction,” he said of a tape delivered to the Tower Commission, which the president had appointed to investigate the scandal. According to a diary entry on Feb. 11, 1987, the tape recorded Lt. Col. Oliver North saying that he had met with the president at Camp David, and that the president “was willing to go all out with arms deliverys in order to get our hostages back & I wanted Iran to win the war.”
Apart from politics President Reagan emerges as a father troubled by the petulance of his son, Ron, but a devoted husband to Nancy. When she was away, he wrote, “As usual I’m lonesome & so is Rex,” the family dog.
Ellie