MEDICAL AS PECTS - WW 534952 DoctId: 32999491 Page 100.
oR Rev, 6-20-78) « By LAWRENCE K, ALTMAN Special to The New York Times . WASHINGTON, March 31 — Contrary to earlier impressions of his condition, when President Reagan walked into the emergency room of George Washington’ University Hospital yesterday, minutes after being shot, he was having serious breathing problems and was experienc- ing chest pain, his blood pressure was low and falling, and he had been spitting up blood from the wound in his lung. “He was definitely in acute distress,”’ Dr, William O'Neill, a surgical intern who treated Mr. Reagan in the emer- gency room, said in an interview. “He ‘was uncomfortable."” Dr. Neill said that the President’s life was in serious danger until a team of doc- tors gave him fluids intravenously, ad- ministered blood transfusions and did chest surgery to stop the life-threatening bleeding caused by the bullet wound in the left lung. Dr Daniel Ruge, the President's per- sonal phys ; said late this afternoon that Mr. Reagan “is doing extremely well.” The President was awake much of the night, but then slept in the morning, read newspapers and began eating soup and gelatin. He is receiving intravenous fluids and antibiotic drugs. Tube Kept as a Precaution Other physicians attending the the President said he was in “exceptionally good condition.” They gave him a favora- ble prognosis after he ed a critical stage in his recovery from emergency surgery to stop the bleeding in his lung. “That stage was the removal of a tube | that had been placed in Mr. Reagan’s windpipe during surgery. It was routinely kept there afterward largely as a precau- tionary measure in case he required me- chanical assistance in breathing. The President’s breathing is painful be- cause the bullet cracked his seventh rib and because surgeons made a six-inch in- cision in his chest. In addition, two other tubes connected to suction devices are draining air and fluid from his lungs. Both tubes were inserted through the skin. Even so, Mr. Reagan was “requiring almost no pain medication at all,’ ac- cording to Dr, Dennis S. 0’ , dean for clinical affairs aft the hospital, where Mr. Reagan is in the intensive-care unit according to standard procedure for his kind of wound and treatment. On Mr. Reagan’s arrival at the hospital yesterday, Dr. O'Neill said. ‘‘The ‘first thing the President mentioned to me was that he had been coughing up blood since the event. He had complained of chest pain and shortness of breath. He denied having lost consciousness.” Dr. O'Neill said Mr. Reagan was not Ht 549527 DoclId: 32999491 FP. L Right@ter S Was in ‘s “6 itting up a lot of blood. “There was blood staining of his lips and teeth and there was blood in the back of his throat,” he said. Dr. O'Neill said that when he examined Mr. Reagan in the emergency room, the ; President’s breathing rate was “in the | high 30's,” or about twice the usual rate. Mr. Reagan's pulse was recorded at 88, or slightly increased. ‘His blood pressure was 78 by tion,’ or lower than usual, Dr. O'Neill said. Mr. Reagan’s blood pressure became normal shortly after ‘he rested on a O'Neill 18 e tem! drop in blood pressure might have been | “the result of the fact that he had walked | in and had a significant amount of blood joss in his chest at that time." Lack of Oxygen and Nutrients tho Mr. Reagan had low blood Altace or a few minutes, Dr. O’Neill said, he was never in shock. Shock is a | tentially fatal condition in which the - Bt alls to such a low level that the body cannot get enough oxygen measur- luces. The President's urine production was good, Dr. O'Neill said. Doctors also do tests called “blood gases” to determine the amounts of gases, such as oxygen and carbon .diox- ide, in the blood. The measurements help doctors determine the adequacy of a pa- tient’s blood circulation and respiration. ‘According to Dr. O’Neill, Mr, Reagan's blood gases were “adequate,” but, be- ‘cause of the-chest-wound, the President. “was working very hard” to maintain . that level. ; oo As a standard part of treating chest in- just , emergency room physicians often rt a tube into the chest cavity to suck out air if a condition called a pneumotho- ! pax, the presence of air in the chest cavi- ty, has developed, as well as to suck out blood and other body fluids that might have accumulated. Often, two tubes are put into the chest: one toward the top, the other toward the bottom of the rib cage. Usually both are inserted without the use of anesthesia. . : Needie the Size of a Finger ‘ The chest tube consists of a needle about the size of an index finger that is covered by flexible plastic. The plastic tubing is about a foot long and is pushed into the chest cavity. The other end of the tube is attached to a suction device. When the tube was inserted into Mr. Reagan’s chest, Dr. O'Neill said, a little less than two pints of blood “came out spontaneously.” The doctors immediately began giving Mr. Reagan blood transfusions. Five units — about 214 quarts — were trans- fused before the operation began. . About 10 to 12 units of blood circulate in the average adult male, which. meant that Mr. Reagan lost almost half his total blood volume from the bullet wound. Mr. Reagan's blood logs was appar- ently rather rous but not rapid enough to cause or sudden death. hooting, Pacan Acute Distress’ i Exec AD Adm. Exec AD Inv. Exec AD LES —. The George Washington University doctors used the amount of blood drainea from the chest cavity as a measure of how many units to transfuse into the . . President. ‘There was concem,’’ among the doc- tors, Dr. O'Neill said. “He definitely was in a life-threa situation. But he was_. very rapidly stab * Throughout the President was able to communicate to us his distress as well as his discomfort and — shortness of breath. But he also was able to communicate that he was alert, ori-~ ‘ented to time, place and person, and at— -times he was able to make a wisecrack or _ two. But he was someone in acute dis- tress.” . ‘= "Treating Events as WeSawThem’ = Asked whether he had thought Mr. - Reagan might die, ‘Dr. O'Neill said: “I can't answer that. We were treating events as we saw them and responding to distress. Certainly when you're in- volved in the care of.the President of the United States the thought is there auto- matically in that setting. But there was specific to indicate that.” Now that Mr. Reagan is in the inten- i sive-care unit, doctors and nurses are en- couraging him to exercise the lung farouge leep-breathing, tot cough, and to up any sputum. steps are considered critical in helping to prevent such complications as atelectasis — the collapse of the lung — and pneumonia. Mr. Reagan is expected to remain at the hospital for at least three more days, according to his surgeon, ii Dx ,Benjamii 1 Aare Also in private rooms in the fioor intensive-care unit are James §. Brady, the President's press tary, went Timothy IM scanhy, 4 See Sarvice agent, who were woundec . There are nine game gunman | other patients being-treated in the unit,-2 hospital official said. te The Washington Post Washington Star-News ———-——— Daily News (New York) _— _ The New York Times A-13B. The Wall Street Journal The Avlanie Constitutes The Los Angeles Tires ————— - naan Date 25
HW 54952 By Lee Lescaze Washington Post Staff Writer President. Reagan, cracking jokes through his first day of exercising au- thority from a hospital bed, was mak- ing an excellent recovery yesterday from a bullet fired into his chest, ap- parently by a former neo-Nazi who - pulled the trigger in an attempt to impress a movie actress. “He is in excellent spirits. All of his vital signs are entirely normal. He’s on almost no medication,” said Dr. Den- nis_O’Leary, the dean for clinical _af- fairs at_George Washington Universi: ty. O'Leary estimated that the presi- - dent will be hospitalized for another week or two and that it will probably be “a couple of months before he is totally back to riding horses.” He said he did not think Reagan required “any intensive level of medical care.” The only somber moment in the president’s cheerful day of recovery from a wound and an operation that he withstood like a much younger “‘man~came-at 12:16-p.m., when-White. House doctor Daniel Ruge told him that press secretary James §. Brady and two other men also had been shot. “Oh, damn. Oh, damn,” Reagan re- sponded. and his eyes filled with tears, White House chief of staff James A. | € ; “That means four bullets hit. Good Lord,” said the president, who had only seen one man fall to the sidewalk before he was knocked into his limou-’ sine by a Secret Service agent and rushed away. jWihite House counsellor_Edtyin Meese IIT said that as he was being wheeled into surgery Monday Reagan asked about the man he had seen fall, and aides had not wanted to distress him by giving a complete report on the casualties. Brady, whose life appeared to hang in the balance as he underwent exten- sive brain surgery Monday, appeared to be making an extraordinary recov- ery. Brady would live, but had sus- tained “fairly extensive damage of the right hemisphere of the brain,” O'Leary said in the morning. oe DoclId: 32969491 A a Fast Recovery Reports from the hospital grew more optimistic throughout the day, as Brady showed ability to wiggle his toes and follow other commands. O'Leary was cautious in predicting Brady’s chances for recovery, however. “In cases like this the spectrum of possible outcomes is very wide,” he said. “We are cautiously optimistic. You can keep his lungs and heart go- ing, but you don’t know what he has left in his head.” . Brady's 74-year-old mother rushed to Washington from her home in Cen- tralia, Ill., in a plane provided by Gov. James_R. Thompson. She © joined Brady's wife, Sarah, at his bedside. His 85-year-old father, Harold, a re- tired railroad worker who recently suf- fered a stroke, remained at home. Timothy J. McCarthy, the Secret Service agent who was gunned down: ‘ with a bullet in the abdomen, was re- ported as doing “extremely well.” D.C. police: officer. Thomas Delehanty, who was shot in the neck, improved’ yes- terday from “serious” to “fair”, Meanwhile, at. the White House, Meese and Baker worked with Vice President Bush to convey the impres- sion that the crisis had passed and that it was business as usual. “The president is running the coun- try,” Baker said. At a Cabinet meeting called to report on the president's condition and discuss the continuing business of government, the presi- dent’s chair was empty. Bush presid- ed, -but he sat in the vice president's chair. “It’s pretty much business as usual with the vice president pinch-hitting for the president,” said Bush’s spokes:. Vn eRe, man, Pete.Teelevy. Bush will act in the president's place, but Reagan remains the presi- dent. To demonstrate his authority, he signed a bill canceling an increase in dairy price-support payments. He signed it on his hospital break- fast tray about 7:15 am. after, Baker said, the president opened the first George Washington University Hospi- tal senior staff meeting with the joke: “Hi fellas. I knew it would be too much to hope that we could skip a staff meeting.” Page 102 New details of the lonely. direction- less life of John W. Hinckley Jr., who is accused of attemptiig to kill Reagan with a .22-cal. revolver, came from a letter seized by D.C. police from the hotel room where he was staying in Washington and from lead- ers of the neo-Nazi National Socialist The letter reportedly revealed that Hinckley had a fantasy relationship with actréss Jodie Foster, 18, who played a youthful prostitute in the movie “Taxi Driver,” and wanted to impress her. Sources also said it indi- cated that he might be seeking to commit a crime that would “get him- self killed.” Foster is a freshman at Yale Uni- versity, where she made her stage debut last week in a student prison drama entitled, “Getting Out.” Exec AD Adm. ___ ® it Exec AD Inv. ___ § Exec AD LES ___ sst. Dir.: Adm. Servs. ____ Crim. Inv. Ident. Intell. Laboratory ____ Legal Coun, __ Plan. & Insp. __ Rec. Mgnt. ___ Tech. Servs. __ Training __ tblic Affs. Of. _ tlephone Rm. irector’s Sec'y The president-elect of the National Socialist Party said Hinckley was ex- pelled in 1979 because he “wanted to shoot people and blow things up.” Mi-, chael C, Allen, said Hinckley had jomed sometime after March 12, ‘1978, and’ was dropped: -from- -the -membership rolls on Nov. 9,.1979, Hinckley was a “storm trooper” for the party, one of the men who pro- tected its leaders, but Allen said the troubled son of a wealthy Colorado oil executive “was just uncontrollable.” Washington Star-News Daily News (New The New York Times —_ The Wall Street Je The Atlanta Cons The Los Angeles York} ywwinal titution Times Fei oo.
