the bitch set me up donald trump goes marion barry

while ronald reagan advises i do not remember i do not recall

film forum in new york prepares to screen the greatest depositions of all times

Reagan's Iran-Contra Deposition

Sunday, June 20, 1999 

In the summer of 1992, independent counsel Lawrence Walsh insisted on taking former President Reagan's deposition despite warnings from Reagan's attorney that the former president had a faulty memory and hearing problems. The deposition, obtained from the National Archives and shown here for the first time, was taken July 24, 1992, in Los Angeles, two years and three months before Reagan told the nation that he was suffering from Alzheimer's disease. For further information, see pages 156-158 of "Shadow: Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate."

– Bob Woodward and Jeff Glasser

Editor's Note: Some typographical errors have been preserved from the original deposition transcript.

Office of Independent Counsel

In Re:
Possible Violations of 18 U.S.C. 1505

2121 Avenue of the Stars
Los Angeles, California

Friday, July 24, 1992

The following deposition of Ronald Reagan, the witness, commenced at approximately 10:05 o'clock, a.m., before Karen S. Scheinberg, Court Reporter, when were present:

Lawrence E. Walsh, Esquire
Independent Counsel

John Q. Barrett, Esquire
Associate Independent Counsel

Christina A. Spaulding, Esquire
Associate Independent Counsel

Theodore B. Olson, Esquire
John A. Mintz, Esquire
On behalf of the Witness

Fred Ryan, Esquire

Proceedings

Judge Walsh: Mr. President, we appreciate your having us here today.

I should say for the record that President Reagan has appeared voluntarily and he and his counsel have been very cooperative in trying to arrange this meeting.

If you are ready, we will begin.

By Judge Walsh:

Q: I thought for the first – incidentally, did you give the President a little outline of what we think we're going to do or give it to counsel?

Mr. Barrett: (Handing documents.)

By Judge Walsh:

Q: You don't have to read it, Mr. President. It's just so that you know where we're going.

A: Oh.

Q: I thought that for the first few minutes we would – I would ask you about matters which will be of interest to whoever reads the report but are not very critical to the questions, but primarily are background, establishing who everyone is. It takes a few minutes to do that.

I will start by asking a very simple question and that is that you were President of the United States from January, 1981 until January, 1989. I think we can have agreement on that.

A: Yes.

Q: You were re-elected in 1984 and began your second term in January of 1985. At that time the national security departments were headed I would say by – the State Department was headed by Secretary Shultz, George Shultz? Would that be correct, sir?

A: I think so but I can't swear anymore. I know there were changes that came along and so forth in there but I think that you're right.

Q: All right. We have agreed with counsel that after the transcript is made that they will review it with you and if we should make an inadvertent error, why that could be corrected so it's nothing to be worried about.

Secretary Weinberger was Secretary of Defense during all of your – well, through 1987?

A: Yes.

Q: And Edwin Meese started as counselor to the President during your first term of office and then became Attorney General during the second term of office. Would that be approximately correct?

A: I take your word for it here. I don't remember the times in which those changes and things were made but that is true of Ed.

Q: Right. I just wondered if you could relax just a minute and tell us who – I haven't worked around presidents very often – the way in which your staff functioned. Maybe I'll lead you a little bit.

During your second term was Bud McFarlane the national security adviser?

A: I can't tell you or remember when Bud left that job.

Q: Would it have been approximately December 5th, 1985?

A: I can't remember. I just know that I had him in that position for a while and I know that he did rather well.

Q: He was succeeded by Admiral Poindexter?

A: Yes, because Poindexter had been kind of second in command.

Q: Yes. When – I'll use their first names just to make it easier for you – when Ed Meese became Attorney General, Don Regan moved into the White House as your chief of staff. Would that be approximately correct?

A: You know, this is awful for me to say but with this lapse of time I don't recall. The names of course are familiar to me and the fact that they served, but I don't recall when such a change was made.

Q: Do you remember that Mr. Baker swapped jobs with Don Regan when Baker left as your chief of staff and became Secretary of the Treasury and Don Regan left as Secretary of Treasury and became your chief of staff?

A: Yes, and that was a trade that – the only thing that I can recall about that was they wanted to make that trade. That wasn't an idea or mine.

Q: And you authorized that to go forward?

A: Yes.

Q: The work was – could you tell us a little bit how the work was divided between Don Regan and Bud McFarlane?

A: No, I can't. I just have to tell you that all of this and every day – the whole history of this took place after we were – I was out of the Governor's office and Nancy and I started talking on how little we could remember about what took place because there was always – you were in motion always and that was what led to – in the President's job, that's what led to the diaries was because we remembered that we just couldn't pin down the happenings in those eight years when I was the Governor.

Q: Then it was even worse, I would imagine, when you became President?

A: Yes.

Q: The pressures were worse between the combination of ceremonial activities and very important decisions, one right after the other?

A: Yes.

Jurors View Videotape of Barry Drug Arrest

By Tracy Thompson and Elsa Walsh
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, June 29, 1990; Page A01

Eighteen jurors, intent on missing no detail, watched yesterday as a television screen showed D.C. Mayor Marion Barry taking two long drags from a crack pipe in a room at the Vista Hotel on Jan. 18. It was the first public screening of the FBI videotape that showed Barry's arrest on drug possession charges. 

Within moments, the screen became a blur of sound and action as FBI agents stormed the room, grabbing Barry, placing him up against a wall with his arms outstretched and reading him his rights before leading him away in handcuffs. 

The enraged Barry muttered over and over, "Bitch set me up . . . . I shouldn't have come up here . . . goddamn bitch" -- references to the woman who lured him to the hotel, former girlfriend Hazel Diane "Rasheeda" Moore. 

At the moment on the tape when FBI agents rushed into the room, some in the audience gasped involuntarily and Barry sat bolt upright in his chair. His wife, Effi, watching from the front row, grimaced slightly when the FBI agents drew the mayor's arms behind his back, and the handcuffs clicked shut around his wrists. One woman spectator got up and left the courtroom, sobbing. 

The 83-minute videotape showed Barry and Moore in dim, grainy images as they talked -- sometimes inaudibly -- of old friends and reiminisced about their affair, interrupted occasionally when Barry reached for the telephone to make calls. The tape was played on a day in which Moore explained her reasons for cooperating with the FBI and faced her first cross-examination by the mayor's attorney, R. Kenneth Mundy. 

As the most dramatic day of the mayor's 18-day trial was drawing to a close, another drama was unfolding in the corridor: Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, accompanied by more than a dozen followers, arrived to attend the trial, only to be barred from the courtroom by U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson. 

"His presence would be potentially disruptive, very likely intimidating, and he is persona non grata for the {rest} of this case," Jackson said in open court, but out of the presence of the jury. "He is barred henceforth for the duration of this case from this courtroom." 

Judges ordinarily are granted wide latitude to bar someone they conclude might disrupt a proceeding. 

After being barred from the courtroom, Farrakhan told reporters outside the courthouse, "This is part of the double standard that black people have been under since we have been in this country." Barry's trial, he said, "demonstrates the wickedness of the United States government and the lengths to which this government will go when it targets a black leader to be discredited." 

The day began yesterday with the prosecution playing tapes of Moore telephoning Barry on Jan. 18 to invite him to her hotel room. The mayor said they should meet in the lobby for a drink. He said there are too many "nosy rosies" around, but she said he should come up to the room. Later, Barry called her back and again suggested meeting in the lobby. "I don't like to go in hotel rooms," he said. But Moore said she had just ordered from room service, so he said he'd be right over. 

The Vista tape played for the jury yesterday corroborated some parts of Moore's testimony from Wednesday, but threw the final interpretation of other parts to the jury. While it clearly showed Barry smoking crack, it also portrayed him as a man at least as interested in sex as in drugs. 

