Obituary

Reagan's treasury boss, staff chief dies

WASHINGTON - Donald T. Regan, a blunt-speaking Wall Street financier who served President Reagan as treasury secretary and chief of staff before being felled by the Iran-Contra scandal, died of cancer Tuesday (June 10, 2003) at the age of 84.

Mr. Regan blamed former first lady Nancy Reagan for his abrupt ouster as the president's chief of staff in February 1987 and got even the next year in a famous tell-all memoir in which he revealed that Mrs. Reagan had consulted extensively with San Francisco astrologer Joan Quigley.

"Virtually every major move and decision the Reagans made during my time as White House chief of staff was cleared in advance with a woman in San Francisco who drew up horoscopes," Mr. Regan wrote in his book, For the Record: From Wall Street to Washington.

Mr. Regan died early Tuesday morning at a hospital near his home in Williamsburg, Va., a hospital spokeswoman said. He had been admitted to the hospital on Sunday.

The chairman of brokerage giant Merrill Lynch before his selection as Reagan's first treasury secretary, Mr. Regan won praise as chief spokesman for Reagan's landmark 1981 tax cut, at the time the largest in history.

Mr. Regan suggested a famous job swap at the beginning of Reagan's second term in which he became White House chief of staff and James A. Baker III, Reagan's first chief of staff, became treasury secretary.

It soon became apparent, however, that Mr. Regan lacked the deft touch with Congress and the media that Baker had enjoyed and he also quickly ran afoul of Nancy Reagan, who fumed at what she viewed as Mr. Regan's imperious management style.

She took particular umbrage at a famous Regan quote in 1986, when the chief of staff took credit for repairing the damage from a summit meeting Reagan had held in Iceland with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. "Some of us are like a shovel brigade that follow a parade down Main Street cleaning up," Mr. Regan said of the summit meeting. "We took Reykjavik and turned what was really a sour situation into something that turned out pretty well."

In her own memoir, Mrs. Reagan said that Mr. Regan had "acted as if he were the president" and deserved to be fired because the Iran-Contra affair had occurred on his watch.

Mr. Regan always claimed that he had been made a scapegoat for Iran-Contra, the scheme overseen by national security aide Oliver North to sell arms to Iran while seeking freedom for American hostages being held in the Middle East. Some of the proceeds of the arms sales were diverted to the Contra rebels, who in the 1980s were fighting the Soviet-backed government of Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega.

A presidential board of inquiry headed by former Sen. John Tower issued a report in February 1987 that said Mr. Regan was responsible "for the chaos that descended upon the White House." Mr. Regan was forced to resign later that month and was replaced as chief of staff by former Republican Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker.

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright