President Defends Wife, Knocks Regan

WASHINGTON —  President Reagan expressed irritation Friday about an upcoming book by former chief of staff Donald T. Regan, saying, “He’s chosen to attack my wife, and I don’t look kindly upon that at all.”

Regan’s book, scheduled to be published this month, is said to reveal that Mrs. Reagan used astrology to determine the timing of the President’s speeches and travel.

The President has denied that any of his decisions have been influenced by astrology, in which the position of the sun, moon and stars are studied in the belief that they influence human affairs.

During a photo session at the start of a Cabinet meeting, reporters asked Reagan whether he felt betrayed or angered by Regan’s book.

“Well, I will say this, that I would have preferred it if he’d decided to attack me, and apparently from what we hear he’s chosen to attack my wife, and I don’t look kindly upon that at all,” the President replied.

Regan was frequently at odds with the First Lady before being forced out of his job early last year, and Mrs. Reagan’s opposition was widely believed to have been a factor in his ouster.

Strobe Talbott, Washington bureau chief of Time magazine, which will publish excerpts of the book, said Friday that Regan “paints an absolutely devastating picture of the Reagan Administration.”

“It characterizes the kind of inside scene there to be a little bit like the court of the Medicis . . . with a little bit of Lady Macbeth and maybe the Keystone Cops.”

Talbott said the book portrays an unidentified San Francisco astrologist friend of Mrs. Reagan as “a kind of absentee presence almost at the Cabinet table or at least right outside the Oval Office, working first through Mrs. Reagan.”

Tom Dawson, a Regan spokesman, said Regan “has had and will have no comments regarding his book until it is published.” He said the book, “For the Record: From Wall Street to Washington,” is expected to be in bookstores beginning Monday.