are HW 54952 In> Lubbock, Tex., “an apartment “ maintenance man who spoke twice with Hinckley recalled a conversation during last year’s presidential cam- - + paign in which the suspect said all the presidential candidates should be “eliminated” except Libertarian Party candidate Ed Clark, whom he sup- ported. Hinckley was being held yesterday under extraordinary security at the brig on the Quantico, Va, Marine saining base. He has been charged only in the shooting of Reagan and McCarthy, but cther charges are pending. In an intensive-care room described by Reagan’s deputy chief of staff, Mi- chael_K. Deaver, as barren, Reagan Was performing like the master of cer- emonies assigned to keep other peo- ple’s spirits high in a time of trouble. As if he were not the wounded 70- year-old victim of an attempted assas- sination, Reagan was bantering with aides, doctors and nurses, first in writ- ten notes and, after 3 am., when the tubes were removed from his nose and mouth. by vaice. “T always head fast.” he told a nurse. | “Keep up the good work,” she re- sponded. “You mean this may happen several more times?” he joked. in the busy recovery room after he came out of the anesthetic following his three-hour-long chest surgery to remove the bullet that punctured his left lung, Reagan remarked: “If I got this much attention in “Hollywood, I'd never have left.”” The -president's jokes, relayed by O'Leary and White House aides, helped bolster the impression of a leader in command, relaxed and as full of the Reagan optimism as he was before the bullet struck him. His remarkably rapid recovery, which left O'Leary saying “I am really stunned by how alert and with it he is,” was attributed tu his extremely strong health despite his age. But Reagan apparently planned to exceed ‘his doctors’ predictions. When they told him that it would be two or more months before he could ride horses again, the president held up one finger in silent disagree- ment, Deaver said. “The president. is requiring almost no pain medication at all. He is tough in a good sense,” O’Leary said. “He's obviously able to function right now in terms of his thought process. capacity to make decisions and so forth.” O'Leary said in the + Morning. “What a constitution that Lrishman has,” Sen. Paul D. Laxalt, (R-Nev.), one of Reagan’s close friends, said in admiration. DoclId: 32989491 Page 103 Dosgan didn’t know he had been es: he was examined at the hos- ital, and Secret Service agent Jérry Parr originally ordered the limousine to take the president back to the White House. En route, however, Reagan complained of a soreness in his rib cage and a bit of difficulty breathing, and Parr ordered him taken to the hospital. “He had walked into the hospital on his own, under his own power, and fallen, sort, of passed out there in the energency room,” Baker told reporters. Reagan was given blood transfusions, and his condition was restored to sta- e. Down the hall from Reagan’s hospi- tal room a White house command center was equipped with all of the communications equipment that goes with the president on all his travels. Baker said the secure White house communications were operating within 45 minutes of the president's arrival at the hospital. Dave Fisher. and Helene vun Damm. two personal aides to the president, were in the command cen- ter, a5 was a military aide with the se- cret codes the president would need in the event of confrontation with the Soviet Union. Baker said that any question need- ing a decision would be telephoned to the president. The top White House advisers also will visit the president once a day or more often as they shake down the new logistics of gov- ernment. ‘Baker Held’ a mid-afternoon news briefing in an attempt to deflate re- ports of new tension between Secre- of State Alexander _M. Haig Jr. and senior White House advisers as a result of Haig’s role during the tense hours before it was known that the president would come through his or- deal so well. Responding to Reagan’s closest aides were once again angry at a grab for power by the sec- retary, Baker said, “The White House staff is not displeased at all with the secretary’s performance yesterday [Monday]. We think the entire gov- ernment functioned well yesterday. We particularly think he functioned well yesterday here as the contact in the situation. room.” Baker acknowledged that there had been a disagreement between Haig _and Defense Secre Caspar W. Weinberger during the Rouse that the “president was undergoing surgery, but he refused to say what it had been about. David _Gergena deputy to Baker, said: “Al Haig did one hell of a job down there, and we really thoroughly appreciate what he did.” reports that - Gergen‘ said the Haig-Weinberger ‘ong not over who was in chargewMwmrc's very clear,” he added. Gergen said there were no shouted ex- changes, and sought to play down the dispute. Other sources said Weinber- ger was upset by Haig’s emotional claim Monday to have authority in the line of executive power and by the nature of increased readiness ordered for US. forces around the world. Haig and a majority of the Cabinet had assembled in the Situation Room to await word of Reagan and the re- tum from Texas of Bush. Under terms of the 25th Amendment. if the president is not. in condition to de- clare his own disability and transfer power to the vice president. the trans- fer can be accomplished by a majority of Cabinet members and the vice president. Baker said he and Meese discussed the possibility that the president should transfer power when they met at the hospital minutes after Reagan had entered the emergency room. He said it was the view of all con- cerned that if the only time period during which the president was inca- pacitated was while he was under an- esthesia or recuperating from anesthe- sia, “There would not be any even preliminary steps taken toward the 25th Amendment, that the best ap- proach as far as the country and the American people were concerned would be business as usual, to the ex- tent that that could happen.” To that end, Bush invited the Sen- vate Jeaders of both parties to the White House yesterday morning for a briefing on the president’s condition and the procedures that the White House aides would follow while the president remained hospitalized. Minority Whip Alan Cranston _(D- Calif.) said the meeting was called “to ; assure us that things were normal and if we wanted to reach people down here, we should call the regular peo- ple, they'll be here.” He said he thinks that the planning triggered by the at- tempted assassination has “gone very smoothly and very effectively.” The seriators were assured, as Ma- jority leader_How: (R- Tenn.) said, that there had been no Monday interruption “in the chain of lawful cornmand.” 2°)
Baker told reporters that the some- what confusing report Monday of a command authority that would pass in succession from president to vice president to defense secretary would only be implemented in a dire mili- tary situation. It “only applies in a narrow set of circumstances, range of circumstances. It’s classified,” Baker said. He said that an emergency sys- tem is established at the outset of an administration and can be changed at the president’s direction. Despite their joy -that Reagan had come through his operation so well. White House officials remained grave ahont Brady. 40, who was renorted by dectors to have lost a good deal of the right hemisphere of his brain. His left hemisphere is dominant. however. O'Leary said. The doctor who acted. as a. spubes- man for the hospital said: “In patients like this the spectrum of possible out- comes is very, very wide.” - -3° 2& HW 54952 Docld:32989491 Page-1
vs Brady | Improves@tramatically | By Susan Okie and Victor Cohn Washington Post Staff writers Presidential press secretary James. S. Brady regained consciousness but remained in critical condition in the intensive care unit at George Wash- ington University Hospital yesterday, after undergoing a 62-hour operation in which doctors removed a large por- tion of the right frontal lobe of his brain. Despite extensive destruction of tissue on the right side of his brain and some damage to the left frontal lobe, Brady’s condition improved dra- matically in the hours after surgery. He was awake, able to see, and able to move his right arm and leg when asked to, according to doctors at the hospital. . Considering the severity of Brady’s brain injuries, one of the doctors called his progress “extraordinary.” “Everybody's very encouraged,” said Brady's old boss, Sen. William Roth (R-Del.), after speaking wi rady’s wife and one of his doctors at the hospital. “Things are going better than we had hoped for or were prepared for.” However, one of the doctors in- volved in the case said it was too early to be certain whether his improve- ment would continue. “We're very guardedly, cautiously optimistic,” he said, “but the problem is that within -the-first-24-to-36-hours-after-this_kind of ordeal things can change. By to- morrow or the next day, if they haven’t changed, I'd feal a little more gomfortable....” The bullet that struck Brady en- tered his head above the left eye, passing through the tip of the left frontal lobe of his brain. It then crossed to the right side of the brain, where it did far greater damage — causing severe bleeding in the right frontal lobe, according to doctors at the hospital. One doctor said the initial CAT- gcan — a cross-sectional X-ray of the brain done Monday as ‘soon as Brady reached the emergency room — looked like “a disaster.” He also said that before surgery Brady’s doctors- feared that expansion of the right half of the brain from blood and swelling might cause fatal pressure on the brain stem, which maintains breathing and awareness. A doctor involved in the case said, that the team of neurosurgeons, head- ed by Dr. Arthur I. Kobrine, removed “a lot of brain tissue” from the right frontal lobe. They also took out the bullet, which had lodged in the back WW 54952 Docld: 32969491 Page portion of the right side of the brain. A much smaller amount of tissue de- stroyed by the bullet at the tip of the left frontal lobe was also removed, the doctor said. Doctors do not operate in every case to remove damaged brain tissue. In this case, however, emergency sur- gery was done to remove blood and to decrease the presure on undamaged portions of the brain. The long-term effects on Brady of the logs of brain tissue from the fron- tal lobes are not yet known, “We believe he is going to live,” Dr Dennis O'Leary, dean for clinical af- fairs at George Washington University. Medical School, said in a statement, yesterday morning. But he added, “In patients like this, the spectrum of possible outcomes is very, very wide .... We have no idea where he is going to end up.” The major function of the frontal lobes of the brain is the control of voluntary muscular movement of the body,-with the left frontal lobe affect- ing movement of the right half of the body, and the right frontal lobe con- trolling movement of the left half of the body. In addition, a portion of one of the’ frontal lobes — moet often the left — contains the brain’s speech center. In Brady, who is right-handed, the speech center would be located on the left side, and thus may have been unaffected by his wound, according to Washington University __ Medical School. . A doctor at the hospital said it was impossible to test Brady's ability to speak until a breathing tube is re- moved. The tube has been. passed through his mouth into the windpipe. The frontal lobes also contain areas that subtly influence personality. Pa- tients whose lobes on both sides have been largely destroyed — such as mental patients who have undergone prefrontal lobotomies — show perma- nent personality changes, including apathy and loss of drive, according to. Dr. Alfred J. Luessenhop, chief_o neurosurgery at ersi- i ool. However, permanent changes may not occur in Brady, who apparently, 105 may develop from said. suffered lige» destruction of the left frontal | nhop said. Initiallynessaid, patients who have lost most of one frontal lobe often show profound apathy or indifference. “They're inappropriate in moods, and they’re not spontaneous,” he said. “They'll answer questions with whole sentences but not volunteer anything.” Within six to 12 months, however, the personality functions of the, lost frontal lobe can be taken over by the one on the opposite side — “really remarkably ple;” varies from y completely in some peo- he said. The amount of recovery #ch. Servs. —_ patient to patient, and in -cining :¢ AD Adm. ‘ec AD Inv. ¢ AD LES __. t. Dir: Im. Servs. —. im. Inv. ont. boratory gol Coun. __ an. & Insp. 2c. Mgnt. Brady will depend on how much ilic Affs. Off. damage was done to the | lobe, be seid, e e left frontal _ Doctors said Brady received two Intravenous medications, mannitol and a rela the : cortisone, to reduce swelling of the brain, Ammerman said it would also be routine procedure to administer antibiotics to prevent a brain infec- tion, one possible complication of his surgery. Luessenhop said the fact that Brady was reportedly awake and re- sponsive yesterday, and that his pupils were small, equal and reacting to light, were very hopeful signs. “He'll be & little worse probably for a few days,” because temporary swalling the surgery, he ephone Rm. ector’s Sec'y _ The Washington Post AN Washington Star-News Daily News (New York) The New York Tines — The Wall Strect Journal ww - The Atlanta Constance. 2 Tin Los Angeles ‘THines uu «
