Long before he entered politics Ronald Reagan was an actor working with Warner Brothers. He was married to actress Jane Wyman. In 1945 they adopted a baby boy named Michael.
Over the next few years young Michael Reagan faced life-altering challenges – his parents divorced, he was sexually abused by a camp counselor, and he felt abandoned not just by his parents but by God.
Get your copy of Michael Reagan’s book
But as he wrote in his 2004 book Twice Adopted, God gave him a second chance and his life turned around. A happy marriage, And success as an actor comedy writer and radio talk show host.
I met with Mike Reagan in the fall of 2004, just a few months after his adoptive father’s death, to talk about the book.
So here now, from 2004, Michael Reagan.
Michael Reagan is 80 now. He and his wife have been married for 50 years.
Chris Matthews says he has been a political junkie since childhood. And his career path would seem to back that up.
With a degree from Holy Cross, graduate work at the University of North Carolina, and a teaching position at Harvard, Matthews came to Washington while in his 20s and went to work on Capitol Hill.
And it was his years under some of Washington’s most powerful figures that he learned the tradecraft he calls hardball. It is, he says, not only how politics gets done, but how everything in business and elsewhere gets done..
After politics Matthews became a columnist, and ultimately a popular cable TV talk show host. A few years before he made that transition, he wrote his first book, which he called Hardball. That’s when I first met him.
And stick around for the second half of this interview as we talk about his predictions for the 1988 presidential race – and why we all need to master Hardball.
So here now, from 1988, Chris Matthews.
Chris Matthews will be 80 in December. He retired from his TV show in 2020 although he still appears from time to time as a guest commentator.
Until the attempt on Donald Trump’s life last summer, the most serious assassination attempt in recent American history came on March 30, 1981.
President Ronald Reagan had just emerged from a speech at a downtown Washington hotel. From behind a nearby rope line emerged a young man with a gun. John Hinckley Jr fired six shots, hitting Reagan and three other people before he was subdued.
And the Secret Service agent who subdued him was 46-year-old veteran Agent Dennis McCarthy.
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McCarthy spent the next several hours guarding Hinckley, who was, of course, later found not guilty by reason of insanity. You’ll hear Dennis McCarthy’s take on that in the interview just ahead.
Get your copy of Dennis McCarthy’s book
I met agent McCarthy in 1985 when he wrote a book called Protecting The President. And he had a startling Revelation in that book, which you’ll hear about.
Broadly speaking there are two schools of thought about the presidency of Ronald Reagan.
On the one hand some see Reagan as the personification of all that was wrong with the 1980s, an era characterized by that line from a movie: “Greed is good.”
But then there are those who revere our 40th president as not just a great president but as a rare and exceptional leader of great principle and virtue.
Into that latter category falls Peggy Noonan, Reagan’s top speechwriter, who crafted some of Ronald Reagan[‘s most memorable orations.
In 2001, a dozen years after he left office, Reagan was the subject of an admiring book by Peggy Noonan called When Character Was King. That’s when she and I had one of our many conversations.
So here now, from 2001, Peggy Noonan.
Peggy Noonan Is 74 now. She writes a column for the Wall Street Journal.
After Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president in 1981, one of his eary appointments was to name a new Secretary of the Navy, who was tasked with rebuilding a demoralized and under-equipped Navy.
He chose a 38-year-old Naval Reserve aviator named John Lehman. No stranger to Washington, Lehman had served on the National Security Council staff under Henry Kissinger during the Nixon administration.
Lehman served as Secretary until his resignation in spring 1987. And the following year he wrote a book called Command of the Seas.
Get your copy of John Lehman’s book
And on top of all of his public service , Lehman is also a first cousin once removed of Princess Grace of Monaco.
I spoke with him when his book was published in the early weeks of 1989.
So here now, from 1989, John Lehman.
John Lehman is 82 now. He’s chairman of the Princess Grace Foundation USA. He lives in Pennsylvania and New York.
More than three decades after the breakup of the Soviet Union, many people today fear a return to a Cold War with Russia. So it’s important to understand how the first one ended.
Today we’re going back 20 years , to a conversation with the longtime foreign service officer, and one-time U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, Jack Matlock.
His 2004 book was called Reagan and Gorbachev: How The Cold War Ended.
Get your copy of Jack Matlock’s book
As a top ranking career diplomat, Matlock was at the very center of the U.S.-Soviet relationship. He was there for everything from the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 to the Breakup of the Soviet Union almost 30 years later.
His book was packed with the kind of details and insight that only a key insider would have.
Born in 1941, Maureen was the eldest child of Reagan and his first wife, actress Jane Wyman. By her late teens, Maureen was becoming active in politics. She later played roles in her father’s presidential campaigns, and ran for Congress herself.
President Ronald W. Reagan
In 1989, just a few months after Ronald Reagan left office, Maureen wrote an admiring book called First Father, First Daughter. That’s when I met her.
So here now, from 1989, Maureen Reagan.
Maureen Reagan died of cancer in 2001. She was 60.
In the 1980s, the presidency of Ronald Reagan was facing two distinct foreign policy challenges.
Members of Hezbollah had taken several Americans hostage in Beirut, Lebanon.
And in Central America, a rebel group known as the Contras was trying to overthrow the socialist Sandinista government in Nicaragua.
To free the hostages, the Reagan administration undertook a secret plan to sell military missiles to Iran, in hopes that the Iranian government would persuade Hezbollah to release the hostages.
In Nicaragua, meanwhile, the U.S. was funding, arming, and training the Contras. That is, until Congress abruptly cut off the entire funding.
Oliver North with Bill Thompson’s daughter Jennifer
That’s when someone had the idea to take the money that Iran was paying secretly for those missiles and hand it secretly to the Contras. The plan became known later as the Iran-Contra affair.
When this plan became public in 1986, Congress was outraged. Hearings into the Iran. Contra affair began 35 years ago this week, May 5th, 1987.
And witness testimony quickly pointed to one man who seemed to have all the answers to the scandal.
Oliver North was on assignment to the National Security Council, and became the central figure in the Iran Contra scandal.
In July 1987, North appeared before I congressional committee, offering testimony that was at once defensive and defiant.
North was convicted on three felony charges but his convictions were vacated, and the criminal case against him was dropped in 1991.
And a short time later, North published a book called Under Fire. And that’s when he and I had the first of what would be several conversations over the next few years.
So here now from 1991 Lr. Col. Oliver North
Oliver North is 78 now. He lives in Virginia, just outside Washington, DC.
Today is March 30th, and it was 41 years ago today that a young man tried to kill President Ronald Reagan.
And one of the most controversial things that happened that day happened to a man with a long and distinguished military and public service career, general. Alexander Haig.
Haig was a graduate of West point m. He served in Korea, served in Vietnam, earned the silver Star and the purple heart. And by 1973 was the youngest four-star general ever in the US army.
In 1973, Haig became President Richard Nixon’s, Chief of staff just as the Watergate scandal was turning up to full boil.
In fact, many say that Haig was instrumental in persuading Nixon to resign the presidency in 1974.
In 1980, after being elected president in a landslide, Ronald Reagan chose Haig as his secretary of State. And it was the following March 30th, the day. John Hinckley Jr. Tried to assassinate the president, that Haig made a comment that will haunt him.
In 1992, Haig wrote a book called inner circles. And that’s when I have the chance to meet him. So here now, from 1992, general Alexander Haig.
