Killing Reagan by Bill O'Reilly Read Free Book Online

activity.”
    Wyman and Reagan quickly offer up six names. This will be the end of Wyman’s involvement with the FBI, but Ronald Reagan begins meeting frequently with the bureau to provide more names and information. He is given a code name: T-10. Two of the people he names, actresses Karen Morley and Anne Revere, will not work in Hollywood for the next twenty years. 3
    Ronald Reagan believes this banishment is just, for he knows the women to be Communists—and thinks the Communist Party is an agent of a foreign power.
    Reagan will be damned if he will allow the motion picture industry to undermine the moral fabric of the United States of America.

    Reagan testifies before the House Un-American Activities Committee, 1947.
    Ronald Reagan will never waver from the belief that informing for the FBI was the right thing to do; nor will he suffer any repercussions for it. “I talked to Ronnie since,” Jack Dales, executive secretary of SAG at that time, will comment years from now. “And he has no doubts about the propriety of what we did.”
    *   *   *
    On October 23, 1947, Reagan travels to Washington to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee, a congressional group trying to root our subversive individuals and practices. 4 “I believe that, as Thomas Jefferson put it, if all the American people know all of the facts they will never make a mistake,” said Reagan, responding to questions from HUAC chief investigator Robert Stripling. “Whether the [Communist] party should be outlawed, that is a matter for the government to decide. As a citizen, I would hesitate to see any political party outlawed on the basis of its political ideology. However, if it is proven that an organization is an agent of a foreign power, or in any way not a legitimate political party—and I think the government is capable of proving that—then that is another matter.”
    Reagan’s appearance before the committee is his first visit to Capitol Hill.
    It makes a lasting impression on him.
    *   *   *
    Nearly four years after testifying before Congress, Ronald Reagan guides Tar Baby back to the barn. He hopes soon to add “thoroughbred horse breeder” to the many job titles that currently keep him busy and plans to expand the simple barn into something more elaborate for that purpose.
    Reagan leads the mare into her stall and removes her bridle and saddle. Whistling softly to himself, he brushes her torso and flanks. The repetitive movement allows Reagan a contemplative moment.
    It is clear that Ronald Reagan needs to make some hard decisions about his future. He gets little respect for his roles as an actor, but he is held in such high esteem for his political activism that when the Friars Club recently honored him they refrained from derogatory jokes and putdowns. Instead, the six hundred members in attendance spent the evening lauding him with sincere speeches about his “stature and dignity,” with the legendary singer Al Jolson even going so far as to say that he wished his son would “grow up to be the kind of man Ronnie is.”
    But with his Guild presidency coming to an end, it seems that Reagan’s political days will also cease. All the respect in the world from his Hollywood peers won’t pay the bills. He must find a way to revive his career. The mortgage on his ranch alone is eighty-five thousand dollars. Politics doesn’t offer that kind of money.
    As Reagan steps out of the barn, walking to where Nancy Davis and his children wait inside the small ranch house, he faces a midlife crisis. Reagan well knows the truth: he is a forty-year-old Hollywood has-been on the verge of losing everything. As he enjoys a brief time of quiet and solitude on this cool December morning, he is unsure of what 1952 has in store for him—hardly aware that it is the year in which he will remarry, father a new child, and vote