President Ronald Reagan secretly recorded some of his conversations with foreign leaders, discovered author William Doyle, who shared some of these never-heard tapes exclusively with The Post.
“Until now, taping was thought to have stopped in the Nixon era. I discovered that was not the case,” Doyle said.
The recordings from the White House Situation Room include Reagan trying to convince an intractable Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to hold off the pullout of Israeli troops from Lebanon in 1983 until Lebanese forces can replace them; the president discussing the release of Western hostages in the Middle East with Pakistani President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, and a talk with Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, the father of Syria’s current dictator and the original “Butcher of Damascus”— whom he kept waiting for over 13 minutes while he finished up a horseback ride at his California ranch.
“Damascus is saying hurry up, what’s going on?” Assad’s frustrated translator says at one point before the conversation.
Doyle said Reagan recorded many, but not all, of his phone calls with heads of state through the Situation Room switchboard, so that an accurate record could be kept of conversations that often included translators and bad connections.
“There is no evidence that I have seen that Reagan audiotaped any other closed-door non-public White House business,” said Doyle.
The tapes — found in the Situation Room in response to 1987 congressional Iran-Contra inquiries — were routinely discarded or recorded over, but Doyle received them last week following a Freedom of Information Act request he made in 1996.
“The White House told Congress they were not relevant to the inquiry, and the tapes stayed in the White House, classified and unheard by any outsiders, until they were labeled, boxed and sent to the Reagan Library, where they remained classified,” said Doyle, co-author of “Navy SEALS: Their Untold Story,” a new book out this week, and co-producer of the companion PBS documentary special.
Steve Branch, an audiovisual archivist at the Reagan Presidential Library in California, said the tapes are the first audio recordings of White House Situation Room telephone conversations the library has released to date.
The five recordings, which Doyle said he selected because of their potential historical value, include two of Zia-ul-Haq — who died in a plane crash that was a suspected assassination in 1988 — who is exceedingly deferential to Reagan, repeatedly apologizing for potentially bothering him with the call about the Beirut hostage crisis of 1984. Reagan insists the hijackers not be appeased, “because I think we would just see more hijackings then and more terrorism.”
In another recording, Reagan profusely apologizes to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for not consulting with her before launching SEALs and other American forces into Grenada in October 1983.
“I guess it’s the first thing we have done since I’ve been president in which the secret was actually kept until it happened,” he notes.
Here are some excerpts from the Reagan tapes acquired by author William Doyle, who puts the calls in context for The Post:
Kith and Kin — Reagan and Thatcher
A deeply apologetic Reagan pours on the charm on Oct. 26, 1983 as he tries to assuage the anger of the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who he knows is furious that he is invading Grenada without having consulted with her first. “It is a remarkable, secret presidential call, as Reagan is in the middle of a major presidential crisis, thousands of US troops are in motion into combat and he is talking without a script,” Doyle says. It’s also the first time Reagan ever led troops into combat, including the first major combat operation of the Navy SEALs after Vietnam.
Thatcher: There’s no need to do that.
Reagan: We regret very much the embarrassment that’s been caused you, and I would like to tell you what the story is from our end out here. I was awakened at 3 in the morning, supposedly on a golfing vacation down in Georgia. And was there with the secretary of state [George Shultz], so we met in pajamas out in the living room of our suite because of this urgent plea from the Organization of East Caribbean States pleading with us to support them in this thing in Grenada.
We immediately got a group going back here in Washington, which we shortly joined, on planning and so forth. It was literally a matter of hours. We were greatly concerned, because of a problem here — and not at your end at all — but here. We’ve had a nagging problem of a loose source, a leak, here. At the same time we had immediate surveillance — as well as we could without their knowing it was happening — on Cuba to make sure that we could get ahead of them if they were moving and indeed, they were making some tentative moves. They sent some kind of command personnel into the island there.
Incidentally, let me tell you that we were being so careful here that we didn’t even give a firm answer to the Caribbean States. We told them that we were planning, but we were so afraid of this source and what it would do; it could almost abort a mission, with the lives that could have endangered.
When word came of your concerns — by the time I got it — the zero hour had passed, and our forces were on their way. And of course the time difference made it later in the day when you learned of it. For us over here it was only 5:30 in the morning when they finally landed and at last we could talk plainly. But I want you to know it was no feeling on our part of lack of confidence at your end. It’s at our end.
And so, I guess it’s the first thing we have done since I’ve been president in which the secret was actually kept until it happened. But our military and the planning only had — I really have to call it a matter of hours — to put this together. I think they did a magnificent job. Your governor general [Sir Paul Scoon] there, we have him safe, and his wife. That was one of our primary goals was to immediately sequester him for his safety. So he is safe in our hands down there.
Thatcher: I know about sensitivity, because of the Falklands. That’s why I would not speak for very long even on the secret telephone to you. Because even that can be broken. I’m very much aware of sensitivities. The action is underway now and we just hope it will be successful.
(Later)
Reagan: I tell ya, those people on those other islands, they’re pretty remarkable. We’ve had here, when I made the announcement to the press here, that OK they’re on shore and D-Day has happened. And I had with me, Prime Minister Charles.
Thatcher: I know her. She’s a wonderful person.
Reagan: She certainly is. She’s captured our city by storm. She’s right up on the Hill meeting with some of our Congress right now. And then, Adams, from Barbados, we are getting him up here. We’ve got both of them on some of our television shows so they can talk to the people. We are getting him on, we’ve had her on. He’s a remarkable man also.
