Draft ALS signed “Ron,” one lightly-lined yellow page, 8 x 10, no date [June 19, 1967 noted in another hand]. Reagan writes Raymond W. Conlin. In full: “It was good to hear from you after all these years. I hope one day your travels will bring you near enough that our paths can cross. I’m grateful for your remarks about brother [Drew] Pearson. You know I didn’t have to get in politics to come under his tar brush. He was doing his usual smear job back when I was on the luncheon speaker circuit, before I’d ever thought of running for office. I’m amazed at the fiction he can dream up. No one ever connected with our outfit ever went to Leavenworth and I recall no fire destroying records. Well I’d better stop before the adrenalin [sic] begins to flow.” In fine condition, with tiny tear at the right edge and two red-ink office notations.
Drew Pearson, the infamous muckraking journalist, used his column, ‘Washington Merry-Go-Round,’ as a podium through which he cast various, and most times outlandish and unfounded, allegations at various public figures. This 1967 correspondence references California Governor Ronald Reagan once again feeling the heat of falling under Pearson’s brutal radar and sharp tongue: “He was doing his usual smear job back when I was on the luncheon speaker circuit, before I’d ever thought of running for office.” In this particular assault, Pearson published the 1966 headline, “Reagan’s Bacon Once Saved By Mysterious Fire; His Army Movie Unit Involved In Messy Scandal,” referencing the former soldier’s time at Fort Leavenworth, claiming that “this column has just learned that a mysterious fire in the 1940s destroyed Army papers that might have embarrassed Ronald Reagan, then adjutant of an Army motion picture unit…” The Governor rebuts this claim in his response to Conlin, recollecting, “No one ever connected with our outfit ever went to Leavenworth and I recall no fire destroying records,” and reveals his frustration with his closing line, “Well I’d better stop before the adrenalin [sic] begins to flow.” This letter provides raw insight into the future president’s reactions to the man who made a career out of controversy. Pre-certified PSA/DNA and RR Auction COA.
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