Reagan’s apology to Thatcher revealed

In this 1983 photograph, US President Ronald Reagan shakes hands with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher after their meeting at the White House in Washington. File picture: Ed Reinke

In this 1983 photograph, US President Ronald Reagan shakes hands with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher after their meeting at the White House in Washington. File picture: Ed Reinke

Published Nov 11, 2014

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Los Angeles -

Former US president Ronald Reagan apologised to British prime minister Margaret Thatcher for invading Grenada without notifying her, a newly released tape of the 1983 conversation reveals.

The tape, posted online on Monday by The Washington Post, reflects a rift in the otherwise close relationship of the leaders over the US invasion of the former British colony and member of the British Commonwealth on October 25, 1983.

Thatcher apparently complained to the White House immediately after receiving the news of the invasion, and Reagan called her the next day.

After Thatcher picks up the phone, Reagan begins his apology by saying: “If I were there, Margaret, I'd throw my hat in the door before I came in.”

Reagan goes on at some length, describing how he was in Georgia on a golf vacation with then secretary of state George Schultz when they got the urgent call in the middle of the night from the Organisation of East Caribbean States asking for help.

“We met in pyjamas out in the living room of our suite,” Reagan tells the British prime minister.

The invasion was planned and approved “literally” in a matter of hours, Reagan says, and there was no time to inform her or anyone else because Reagan says he was worried the Cubans would get wind of it and get involved.

Ten minutes later, after Thatcher accepts his apology and excuses herself to return to a “tricky” emergency debate in the House of Commons about the invasion, Reagan wishes her luck.

“Go get 'em. Eat 'em alive,” he says, according to the transcript.

The tape is one of 20 previously unknown recordings of Reagan's conversations with foreign leaders released by the Reagan Presidential Library in late October to US author William Doyle - 18 years after he requested them under the Freedom of Information Act.

According to a document posted by the Thatcher Foundation, the tape had been declassified by the US government in 2000.

Among the behind-the-scenes vignettes was an ironic congratulation to Syrian president Hafez al-Assad, father of current president Bashir al-Assad, on his “re-election” in February 1985.

Reagan salutes Assad on his “re-election to a new term as president of Syria”.

Doyle said this was a dig at the rigged elections in Syria's one-party police state.

Before that call started, according to the transcript, Reagan kept Assad and an increasingly frustrated translator waiting on the phone for more than 13 minutes while the former cowboy movie star finished a horseback ride.

“Until now, taping was thought to have stopped in the Nixon era. I discovered that was not the case,” Doyle told the New York Post, which first reported the story on Saturday.

Doyle said Reagan taped the conversations through the White House Situation Room telephone switchboard to ensure accurate records.

Steve Branch, an audiovisual archivist at the Reagan Presidential Library, told the New York Post the tapes were the first audio recordings of Situation Room telephone conversations the library has released to date. - Sapa-dpa

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