Says Aides Served Reagan Poorly; Defends Own Activism : First Lady Takes Aim at President’s Staff

WASHINGTON —  In a vigorous parting shot at her critics and the White House staff, First Lady Nancy Reagan said that she felt compelled to exert her influence during President Reagan’s eight years in office because he was poorly served by aides who pushed their own agendas over his.

“I don’t feel his staff served him well, in general,” Mrs. Reagan said in a wide-ranging interview, adding that she was “hurt, surprised and disappointed” by their actions.

The First Lady readily acknowledged that she wielded influence over her husband on some personnel decisions, a practice that has generated debate about the proper role of a President’s wife. But she defended her actions as necessary to counter Reagan’s own aides.

“Of course,” she said, and “in no way do I apologize for it.

“I’m more aware if somebody is trying to end-run him and have their own agenda,” she added. “I’m more aware of that than he is. It just never occurs to him that anybody is going to do that.”

She said that “the best example” of the staff’s failure was the Iran-Contra scandal, in which White House aides sold arms to Iran in hopes of freeing American hostages and directed the profits to rebels in Nicaragua.

“He (Reagan) did not know what was going on and that’s not right,” she said, maintaining that the scandal would not dim history’s view of her husband.

“I think it will be seen in the context it should be seen in--that he was badly served by people on his staff,” she said.

Mrs. Reagan made the comments during an hour interview Oct. 18 in the White House Map Room. She spoke candidly under the agreement that her comments would not be published before the presidential election.

Touches Many Subjects

Lacing her remarks with tears and laughter, Mrs. Reagan touched on subjects ranging from her influence, her image and cancer to her reluctance to remain in Washington for a second term and the confinement of the White House.

She painted a portrait of a presidential couple increasingly dependent on each other in the face of betrayal by staff members, unsympathetic treatment by the press, threats to their security and health, the death of both of her parents and the Reagans’ estrangement from their first-born child, Patti Davis.

The First Lady insisted on leaving some details of her life, such as her interest in astrology, to the autobiography she is writing “to set the record straight on a lot of things.” She apparently is hoping that the book will counter the recent flood of negative “kiss-and-tell” accounts from former White House officials.

That torrent began in earnest this spring when former White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan’s book revealed her interest in astrology and depicted her as an interfering tyrant of questionable mental stability.

An upcoming insider account by the President’s longtime secretary, Helene von Damm, reportedly describes the First Lady as “a schemer married to someone who is unable to conceive of a Machiavellian thought. . . . Far from making him look good, the practically open interference made him look pathetic and weak.”

And celebrity biographer Kitty Kelley, author of biting best sellers about Frank Sinatra and Elizabeth Taylor, is now focusing on Mrs. Reagan.

Mrs. Reagan indicated that the whole subject of such accounts is a sore spot. “I think we’ve gone way over in books about people,” she said. “And I just think that’s wrong.”

Friends and aides have long described Mrs. Reagan as the keeper of her husband’s legacy, and in the interview she repeatedly blamed the President’s advisers “in general” for the Iran-Contra scandal.

Asked if that meant she opposed presidential pardons for former National Security Adviser John M. Poindexter and his former aide, Oliver L. North, who are under indictment in the episode, Mrs. Reagan laughed and repeated: “I don’t think his staff served him well.”

She rejected suggestions that the President’s detached management style allowed his aides to get out of hand.

“Well, he’s done pretty well with everything else,” she maintained. “I mean, he did bring about a lot of things that wouldn’t have been brought about, like the INF (Intermediate Nuclear Forces) Treaty, like the improved relations with all the countries.”

She reserved particular ire for former Chief of Staff Regan, apparently blaming him for having failed to adequately inform the President about Iran-Contra, as well as for refusing to cooperate with her.

“Well, it was difficult,” she said of her relationship with Regan. “I think we probably had our first run-in at the hospital with Ronnie (after the President’s colon cancer surgery). The doctor had said six weeks’ recovery, which is a normal recovery period, and he (Regan) wanted him to have a press conference and give speeches two weeks after this. And I said: ‘No. No way.’ ”

Regan interpreted this as meddling, Mrs. Reagan recalled.

“But a First Lady is a wife, first of all,” she insisted. “I don’t care. That comes first for me. I’m sure with everybody that comes first. And I certainly felt that for Ronnie’s interest--it was to his interest.”

Did she insist that Regan be fired, as was widely reported at the time? “No,” Mrs. Reagan replied, adding, “Well, again, this is going into my book.”

The autobiography will straighten out misperceptions about her “so-called influence,” she said. Her actions focused on the staff, she insisted, and had nothing to do with such policy questions as arms control.

A President’s wife, she said, “will hear things that he doesn’t hear. And many times I get phone calls about one thing or the other and I’d say: ‘Please, go over and tell my husband.’ But something happens to people when they walk into the Oval Office and they freeze up and they don’t tell him.

“So then I end up telling him. But somebody has to tell him. It’s always been true--there’s something about the Oval Office that’s intimidating.”

Mrs. Reagan made it clear that she will always resent stories depicting her as a shallow devotee of the worlds of fashion, beauty and luxury. She volunteered, for instance, that she was upset eight years ago by a report that described her as “a lunch bunch girl.”

