Did Ronald Reagan have Alzheimer's while he was president?

I have always wondered about this myself, and it would
certainly explain Reagan's standard remark, "I do not recall," during his
testimony concerning the Iran-contra affair. Reagan had used a similar answer, "I don't
recall" when he gave testimony during a federal trial in 1962 concerning anti-trust
violations while he was president of the Screen Actors Guild. (MCA and the SAG were
charged; Reagan was not. The two organizations settled out-of-court and records were
sealed.)

Obviously, Reagan could not have been suffering
from the disease as early as 1962, but other people noticed a distinct change in his
mental abilities while he was President.

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Former CBS White House correspondent Lesley Stahl
recalls an interview when he was president where "a vacant Reagan barely seemed to
realize anyone else was in the room," and that before he "reemerged into alertness" she
recalls that "I had come that close to reporting that Reagan was
senile."

His memory was
failing him while he was still President.

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Once, while meeting with Japanese Prime Minister
Yasuhiro Nakasone, he repeatedly referred to Vice President Bush as "Prime Minister
Bush".

But, his White House
doctors--all four of them--claim they saw no evidence of the disease while he was
President. He first showed symptoms of the disease in 1992 or 1993, so it is possible
that the disease had first taken hold during the latter stages of his Presidency, which
ended in 1989.