Killing Reagan Read online

  But it is not De Niro who stirs the most emotion in John Hinckley. Instead, it is the child prostitute Iris who brings him back to the Egyptian Theatre time after time. Portrayed by twelve-year-old Jodie Foster, Iris behaves like an innocent child by day while turning tricks with grown men at night. During the filming of Taxi Driver, Foster was so young that she had to undergo a psychological evaluation to make sure she could cope with the troubling subject matter. Her nineteen-year-old sister, Connie, was brought in to be a body double for her in explicit scenes.2

  Hinckley does not know these things. Nor does he care. He is falling in love with Jodie Foster, no matter what her age.

  Outside the Egyptian, the once-glamorous streets of Hollywood that Ronald Reagan knew when he was a movie star thirty years ago are no more. Hustlers, con artists, pimps, and drug addicts troll the sidewalks. There is an air of menace as solitary men enter cheap X-rated theaters. Street thugs and drug addicts mingle with tourists who buy tacky souvenirs and study the cement sidewalk handprints of the stars at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.

  John Hinckley has come to Hollywood to be a star in his own right. He hopes to use his guitar skills to make his fortune, but that has not happened. His squalid accommodation at Howard’s Weekly Apartments just off Sunset Boulevard has become a prison. “I stayed by myself in my apartment,” he would later write of his months in Southern California, “and dreamed of future glory in some undefined field, perhaps music or politics.”

  The lonely Hinckley keeps to himself, living on fast food and slowly becoming convinced that Jews and blacks are the enemies of white men like him. The more time he spends in Hollywood, the more Hinckley expands his circle of loathing. He now views the city of Los Angeles as “phony” and “impersonal.”

  Isolated, Hinckley does not even keep in contact with his parents unless he needs money. He has become a drifter, unwilling to finish his studies at Texas Tech or get a job, and would be homeless without their support. John and Jo Ann Hinckley are growing increasingly concerned about their son’s behavior, but they support him financially, hoping that one day he will turn his life around and come back to Colorado. Hinckley gives them hope by writing that he is in a relationship with a woman named Lynn. But “Lynn Collins” is not real. She is a myth based on Betsy, Cybill Shepherd’s character in Taxi Driver—a fact the Hinckleys will not learn for five more years.

  Jodie Foster as Iris in Taxi Driver

  There are more lies, such as the one about the rock music demo he fictitiously records. In reality, the only good thing in John Hinckley Jr.’s life right now is up there on the screen at the Egyptian. Taxi Driver gives him hope and a sense of purpose. The fog of depression hanging over him lifts. Adopting the same manner of dress and behavior as Robert De Niro’s character is empowering for him. In Taxi Driver, Hinckley sees a series of clues that will lead him to a better life.

  “You talking to me?” Travis Bickle says, alone in a ratty apartment not much different from Hinckley’s. Bickle stares at his reflection in the mirror, taunting an imaginary antagonist. “You talking to me? Well, I’m the only one here. Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?”3

  Hinckley is enthralled as the on-screen action shifts to an attempted political assassination. The scene shows Bickle intending to kill a presidential candidate in order to win the love of a woman. But the Secret Service foil Bickle’s effort, and he slips away without firing a shot.

  John Hinckley knows the next scene well. It is the final gun battle. Travis Bickle goes to rescue Jodie Foster’s character from her pimp, who has sold her to an aging mobster. Jodie is beautiful up there on the screen, her blond hair rolled into tight curls, lips painted a vivid red. A one-man vigilante, Bickle blasts his way down the dingy hallway to where Iris’s liaison is being consummated. Blood spatters the walls as the body count rises. The camera pulls in tight to the surprised look on Iris’s face as she hears the approaching gunshots. It is her friend, Travis Bickle, who has come to save her. She is not afraid. Quite the opposite. She cries when it appears that Travis might die.

  As the movie ends and the credits role, Travis Bickle is a hero in the eyes of Jodie Foster’s character—and in the eyes of John Hinckley Jr.

  And if Bickle can be a hero, then Hinckley can be a hero, too.