At the beginning of the Vista tape, Barry lounges on the bed inside room 727 of the Vista, reaching out occasionally to touch Moore or fondle her breast or leg. 

"Can we make love before you leave, before you leave town?" he asks. When Moore declines, laughing, he presses the issue. Effi Barry watched the tape with a stony expression. 

After a few more moments of casual talk, Barry first broaches the subject of drugs, Moore has testified. Barry, referring to the woman FBI undercover agent posing as Moore's traveling companion, asks Moore, "Does she mess around?" Moore, who earlier testified that she understood Barry's question to refer to drugs, answers:

"She has some. Yeah, sometimes. She doesn't do a lot. She toots {snorts cocaine} more than she'll do anything else." "Mmm," Barry responds. Then he adds that he doesn't "have anything," and asks Moore, "What about you?"

Moore confers repeatedly with the agent in the bathroom, and a short time later comes back with a small amount of crack. Then she and Barry tell each other they should try the drug first. The test of wills ends when Moore says the cocaine would make her too "hyper." Finally, Barry takes two long drags on the pipe, puts it down and reaches for his coat.

"Let's go downstairs and meet your friend. Come on," he says, and uses his radio to call his security detail, who were waiting downstairs, to say that he was leaving. As he speaks, FBI agents swarm into the room, with one jumping onto the bed to get to him.

At first, FBI agents could not get him to pay attention to them when they read him his rights. Barry continually mutters to himself that Moore set him up, and that he should not have come up to her room.

"I guess you all got the phones tapped, too, so {that} means you all heard me talk too, right?" he says. "Bitch. Goddamn." At another point, he looks up at the ceiling and asks an officer what the fire sprinkler was, apparently suspecting that it contained a camera. In fact, there were two cameras in the room -- one behind a chair, looking across the bed toward the hallway door, and another in the headboard of the bed, looking toward the dresser -- plus a third in the bathroom.

"What's your charge again?" he asks an agent at another point in the tape. Told it is cocaine possession, he laughs: "Possession? With what, intent to use? That, little, that little bit, that, that little speck?"

"Everybody heard that, right?" asks D.C. police Sgt. James Pawlik of the Internal Affairs Division.

After the arrest, Barry is asked if he would like medical attention. Barry refuses, but says "You mind if I, I have a quick drink, for just . . . . "

"No, we, we can't let you do that," Pawlik replies.

The playing of the tape was preceded by testimony from Moore, who under questioning from Assistant U.S. Attorney Judith E. Retchin revealed that she had lied to a federal grand jury after the Vista sting. She said that she had taken cocaine in early January of this year, while in the District and while being prepared for the Vista sting by FBI agents. She said that she lied about it to the agents and to a federal grand jury in late January. She said the last time she took cocaine was in April.

She also testified that after kicking her cocaine habit, she began drinking heavily. She has not drunk alcohol or taken cocaine for the last 45 days, she testified.

She said she decided to cooperate with the FBI because she underwent a religious conversion and was concerned about the mayor's health. At one point, when Moore described her own cocaine addiction as "a disease," Mundy objected on the grounds that she is not a medical doctor. Jackson overruled him. A moment later, when Moore was explaining her religious convictions and began to quote the Bible, Mundy objected again. 

"Now she's a minister," he said. Again, Jackson overruled him.

Mundy got his chance to question Moore toward the end of the day. During a brief cross-examination, he attempted to portray her as a long-term crack addict who had little recall of specific dates, gave inconsistent answers and had so little integrity that she spent her children's welfare money on drugs.

Moore appeared briefly rattled by Mundy's questions and acknowledged that it was "very difficult to be specific with these dates." But she quickly regained her composure and seemed to take some of the sting out of the questions by agreeing with his descriptions of her behavior, and adding to his accounts of her brushes with the criminal justice system.

Moore corrected Mundy when he said that the father of one of her children had been arrested in London transporting about a "million dollars' worth" of drugs. 

"If I can correct you, Mr. Mundy, it was around $18 million," she said.

Staff writers Sari Horwitz and Michael York contributed to this report.