Attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan

• 1. Introduction

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  The attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan began, on the 30th of March 1981, with a reporter's question outside the Washington Hilton in Washington, D.C. Mike Putzel of the Associated Press called out "Mr. President" and never finished the thought. Several hundred people had been applauding as Reagan walked toward his limousine. Then a man named John Hinckley Jr. dropped into a crouch in the crowd and fired a revolver six times in 1.7 seconds. The gunman's real audience, in his own mind, was an actress who had made it clear that she was not interested in him.

  How does a man with a revolver reach a sitting president? What did doctors, Secret Service agents and Cabinet members do in the hours that followed? Who was really running the government while the president was in surgery? And what became of the people the gunfire touched?

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• 2. A Film and a Fixation

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  John Hinckley Jr. watched the 1976 film Taxi Driver at least 15 times while he lived in Hollywood in the late 1970s. He seemed to identify strongly with its protagonist, Travis Bickle, played by Robert De Niro. In the story, Bickle tries to rescue a child prostitute, played by Jodie Foster. Near the end, he attempts to assassinate a United States senator who is running for president. Hinckley had erotomania, and his obsession with Foster became the motive for everything that followed.

  In the years after the film, Hinckley trailed Foster around the country. In 1980 he read in People magazine that she was a student at Yale University, so he enrolled in a writing course there. He sent her numerous letters and notes in late 1980 and called her twice. When she made clear that she was not interested, he refused to give up.

  Hinckley became convinced that he would be Foster's equal only if he became a national figure. He chose to imitate Bickle and began stalking President Jimmy Carter. He was surprised by how easy it was to get close to Carter. At one event he stood only a foot away. In October 1980 he was arrested at Nashville International Airport, where Carter had made a campaign stop, and fined for illegal possession of a firearm. The FBI did not connect the arrest to the president and did not notify the Secret Service.

  His parents briefly placed him in the care of a psychiatrist. Hinckley then turned his attention to Reagan, whose election he told his parents would be good for the country. In early March 1981 he wrote three or four more notes to Foster. She gave them to a Yale dean, who passed them to the Yale police. The police tried to find the writer and failed.

  On the 28th of March, Hinckley arrived in Washington by bus and checked into the Park Central Hotel. He had intended to travel on to New Haven for another attempt to win Foster's attention. Then he saw Reagan's schedule printed in The Washington Star and decided that it was time to act.

  Hinckley knew he might be killed. About two hours before the attempt, he wrote Foster a letter. He said he hoped to impress her with the magnitude of his action. He wrote that he would "abandon the idea of getting Reagan in a second" if only he could win her heart. He never mailed the letter, and it stayed behind in his hotel room.

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• 3. Past the Rope Line

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  On the 21st of March 1981, nine days before the shooting, Reagan and his wife, Nancy, attended a fundraising event at Ford's Theatre in Washington. In his autobiography, An American Life, Reagan recalled looking up at the box where Abe Lincoln had been sitting the night he was shot, and feeling "a curious sensation." He thought that, despite all the Secret Service protection, a determined person could probably still get close enough to shoot a president.

  On the 30th of March, Reagan gave a luncheon address to AFL-CIO representatives at the Hilton. The Secret Service knew the building well. Agents had inspected it more than 100 times for presidential visits since the early 1970s. Officials considered it the safest venue in Washington because of an enclosed passageway called "President's Walk," built after the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy. Reagan entered through it at about 1:45 p.m., waving to a crowd of news media and citizens.

  Reagan wore no bulletproof vest. The Secret Service had required one for some events, but this speech exposed him only for the 30 feet between the hotel and his limousine. The agency did not require vests for its agents that day either. No one saw Hinckley behaving strangely. Witnesses who later described a fidgety, agitated man apparently mistook him for someone else the Secret Service was monitoring.

  The Secret Service had screened the people attending the speech extensively. It still allowed an unscreened group to stand within 15 feet of the president, behind a rope line. The agency relies on layers of protection. Local police in the outer layer briefly check people, and agents in the middle layer check for weapons. More agents form the inner layer around the president. Hinckley had slipped through the first two.

  At 2:27 p.m., Reagan stepped out through President's Walk on Florida Avenue, where reporters waited, and headed from the T Street NW exit toward his limousine. Hinckley stood in the crowd. The president unexpectedly passed right in front of him.

  The first shot hit James Brady, the White House press secretary, in the head above his left eye. It passed beneath his brain and shattered his brain cavity. The bullet carried a small explosive charge, which went off on impact. Thomas Delahanty, a District of Columbia police officer, recognized the sound of a gunshot and turned his head sharply to the left. The second shot struck the back of his neck and ricocheted off his spine. He fell on top of Brady, screaming "I am hit!"

  Hinckley now had a clear line to the president. Alfred Antenucci, a labor official from Cleveland, had seen him fire. He struck Hinckley on the head and began wrestling him from behind.

