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By July 5, all the pieces were falling into place. I believed that by July 9, four days hence, the P.L.O. withdrawal could commence and the conditions for peace in Lebanon would have been established. At that moment, George Shultz, my nominated successor, who was with the President in California, called to discuss "future arrangements." He said he wanted me to become a "consultant." I told Shultz that I was prepared to step aside whenever the President wanted, but I could not accept the role he was describing.
Shultz said he took his hat off to me—a great deal had been accomplished in the past week. About an hour later, he phoned again. The President had decided that I should leave. My resignation was accepted, effective immediately. Shultz had been given an uncomfortable duty, one that I had performed myself for other Presidents, and I sympathized. But in the circumstances, with this message coming when we were on the verge of achieving peace in Lebanon, I felt that I must hear the words from the President himself. I could not abandon the negotiations on lesser authority.
My wife Pat and I went to dinner in the hotel dining room. At 9:45, a messenger summoned me to the telephone. The President was calling. I took the call in an empty room off the lobby. The strains of orchestra music floated in from the dining room. Reagan's voice was warm, his manner affable. "Al, George Shultz tells me he's had a discussion with you," Reagan said. "I just wanted to tell you that what he told you had my approval." The entire conversation lasted for less than one minute. The two of us said goodbye and I went in and finished my dinner.
The next day, July 6, in response to press reports from Jerusalem, Reagan announced that he had agreed to commit U.S. troops to a peace-keeping force in Lebanon. With this ill-conceived announcement, attention was diverted for several vital days from the peace effort and focused instead on the meaning of committing American troops. Superpower rivalry was reawakened. The breach between Syria and the Soviet Union was mended by huge new shipments of Soviet arms to Syria; Syria announced that under present circumstances, it could not accept the P.L.O.; the P.L.O. reneged on its agreement to withdraw from Lebanon; the Israelis announced that they were making logistical preparations to spend the winter in Lebanon; Shultz, during his confirmation hearings before the Senate, put special emphasis on the "legitimate needs and problems of the Palestinian people"; American policy seemed to be changing again. And again the P.L.O. decided to play for time.
All that we had labored so hard to grasp, and had come so close to grasping, slipped away, with consequences not yet wholly revealed.
As the end of Ronald Reagan's first term approaches, it is possible to say that he has contributed greatly to the revival of America's confidence and pride in itself, and in the restoration of the economy and in beginning the process of rebuilding the nation's