TOP VIEW CROSS SECTION SHOWING THE EXTERT OF JAMES BRADY'S WOURD PATH OF BULLET BULLET ENTERED ~ BRADY’S SKULL N Zz. ABOVE THE LEFT EYE BULLET LODGED IN RIGHT SIDE OF BRAIN ABOVE THE EAR BULLET CAUSED SEVERE DAMAGE AND BLEEDING TO RIGHT FRONTAL _ LOBE, NECESSITATING THE REMOVAL OF A GREAT AMOUNT OF TiS- SUE TO RELIEVE PRESSURE AND SWELUNG OF THE BRAIN ITSELF WHICH COULD HAVE BEEN FATAL DAMAGED AREAS WHERE TISSUE WAS REMOVED "By Robert Barkin — The Washington Post HW 54952 DBocld:329899491 Page 106
0-19 (Rev. 8-20-79) a ' WW 54952 Doc! diss peep sexnetar By Victor Cohn and Susan Okie Washington Post Btaff Writers President Reagan, a 70-year-old who is healing like a 50-year-old, was recovering so fast yesterday that one of his doctors at George Washington University Hospital said he was “atunned.” He was in “excellent spirits” and “exceptionally good condition,” said Dr. Dennis O'Leary, adding that the president pr d have put in a full day’s work if he had not needed some sleep. Many physicians compared Reagan to “a man in his 50s” in his high- spirited, quickly mending reaction to what was, at the least, a moderately serious gunshot wound followed by major surgery. But another doctor also said, “Both he and the country are fortunate ev- erything is going fine.” The president, as healthy as he is, was also lucky Monday afternoon. Several doctors said he was lucky his assailant used a .22-cal. pistol, what one doctor called “a lady’s gun.” Had his would-be assassin used a .45, the heavy slug could have torn a quickly lethal hole through his insides. Second, he was lucky because the bullet hit a rib and was deflected. Otherwise it might have struck an organ more vital than the lung. And last, he was lucky because he was minutes away from a major and first-class medical center. He could immediately be greeted by platoons of specialists of every kind. Then — since he .was bleeding internally and seriously from his wounded lung — the bleeding could be halted before it became truly dangerous. A report on his condition was given yesterday by O'Leary, George Wash- ington clinical (medical) affairs dean, at a White House briefing. Despite a mostly sleepless night in a busy intensive care unit — “not a restful place,” O'Leary said — Reagan was alert and taking “almost no” pain medication for what many persons would find a painful condition. Questioned closely about the preai- dent’s abilities should a crisis arise, O'Leary said: “I think he is quite ca- pable of making decisions and inter- acting with people. I -wouldn’t encour- age him to put in an 18-hour day, but T am sure he can attend to the impor- tant matters of government today.” This assessment came just 18 hours after the shooting of the president and three of his entourage, including . Brady. Reagan was not told about the gravity of Brady's head wound and brain in- jury until yesterday afternoon. “Just remember,” O'Leary ex- plained, the president was “coming out of major surgery. He’d been up all day and night,” so his doctors had to decide “how much” news he should have to absorb right away. ; Such news aside, the president’s course read like an old movie script. He had been rushed to the hospital Monday. Fifteen doctors crowded around him and quickly shoved a tube into his chest to drain out the air and blood that had deflated his wounded left lung. This quickly rein- flated it. X-rays and blood tests followed, and a blood transfusion to replace the 2% quarts the tests showed he had lost. Then -came his three hours of surgery —to search the chest and abdomen for other damage (none was found), to drain out more bloody flu- id, to remove the crumpled bullet. When the president was wheeled out of the operating arena at 6:20 p.m., his doctors: left-in place the en- dotracheal tube, the tube down his windpipe through which they had been anesthetizing and breathing for Asked about the reports of Reagan’s apparent joviality, O'Leary said it showed “a very young, very vital person....He is tough in a good sense.” Another George Weshingto n_sur- geon, Dr. Glenn Geelh ; who was in the operating area, had another thought: “He’s a performer. He recog- nizes that people are responding to him, and he responds accordingly 1. Her izes also, a8 any presi- dent should, that he is the center of attention, that people are aware of his statements and he should be consid- ered upbeat.” ; en, for age 70, there is simp: that youth. ad tr. Dr. Eugene Exman,a Los Angeles chest, surgeon, unconnected with the case, said, “Many people do well after such surgery. Some do exceptionally well. He is one. I think you have to remember that some people at 50 look like 70. Some at 70 look like 50. His doctors have said over and over that he’s in good physical condition. This shows it.” Geelhoed put his “physiological age” in the “late 50s.” O'Leary said, “he is a physiologically young person” who at this point —- and barring surprises — is “doing beautifully.” Like a Man in His 50 Exec AD Adm. __ Exec AD Inv. _”_ Exec AD LES uw Asst. Dir.: Adm. Servs... Crim. Inv. Ident. — Intell. Laboratory __ Legal Coun. Plan. & Insp. Rec. Mgnt. Tech. Servs. __ Training —_. Public Affs. O#, Telephone Rm. Directos’s Sec’y . The Washington Post ALY. Washington Star-News Daily News (New York? The New York Tine- The Wall Street Jeurnad uw. The Avian. Consitutiss 2. The Los Angeles Tine~ 3 Fei sou
HW 54952 Reagan Staff gen ‘For Interim Rule: “Business as Usual’ By Lou Cannon . Washington Post Stat! Writer Hours after Ronald Reagan was shot, even before the bullet was removed from his chest, the White House senior staff was drafting the blueprint for sustaining the momen- tum of the Reagan administration while the president re- covers from his wound. Presidential counselor Edwin Meese IIT summarized the strategy yesterday in a single sentence: “Basically, the message is that this government is doing business as usual.” Until the president is safely returned to the White House and fully back at work in the Oval Office, every public gesture and activity will be aimed at demonstrating that nothing fundamental has changed while he is away. As it happens, the Reagan White House had at its fingertips a handy guide from history — how the Eisenhower adminis- tration maintained its equilibrium when Ike was hospital- ized with a heart attack on Sept. 24, 1955. “It’s just as if the president were here i in the Oval Office the way the White House is running,” said_Michael K. _Deaver, the White House deputy chief of staff, who was at the president’s side when he was woun onday. Deaver’s comment reflects a confidence among senior advisers that Reagan, from his hospital bed, will be able to make the decisions that are required of a president. The White House approach ‘also demonstrated that Meese, Deaver and chief of Stati am James A. Baker If have a public relations awareness of” ‘to show ‘that ‘the government has not been thrown "oft stride, despite the trauma of the attack. Yesterday, for instance, the president’s three senior ad- visers held their usual early-moming meeting — only this time it was around the president’s hospital bed. At break- fast, the president signed a bill, using his hospital tray as a desk. Later, Vice President. Bush presided at an informal Cabinet meeting, su for an at a meeting with congressional leaders and Junched with the These small but important gestures of continuity could well have been lifted from the days of 1955 when Vice President Richard Nixon filled in for the recuperating president while Fisenhower’s senior staff kept the -government running. Late Monday afternoon, when the extent of Reagan’s injury was not fully use writer ‘Tomy Bs lan, sent Robert ML arc. M7. cm ick, Meese’s deputy, a memorandum. {t began this way: “During the Eisen- “hower heart’ attack period, the admin- “istration kept to the theme of business “as usual.” Dolan’s memo summarized the ap- -proach of the White House staff after President Eisenhower's heart attack. Docld: 32969491 . Page 106 __ “LOfficials noted in their pues statements that President Eise Shad established a Cabinet style _emment — ‘the Ike team’ — and had : carefully delegated authority [which] vhad prepared the government for just ‘such an eventuality. “2.The administration kept to pre- viously announced schedules of gov- emment activities, even to trips abroad by Cabinet officers. “3.The first Cabinet meeting after Tke’s attack was opened with prayers: for his recovery. “4.Then-Vice President Nixon noted the incredibly heightened sensi- tivity of the press during this period. Even a wrong expression in a still photo could be widely misinterpreted. It was a time for carefully guarded words and actions, especially for the vice president. It was important, ‘Nixon noted, to appear neither brash nor timid.” “This memo could well have de- scribed the way that the senior White House staff — and the vice president ~— behaved on the second day of Reagan’s hospitalization. After a breakfast meeting at the hospital, the White House “Big Three" adjourned for their regular morning imeeting with Reagan. This meeting was held in the barren intensive-care unit with the three staff members grouped around the bed. “T’ve really screwed up the sched- ule,” Reagan said to Deaver, who keeps the president’s schedule in the White House. -In-fact;-every- effort-was-made-yes- terday — as it will be the rest of the week — to see that the Reagan sched- ule is carried out by Bush. It is what will happen again today, when Bush presides over a National Security Council meeting, and again on Thurs- day when the vice president is sched- uled to chair a full meeting of the Cabinet. In all these actions both Bush and the senior staff are careful to weigh their words, in the manner suggested by the Eisenhower staff experience, so that no one forms the impression that Bush has taken over as president. “The decisions are being made by the president,” said Meese, in words virtually identical to those uttered by Baker and Deaver. In administering ‘the interim gov- ernment until the president’s full re- covery, White House aides are count- ing on the enormous asset of a presi- “that ” dential style that they perceive as gritty and courageous. ‘The Reagan wisecracks in the hos- * pital bed — “Does Nancy know about us?" the president joked to a nurse Monday night — and his physical re- ‘silence have convinced his aides that the interim ‘without him will be rela- tively short.It has to be, in the opin- ion of his closest congressional ally. Sen. Paul Laxalt (R-Nev.), who thinks res no substitute for Reagar, _when it comes to political salesman- ship. “Sympathy is a short-term com- modity on Capitol Hill,” says Laxal:. “ explaining why Reagan's presence vil! be needed to maintain public support for his economic program. But the Nevadan predicts the White -House staff will function smoothly in Reagan’s absence and that Bush’s -performance will be ac- ceptable to all factions. He also be- lieves that the president has the con- gressional schedule on his side in the form of the Easter recess, which will begin on April 10 and extend to April an would hope by that time Reagan would be ready to go to work,” Laxalt said. While no one is making a predic- tion like this at the White House, the private expectations clearly are very high. Reagan was scheduled to move out of his intensive-care unit to a pri- vate room late last night or early to- day. Aides are talking about another 10-days- of: -hospitalization; -and--some are even more optimistic than that. “The doctors are treating him as The Washington Post Al. Washington Star-News —- Daily News (New York) ———_—--- The New York Times _-__-__-- The Wall Suecet Journal —__....... The Auianta Constitution — The Los Angeles Times ——_..- FRCS.
