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Regan now works out of a spacious office looking up the Potomac toward the White House from Alexandria, tending to the substantial investment portfolio he assembled during his 35-year career with Merrill Lynch, the last ten as chairman of the board. Still full of what he calls his "Irish jollity," the feisty ex-Marine is unapologetic about his disclosures. "What do you mean 'kiss and tell'? To my knowledge I've never been kissed by anybody in the Reagan Administration."
To criticism that he wrote too soon, Regan argues that many others -- including Haig and David Stockman -- didn't wait until the President had % left office before writing memoirs. Besides, he asks, "Do you think the Reagans should have waited ((before firing him))? Why is it that I have to live with this burden of calumny and slander and omissions?"
Regan ends his book by emphasizing that "my admiration for Reagan as President remains very great." But the contempt Regan holds for those "frivolous gossips and sycophants" who helped force him out under a cloud is equally great. If revenge is a dish best savored cold, then Don Regan, 14 months after "the bitterest event of my life," should be in for quite a feast.