Rawhide Down (11 page)

The threat of assassination was one reason Reagan had gone out of his way to keep Vice President Bush informed and brought him into so many meetings. At his seventieth birthday party in February, Reagan had leaned over and asked Barbara Bush whether her husband was enjoying the job. “Does he feel what he’s doing is worthwhile? I just want to be sure he’s doing enough. If the awful-awful should happen, George should know everything.”

A month and a half later, on March 21, Reagan attended a black tie gala at Ford’s Theatre. During a performance featuring Twyla Tharp, Tony Bennett, and Luciano Pavarotti, Reagan gazed at Lincoln’s box and tried to imagine the horrific moment when John Wilkes Booth assassinated the president and then leaped to the stage. Today, no president would ever be so exposed, but Reagan well understood that, despite his armored limousine and the Secret Service detail, a determined assassin might one day kill him.

Now, at 1:45, with the president safely ensconced in the car’s gray leather seats, the limousine pulled away from the White House. Riding next to Reagan in the passenger compartment was Labor Secretary Ray Donovan. Formerly a construction executive in New Jersey, Donovan had earned his position in the administration by soliciting donations and advising Reagan’s campaign about politics in his home state.

Earlier that day, Donovan had spoken before the Building and Construction Trades Department of the AFL-CIO; he got a chilly reception. As the two men rode toward the Hilton, Donovan warned Reagan to expect a tough time. But the president was unruffled. “We’re used to that, aren’t we?” he said, smiling.

Reagan and Donovan chatted briefly about politics before the labor secretary launched into an amusing yarn about a politically connected bar owner given a patronage job as the commissioner of weights and measures. After his first day on the job, reporters asked the new commissioner: “Sir, how many ounces in a pound?”

“Hey,” the former bar owner said. “Give a guy a chance to learn his duties!”

Donovan had told the president that joke more than once over the past few years, but, as always, Reagan laughed.

Riding in the front passenger seat that afternoon was Jerry Parr. It was the same position he had occupied two months ago during the inaugural parade, and now, as then, he listened to the Secret Service radio and constantly scanned the cityscape. At the limousine’s wheel was Agent Drew Unrue, an army veteran who had joined the service in 1972. Unrue was often given the stressful job of driving the hulking limousine, and even during a routine trip such as this one he was intensely focused. Knowing that he was an obvious target was bad enough, but the agent was always nervous about missing a turn or dropping the president off at the wrong entrance to the venue, the kind of mistake he would never live down.

Directly ahead of Stagecoach was a second armored limousine, a tan Lincoln that carried Dr. Daniel Ruge, the president’s personal physician. Ruge or one of the doctors working for him always accompanied Reagan on trips outside the White House gates; usually Ruge sat in the second limousine, which the Secret Service would use as a spare if Stagecoach broke down. It also served as a good decoy.

Ahead of the spare limousine, riding in the passenger seat of a marked cruiser driven by a D.C. police sergeant, was Agent Mary Ann Gordon, who was responsible for ensuring that the motorcade encountered no problems on its way to and from the Hilton. Gordon, a former juvenile parole officer from Boston, was one of only a handful of female agents in the Secret Service. She had already made history when she’d chauffeured Jimmy Carter to a speech, becoming the first female agent ever to drive a president. Earlier that Monday, Gordon had driven all of the possible motorcade routes to the Hilton, to the White House, and even to George Washington University Hospital. She wanted to be sure the streets were free of construction equipment or other impediments; she also wanted to imprint the routes in her memory, because there would be no time to think or ask for directions in a crisis. Now, as they drove toward the Hilton, she kept an eye on the police motorcycles ahead of them and noted that officers were blocking traffic at all the appropriate intersections, giving them a clear corridor to the hotel.

The presidential limousine was trailed by an insurance policy—a follow-up car that carried a driver and half a dozen additional agents who wielded handguns, shotguns, and submachine guns. Code-named Halfback, the car was an armored Cadillac with running boards and a powerful engine, and the six agents riding in it were all members of the so-called working shift, which closely shadowed the president. In the front passenger seat was Agent Ray Shaddick, the shift’s supervisor. Among those squeezed in the back was Timothy McCarthy, a muscular former Big Ten safety.