they would any 50-year-old man,” quipped Meese yesterday. Reagan is 70 years old. He is also, to hear his doctors and his aides talk about it, tougher than the proverbial boot. He was at first unaware that he ‘wag shot, and he joked with doctors on the operating table. When a doctor told him it would be two months be- fore he could work at his Santa Bar- bara ranch, Reagan held up one fin- ger. The steady reporting of Reagan one-liners and the meetings at Reagan's bed are all calculated, of course, to put the best possible light tw sasse DoclId:32969491 Page 109 on the president's condition and to avoid dwelling on the trauma of the gunshot wound. But Reagan’s stilistic response to the-shooting has made the task of his managers easier. Even opponents of the president have praised his grace under pressure. Even critics of the White House staff acknowledge that it has performed relatively smoothly in the present cri- sis. Even opponents of Vice President Bush found little on which to fault him yesterday. Traumatic as the crisis has been, the realities of politics lead those who are in charge of pushing the presi- dent’s program to ask themselves if there are any short-term benefits that can be derived from the violence that erupted gutside | the Washingt n_Hil- ton Hotel_on Monday. No one pre- tends to know the answer to this now. But Reagan and his aides will take any help they can get. Asked whether the president's pro- gram would benefit from what had happened, his top aide Meese replied this way: “I honestly don't know. But 1 don't think the president's programs will be
048 Rev. 20-79) Sik Ar e Unexpect@@y r * Exec AD Adm. Exec AD Inv. _ e f P. S. t Exec AD LES __ . Encouraging or Fress OeCcreltary ass. ois. ———_—— - ee oe = Adm. Servs, By ROBERT REINHOLD to die of his wound, although last night he Crim. Inv. * _Specialto The New York Times appeared to be near death, his doctors Ident WASHINGTON. March 31 — told White House officials. Int {1 — Brady, the White House press secretary, George Washington Hospital listed Mr. nteul. who was the most gravel injured of the Brady's condition this evening as “crit. Laboratory —__ four men struck in yesterday’s attempt to | cay but improving.” He was resting in a Leoal Coun assassinate the President, showed signs private room of the intensive care unit on 9 _— today of recovering unexpectedly Well | the fourth floor near Agent McCarthy and Plon. & Insp. __ from the bullet that had plercedhis brain. | president Reagan. Nine other patients Rec. Mgnt. His doctors said that the 40-year-old | Verein the unit —— Mr. Brady was conscious, with eyes open, . Tech. Servs. and that his pupils reacted well to light. | The White House issued a statement Training -He obeyed commands to move his right | that Mr. Brady was “in critical but arm and leg and to wiggle his toes, and he squeezed his wife’s hand with his right hand. The left side of his body did not re- spond so well, but it was not yet clear if e re was full paralysis. But while these signs were taken as en- couraging, several neurosurgeons with varying familiarity with Mr. Brady's wounds expressed doubts that he would be able to resume a job as intellectually taxing as that of press secretary to the President. If he was able to return to the job, they said, it would probably be only after a long recuperation. They all stressed, however, that recovering from brain in- juries was notoriously unpredictable and that remarkable recoveries were not un- known Mr. Brady suffered ‘fairly extensive” damage to tissue in the right side of his brain but only “minimal” damage to the of “left, said D clinical affairs at George Washington University Hospital, where mr. Brady underwent about four hours of surgery last night. -In most people, one.side of the brain —' the left in Mr. Brady's case — is “domi- nant.”” Dominance accounts for such traits as right- and left-handedness. In all people, the left side of the brain is the primary center for many key functions, such as speech. That his left side sus- tained only minimal damage augured well for Mr. Brady. “His response to surgery has been good — everybody treating him is hopeful,” sal Dr Hugo-Rizzoli. chief of neurosur- gery at the hospital. Dr. Rizzolf has not ‘attended Mr. Brady personally; surge was performed b rthur I. Kobrine™ “It is amazing how much improvement many of these patients do exhibit over time,” Dr. Rizzoli said. But he said it was too early to conjecture about Mr. Brady’s prospects for resuming his duties, ‘ex. cept that it will be a long time." Conditions of Two Officers Two law enforcement officers who were also struck in yesterday’s fusillade of bullets were reported to be in stable condition today. Timothy J. McCarthy, a 3i-year-old Secret Service" a ; was “doing very well’ after surgery to repair liver damage and was expected to re- cover fully, a spokesman for the service said. The other law officer, Thomas K. ~Delahanty, a 45-year-old District of Co- lumbia police officer, was still in “‘seri- ous” condition but was coherent and “doing quite well,” with a bullet still lodged in his neck, according to a spokes- man for the police. Having survived the first 24 hours, Mr. Brady was generally considered unlikely 4 D stable” condition. ‘‘He is being observed closely for possible complications for which he is at significant risk,’’ the state- ment said. Since his doctors have issued no de- tailed medical statement, the exact path of the bullet or the extent of brain tissue damage is uncertain. However, doctors close to the treatment team said that the bullet had entered at an angle just above and slightly to the left of the left eye, passed through the frontal sinus and hur- tled into the right side of the brain. Earlier reports said that the bullet had completely plerced the skull and exited from the right side. However, it now ap- pears that the slug — or at least the larg- est fragment — settled in the right rear , part of the brain, probably the parieto-oc- cipital area. . Whether Mr. Brady’s mental capaci- ties would suffer permanent change could only be a matter of speculation at this point. : “Time and observation are the best udges of the nature of the injuries,’’ said : at,.chiefof neuro. on, “Often there is a remarkable de of readjust- ment of abilities and atic recov- eriés.’’ But he added, ‘‘Some limitation is the rule rather than the exception.” HW 54952 DocId: 32989491 Page 110 Public Affs. Off. Telephone Rm. __ Director's Sec’y . The Washington Post —WW_ Washington S:rareNews Daily News (New York} The New York Times SAS. The Wall Street Journ? ee | The Allanta Constnete: Ju Thy Los Angeles ‘Tomes woe
0-19"(Rev. 8-20-79) ee @& Exec AD Ad , xec m, . ‘ Exec AD Inv. ___ Exec AD LES ___ Asst. Dir.: Adm. Servs. ____ Crim. Inv. - Ident. Intell. Laboratory | __ ade . Legal Coun. ___ Say Brady | saa ce — Rec. Mgnt. __ . a = is gaining Tech. Servs. __ Training — Public Affs. Of. By FRANK VAN RIPER Telephone Rm. Director's Sec’y Washington (News Bureau}—Doc- tors reported last night that White House Press Secretary 40, remained in critical but stable condi- tion. They said they were “encouraged” by his progress thus far, but noted that he remained in “guarded” condition. Brady suffered a gunshot wound through the brain in Monday’s assassi- nation attempt and was being “observed closely for possible complications for which he is at significant risk,” said a medical bulletin from the George Washington University Hospital. Doctors said that Brady was “respon- sive and continues to move the right side of his body in response to voice commands...it is clear that Mr. Brady understands voice commands, implying retention of significant brain function.” But the doctors Would make no‘predic- tion about the extent of his recovery. “We believe he is going to live,” said Dr. Dennis O’Leary, the George Washington University Hospital spokesman, “but we don’t know how he is going to end up.” IN AN EARLY morning briefing yesterday, during which the question- Sachi - ing focused almost as much on the The Washington Post —______ popular Brady as it did on the Presi- . Washington Star-News —____... . dent, O’Leary was optimistic that de- Daily News (New York? a> mane spite anticipated permanent brain dam- The New York Time~ _ age, Brady’s mental capacity would The Wall Street Journe! remain more or less intact. “All his Tr lanta Cons SO rere mental processes are on the left side The Atlanta Const ruven ae. (of the brain),” O’Leary explained, and Phe Los Angeles Titer oo . that side sustained only minor damage et : from .the bullet. ~ Date _—f-1-Bf 25 2 -Docld: 32989491 Page 111 .
HW 54952 DocId: 32989491. Prez get OTE By LAURENCE McQUILLAN and BRUCE DRAKE Washington (News Bureau)—Told for the first time yesterday that his. press secretary and longtime friend, Jame -had been critically ounded in the same burst of gunfire that hit him, President Reagan, replied: “Oh, damn. Oh, damn, as tears welled in his eyes. . ; “ Told, too, of the shooting of Secret Service agent hy. and Washington policeman Thomas Dela, hanty, Reagan said: “Oh, dear. We must Prpoctors said McCarthy and Delahan- ty have been showing continued im: provement. But Brady, although gain- ing, remained in extremely serious con- dition last night. Reagan was tol by White House Dr. Daniel Ruge just after noon yesterday that Brady had ‘been wounded. Then, Reagan's chief of staff, _ James_A. Baker, told reporters that the ‘President asked if Brady had been hit in the brain. Ruge Said yes, and Reagan’ replied, “Oh, damn. Oh, damn.” AS FOR THE President, he has bounced back in “excellent spirits” from an operation to remove a bullet from his lung, peppering hospital staf- fers and his own aides with jokes and even signing into law—although in a slightly wobbly hand—a bill he had asked Congress to pass. Reagan attended to the matter of, state when his top White House aides— Baker, counselor Edwin Meese'3d and presidential assistant Michael Deaver— visited him at 7:15 am. in George Washington University Hospital. The President was propped up in. bed, brushing his teeth, when they gave him for signing a bill to block an increase ‘in dairy price supports. He affixed his ‘signature in a slightly shaky hand. White House officials strove to em- S Ort phasize that the functions of govern- trent were continuing unimpaired. “The White House did not skip a beat,”: insisted Larry Speakes, deputy _press secretary. “The government did not skip a beat. The White House performed effectively. There was not a single ripple.” __ CHIEF OF STAFF’ Baker called 2, small group of reporters to his office to quash reports that a heated row had broken out between Secretary of State Haig and Defense Secretary Caspar’ _ Weinberger over who among senior administration officials was in control of: the situation room Monday after- noon after the President was shot. “We took pains.at the senior staff meetings this morning to congratulate the cabinet and the staff for what we think was pretty good teamwork during this thing,” Baker said. David Gergen, a Baker aide, added, “I was there (in the situation room), and there was no big ‘fight between Weinberger and Haig.” : “ Dr. Dennis O’Leary, dean for clinical affairs at George Washington Universi- ty HoSpital, said that Reagan was in “excellent spirits,” that his vital signs were normal and that he required almost no drugs to kill pain or for other reasons. A medical bulletin is- sued later in the day repeated that Reagan was “on the road to recovery.” A WHITE HOUSE official said that Reagan would have to remain in the hospital about 10 days and that fuller recovery would take three weeks. O'Leary said it would be “probably a couple of months until he is totally back to riding horses.”. ; “He's obviously able to function ‘right now in terms of his thought processes, capacity to make decisions and so forth,” O'Leary said. “I wouldn't encourage him to put in an 18-hour day, but I am sure he can attend to the 1 news * Exec AD Adm. _— Exec AD Inv. —_— Exec AD LES Asst. Dir.: Adm. Servs. —— Crim. Inv. ———- ; Ident. ——__ oe matters of government to- The President’s recovery from the shooting has been characterized by his trademark sense of humor. . Around midnight, while tubes in his throat prevented him from speaking. . O'Leary said Reagan wrote a note: Winston Churchill saic, ‘There is no " more exhilarating feeling than being ° shot without result.” ane . ANOTHER NOTE came about 2 a.m.: “If I had this much attention in Hallywood, J would have never left.” | qouse Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O'Neill, reporting on what the White House had told him, indicated it hasn't been all roses for the President. Reagan had an “uncomfortable night,” O'Neill said, and probably ‘will have more uncomfortable times ahead. _ But when longtime aide Lyn Nof- ziger visited and told Reagan that he would be “happy to know that the government was running normally” without him, O’Leary reported Reagan’s response to be: “What makes you think I'd be happy about that?” The Washington Post ——————> Washington Star-News — Daily News (New York} — The New York Times ——————>- The Wall Street Journal ——-— The Adianta Constitution -———- - The Los Angeles Times ————- Date fe Le SL ZO FEI DO.
moms — Soeng Service Che king Limousine Position HW 54952 By ‘T.R. Reid Washington Post Stall Writer Secret Service officials said yester- day that agents guarding President Reagan followed prescribed procedures to the letter at the Washington Hilton Hotel Monday. but ency Is joking into whether the president’s waiting limousine may have been parked too far from the door. When Reagan came out of the Hil- ton Monday, the bulletproof presi- dential limousine was not waiting di- rectly in front of the hotel exit, as Secret Service practice usually re- quires. If it had been, Reagan would have had a straight-line walk of about eight feet from door w car. Instead, he had to walk diagonally down the sidewalk about 25 feet, bringing him around a curve and into the line of fire of ac- cused assailant duhn W. Hinckley Jr. There was no-titianswer yester- day why the car was not immediately outside the door or whether events would have happened differently if it had been.