  There are any number of reasons John Hinckley has fallen in love with that beautiful young girl up there on the screen. She is the one person the solitary Travis Bickle cares enough about to put his own life on the line for—and in real life, her name is Jodie, which is the nickname Hinckley’s mother goes by. A delusion is beginning to take shape in Hinckley’s disturbed brain: that Jodie Foster might just be capable of falling in love with him.4

  The screen grows dark. John Hinckley steps out into the hot California sunlight. He walks the streets, just as Ronald Reagan once did. It was here on Hollywood Boulevard, near the corner of Cahuenga, that Reagan received his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960. Hinckley strides over it without even noticing.

  In addition to acquiring boots, a jacket, and a newfound thirst for peach brandy, John Hinckley now also keeps a journal, just like Travis Bickle. The only trait he has not borrowed from the taxi driver is a passion for owning guns.

  That will soon change.

  14

  WHITE HOUSE

  APRIL 25, 1980

  5:43 A.M.

  President Jimmy Carter is depressed. The White House switchboard wake-up call has not made his real-life nightmare disappear. In fact, it’s getting worse. Having his press secretary leak the horrible news to the media in the dead of night was bad enough, but the weight of what he must do now feels like a heavy stone upon his chest.

  Carter is a man who likes to micromanage. He dresses quickly, in a dark suit, light blue shirt, and yellow-and-blue tie. The president then picks up the bedroom phone to call his press secretary, Jody Powell. Throughout the last four years, Powell has been very busy, as Carter’s presidency has seen one setback after another. Catastrophic inflation has weakened the dollar. Skyrocketing oil prices and long lines to purchase gasoline have shocked and angered the public.1 And now there is humiliation overseas.

  Jimmy Carter and Jody Powell talk intensely about what the president will say on television in just one hour. An anonymous scheduler keeps track of the president’s calls, inserting a P next to this moment in the president’s daily worksheet, indicating that it was Carter who placed the call to Powell. (An R is used when the president receives a call.)

  The two men talk for five minutes. Neither has any interest in breakfast. They are used to working under pressure. But even though the day is still young, they are already drained. The speech on television should have been one of celebration, the president of the United States proclaiming jubilant news to the world: A daring rescue attempt has freed the fifty-two American hostages. The hostages have been held in Iran by Muslim militants for six harrowing months because of U.S. support for the shah of Iran, who was admitted to the United States for cancer treatment shortly after going into exile. The radicals holding the Americans hostage insisted that he be returned to Iran to be put on trial for crimes committed during his thirty-eight-year reign.

  Instead of celebration, though, there is disaster: eight American soldiers and pilots lie dead in the hot sands of the Iranian desert following an aborted rescue attempt, their bodies burned beyond recognition. In a rush to flee without being captured, their fellow soldiers left the dead Americans behind. It is, perhaps, one of the greatest military humiliations in U.S. history.2

  But Jimmy Carter’s nightmare will not end with a public explanation of why he authorized the rescue attempt, why he suddenly ordered it aborted, and why eight American servicemen are now dead.

  Iranian militants have long threatened to kill the hostages if any rescue attempt were launched. Carter finally called their bluff—only to fail miserably. Now he has to explain the tragedy to the American people.

  Jimmy Carter walks downstairs from the seco
nd-floor residence. His wife, Rosalynn, a woman known for her frosty demeanor, is on her way home from Austin, Texas, where she was supposed to spend the day campaigning on her husband’s behalf. It was shortly after midnight when Jimmy Carter asked his wife to come back to Washington. This would not be a day for campaigning.

  Morose, the president steps into the Oval Office at 6:08 a.m. He sits at his desk in this great room and places phone calls to the First Lady and Secretary of Defense Harold Brown. A news camera and microphone are brought into the room. The president straightens his tie. His speech is laid before him on the famous Resolute desk.3

  Finally, at 7:00 a.m., Carter looks into the camera. He wants to appear in command, but his eyes betray him, showing exhaustion. The president will speak for eight minutes. Afterward, he will receive condolences from former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, who will offer to explain the purpose behind the failed rescue mission to the major television networks on Carter’s behalf.

