Regan, Donald Thomas (1918-2003)

US Republican political adviser to Ronald Reagan. He was secretary of the Treasury 1981-85, and chief of White House staff 1985-87, when he was forced to resign because of widespread belief in his complicity in the Irangate scandal.

Regan was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and graduated from Harvard in 1940. He joined the US Marine Corps, retiring at the end of World War II as a lieutenant colonel. In January 1981 he became the 66th secretary of the Treasury. Later that year he was elected chair of the Depository Institutions Deregulation Committee, which was created by Congress to phase out interest-rate ceilings on deposits in commercial banks, mutual savings banks, savings and loan associations, and credit unions.

Regan is the author of A View from the Street, an analysis of the events on Wall Street during the crisis years of 1969 and 1970.