“ As the FBJ. D.C. Police and Secret ‘“Séivice began investigations of the aseussination attempt, those questions’ seemed likely focal points, as were two other queries: eWhy didn't the Secret Service have any warning about Hinckley and his previous firearms record? The agency's inidal answer was that Hinckley’s arrest for carrying three concealed handguns last Octoher was not the kind of charge that triggers Secret Service attention. ¢ How did Hinckley manage to get into the press area outside the Hilton about 10 feet from the president? A Secret. Service official said the ad- Vance agemt oan the scene concluded that it would be counterproductive to sét up an area restricted only to the press on the narrow, curving walk out- side the hotel. The basic dilemma posed by the shooting, security officials said, is the impossibility of providing total protec- tion for anyone in a public place in a free country. “8 One Secret Service agent recalled a comment attributed by author Jim Bishup to the late President John F. ‘Kennedy: “No amount of protection is enough. All a man needs is a willing- ness to trade his life for mine.” DoclId: 32969491 And, although the Secret Service keeps computerized records on about 20,000 people who have come to its attention as potential threats to a president, the list cannot be complete. None of the six people involved in prominent assassination attempts since 1963 was ever on the list. If a president can be protected any- where, security officers said, it would be at a major hotel in Washington where Secret Service and police ofti- cers are on familiar turf. That is particularly true at the Washington Hilton, the hotel probably visited most hy presidents for ‘speeches and dinners. Reagan was shot as he came out of an unmarked security exit the hotel had installed, with Secret Service guidance, to pro- vide safe passage for presidents and other VIPs. Given the dimensions of the prob- lem, Secret, Service officials said yes- terday that the agents with Reagan had done everything possible. “After . viewing the video tapes,” agency spokesman Jack Warmer said, -“we believe the presidential protection was as effective as it could possibly he. These guys were competing with a bullet” Secret Service agents not on the Reagan detail pointed out that those at the Hilton did exactly what train- ing manuals prescribe. One agent, Timothy J. McCarthy, turned in the direction of the shots and took a bullet aimed toward the president in his chest. The chief of the Reagan detail, Jerry Parr, grabbed the president and threw him into the limousine. “This is rule No. 1 when something happens,” an agent explained. “Find an escape route. Get the man out of there.” Generally, agents want the armored limousine waiting in a direct line with the president’s exit door as he moves from building to car. Such positioning shortens the peri- od of vulnerability and makes it easier for agents to form a human shield as the public figure moves. In some cases, agents have had the car moved one foot or less to have it perfectly aligned with the exit. Page 114 Exec AD Adm. __ Exec AD Inv. __ Exec AD LES Asst. Dir.: Adm. Servs. Crim. Inv. Ident, _ On Monday, though, Reayan’s lim- ousine was waiting about 20 to 25 feet down the driveway from the door. To reach the car, Reagan had to walk down the curving sidewalk. Around the curve, flush ayainst the hotel wall, the assailant waited with his pistol. Asked about this yesterday, Secret Service spokesman Richard Hartwig noted that if the limousine had been waiting in the narrow driveway direct- ly outside the security exit, it would necessarily have been heading down- hill, or east, to drive out of the hotel complex to T Street. Instead, the car was facing west, uphill toward Connecticut Avenue. Because of a traffic island that blocks access to T Street just in front of the security door, a westbound car would have to wait two car lengths below the door to pull directly onto T Street. Otherwise, the car would have to cir- cle through the hotel’s front driveway before reaching the street. Hartwig speculated that the car was facing west below the security door so Reagan could enter by the right rear door, which the service considers the the safest “VIP position” because it provides a direct sight line for agents riding immediately behind in a motor- cade. But Hartwig said the question must be considered more fully. The Secret Service's ignorance about Hinckley and his firearms record resulted from what Hartwig called “a judgment call, not clear one way or the other.” The Washington Post all. avoratory yal Coun. in. & Insp t. Mgnt. uu ch. Servs. wee sining —__ ic Affs. Off. phone Rm. _. ctor’s Sec’y Alt Washington Star-News WWW. Daily News (New York? The New York Times WW... Phe Walt Street - Tie Atlanta Consisutow Tae Los Angeles Tn ae urna! rrr rrr rire nee ier 27
“We understand that he was ar ee rested at an airport [in Nashville) wit. concealed handguns,” Hartwig said. “That in itself was not enough to noti- fy the Secret Service. Now, the fact that the president [Jimmy Carter] was in that city on the same day, appar- ently nobody made the connection.” Hartwig said it is not clear whether Carter's presence would have made the incident something the Secret Ser- vice should have been told about. Television crew members at the Hilton said they had complained to the Secret Service about bystanders pushing into the area reserved for the press. One bystander, as it turned out, was the accused yunman. A Secret Service official said the press area outside the hotel was not a “dedicated press area” — that is, not President an area with access restricted to those Reagan shot entering | / limousine with press credential. The officiad said the agent who set up the area before Reagan's arrival decided that a restricted press area would compound security problems. It would force onlookers, he said. to spread out along the curving walk. perhaps to the other side of the drive- wey, maxing protection more difficuk. _-- - Actual iocation’ of limousine D:C. Policeman | 2. Timothy J. McCarthy Secret Service Agent 3. James Brady Press Secretary HW 54952 DBocld:329899491 Page 115 wee oo ET. Thomas K. Delehanty: Position where limousine would have beenclosest to exit Entrance | Security _ Washington _ Hilton Hotel
0-19.(Rev, 8-20-79) Amid ba(s Darkest Moments, _a Leaven of Presidential Wit By B. DRUMMOND AYRES Jr. Special to The New York Times WASHINGTON, March 31 — When President Reagan awoke this morning, an aide reported to him, “‘You’ll be happy to know that the Government is running normally.” “What makes you think I'd be happy about that?’’ the President shot back. When it comes to the one-liner, Ron- ald Reagan can trade with the best. Be- fore yesterday, the cynics had said that the President’s mastery of that partic- ular form of humor was to be expected from an old Hollywood actor, that it was staged and practiced. But there was no staging what happened on the H street outside the Washington Hilton HW 54952 and no time to practice the stream of one-liners that followed. No sooner did Mr. Reagan alight from his limousine at George Washing- ton Hospital than the quips began, most of them duly passed on to reporters by Still chuckling family members, aides ° - and medical personnel. They were good medicine, leavening the crisis, bouying an anxious nation and showing the wounded leader to be a man of genuine good humor and sunny disposition. “*] forgot-to-duck,"’ he-explained_to Mrs. Reagan. “I hope you’re all Republicans,” he said to his surgeons. . 4 A Remembrance of W.C. Fields For a while, it seemed that the anes- thesia and the breathing tubes in his throat would shut off the quips. But as the anesthetic wore off, he improvised, reaching for a pad and pencil. “All in all,” he wrote, quoting W.C. Fields, “I’d rather be in Philadelphia."’ _ The Reagan wit tends to self-depreci- Docld:32969491 Page 116 _ ation, and is particularly effective in deflecting criticism about his age. In a recent speech to the Washington Press Club, he drew a long Jaugh when he said, “I know your organization was founded by six Washington newspaper- women in 1919 — it seems like only yes- terday.’”’ The timing for the punch line was ex- quisite. If it reflected Mr. Reagan’s training as an actor, it also reflected his 20 years of speech-making on the ‘rubber-chicken circuit. Uses Wit to Deflect Questions The President also uses the self- deprecatory one-liner to turn away- tough questions at news conferences. Asked recently whether he had denied a Federal job toa woman who had criti- cized some of his proposed budget cuts, he paused for a moment, allowed a _.mock-puzzled look to cross his face, then replied, ‘‘“How can you say that about a sweet fellow like me?”’ But when the laughter died, he re- tured to his questioner, addressed her by her first name, then in a conversa- tional, disarming voice proceeded to offer an answer — of sorts. It was vin- tage Reagan, an almost classic mix- ture of his humor, folksiness and unfail- ing politeness. He can, of course, raise his voice and become angry. But not often and not for long. Last fall, inhis debate with President Carter in Cleveland, his eyes tele- graphed anger and annoyance at some of Mr. Carter’s assertions, but his voice tended toward humor, with a bit of bite. “There you go again,” he began in answer to one of Mr. Carter’s state- ments about the need for health insur- ance. Exec AD Inv. — Asst. Dir.: Adm. Servs. Exec AD Adm. __ Exec AD LES Uw Crim. Inv. — Ident. Intell. Laboratory Legal Coun. Plon. & Insp? Rec. Mgnt. Tech. Servs. —_ Training Public Affs. Off. . Telephone Rm. Director's Sec'y _ The Washington Post Washington StarNews Daily News (New York) The New York Times Ass. The Wall Street Journ 1) We .- The Atkata Constitutnn The Los Ang: des Tames oe = i
HW 54952 (2S (Rev, 5-20-79) Secret Service Orders Internal Investigation Security Breakdown At Hilton Targeted By Thomas Crosby and Bob Gettlin Washington Star Staff Writers At least two eyewitnesses to Mon- cav's shooting of President Reagan at the Washington Hilton Hotel said that John Warnock Hinckley Jr. was acting In an erratic, boisterous man- ner that attacted their attention shortly before the president emerg- ed from the hotel. But Hinckley. 28, who is being held without bail in the shooting of Reagan and three others in his en- tourage, was allowed to mix freely with the press and other members of the public as they waited to catch a glimpse of the president. John W. Warner, public informa- tion officer for the Secret Service, said the agency has launched an in- terna) investigation into Monday's events, In part to check out the re. ports of some of the evewitnesses. Warner acknowledged that if the eyewitness accounts prove accurate, there was a critica; breakdown in se. curity __ "He stood ovt like 3 sore thumb.” said John M. Dodson. a.céiiputer op- erator ip a hipgh-fise building across the street from the Washington Hil- ‘ton. “Tourists can get excited -be- cause theyre going to see the president. but they don’t look ner- vous, and the press just ects casual because its just another job to them.” Rocky D. Kuonen, a press advance man for the White House. said yes- terday that a nghter policy would be established for presidential appear- ances to set aside areas for the press that would exclude the public. “During the presidential cam- paign, a special area was set aside for the press and the pubhic could not enter it.” said Kuonen. “We would like to return to that situation. Ev- erybody wants it” In addition, two days before the shooungs. the White House was con- cerned with the president's security. Kuonen said that when Reagan at- tended the annual Gridiron Club dinner Saturday night, “There were a lot of people behind ropes but no area set aside for the press.” The press aide said he discussed this with the Secret Service at the time. “Because he’s so popular people come up to him with little cameras and flash cubes,” said Kuonen. “Not much is done to restrain them.” DoclId: 32969491 _Page 117 _. The reports of a possible lapse in security at the hotel come a day after the Secret Service confirmed that it had never been told by the FBI that Hinckley had been arrested at a Nashville, Tenn., airport Oct.9 when he tried to board an airplane with three handguns. President Jimmy Carter was in town on a campaign stop at the time of the arrest. Candidate Reagan had been due to visit Nashville two days earlier but canceled the appearance at the last moment. The FBI has confirmed that it was told of Hinckley’s arrest. An FBI spokesman Said last night, “I don’t know why we would turn the infor- mation over to the Secret Service. He ° was being prosecuted by local av- thorities.”. “We never received any informa- tion that he had been arrested,” said Warner. Warner added that Hinc- kley’s name was not on a list of 400 persons considered most likely to at- tempt an assassination. He also was not among 25,000 names of people considered to.pose a Jesser threat to the president, Warner said. The Warren Commission, em- paneled to probe the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, concluded that the FBI withheld from the Secret Service information indicating that assassin Lee Harvey Oswald may have posed a threat to the president in Dallas. The commission was critical of se- curity arrangements for Kennedy's motorcade and noted that a Secret Service official said if the agency had received the information about Oswald from the FBI, the Secret Ser- vice would have included him on a list. In addition. two years ago H. Stu- art Knight, director of the Secret Ser- vice. told the House Assassinations committee that his agency was ham- pered by the wave of restrictions put into effect after disclosure of FBI abuse of domestic intelligence gath- ering. Warner said that people included on its lists of potential threats to the president often have psychological problems and a history of puchasing firearms. Tronically, Hinckley has under- gone psychiatric care and has the ar- rest record involving guns at the Nashville airport. ee When the president came out of the hotel Monday he faced a scene that included a crowd of members of the public - including Hinckley — pushing into the area set aside for the press to catch a glimpse of Rea- gan. Hinckley had apparently begun acting in boisterous manner when members of the press congregated 1n the driveway under the hotel's con- crete canopy prior to Reagan's exit. “I think it was he mouthing off in the crowd,” said Walter Rodgers, an Associated Press radio reporter, who added the voice said, “You ought to get here on time” to reporters and muttered, “They can do anything they want.” “They often get in.” said Rodgers of membérs of the public who infilit- rate areas set aside for the press in their zeal to see the president. “They often get in our way,” he said. "** About five or six minutes before Reagan emerged from the hotel's VIP entrance, Dodson, who saw the entire incident from his seventh- floor office in the Universal Build. ing across from the hotel. said Hinckley “was very fidgety. Maybe it was_just-me, but_I thought he didn’t look right.” Dodson said Hinckley was “pacing back and forth ... walking from Side to side, looking around like he was real nervous.” He was wearing a tan jacket and had his hands in the pockets. “But he didn’t look like he belonged in that crowd, that's all there is to it.” The Washingion Post Exec AD Adm. __. Exec AD Inv. —_ Exec AD LES Asst. Dir.: Adm. Servs. 2 o2 Crim. Inv. — WW Ident. Intell, Laboratory Legal Coun. ___ Plan. & Insp. —_ Rec. Mgnt. —. — Tech. Servs. Training — Public Affs. Off. Telephone Rm. Director's Sec’y . Washington Star-News Ax-'¢6.. Daily News (New York} The New York Tins The Wall Street Jour, cee ane The Atianta Constivor a 2. The Los Angeles Ties won. oe _ 48 Date a oo - eee ee
wet WW 54952 DocId:3 EL at i= When he first saw Hinckley. Dod- son said he thought, “Maybe I should have made a phone call, but I saw all the cops out there and figured they had it under control. } sit here and think I could have prevented it if I had thought and acted’ fast enough. He looked like a kook but then I thought, ‘Hey, there’s enough cops down there to take care of him.“ ABC cameraman Hank M. Brown, ’ 32, complained about the crowd be- fore Reagan came out but the Secret Service did not restrict the crowd. “More than half of the people were not press people,” said Brown, who added that prior presidential visits to the Hilton “were never like that" An eyewitness, Michael D. Kad- . Jecik, the assistant city manager 0 Davenport, Iowa, said: “I was stand- ing more or less right behind the guy who shot the president... a lit- tle less than arm's length.” Although there was a rope, Kad. . lecik- said, “I didn't see it.” He ~ described the ability of people to get near the president as “unrestricted. Nobody told-us to move. There was -no-security-check-that know of: “[saw an arm going up,” said Kad- lecik, thrusting his hand straight out as if holding” a gun, “and then bang, bang, Cang. . . I could see the smoke ‘from his gun. I was stunned. It happened so quickly." Also contributing to this story were Star staff writers Joan Low’ "y and Jane Puskas.