“I never was. I never was!” she insisted. “I was too busy. I had young kids. I was car-pooling, I was on the board of the school, I was going to school fairs, I had the hot dog stand. I just--I was never a lunch bunch girl.”

As for the more recent controversy over her practice of borrowing high-priced fashions from favorite designers, despite a promise not to, she would say only: “I don’t want to (comment). I think everybody else is making comments that are very nice and I don’t want to get--it’s an old story.”

The fashion issue, along with controversies over the First Lady’s redecoration of the White House living quarters and replacement of the presidential china, arose early in President Reagan’s first year in office. She has described the period--also marked by the assassination attempt on her husband--as “a lost year.”

In the interview, Mrs. Reagan said that she is still hurt and baffled by the press coverage she received at the time.

“There are a lot of things I wish had happened differently, certainly. I never quite understood why all those spate of bad stories appeared about me before I ever got here,” she said. “I mean, they never knew me. And there was all this terrible stuff being written.

“All those stories made it hard to make friends in the beginning. For instance, (former Democratic National Committee Chairman Robert S.) Bob Strauss--we’ve become very good friends. And the first time he took me to lunch he said: ‘You know, Nancy, when you first came here I didn’t like you at all.’ And I said: ‘I don’t blame you. If I had been reading what you had been reading, I wouldn’t like me either.’ ”

Severely shaken by the assassination attempt, Mrs. Reagan not only turned to astrology in an apparent effort to protect her husband from further harm but she also opposed his seeking a second term. She was, she said, “dragging my heels” and “had to be convinced” by the President that it was worth it.

The unrelenting media scrutiny, coupled with stepped-up security measures after the shooting, all but imprisoned the Reagans when they were anywhere but at the secluded presidential retreat at Camp David, Md., she indicated.

“I think it’s gotten more and more confining,” she said. “It’s not a comfortable feeling. It’s not comfortable. That’s why Camp David is so important, because you have to have a place to get away to, that you can just put on a pair of blue jeans and go out and ride or do whatever you want to do. And you’re OK and nobody’s there photographing you or taking a shot at you.”

Life in the White House, she said, was more trying than anyone could realize but “I don’t want to sound like I don’t love this house, because I do. I really do. I understand now what they were saying to me in the beginning, that the people who have been here for a long time, they really love this house. I understand that now and I love the house.”

The First Couple’s return to California in January may provide an opportunity for reconciliation with their daughter, Mrs. Reagan said. She indicated that she and Davis have not spoken in more than a year and said “there is no relationship.”

Davis, who lives in the Los Angeles area, has long been openly rebellious toward her parents. But the relationship apparently hit bottom after a series of events: the publication of Davis’ novel, a roman a clef in which she portrayed a cold and manipulative First Lady; Davis’ failure to visit Mrs. Reagan after the First Lady’s surgery for breast cancer in October, 1987, and Davis’ absence at the funeral of Mrs. Reagan’s mother, who died just nine days after the First Lady’s mastectomy.

Mrs. Reagan said that she hopes that the estrangement won’t be permanent. “I mean, I’m her mother,” she said, her eyes tearing. “I hope not.”

The First Lady said that she worries more about a recurrence of her husband’s cancer than her own, because “I can’t imagine life without him.”

Dealing with his surgeries after the assassination attempt and for cancer was more difficult than withstanding her own mastectomy, she said, because “you’re in a position (where) you want to do something and you can’t do anything. And you want to do something so badly and you feel so frustrated-- Why can’t you do something? “

When the President was informed that his wife had breast cancer, he laid his head in his hands and cried, she said. Her own reaction to the diagnosis was: “Well, I guess it’s my turn. The first thing I thought of was that he had been through so much and God must think. . . .”

As she let the thought go unfinished, she was asked if she felt that fate had been unfair.

‘I’ve Been Lucky’

“No,” she said, “I think really fate’s been--I mean, if all goes well at the--” she paused to knock on a wooden end table--”at the checkup, that I’ve been very lucky.”

Fear of a recurrence “is there in the back of your mind. Well, you just try to keep it in the back of your mind.” But there isn’t a day that goes by that she doesn’t think about her cancer.

“You think about it when you get undressed,” she said.

After she leaves the White House, Mrs. Reagan said, she wants to give speeches about coping with cancer. “The thing of--there is a life after (diagnosis),” she said. “It’s when you hear that word that you just--there’s nothing like it.”

She said that she is looking forward to regaining a measure of privacy, particularly on matters of their health. “I’m looking forward to not being under the microscope so much,” she said.

But there are some things she will miss. “I’ll miss (Washington socialites) Oatsie Charles, the Ikards, the Cafritzes. I’ll miss (columnist) George Will. I’ll miss the (Richard) Helmses,” she said.

“I’ll miss Air Force One, from what I hear about air travel.”

There are even some White House staffers she will miss--the ones she may have depended on most as a lifeline to the world outside the isolation of the White House and for her battles inside it:

“I’ll miss all the wonderful--the White House (telephone) operators. Those women are really wonderful. They can reach “anybody, any time.”