Thatcher: He’s a very remarkable man. He is a very cultured man and very wise. He’s been in politics a long time.
Reagan: Yes. You know she doesn’t have an army. She did away with an army completely. She has a police force. She told me that her constables in her police force were coming in from out in the country and asking her if they couldn’t go with the forces over there.
Thatcher: They wanted to help.
Reagan: They all feel — and dating from the days when they were under the Crown — she used the expression: kith and kin. I don’t know if that’s one of our expressions or one of yours.
Thatcher: It’s one of ours.
Reagan: Well, we still use it here. We still have the heritage. She used that several times to describe their feelings. They have no feeling of the people on the other islands being foreigners. They still think of themselves as all one group. We want to put them out ahead in helping with the restoration of a government, so there will be no taint of big old Uncle Sam trying to impose a government on them.
Thatcher: There is a lot of work to do yet, Ron.
Reagan: Oh, yes.
(Later)
Thatcher: I must return to this debate in the House. It is a bit tricky.
Reagan: All right. Go get ’em. Eat ’em alive.
‘We must not make the hijackers think they’ve won their goal’
This call in June 1985 is about TWA Flight 847, which was hijacked by Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad. “Reagan had two cards to play to try to free the hostages: the military card, as Navy SEALs and other US special forces prepared several times to rescue hostages in Lebanon but could never get good enough intelligence to confirm their exact whereabouts,” Doyle says. “And he had the diplomatic card, which he is trying to play here with Pakistan, which had influence in Lebanon with the Shia.”
Pakistani President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq: We have released a statement this afternoon in the press and also the media about conveying the concern of the people of Pakistan government . . . in this undue delay, and we have demanded immediate release of the hostages, and also we have at the same time conveyed that we hope that those Lebanese Shiites would be released by the government of Israel.
Reagan: Yes. Well, we must do that in a way that does not make the hijackers think that they have won their goal, because I think we would just see more hijackings then and more terrorism. But we believe that if they will return ours, and then I think the Israelis are prepared to also to deliver theirs. But not make it a kind of ransom at the moment.
Zia-ul-Haq: I entirely agree with you, Mr. President. And I must say that many of us here in Pakistan and also elsewhere in the world really appreciate the stand that you have taken. We admire you, Mr. President, and we salute you. And we hope that you will win because right must win.
Reagan: Well, thank you very much.
Making Assad wait
Reagan makes a call to Syrian President Hafez al-Assad in February 1985 to try to pressure him to resolve the Lebanon crisis. The language is mostly stilted, but Reagan still manages to get in a couple digs in.
Reagan was riding his horse at his California ranch and kept Assad waiting over 13 minutes. But Assad’s translator doesn’t give the president the exact explanation that Reagan staffers offer — which is that the president was horseback-riding — and instead simply tells Assad that Reagan apologizes and was on a “farm.”
“I’m sure he was enjoying that a lot more than the prospect of talking on the phone with the original Butcher of Damascus, who was known to have ordered the killing of at least 10,000 Syrian civilians in a single massacre, the 1982 slaughter at Hama, Syria,” Doyle says.
Reagan: Mr. President, let me take this opportunity to extend my congratulations on your re-election to a new term as president of Syria.
That was ironic, Doyle notes, since Syria was a one-party dictatorship and police state with rigged elections.
“Over the years, Assad frequently teased American leaders with the promise of progress with Syria on regional matters, but such progress rarely occurred,” he added.
‘A call I did not want to make’
Menachem Begin — who was among the toughest and most difficult negotiators among American allies — balks at doing what the president is asking him to do, which is to delay an Israeli tactical withdrawal from certain positions in the Chouf mountains in Lebanon until Lebanese forces could replace them in February 1983. It shows Reagan trying to maneuver the explosive chess pieces of a Mideast crisis that included the US Navy SEALs as part of multinational peacekeeping force; the Israeli, Lebanese and Syrian armies; the PLO; and multiple militias and terrorist factions.
Begin can’t bring himself to say no to Reagan — and instead will have his defense minister tell the Americans that they are pulling out.
“It is also an astonishing recording as it captures a moment in the death of Menachem Begin’s political career. He was deeply depressed over the disastrous war in Lebanon and by the death the previous year of his beloved wife. He was also plagued with heart trouble and other health problems. Months later he decided to resign, that October he left office a broken man, and after that rarely left his house until the day he died. On the tape, you can hear the pathos of the moment in Begin’s voice,” Doyle said.
Reagan: It’s a call that I have resisted making and did not want to mak,e and I know what has been taking place there. And the only reason I am making this call now is because the situation has changed in the five days since you willingly agreed to delay and we all had hoped that its all we had to ask of you. But there’s been great progress along some lines there.
. . . But physically, they need several more days before they can move into the Chouf. And I’m sure you are aware of the massacre that has taken place there — the men, women and children in that Christian village that were massacred. And I’m afraid of the instigation of the Syrians, we know enough, as I’m sure you know, that the Syrians are very much involved in all of this.
And so, here I am now asking you the one thing you told me not to ask you and that is, could you delay a few more days in that withdrawal until the Lebanese army can free itself from Beirut and move into the Chouf.
Begin: Ron, I just spoke to the foreign minister who has held Jerusalem and now he is also the defense minister. He came back from Lebanon. I know that the evacuation had to start tonight . . .
I will get in touch with our defense minister . . . any minute . . . and then I’ll get in touch with you. Because what I want to say now is that the two previous delays which we accepted only because you asked us to do so, that we knew it will create resentment . . . as a result of that experience I really express the hope . . . that we will not have to delay again.