0-19: (Rev. 8-20-79) | , 1 54952 DocId:32989491__Page.119 1 Exec AD Adm... Exec AD Inv. ~— Exec AD LES ___ Asst. Dir.: Adm. Servs. Crim. Inv. Ident. Intell. Laboratory —_.. 1 ---! Loun, Fer assassins, 22isa ‘id’: Cheapness, size make it a criminal favorite By J ERRY SCHMETTERER and STUART MARQUES The small, inexpensive .22-caliber revolver—the kind used to shoot President Reagan—is “an assassin's weapon” that has become increasingly popular with street criminals and mob hitmen. “It’s an assassin’s weapon because it's small and light and has no recoil,” says Police Department ballistics expert Edward McPhillips. “If you want to take someone out in an alley, the .22 is the right weapon.” New York City police say 20% of the more than 10,000 ‘guns confiscated last year were .22s, and officials say the Small gun is the “most commonly used weapon in felonies,” because it’s “easy to conceal and relatively - cheap.” Gun shop owners say the cheapest model .22 starts at about $45. The gun, popular with target shooters, is a. semi-automatic capable of up to nine shots. Most are made abroad and shipped into the country in parts to circumvent import laws. They are assembled in various states where gun laws are lax, chiefly in Florida - -and_Georgia. The_gun_used.to _shoot_Reagan.reportedly. was assembled by RG Industries in Florida from parts: made by its parent company, Roehm, in Germany. Cops don’t use the gun as an off-duty weapon because rR me it is not designed to merely stop a criminal in his tracks. -But the gun is deadly because the velocity of its bullets is “extremely high—greater even than a.38. - “YOU WOULDN'T WANT to trust your life to a .22; it s just not a defensive weapon,” MePhillips says. * The .22’s weak “stopping power” was evident when Reagan was able to walk into George Washington Univer- sity Hospital even though he had been hit. Experts said a bullet from a more powerful gun would have shattered one of Reagan’s ribs, rather than ricocheted off it. Police said .22s are turning up more and more in street robberies, “mob hits” and random murders, though there are no figures on how many people were killed with the weapon in New York. Since 1975, more than 30 mobsters, including several informers, have been killed with .22- caliber revolvers across the country. Four black men were killed with .22s in a what may have been a racially motivated series of murders in Buffalo recently. Local police have dubbed the gunman the “.22-caliber killer.” Cops say. that the Purple Gang, an East Harlem-based group of enforcers for the Genovese crime family, once -bought.49.of.the guns-in Florida.Some.of.those-weapons- were used in the murders of New Jersey mobsters John (Coca Cola) Lardiere, Vincent Capone, Frank Chin and Thomas Palermo. a The Washington Post isp. ~— ervs, fle Of. ! e Rm. *s Sec’'y — Washington Star-News ——___—gem., - é Daily News (New York) 2.2... The New York Times ———— ma ae The Wall Street Journal —-—---. - The Atlanta Constitution ———->.- The Los Angeles Times ————- 2. FR. DS.
0-19 Rev. 8-20-79) * x Draw a bead on security © * By JOSEPH VOLZ ; Washington (News Bureau)—Secret Service offi- Cials have launched an investigation to find out why t Jr., the man accused of trying to kill President Reagan, was able to sneak by feet of the chief executive. . The Washington Metropolitan Police also began their own probe of the events Surrounding the oling yesterday afternoon outside i Hilton ees the Washington. Some critics complain that the Secret Service has been notably lax in the past in Keeping crowds back and away from the President when he makes Scheduled visits in and around Washington. On the and are uncomfortable. mone one of the service’s principal means of heading off such would-be gunmen—the protective intelligence file"—also failed Monday. The file is kept by the service in cooperation with the FBI an concerns itself with would-be assassins, mental cases, persons who have sent threatening messages to the White House and others who might be considered a rto the President. jae neither the Secret Service file here nor the more extensive FBI files contained any information on Hinckley, even though he had been arrested last Oct. 9 in Nashville for carrying three pistols and 50 rounds of ammunition on a plane on the same day road, however, it is another matter: Secret Service » President Carter was in the city. Hinckley forfeited a agents are often more Stringent in booting crowds off _ Sidewalks and approaches to the presidential route, * An ABC-TV news cameraman, Henry Brown, who: treme os, Se aenee? was working at the scene, said he saw non-press persons “penetrating the press area” earlier and had complained to Secret Service agents. Apparently, the agents on duty brushed off his complaints. The service insisted yesterday that the area had not been roped off exclusively for press. _ The service's position always has been that a President determines what kindof security he wants. Ideally, the Secret Service would have preferred it if Reagan's limousine had been brought into the hotel's underground garage. In this way, the President could have entered it almost unobserved—and, of course, without meeting the friendly crowds that are a politician's bread and butter. Washington's deputy police chief, Robert Klotz, a veteran of operations planning of the Toca depart- ment, Said that the scene at the hotel Monday—when the public is told that the President will be at a Specific place at a certain time~is about the most dangerous security situation that can arise. A gun- man.can plan his attack. (D.C. Police found a detailed Reagan itinerary, clipped from a local paper, in Hinckley’s Washington hote} room yesterday.) Hotels seem to be particularly dangerous because. the Secret Service generally makes little effort to hustle the President out back doors. President Reagan was not wearing a bullet-proof vest yesterday, an option the Secret Service suggests to chief executives. President Ford, who was the target of two assassination attempts within one 17-day span in September 1975, wore the vest on occasion, but found it confining and discarded it after a time. . Secret Service agents themselves are issued bullet- proof vests to wear under their ‘clothes, if they choose. But many, like agent Timothy J.MeCarthy, who was severely wounded by the gunman Monday, choose not to wear the vests because they restrict in the case, Nashville authorities said. Hehe official explanation for that slip-up was that there are so many people threatening presidents or carrying guns illegally, and there are so few Secret Service agents itisimpossibletowatchthemall. The Washington Pos Exec AD Adm. — Exec AD Inv, __ Exec AD LES ___ Asst. Dit.: 7 Adm. Servs. nee Crim. Inv, ; __ Ident. —_ Intell. —_ Laboratory _ __ Legal Coun, — Plan. & Insp, — Rec. Mgnt. — Tech, Servs. — Training — Public Affs, Off, | Telephone Rm. —_ Director's Sec’y _ ere Washington Star-News : . nara antaen Daily News (New York) _de The New York Times The Want Street Journal The Adanta Constit uiion The Las Angeles tt rere, Times __ Fer pov HW 54952 Docld: 32989491 Page 170
0-19 (Rev. 8-20-79) @: - é Secret Service a Tight-Knit Group - By David Shribman Washington Star Staff Writer The Secret Service is more than a fraternity, itis a full-ledged college, complete with alumni committees. And so, when an incident thrusts it into the public eye, even retired members fee! the shock waves. It has almost always been that way. “Every agent of the Secret Service, no matter where he was Monday, feels he was there,” said a quarter- century veteran of the service, now retired. “We all have pretty much the same reaction ~ a feeling of ab- ject frustration and personal loss, even if no one was killed. It's like a family.” And though tne president's life was spared in Monday’s attack, a sad, somber mood pervades the service. The question lingers in Secret Ser- vice headquarters at 1900 G Street NW and wherever people gather to discuss thé horrifying news of the day that perhaps someone, some- where could have=-done something. anything, to prevent what happened outside the Washington Hilton, The SecretService, which is charged with protecting the life of the presi- dent, is conducting an internal in- _ vestigation. to try -to -answer -that question, but it may never be an- swered fully. It perhaps will never fully go away, either. “Everybody involved feels what happened yesterday,” the retired agent said. “It's not water off your back. You feel it.” They do. Even in the happiest of times, Secret Service agents are not known as the most gregarious of fed- eral employees; they pass their work- days with an almost self-conscious sobriety. This week, after the un- thinkable has almost come to pass, they are depressed - and relieved that it wasn’t worse. “It's a mixture of frustration and a good feeling about the responsive- ness of our agents,” said John W. Warner Jr., assistant to the director of the service. “But our people are professionals. We don't lose a step.” Even before Monday's incident, Rep. Edward R. Roybal, a California Democrat who is chairman of an ap- propriations subcommittee on the Treasury, was concerned about re- ports of low morale within the Secret Service. He scheduled hearings for tomorrow and April 8 to inquire about, among other matters, Secret Service morale issues. “The morale in the service is not at its highest,” he said, “and this has got to be a big blow.” Sources close to the Secret Service “attribute much of the morale prob- lem to the burden of protection that brings such people as children of former presidents under age 16 and -wives of former president under the service's protective umbrella, and to the rigors of travel during the pres- idential campaign season just past. “The divorce rate is probably the highest in any agency in govern- ment.” said one Capitol Hill source. “These guys are away from home a lot, day and night. Their wives never know where they are. They're good looking — attractive as hell - and the girls like to make passes at them.” Said another source: “They're all well-built, and they’re all good- looking. It’s.as if that’s a prerequi- site. You almost have the idea that they look for good-looking people to protect these important men.” Special agents average about 36 years of age and have an average of about nine years of service; agents are assigned to protective.duty only after five years of service in the field. The attrition rate among the 1,150 agents is low (only 3.5 percent). A personality profile is harder to come by, but agents generally are in top physical condition and clean-cut in a macho-preppy sort of way — “the kind of guys,” as one source put it, “who have a lot of hair on their chests.” And yet many are possessed of a rigid, almost military mien, and as a group they are widely regarded’as having a dictatorial bearing. Report- ers almost uniformly describe their relationships with agents as “hos- tile.” The Secret Service’ underwent its greatest burst of growth after. the as: -sassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas-nearly two dec: ades ago. Since then, the old image of the easy-going Secret Serviceman has faded, replaced by agents with a different operating style - Viet- nam veterans, many of them, with an eyé for three-piece suits, expen- sive hair styling and fancy weapons. Exec AD Adm. _. Exec AD Inv. Exec AD LES Asst. Dir.: Adm. Servs. Crim. Inv. Ident, Intell. ~ Loboratory — Legal Coun. —. Plon. & Insp. __ Rec. Mgnt. Tech, Servs. Training Public Affs. On. Telephone Rm. Director's Sec’y .. The Washington Post WH Washington Star-News Daily News (New York? — The New York Times WW. - The Wall Street Je urn 2 . The Athama Constmati-t cee ae Tae Las Angeles Tones Date ane Le Ly. L. a 4d HW stoke _poutastaeamuss~-Poye-T7
0-19 (Rev. 8-20-79) > HW 54952 y DoclId: 32969491 3 Committees Investigating Conduct of Security Services By RICHARD D. LYONS Special to The New York Times WASHINGTON, March 31 — Three | was correct, and it turned out not to be,” Congressional committees and the Secret Service opened investigations today into the conduct of the Federal security forces in yesterday’s attempt on the life of President Reagan. “There is no question that there was a breakdown in security, and the public needs to know why,’’ said Edward R. Roybal, Democrat of Califor- nia, who will Be chairman of a Congres- sional hearing on Thursday into yester- day’s conducts of the Secret Service and other Federal security agencies. Mr. Roybal said he wanted answers to such questions as these: GWhy was_John W, Hinckley _Jr., the accused attacker, allowed into the area near the special hotel exit? The area was designed by the architects particularly to provide special security for Presidents and other distinguished visitors. Why was Mr. Hinckley’s name not en- tered in the Secret Service computer that contains the names of 25,000 potential as- sassins? Why was not Mr. Hinckley’s-presence in the Washington area known to the au: - thorities? Why did the Secret Service insist that five shots had been fired, not six? Warner Concedes Mistakes John W. Warner Jr., spokesman for the Secret Service, conceded that mistakes had been made by agents of the service. “7 never had such bad information in my life,” Mr. Warner said in an inter- view. “We were getting a lot of conflicting in- formation,”’ he said, such as the wrong identification of make and model of the revolver used The weapon, known as the Roehm model RG-14, was shipped from Ger- many in pieces and assembled in the United States. It holds six cartridges. Yet as late as midnight Secret Service officials were saying that the weapon was a nine-shot Harrington Richardson re- volver. “T went back to the men half a dozen times to check to see if that information Page 122 Mr. Warner said. On another point, Mr. Warner de- scribed Mr. Hinckley’s previous arrest, in Nashville in October, asa “routine ar- rest.” $ Pistols Found in His Suitcase tative-/ At that time Mr. Hinckley was arrested at the airport after three pistols and 50 rounds of ammunition were found in his suitcase. President Carter was in Nash- ville making a campaign speech the same y. Mr. Hinckley posted a $62 bond but did not show up for a court appearance and forfeited his bond. Other law-enforcement sources said, however, that such information should. routinely have been provided to the Se- cret Service, but was not, adding that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had known of the Nashville arrest but had not, told the Secret Service. . Police officials in the District of Colum- bia said that the detail assigned to the -Hilton- -Hotel-: was. shorthanded. They. noted that to fill out the detail, they had assigned Ratrolman Thomas K. Dela- hanty of the District of Columbia police force, who was normally attached to the canine patrol in the city’s parks. Officer Delahanty was wounded. Photographs made public by the White House today show that it was the police- men, rather than the Secret Service agents, who were closest to Mr. Reagan! as he left the hotel. Hearing in the Senate Also Set The pictures, which were taken by Mi- chael Evans, the official photographer for the White House, show that officers of the Metropolitan Police Department had wrestled Mr. Hinckley to the ground be- fore Secret Service agents got to him. H. Stuart Knight, director of the Secret Service, is expected to testify on these points in the Senate, in a second Congres- sional hearing on his agency, also on i/ The second hearing will be held by the Exec AD Adm. __ Exec AD Inv. _ Exee AD LES ___ Asst. Dir.: Adm. Servs. Crim. tnv. Ident. Intell. __ * Laboratory ___ Legal Coun, ___ Plan. & Insp. Rec. Mgnt. Tech. Servs. Training — Public Affs. Off. Telephone Rm. Director's Sec’y The Washington Post Washington Star-News — Daily News (New York) The New York Times _A--/ The Wall Street Journal The Atlanta Constitution The Los Angeles Times —W 4 Date _ / t6 Fer oo.
