Description
In this provocative and stunningly insightful memoir, Donald T. Regan takes us down the corridors of power in Washington and into the heart of the Reagan Administration. For the Record is frank and revealing. It is an analysis of the Reagan Presidency-and an account of the personalities of Washington's movers and shakers - written by a man once called "the second-most powerful man in America."
This closely observed, sharp-edged work begins in the President's hospital room, where Reagan is recuperating from colon cancer and where the first discussions of the Iran initiative take place. What follows is an anecdotal history of the crisis as it develops: the missions, the hostage re- leases, the arms shipments, and finally the astonishing revelation of a possible diversion of funds to the Contras in Central America. We are present when Attorney General Edwin Meese tells the President and Regan of this discovery; and we are with Regan the following morning, when he confronts Vice Admiral John Poindexter. Finally, we are with Regan when he is forced into tending his resignation by factions in the White House that sought to make him the scapegoat for the Iran- Contra debacle.
Regan describes how, as Secretary of the Treasury, he helped revolutionize U.S. economic policy, and he offers a spirited advocacy of the controversial measures that overcame inflation and helped to re- form the tax system. He reconstructs his two years as Chief of Staff-and presents a vivid picture of Reagan's visit to Bitburg and of the superpower summits with Gorbachev.
In the lively personal section of the book Donald Regan turns to the modest circumstances of his boyhood in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The son of an Irish police- man, he attended Harvard on a scholar- ship and served with the marines in World War II. Regan discusses his career at Mer- rill Lynch, where he began as a trainee in 1946 and rose through the ranks to be- come Chairman of the Board in 1971.
For the Record reads like the most engrossing of thrillers: It documents in chilling detail what happens when radical elements in the White House run amok in a world of international intrigue, personal rivalry, and special interest. Donald Regan has written the extraordinary story of one of the most complexly run administrations in modern times. In doing so he has created a political memoir without parallel.
ISBN:0151639663