  Jimmy Carter never imagined such a moment when he was governor of Georgia. Then, he was a solitary man with huge ambitions, launching a long-shot campaign in 1974 eventually to become president of the United States. Carter has come a long way from his small hometown of Plains, Georgia, but now it is all crashing down.

  Carter speaks like a naval officer instead of a politician as he unemotionally explains his tactics to the nation, hoping his words will save his reelection campaign.

  “I canceled a carefully planned operation which was under way in Iran to position our rescue team for later withdrawal of American hostages, who have been held captive there since November 4,” he begins.

  “Our rescue team knew, and I knew, that the operation was certain to be difficult and it was certain to be dangerous. We were all convinced that if and when the rescue operation had been commenced that it had an excellent chance of success. They were all volunteers; they were all highly trained. I met with their leaders before they went on this operation. They knew then what hopes of mine and of all Americans they carried with them,” Carter explains.

  “It was my decision to attempt the rescue operation. It was my decision to cancel it when problems developed in the placement of our rescue team for a future rescue operation.

  “The responsibility is fully my own.”

  Carter exhales. It has been a brutal morning. And he fears the worst is yet to come.

  Out of respect for the fifty-two captives, Carter has done little campaigning for reelection. He believes this “Rose Garden strategy” of remaining in the White House to deal with the crisis makes him look more presidential—and that it will ultimately win him another term.

  That strategy is doomed to fail. And so is Jimmy Carter’s presidency.

  After his nationwide address on the Iranian hostage-rescue disaster, Carter’s job approval rating plunges to 28 percent.

  Ronald Reagan takes notice.

  * * *

  Ten months before the failed rescue attempt, Jimmy Carter is responding to the news that Sen. Ted Kennedy plans to run against him for president. “I’ll whip his ass,” Jimmy Carter tells a group of Democratic members of Congress.

  The two men are sworn enemies and will remain that way the rest of their lives. Kennedy, the blue-blooded youngest brother of the assassinated John and Robert Kennedy, is a forty-seven-year-old senator from Massachusetts. He’s a man of many pleasures, drink and women being chief among them. Kennedy is the sentimental favorite among many Democrats who have bestowed sainthood upon his dead brothers.

  But Teddy Kennedy is no saint, as the events of a fateful summer night one decade ago clearly showed.

  It was 11:15 p.m. on July 18, 1969. The senator was attending a party on Chappaquiddick Island, a short ferry ride from the main hamlet on Martha’s Vineyard, Edgartown. Kennedy was restless and decided to leave the party with an attractive young campaign worker, twenty-eight-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne. The fresh-faced Mary Jo was infatuated with Kennedy, and he knew this as he led her to a 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88. Kennedy had been drinking but nevertheless got behind the wheel while Mary Jo, a former member of the Robert Kennedy 1968 presidential campaign, sat in the front passenger seat. Strangely, she’d left her purse and her hotel room key behind, as if expecting to return to the party later that night.

  Kennedy and Mary Jo drove into the dark. Few people live on Chappaquiddick Island. First, the two made a stop on Cemetery Road, an out-of-the-way location. Suddenly, a police car approached, so Kennedy started up the Olds again.

  Later, Ted Kennedy will tell investigators that he was driving Mary Jo Kopechne to the local ferry so she could make the last crossing to Edgartown. But that was a lie; they were driving in the opposite direction from the ferry. Kennedy turned down a dirt road and onto a small wooden bridge that crossed a canal. There were no guardrails, and the car was traveling twenty miles per hour when it suddenly slid off the bridge and into the water. The Oldsmobile flipped upside down in the black current, disorienting Kennedy and Mary Jo. The senator quickly got free of the vehicle and then kicked hard for the surface. In the darkness, he did not see or hear Mary Jo Kopechne.

  Kennedy panicked. Not only had he driven a car off a bridge in the dead of night, in the company of a woman who was not his wife, but that woman may also have drowned.

