“blending the gifts of Ronald Reagan with the proper pageantry”: Deaver, Behind the Scenes, 179.
license to use the president’s first name to his face: ibid., 195–97.
allow him unfettered access to the White House grounds: Fred Ryan, interview by author, Washington, DC, January 22, 2020.
“Could be”: Henkel, author interview, October 17, 2017.
“snake-check that son of a bitch for everything he’s worth”: Deaver, Behind the Scenes, 185.
“Everything we were doing… that Joan didn’t plan on”: Henkel, author interview, October 17, 2017.
“a nightmare”: Cannon, President Reagan, 67.
“his agony… transmitted itself, via television, into millions of human hearts”: Morris, Dutch, 532.
“We survived… …would have been a blip on the screen”: Rollins with DeFrank, Bare Knuckles, 164.
“Her power was everywhere… She was everywhere”: Peggy Noonan, What I Saw at the Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era (New York: Random House, 1990), 163.
“Suddenly, looming up in full view of the scope… and perhaps the world?”: Hutton, interview, April 15–16, 2004, Miller Center.
“It’s cancer.”: Speakes with Pack, Speaking Out, 186.
“Her aplomb was extraordinary… we then explained the procedure we would perform”: ibid.
“Goddamn it,” she said. “I knew he was going to do that”: Kuhn, author interview, February 28, 2019. Kuhn was in the room with Nancy Reagan.
“Because in her opinion he couldn’t be tired out this way… looked very peculiar”: Donald Regan, interview by Lou Cannon, May 17, 1989, transcript in Lou Cannon Papers, University of California at Santa Barbara.
“cancel the damn helicopter”: Regan, For the Record, 14–15.
never again to withhold medical information about him from the public: Speakes with Pack, Speaking Out, 194–202.
A little over two years later… “It will be all right”: All dialogue comes from Hutton, interview, April 15–16, 2004, Miller Center.
“lifted me from the pit I was in and kept me out of it”: Ronald Reagan, An American Life, loc. 10328 of 12608, Kindle.
“It was full of love and concern… wishing it had come from my own daughter”: Nancy Reagan with Novak, My Turn, 255–56.
“Believe me, no one knows… it really isn’t so bad”: Nancy Reagan to Betty Cuniberti, 1988; letter provided to author by Cuniberti.
He had never seen his wife in such pain: Ronald Reagan, An American Life, loc. 10356 of 12608, Kindle.
Ronnie delivered a graceful eulogy… “already broken heart”: Nancy Reagan with Novak, My Turn, 263.
“Those first few months in the White House… side by side”: Morris, Dutch, xiii–xvii.
“When I began writing… what feels good in one’s heart is usually sincere writing”: Wendy Smith, “Edmund Morris: Writer Behind the Throne,” Publishers Weekly online, October 11, 1999, https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/print/19991013/29478-edmund-morris-writer-behind-the-throne.html.
“Well, he’s pretty simple as far as I’m concerned… no big mystery here”: Deaver, interview, September 12, 2002, Miller Center.
“I still don’t fully understand my father… more clues, more threads to tie together”: Patti Davis, “Finally Seeing My Father—Through Edmund’s Eyes,” Washington Post online, October 10, 1999, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/1999-10/10/034r-101099-idx.html.
“comes as near as any book I’ve read to capturing my father’s elusive nature”: Ron Reagan, My Father at 100, 6.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“At first, we thought it was gay men… Haitians—which was a mistake”: Dr. Anthony Fauci, interview by author, Bethesda, MD, January 30, 2018.
Annals of Internal Medicine: Anthony S. Fauci, “The Syndrome of Kaposi’s Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections: An Epidemiologically Restricted Disorder of Immunoregulation,” Annals of Internal Medicine 96, no. 6 (June 1, 1982): 777–79, https://doi.org/10.7326/0003-4819-96-6-777.
Though more than half of those stricken… on the inside pages: Randy Shilts, And the Band Played On: People, Politics, and the AIDS Epidemic (New York: Penguin Books, 1988), 191.
“It was clear that there was sort of a muted silence… bully pulpit to sound the alarm”: Fauci, author interview, January 30, 2018.
“By that time… 20,849 had died”: Shilts, And the Band Played On, 596.
“Jail will kill him”: Michael K. Deaver and Mickey Herskowitz, “The Invincible Nancy,” Washington Post online. February 21, 1988, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1988/02/21/the-invincible-nancy/24c8ed84-aff5-40aa-a645-37b881bc6803.
Their family friend Doug Wick… changed the perceptions of some in his circle who misunderstood her: Wick, author interview, July 13, 2017. Another account of the episode at the wedding reception: Trish Bendix, “The ‘Lesbian Writer’ Who Danced with Nancy Reagan,” Into More online, April 3, 2018, https://www.intomore.com/culture/the-lesbian-writer-who-danced-with-nancy-reagan.
“maybe the Lord brought down this plague” because “illicit sex is against the Ten Commandments”: Morris, Dutch, 458. Confirmed in author interview with Morris, August 7, 2017.
“ ‘If those fellows don’t leave me alone, I’ll just slap them on the wrist’ ”: Speakes with Pack, Speaking Out, 103.
“I don’t have it. And you? Do you?” German Lopez, “The Reagan Administration’s Unbelievable Response to the HIV/AIDS Epidemic,” Vox, last modified December 1, 2016, https://www.vox.com/2015/12/1/9828348/ronald-reagan-hiv-aids.
The reaction… was laughter: Richard Lawson, “The Reagan Administration’s Unearthed Response to the AIDS Crisis Is Chilling,” Vanity Fair online, December 1, 2015, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/11/reagan-administration-response-to-aids-crisis.
during a meeting with his national security advisers… San Francisco officials demanded an apology, both to the city and to people infected with the disease: Bob Woodward, “Gadhafi Target of Secret US Deception Plan,” Washington Post, October 2, 1986, A1; Associated Press, “Report of AIDS Jokes Roils San Franciscans,” New York Times, October 3, 1986, 7.
“How do you know?… How do you know?”: Kuhn, author interview, February 28, 2019. Kuhn said that Hutton related the account to him.
Nancy sent Hudson a set of photos… turned out to be Kaposi’s sarcoma: Daniel Bates, “We Have Recently Had Sex Together and… I May Have AIDS,” Daily Mail (UK) online, last modified December 5, 2018, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6464365/Book-reveals-Rock-Hudson-sent-letters-lovers-diagnosed-AIDS.html.
When Hudson collapsed… “in their thoughts and prayers”: Shilts, And the Band Played On, 574–79.
for nearly two years: The next mention in the Reagan diaries comes on March 30, 1987.
treatments would do no good: Shilts, And the Band Played On, 574–79.
Hudson’s heroic public acknowledgment… more than twice as much as had been collected in all of 1984: “Rock Hudson,” People online, December 23, 1985, https://people.com/archive/rock-hudson-vol-24-no-26.
“It was commonly accepted now… the power the news media exerted in the latter portion of the twentieth century”: Shilts, And the Band Played On, 585.
“You mean like the measles virus… no immune response?”: Hutton, interview, April 15–16, 2004, Miller Center.
tattooing HIV-positive people—on the upper forearm if they were IV drug users and the buttocks