McCarthy, the thirty-one-year-old son of a Chicago cop, was not happy about today’s assignment because of the weather—he was wearing a new Geoffrey Beene suit and didn’t want it to get wet in the rain or splotchy from water dripping from Halfback’s leaky roof. He had nearly gotten out of the trip but had lost a coin toss with two other agents who also wanted to skip the speech because they were behind on their expense reports.

Behind Halfback was the control car, driven by a military noncommissioned officer. Also in the control car was Michael Deaver. A member of the Troika almost always accompanied the president on official trips, and today it was Deaver’s turn. Riding with him were David Fischer, the president’s body man, and the military aide carrying the nuclear football.

The spare limousine, the presidential limousine, the follow-up car, and the control car together made up the “escape package,” and they were never to be separated under any circumstances. Trailing the package was a staff car ferrying the president’s press secretary, Jim Brady, a bear of a man respected by White House officials and the press for his work ethic, honesty, and sense of humor. Earlier that day, as he juggled a press briefing, attended staff meetings, met with the president, and schmoozed with reporters, the forty-year-old press secretary had considered skipping this event. He was always caught in a tug-of-war between his two most important constituencies: the president and the pool of White House reporters. Relatively new to Reagan’s orbit of advisors, Brady was aiming to spend as much time with the president and his closest aides as possible, but he was also trying to improve his relations with the press. As the scheduled departure for the Hilton approached, Brady finally decided to travel with the president.

The string of limousines, official cars, police cars, and two police motorcycles added up to a motorcade fifteen vehicles long. With the police motorcycles leading the way, the president’s limousine rumbled up Connecticut Avenue and soon took a right onto Florida Avenue. Then, after a quick left onto T Street, the big Lincoln veered into the Hilton driveway, made a sharp left, and pulled up at the VIP entrance.

The ride had covered 1.3 miles in about four minutes. It was 1:50 p.m.

*   *   *

A
FEW MINUTES
before the president’s arrival, D.C. police officers Sergeant Herbert Granger and Officer Thomas Delahanty stood at the rope line, corralling seven reporters and ten spectators about thirty-five feet from the Hilton’s VIP entrance. It was the officers’ job to keep people away from the president and his motorcade.

At seven that morning, the two men had reported for work at the 3rd District police station to learn that they were among those being assigned to guard duty at the Hilton during the president’s visit. Granger sighed—he had stood post at the hotel a number of times before, and it was boring duty. He much preferred to work the streets, especially in high-crime neighborhoods. Worse, on a day like this he would have to sweat in the suffocating department-issue raincoat. Standing at his locker in the basement of the station house, Granger picked up his bulletproof vest. He knew it would only make him perspire even more.
Hell,
the sergeant thought,
it’s just the Hilton.
He tossed the vest back into his locker.

Delahanty, one of Granger’s officers, was currently assigned to the department’s K-9 unit, but his dog, Kirk, was ill that day, so he was available to work security. Before going to the Hilton, however, he visited the department’s dog training center and also drove to police headquarters to have a new departmental photograph taken. Over the weekend, he had spotted an out-of-date picture in the newspaper of an officer involved in a recent shooting, and he didn’t want his bosses handing out an old photo if he ever made the news. In the new photograph, Delahanty, forty-five, stared straight back at the camera, his tired-looking eyes framed by his square jaw and his long sideburns.

About forty-five minutes before the president’s departure from the White House, Granger, Delahanty, and five other officers piled into squad cars for the short trip to the Hilton, where the sergeant deployed his men around the entrance. Granger sent an officer to stand guard on a ledge overlooking the hotel’s VIP entrance, where Reagan would enter and leave the hotel, and arranged the others near the rope line and the Hilton’s doors.

Not long after Granger and his officers had taken their places, a Secret Service agent emerged from the VIP entrance and yelled, “They’re coming.”

Granger, a former military police officer frequently assigned to demonstrations and protests, had developed a sixth sense about crowds—when they might erupt in violence; when someone might throw a brick. With the president approaching, Granger eased closer to the rope line and studied the faces of those in the small gathering, looking for signs of trouble. He saw and felt nothing.