  Soaking wet, Kennedy walked up the road until he came to the body of water separating Chappaquiddick from the main part of Martha’s Vineyard. He dove into the water and swam five hundred feet to Edgartown. Incredibly, once on land, Kennedy returned to his hotel room, changed into dry clothes, and went to bed. He did not inform police about the accident for nine more hours. When he finally did talk to the authorities, he told them he’d called Mary Jo Kopechne’s name many times and made an effort to swim down and find her in the submerged vehicle. Few believed his story.4

  Soon, fishermen spotted the wreck, and rescue divers pulled Mary Jo Kopechne’s body from the car. Quickly, investigators deduced that she’d initially survived the wreck, finding an air pocket inside the vehicle. Judging from the position of her body, police believed she’d remained alive for some time. Edgartown Rescue Squad diver John Farrar, who pulled Mary Jo’s body from the vehicle, told friends that Mary Jo suffocated rather than drowned. The car’s doors were all locked, but the windows were either open or shattered, leaving investigators to wonder how the six-foot-two Kennedy could successfully escape while the five-foot-two Mary Jo remained in the vehicle.

  In another incredible occurrence, there was no autopsy, in part because the Kopechne family opposed it. Almost immediately, the young woman, whose family lived outside Scranton, Pennsylvania, became the subject of rumor and innuendo.5

  One week after Mary Jo Kopechne’s death, Sen. Ted Kennedy learned that he would get off easy. An openly sympathetic judge, James Boyle, quickly wrapped up the case. Kennedy pled guilty to leaving the scene of an accident, and Boyle gave him a suspended sentence, saying, “You will continue to be punished far beyond anything this court can impose.”

  Now, more than ten years later, Boyle’s words ring true. “Chappaquiddick,” as the incident has become known, dogs Edward Kennedy as he challenges Jimmy Carter for the presidency. Two months after announcing his candidacy, CBS news interviewer Roger Mudd brings up that ill-fated night during a televised interview. Mudd also asks about the state of Kennedy’s marriage.

  Ill at ease, the senator fumbles for words. At one point, Mudd appears to accuse him of lying. Kennedy will later state that Mudd duped him into speaking about matters for which he was not prepared.

  Making the situation even worse, the interview airs on November 4, 1979, the same day that fifty-two Americans are taken hostage in Iran. Immediately, the nation rallies around their president rather than the callow Kennedy. In primary after primary during the early months of 1980, Jimmy Carter is true to his word, whipping Kennedy’s ass again and again, winning thirty-seven primaries to Kennedy’s eleven.6

  In the mind of Ted Kennedy, Jimmy Carter is a sanctimoni
ous, weak man. “He loved to give the appearance of listening,” Kennedy will one day write of visiting the Carter White House as a senator. “You’d arrive about 6 or 6:30, and the first thing you’d be reminded of, in case you needed reminding, was that he and Rosalynn had removed all liquor from the White House. No liquor was ever served during Jimmy Carter’s term. He wanted no luxuries nor any sign of worldly living.”

  Kennedy also seethes about what he believes to be Carter’s growing conservatism, thinking it an affront to the democratic ideals for which his brothers fought so hard. “Jimmy Carter,” Kennedy will write, “held an inherently different view of America from mine.”

  So it is that, despite the lingering stain of Chappaquiddick and the many primary defeats, Ted Kennedy vows to continue his fight against Jimmy Carter all the way to the Democratic National Convention at New York’s Madison Square Garden on August 11. In the same manner in which Ronald Reagan sought to unseat President Gerald Ford with a last-minute bid four years ago, Ted Kennedy and his staff now hatch a plan to take down Carter.

  Polls support this plan. When asked, Democratic voters said they’d prefer Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter if those two candidates faced off for the presidency. Those same polls, however, show Ted Kennedy defeating Ronald Reagan.

  On June 5, 1980, six weeks after Carter’s televised national address about the failed hostage rescue, he and Ted Kennedy meet in the White House. Kennedy is giving Carter one last chance to avoid the sort of bruising convention that Ford endured—and that ultimately led to his defeat in the general election. All Kennedy wants is the chance to debate Jimmy Carter on national television, allowing voters to decide who should lead the country. The campaign has been a long one for Kennedy, taking him through forty states in nine months. He estimates that he has flown a hundred thousand miles in that time. He is not yet ready to concede the nomination, particularly against an opponent he despises.