Subcommittee on Treasury, Postal Serv- ice and General Government of the Sen- ate Appropriations Committee. ““It’s a start we have to make,’’ said ator James Abdnor, Republican of South Da ; who is Chairman of the subcommittee. This committee conducted hearings on the conduct of the Secret Service six years ago, after an assassination attempt against President Ford in San Francisco. Representative Roybal is chairman of the Subcommittee on Treasury, Postal Service and General Government of the House Appropriations Committee. He said the first witnesses would be Donald T. Regan, the Secretary of the Treasury. DoclTd: 32969491 Page 123 HW 54952 The Secret Service is an arm of the Treas- ury Department. Mr. Roybal said he was also interested in a question that had arisen concerning low morale among Secret Service agents. He noted in passing that appropriations for the Secret Service had risen rapidly in recent years. The service was given $157 million this fiscal year, ending Oct. 1, and had asked for $20 million more for the fis- cal year 1982. The third Congressional group that will conduct an investigation is the Subcom- mittee on Commerce, Consumer and Monetary Affairs of the House Govern- ment Operations Committee, Its chairman, Representative Benja- oe in S. Rosenthal, Democrat of Queens, said he had ordenara private inquiry by staff members that might in turn lead to public hearings. Mr. Warner said the Office of Inspec- tion of the Secret Service would conduct the investigation there. Inquiry Called ‘Routine’ “This is done as a review and investi- gative procedure after any attempt on the life of a President,’’ Mr. Warner said, adding that such an investigation was “routine.” ° Mr. Warner said Mr. Knight and other high officials of the Secret Service “‘have been very proud of the manner in which our agents reacted to the assassination attempt."” He said that Timothy J. McCarthy, the Secret Service agent who was seriously wounded yesterday, “jumped into the line of fire and appeared to have stopped a bullet headed for the President.” Mr. Warner said the question of se- curity was one less of available funds and staff than the larger issue of ‘how re- strictive should the Secret Service be of providing access to the President by the public and the press.” “We're operating in a democracy where the public wants to see its Presi- dent, and the President wants to see the public,” he added. . Yo
Te [SR Get TY f HW 54952 Docld:32989491 Page 124 ——— | Ex-Agent Says Guards Are Paid to Be a Shield COLUMBUS, Ohio, March 3} (UPI) ' — Robert W. Foster, a former Secret Service agent, says agents guarding the President are ‘‘paid for acting like a shield.” Mr. Foster, 50 years old, who is re- tired, guarded Presidents Eisenhower, “Kennedy, Johnson; Nixon and Ford. “You're a shield every time a Presi- dent goes out in public,’’ he said. “It’s a pressure-packed job most-of the time. “Your palms ‘are sweaty, there’s always a sort of knot in your stomach.” “There's a saying that came out after President Kennedy was shot: politics and security don’t mix,” -he said. ‘‘A politican needs the public, but the job of guarding him becomes more difficult when he’s in an open forum where almost anything can happen.” Washington Star-News — Exec AD Adm. Exec AD Inv. WW. Exec AD LES Asst. Din: Adm. Servs Crim. Inv. 1 Ident. Intell. ae Laboratory ..— Legal Coun. __. Plon. & Insp. —. Rec. Mgnt... . Tech. Servs. ..— Troining —--. Public Affs. OF Telephone Rm. . Directo:'$ Sec ’y The Washington Pa~t -— Daily News (New York! —---.— The New York Tines The Wali street deurn Po. 2 - AAO The Atlama Const itaiien 2 The Los Snel + Times 2. Date oft fel.
1S Res, bE T GY \  ) } Exec AD Adm. __ — Exec AD Inv. . Researchers Trace Key Factors Asst. Dit.: Adm. Servs... Crim. inv. Ident. Intell, Laboratory ____ Legal Coun. __ Plan. & Insp. Rec. Mgnt. _._ _ Tech. Servs. Troining Public Affs. Off. in Profiles of Assassins on the American Scene By JANE E. BRODY A national emphasis on civil liberties for the mentally ill, the Jack of cultural restraints upon expressions of hostility and the ready availability of pistols are combining to make assassination an in. creasingly common American event, ac- co to psychiatrists who have exam- « ined the problem. Assassination and assassination at- tempts are more common here than in any other country, experts on violence ! maintain. In fact, assassination is the | leading cause of death of American Presi. ! dents in office. : Unlike other countries, where assassi- nations of heads of state are carried out either by politic&t- fanatics on in the course of a military coup, in this country nearly all assassins have been personai- ly, not politically, motivated. =, “Here, assassination is often the prod- uct of a single mentally disturbed person -who-is_alienated from society, who feels like a zero, is wanted by no one and can't get a job,” said Dr. Zigmond Lebenschn, a Washington psychiatrist. ‘‘We used to -lock such people up, but our current legal attitude permits them all to wander about.” Dr. Shervert Frazier, psychiatrist in, chief at McLean Hospital in Belmont,: Mass., said: _ “In this democracy, you can get away with a lot of things. Unlike the English, ’ there is no cultural restraint against ex. ~ pressions of hostile feélings in public. Nor do we have much moral restraint in our society right now; people can do and do do anything they want to. Also, there are & lot of handguns around — one for every two persons.’ Dr. Frazier is one of 27 experts prepar- ing a report on the prediction of violent behavior for the National Academy of Sciences at the request of the Secret Serv- ; ice. The group held a three-day meeting ‘ on the subject last month. F Except in the case of the two Puerto! Rican nationalists who tried to kill Presi | dent Truman in 1950, psychiatric studies ! of the backgrounds and motivations of as- sassins of American Presidents and simi- lar authority figures have shown that nearly all were mentally unstable, alien- ated persons who were failures in their own eyes. By killing a powerful and re- spected person, such as the President, they sought personal agerandizement — Status and fame — the analyses suggest. } Though some assassins professed af- tiliation with a particular political view- point, the groups they identified with did not regard them as representatives. In fact, the assassins were often rejected by their chosen group or had ended their ai- filiation with the group because of philo- sophical or tactical disagreements. Background of Suspect John W. Hinckley Jr., the 25-year-old | son of a Denver oil company executive * who has been charged with the attempt Monday on President Reagan's life, had elther left or been expelled from the Na- | tional Socialist Party of America, a neo- Nazi group; because Mr. Hinckley felt the group was not militant enough. Mr. Hinckley has been described as a drifter with a history of psychiatric prob- lems. He had attended college off and on .| over a six-year period but had not com- pleted his“education. Nor did he have a job. His older brother, Scott, is a vice {president of the Vanderbilt Energy Cor- ation, of whi ather Is-chair- man and president. The suspect’s profile fits the pattern of American assassins, according to Dr. Ir- ving D. Harris, a Chicago psychiatrist who has made a study of the p-blem “America’s assassins have almost al- ways been younger children in their fami- Mes, and in most cases they have had older brothers,” Dr. Harris wrote in Psy- chology Today. The list includes’ John Wilkes Booth, who killed President Lincoln; Charles “Julius Guiteau, President Garfield's as- , sassin; Leon Czolgosz, who shot Presi- dent McKinley; Lee Harvey Oswald, who killed President Kennedy; Sirhan B. Sir- han, who killed Senator Robert F. Ken- nedy in the course of his campaign for the Presidential nomination, and Arthur H. Bremer, who shot Gov. George C. Wal- lace of Alsbama. tamil it “Their one-do amily position pre- disposes them to rebel against authority and tradition, to resent their unequal status, and to wish to gain status by com- peting with the successful rival or by weakening the power of authority,” Dr. Harris said of the assassins. “If these ' feelings find no constructive outlet, then 8 shortcut to fame may seem reason- -able.” Telephone Rm. __ Directo-’s Sec’y . The Washington Post —__ Washington Star-News — an Daily News (New York) ww. The New York Times — The Wall Stree Journal The Atlante Constante wo Thr Las Angeles Tines —
HW 54952 DocTd: 32969491 . Page 126 I! oe @ Dr. Harris has isolated two character- istics that he believes characterize , American assassins: depression and de- spair over one’s self-worth, and attempts to counter this despair by seeking a new self-image that commands attention and respect. Judge and Executioner These characteristics are quite com- mon and ‘‘fairly normal,” the psychia- trist sald. What differentiates-the assas- sin is the route chosen. Rather getting society to confer the new identity, the as- sassin makes himself a “‘hero" by becom- ing judge and executioner. Dr. Lawrence Z. Freedman, psychia- trist at the University of Chicago, ob- served that American assassins were un- able to avoid a sense of personal failure. “Ambitious out of all proportion to their | prospects,’’ he noted, ‘‘they were lonely j and alienated from an immediate com- ‘munity of friends and sought their: pri- ; vate solution in a massive assault on the head of the Republic.” Other psychiatrists have emphasized the schizophrenic personalities of Ameri- can assassins. According to the late Dr. Donald Hastings, who was director of psychiatry at the University of Minneso- ta, most assassins were of the ‘‘para- noid” type who had lost contact with real- ity, harbored delusions of persecution and grandeur and had a strong hatred of authority. “Hatred of a powerful father before whom a boy is helpless can become a murderous loathing,” Dr. Hastings j wrote. ‘In later years, the father is sym- ... bolized by figures of public authority. With the exception of John Wilkes Booth, all the assassins. were ‘little people,’ ”’ _|.and_even. Booth was.the_lesser_light_in_a family of actors more successful than he. As Dr. John K. Lattimer of Columbia- Presbyterian Medical Center notes in his new book, ‘‘Kennedy and Lincoln: Medi- cal and Ballistic Comparisons of Their Assassinations,”’ a psychiatric evalua- tion of Lee Harvey Oswald described him as having a ‘‘schizoid personality disturb- ance" with ‘‘a vivid fantasy life turning around the topics of omnipotence and power.”’ Dr. Freedman said that “in this coun- try, the President is the locus of power, a highly visible celebrity and object of envy —all things the assassin is not.’’ The real question, he said, is not why Presidents are sometimes shot but why they are not shot at more often. “The opportunities ; number in the billions,” he remarked. Aside from the ready availability of pistols, which differentiates this country from nearly all of Europe, Dr. Freedman believes that ‘‘it’s dangerous to make generalizations about an entire culture based on the actions of eight or 10 peo- e.”” . P Dr. Frazier added that the loose cul- tural climate that seems to be encourag- ing self-expression through assassination tended to go in cycles, “Everything loos- ens up, then it tightens up later,’ he said, suggesting that a more restrictive. cul- tural climate in years to come might re. press assassination tendencies.
