Reagan Image-Maker Changed American Politics

Each time Reagan walked out to begin a formal news conference, Deaver handed him a note. Reagan would take a quick peek, then step before the cameras with a smile or a jaunty stride.

The notes, Deaver told the New York Times, were just to relax the president. "One time, it was: 'The answer to question No. 1 is, No answer. The answer to question No. 2 is, No answer. The answer to question No. 3 is, No answer.' "

Through socializing with the president's wealthy friends and supporters, the one-time fry cook, ditch digger and meter reader acquired a taste for high living that his $72,000 salary could not provide. Deaver was also burning out on his job's high-pressure demands; he did not deal with policy matters, but because of his close relationship with Reagan, he was the one who carried bad news to the president.

Deaver resigned in 1985, shortly after a presidential trip to Europe included a stop at the military cemetery in Bitburg, West Germany, where 49 Nazi SS soldiers were buried. The brief ceremony there drew strong opposition from Jewish groups, veterans and others; Deaver had made the advance arrangements and failed to foresee the uproar the Bitburg stop would cause.

But there was no sign that Reagan bore a grudge.

"I consider Mike's leaving in the nature of an amputation," Reagan said in a news conference on his aide's last day on the job. "And it is me that is suffering the amputation."

Deaver rejected a lucrative offer from the Burson-Marsteller public relations firm and started his own Washington consulting company. Its success exceeded all expectations, as he billed $3 million worth of business in just seven months from such major entities as Canada, Singapore, Mexico, Trans World Airlines and Philip Morris Inc.

Deaver bought the house next door to the one he had been renting and added a kitchen with a wall of windows. He drove a green Jaguar and furnished his office lavishly. He also retained his White House pass, saw the president's confidential daily schedule, talked weekly with Nancy Reagan and played tennis on the executive mansion's courts.

Deaver's business wasn't even a year old when the London firm Saatchi & Saatchi began negotiating to buy it for $18 million, a deal that never went through.

But those he spurned while at the heady apex of power began raising questions about whether he was selling access instead of expertise. In December 1985, after reading a news report about Deaver's reported lobbying about acid rain on behalf of the Canadian government, Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.) requested a General Accounting Office investigation. Journalists began tracking Deaver. The Time magazine cover accelerated the inquiries, and within months, Deaver found himself testifying before Congress and a grand jury.

Then, shocking those with whom he had worked and partied for years, he checked himself into an alcohol rehabilitation center in Havre de Grace, Md.

Deaver had begun drinking heavily during the 1984 election campaign, he later said. At first, he claimed, he drank a quart of Scotch a day, but after Nancy Reagan expressed disbelief, he said alcoholism had clouded his judgment and impaired his memory, causing him to forget key moments from the past.