*   *   *

L
OOKING BACK AT
the police sergeant from among the handful of reporters, photographers, and spectators was John Hinckley. His RG 14 revolver was stashed in the right pocket of his beige jacket. It was a small gun, its barrel only 1¾ inches long—the sort of weapon often called a Saturday night special because it was cheap and easy to obtain. The firearm had no safety catch and its trigger was considered heavy, meaning that it required more pressure to squeeze than a typical gun.

The RG 14 was also relatively difficult to load. Sitting in his hotel room less than an hour earlier, Hinckley had unscrewed a knob underneath the barrel and pulled out a pin that released the gun’s cylinder, which flipped out to the left on a hinge. He removed the six Devastator bullets from their box and inserted them into the round cylinder. The Devastators’ tips were filled with twenty-eight milligrams of lead azide, a high explosive meant to detonate on impact. Left untouched in one of his suitcases were thirty-five hollow-point bullets and two round-nosed bullets.

Hinckley had owned this revolver only since October 13, but he had been buying guns since 1979, when he picked up a .38-caliber revolver at a Texas pawnshop. He had spent time practicing with them, too: for the past two years, he had been visiting firing ranges to hone his shooting skills.

This was also not the first time Hinckley had stalked a president. Six months earlier, stung by Foster’s rejection and determined to get her attention, he had traveled to Texas to buy two revolvers and then flown to Washington to try out the idea of killing President Carter. He took a hotel room just three blocks from the White House—“Carter’s fortress,” as he referred to it in a postcard he sent his sister and her husband. After spotting a news story that mentioned the president’s campaign schedule, Hinckley flew to Ohio. On October 2, he attended a Carter campaign rally in Dayton where he stood within arm’s reach of the president, just one in a sea of about fourteen hundred screaming supporters. But he hadn’t brought a gun—his three revolvers were stowed in his luggage at the city’s bus station. The rally was a test run, an effort to prepare himself for the ultimate act. No agents searched him at the event, and Hinckley was astonished that he was able to get so close to the president.

Five days later, Hinckley flew to Nashville to attend another Carter rally. At the last minute, however, he changed his mind and decided not to approach the president again. Back at the city’s airport, he went to security and watched as his suitcases passed through an X-ray machine. A security officer noticed what she thought was a gun in one of them; a police officer searched the bag and found the three revolvers, as well as a pair of handcuffs and a box of .22-caliber ammunition. The guns were confiscated; Hinckley was taken before a judge and fined $62.50. He paid the fine in cash and was driven back to the airport, where he caught a flight out of town.

Hinckley felt especially lucky that day. The officer hadn’t dug particularly deep into his suitcase, so he had missed his diary, which told the whole story—his obsession with Jodie Foster, his stalking of Carter in Dayton, the reason for his trip to Nashville. The first chance he got, Hinckley destroyed the journal. Then, just days after losing the three guns in Nashville, he purchased two .22-caliber revolvers at a pawnshop in Dallas.

In November, Hinckley turned his attention to the president-elect. He flew to Washington, where he was photographed in front of the White House and Ford’s Theatre. He loitered for hours outside Blair House, the president-elect’s official guest residence, just across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. With a gun in his pocket, he watched Reagan come and go, but he never mustered the resolve to pull the trigger.

Then, in December, while stalking Reagan in Washington, Hinckley learned that his hero John Lennon had been assassinated in New York City. Overcome with despair, Hinckley traveled to New York a few days later and attended a vigil. Afterward, he returned to Evergreen, where his troubles seemed to deepen. In the weeks following Lennon’s death, he was swept up in a tornado of fantasies that became ever more elaborate and absurd, most of them involving Jodie Foster. He dreamed of skyjacking an airliner, forcing Foster to join him, and then compelling Reagan to resign. This narrative ended with him and Foster living in the White House. He bought a postcard of the Reagans, on the back of which he jotted: “Dear Jodie, Don’t they make a darling couple? Nancy is downright sexy. One day you and I will occupy the White House and the peasants will drool with envy.” He didn’t send the postcard, but he slipped it into a book and saved it.