YRIS (Rev. 8-20-78: > | Secret Service Opens | : Inquiry on Attempt @ Mr. Johns and Mr. Steed said the Presi- dent is most vulnerable to attack when en- | tering or leaving hotels and at times when it is publicly known that he will be in the open at a specific place. Mr. Reagan, like his | To Kill the Pre stdent "predecessors, habitually pumps the hands of * * | * | Agents’ Performance Praised: | Review Expected to Focus | On Knowledge of Suspect rey By Brooxs Jackson Staff Reporter 0f TRE WALL STREET JOURNAL WASHINGTON—The Secret Service be-j gan an inquiry.but said it saw little it could have done to prevent Monday’s attempt on ; President Reagan's life. A presidential aide ; Said Mr. Reagan might resume wearing a i bulletproof vest. _ Videotapes show that agents responded 1 quickly once gunshots were heard, said Lav- j rie Davis, a Secret Service spokeswoman. ; Agents hustled the President into his ar- | Mored limousine .and, in the case of , Wounded agent Timothy McCarthy, physi- ‘cally Shielded the Chief Executive. “They did what they were supposed to do,” she The Secret Service’s review likely will fo-! {cus on whether the shooting suspect, John ‘ -.W. Hinckley Jr., 2 25-year-old college drop- Out With a histary of psychiatric treatment and aimless drifting, should have been flagged ‘for special attention after an arrest | in Nashville. He was caught carrying hand- guns onto an airliner last October when President_Carter was campaigning there. , BL officials said Mr. Hinckley forfeited $2.50 on a federal misdemeanor charge. But they said that such arrests were com- mon and that without anything to connect the incident to President Carter's visit there wasn’t any reason to alert the Secret Ser- vice. Even if the Secret Service had put Mr. Hinckley on its list of potential threats to the President, there. appears to be little chance that the agency would have been alerted to his presence in Washington. Federal prose- cutors have said he told his parents that he was going to California. Tho ” Johns, a former head of White House security, and Tom Steed, a for- mer chairman of the House subcommittee controlling the Secret Service budget, both said they didn't see any failure of Secret Service intelligence. So far as is known, the suspect never threatened any President in public before Monday’s shooting. The Secret Service inquiry may also at- tempt to answer whether security was lax at the shooting scene, the VIP entrance to the Washington Hilton Hotel. Reporters said members of the public Were allowed to min- gle with reporters and television camera crews on the sidewalk a few feet from the President. — hundreds of onlookers on such occasions. Agents are trained to spot an odd facial expression or hand movement that might Suggest someone is reaching for a weapon. But they say the President accepts some risk of attack whenever he makes an an- nounced public appearance where people can get near him. “That's what gives the Secret Service ulcers,” Mr. Steed said. He said it would be more prudent for the President to enter and leave hotels like the Hilton through underground garages, where possible. The Hilton has such a garage, but it couldn't be learned whether the Secret Service had suggested using it instead of let- ting the President walk in the open for the few feet between the VIP door and his lim- ousine. President Carter routinely used the VIP entrance, a small door some distance from the public entrance. Mr. Reagan has been particularly fond of holding sidewalk chats with reporters and sometimes members of the public. Report-. ers have referred to him as ‘‘the curbside President.” James Baker, White House chicf of staff, indicated that the President might change his method of mingling with the public but that he thinks Mr. Reagan won't. “We will have, 1 am sure, recommendations from the (Secret) Service, and it may be that those could be convincing.” he said. “We'd just have to take a2 look at them and see.” Mr. Baker said the Secret Service hasn't ~suggested-that-the-President-wear-a-bullet- ‘ proof vest since assuming office, although Mr.-Reagan wore one several times during last fall's Presidential Campaign. Former President Ford took to wearing sych a vest after attempts on his life. ~aeme HW 54952 Docld:32969491 Page 127 ee anette TSA Exec AD Adm. Exec AD Inv. Exec AD LES . Asst. Dir.: Adm. Servs. Crim. Inv. —.. Ident. Intell. Laboratory __ Legal Coun. __.. Plan. & Insp. Rec. Mgnt... Tech. Servs. —._ Training Public Affs. Off. . Telephone Rm, __. Director's Sec’y The Washingtor Post Washington StarsNews We. . Daily News (New York? — The New York Times WW The Wall Street Journ. 2 20 The Alanis Constitutien .—. - The Los Angeles Tine + Date _ $- 1-3] 50 FBI DOS
oi8«R ° -Violent crime: new vig «oo - » inthe search for solutions By Julia Malone Staff correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor Washington The attempted assassination of the HW 54952 President comes on the heels of growing concern about violent crime in the United States. _* Just hours after the attempt on the Presi- dent’s life, the Federal Bureau of Investiga- tion announced that incidents of major crimes jumped by 10 percent in 1980. FBI Director William H. Webster called it the biggest increase in five years and “a con- tinuing cause for concern by law enforce- ment and the American people.” US Chief Justice Warren E. Burger grabbed the news headlines with his speech in February decrying crime. And the Senate Judiciary Committee re- ports that letters are pouring in from citi- zens who are “very, very upset about safety in their neighborhoods.” Many people now are learning what criminologists have known for years: that the US has the highest crime rates among Western industrialized nations. The rate of reported offenses is “three or four times” that of similar countries, says Graeme Newman, professor of crimi- nal justice at the State University of New York at Albany. The murder rate for the first half of the 1970s was 9 per 100,000 in the US. Meanwhile, the corresponding rate for Canada was 2.4, for the United Kingdom 1.0, and for Japan 2. It’s guns, say some observers. The private arsenals in American households now add up to 50 million handguns. Vir- tually every other Western industrialized country puts tight controls on guns. _ Other experts blame race discrimination, the anonymity of big-city living, and the materialism of the culture. Congress, which is traditionally expected to come up with instant solutions for such problems, is considering a stack of bills to deal with crime. In the outrage and shock following this week’s events, Capitol Hill is bracing itself for a renewed controversy over gun control. Thirteen years ago, it took the killings of Robert F. Kennedy and of Martin Luther King Jr. to force Congress to pass limited gun-control laws. Now Rep. Peter Rodino (D) of New Jersey, who heads the House Judiciary Committee. is pledging to redouble his ef- forts to get a new, stiffer law. . His bill is expected to call for banning the so-called ‘‘Sat- urday night special,” as small, inexpensive guns are some- times called, and provide a 21-day waiting period for anyone wanting to buy a handgun, as well as require dealers to keep records of serial numbers for 10 years. So far, Representative Rodino has had little success with his bill, which failed to make it to full committee consider- ation last year. Meanwhile, in the Senate, Sen. James A. Mc- Clure (R) of Idaho is reported to be almost ready to present a bill to cut back on enforcement of the 1968 law. DoclId: 32969491 Page 1275 |. able procedures for capital punishment. pushed violent crime closer to the forefront by naming it as SR were . . + “ Congress is working oe that use the carrot-and- stick approach to figh ime. Rodino wants a “victim compensation” law that wdtrd repay crime victims, but only if they cooperate with the police. Sen. Strom Thurmond (R) of South Carolina, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has introduced a bill aimed at keeping convicted felons in jail by cutting off access to federal courts. And two other hills in the Senate would re- quire courts to consider evidence, even if ‘police obtained it illegally. —_ The Senate also is considering a bill to set legally accept- President Reagan, now a victim of violence, had already » the top priority for the US Department of Justice. (Presiden Insp. — Carter had targeted white-collar crime.) - And Attorney General William French Smith has an- ‘YS: =—— nounced a special task force to recommend new federal laws — to combat violent crime. s. Off. _ James Q. Wilson, a member of that task force and a pro-: Rm. fessor of government at Harvard University, said that the Sec’y _ assassination attempt would have little effect on the group’s work. And he bristled at the idea that the crime against the President was an indictment of American society. “It is intellectually shabby to say that when a single deranged person does something heinous, itis a commentary on society as a whole,” said Professor Wilson in a telephone interview. He added that even in the 1830s American cities had high crime rates and that no “instant theories’’ will re- solve the problem. Despite the Reagan administration's pronouncements on violent crime, the proposed new budget shows no major spending plans in the area. In fact, the new budget for the Department of the Treasury, which enforces handgun laws, shows a big cut. Firearms compliance inspections will be “(deemphasized and phased down during fiscal year 1982,” says a Treasury Department budget document. The Washington Post —_.___ Washington Star-News — Daily News (New York) The New York Times — WW. The Wall Street Journal The Atlanta Constituijan . The Los Angeles Times -
(LM (Rev. & - * = OBSERVER Once Again By Russell Baker This began as an amiable, tongue-in- cheek piece about the Reagan Admin- istration’s decision to bring back the battleship, but a friend burst into the room. Somebody had shot at the Presi- dent. The bulletins tumbled out of him: The President's press secretary shot in the head. Policeman shot. Se- cret Service agent shot. Despite so many years of it, the re- sponses were precisely the same as al- ways. Incredulity. Then a wave of hor- ror and revulsion. The involuntary groan: “My God.” Then the dash for the television set. One has been through all this so many times before that the moves have become condi- tioned reflexes. Across the country, the whole nation Was running through the same refiex- ive responses. Millions and millions _and_millions of people so diverse that no leader can induce them to make three consecutive notes in harmony, but a sirfgie gunman could instantly or- chestrate a national gavotte of incre- - _ dulity, horror and reyulsion ending in ~ & continental town meeting before the television screen. There was the usual fiddling with -the-TV-dials, the usual pleading ‘from the assembling crowd for a -better focus in the picture, the usual _shaken network news people switching the camera from place to place, the usual film of the assault played over and over in slow motion. Fortunately, the President had not been-hit. Naturally, the first bulletins from Dallas in 1963 came to mind. “Shots were fired near the President’s car,” they said. No indication that -President Kennedy -had been hit, ‘though he had been. * Then another bulletin: First bulletin ‘in error. Bullet lodged in President ~Reagan’s lung. Surgery imminent. ‘Vice President Bush recalled to Wash- ington from Texas. Cabinet officers assembling at the White House. A glimpse of Mrs. Reagan running into the hospital emergency room. Something must be said about all this, but nothing remains to be said that has not been said before over and over. Everyone is tired of ragings against the easy availability of hand- guns. That’s the tired old liberal re- sponse every time, and Congress is as tired of having to ignore it as the pistol lobby is tired of having to sxplain that, guns don't kill people, people kill peo- ple. es Anyhow, ‘what sense does it make any more? There are so many pistols out there, millions and millions of them. An acquaintance of mine died not long ago at the hands of a burglar who happened to have one as he went about his work. I went to attend the fu- neral and before I got back John Len- non died at the hands of an autograph seeker who happened to have a pistol. On each occasion I heard the news with incredulity, followed by a wave of horror and revulsion and an involun- tary groan of ‘““My God.” For my ac- quaintance there was no dash to the TV set to get the bulletins, only a fran- tic series of long-distance telephone calls. Over the years I have uttered that “My God” for John Kennedy at } o’- clock in the afternoon, for his brother Robert at 7 A.M. on a beautiful June morning, for Martin Luther King on a windy spring night, for my friend just before bedtime in the Christmas sea- son, for Ronald Reagan in the middle of a rainy afternoon with an amiable, tongue-in-cheek piece about battle- ships in the typewriter. it was not uttered upon the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald. What came out then was, ‘‘You’re kidding!’ I was ata very late Sunday morning breakfast engrossed in newspapers when a child who had‘ been watching television saw Oswald shot and came running. “You're kidding!” I said, dashing as always for the television set, and ar- riving in time to see Oswald shot again . on tape, and then again and again as the tape was rerun. Almost always, however, as hap- pened again-when the first bulletin about President ‘Reagan ‘was an- nounced, what instinctively emerged was ‘My God.” These were the words — “My God’ — that the co-pilot of the Enola Gay entered in his diary when he looked back on the first atomic bornb exploding on Hiroshima. What the words express, I suppose, is a sense of something happening that is too horrible for a man to grasp. In the case of our increasingly common- place American shootings, this horror transcends the violence committed upon the dead and wounded. It is the destruction of the fragile civility of American society that causes the shudders. The ‘true horror’ is the constantly mounting evidence that our efforts to govern our relationships with each other civilly through discourse, ac- commodation and peaceable demo- cratic persuasion can be destroyed in an instant by the whim of a gunsling- er; and the awful implication that, fi- nally, our destiny is at the mercy of maniacs. ’ So there will be no amiable, tongue- in-cheek. discussion of battleships today. That would be civil discourse, which ‘is out of placé while we still lie in shock under the power of the gun. Exec AD Adm. Exec AD Inv. Exec AD LES ___ Asst. Dir: Adm. Servs, Crim. lav. Ident. Intell. Loborotory -.__ Legal Coun. ___. Plan. & Insp. Rec. Mgnt. . . Tech. Servs. Troinine Public Affs, OF 7 Telephone Rm Diretioz’s Sec’y The Washingt : Pres oo. Washington Siar Nc ws -Daiiy News (Nes York! ron aoe A=3l The Athanta Constrat. = The New York Tines The Wall Streey A. The Loe Angejes Tints ee vue t= [= Bl eg herew te . HW 54952 Docld:32989491. Page pog-—