  Special Agent in Charge Jerry Parr almost instantly grabbed Reagan by the shoulders and dove with him toward the open rear door of the limousine. Agent Ray Shaddick followed closely to help throw both men into the car. The third round overshot the president and hit the window of a building across the street. Parr's actions likely saved Reagan from being hit in the head.

  Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy turned toward the gunfire and placed himself in the line of fire. He spread his arms and legs in a wide stance to make himself a target. The fourth round struck him in the lower chest. It passed through his right lung, his diaphragm and the right lobe of his liver.

  The fifth round hit the bullet-resistant glass of the open rear door as Reagan and Parr passed behind it. The sixth ricocheted off the armored side of the limousine and slipped through the gap between the open door and the frame. It hit the president in the left underarm, grazed a rib and lodged in his lung, partially collapsing it. It stopped less than an inch from his heart.

  Within moments, Secret Service agent Dennis McCarthy, no relation to Tim, dove across the sidewalk and landed directly on Hinckley as others pushed him to the ground. Another Cleveland-area labor official, Frank J. McNamara, joined Antenucci and punched Hinckley in the head hard enough to draw blood. Dennis McCarthy later said he had to "strike two citizens" to make them let go. Agent Robert Wanko pulled an Uzi submachine gun out of a concealed briefcase to cover the president's evacuation and deter a group attack.

  Inside the limousine, no one yet knew that the president had been shot.

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• 4. Rawhide Is OK

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  The Secret Service radio network carried the words "shots fired" as the agents in the limousine, code-named Stagecoach, carried away the president, code-named Rawhide. Jerry Parr searched Reagan's body and found no blood. He reported, "Rawhide is OK...we're going to Crown," using the code name for the White House. Parr preferred its medical facilities to those of an unsecured hospital.

  Then Reagan, in great pain, coughed up bright, frothy blood. He believed that Parr had cracked a rib by pushing him into the car, and he thought he had merely cut his lip. Parr judged that a cracked rib had punctured a lung. He ordered the motorcade to divert to George Washington University Hospital, which the Secret Service periodically inspected. The limousine arrived in less than four minutes. Other agents took Hinckley to a jail, and Nancy Reagan, code-named Rainbow, left the White House for the hospital.

  Parr had asked for a stretcher, but none was ready. The hospital did not normally station one at the emergency entrance. Reagan climbed out and insisted on walking. He acted casual and smiled at onlookers as he went in. Once inside, he complained of difficulty breathing, his knees buckled, and he fell to one knee. Parr and others helped him into the emergency department.

  The physician to the president, Daniel Ruge, had been near Reagan during the shooting and arrived in a separate car. He feared a heart attack and insisted that the trauma team treat the patient like any other. A hospital employee asked Reagan's aide Michael Deaver for the patient's name and address. Only when Deaver answered "1600 Pennsylvania" did the worker realize who was in the emergency department.

  The medical team, led by Joseph Giordano, cut open Reagan's custom-made suit to examine him. Reagan complained about the cost of the ruined "thousand-dollar" suit. An assistant repeated the complaint in a press briefing to reassure the public that the president was in stable health. FBI agents moved to confiscate the suit, Reagan's wallet and other possessions as evidence. Military officers, including the one who carried the nuclear football, tried and failed to stop them. The president's Gold Codes card was in the wallet, and the FBI did not return it for two days.

  Reagan's systolic blood pressure was 60, compared with a normal 140, a sign of shock. The doctors knew that most 70-year-olds in his condition would not survive. But Reagan was in excellent physical health, and the bullet was a .22 caliber rather than the larger .38 first feared. The team gave him intravenous fluids, oxygen, tetanus toxoid and chest tubes. They also surprised Parr, who still thought he had cracked a rib, by finding the bullet's entry wound. Nearby, doctors operated on Brady and on the wounded agent Tim McCarthy.

  When Nancy Reagan arrived, her husband told her, "Honey, I forgot to duck." He was borrowing a line the boxer Jack Dempsey had used with his wife on the night he lost to Gene Tunney. While intubated, Reagan scribbled a note to a nurse: "All in all, I'd rather be in Philadelphia." That line came from W. C. Fields.

  Within 30 minutes, Reagan left the emergency department for surgery with normal blood pressure. Benjamin L. Aaron, the chief of thoracic surgery, performed a thoracotomy that lasted 105 minutes because the bleeding persisted. In the operating room, Reagan lifted his oxygen mask to joke, "I hope you are all Republicans." Giordano, a Democrat, answered, "Today, Mr. President, we are all Republicans." The surgeons removed the bullet. The team's quick action, and Parr's decision to drive to the hospital rather than the White House, likely saved Reagan's life. Across the emergency room and the operation, Reagan lost more than half of his blood volume.

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• 5. The Situation Room

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  Six days before the shooting, Vice President George H. W. Bush had been handed the job of managing crises. Secretary of State Alexander Haig had wanted that role. National Security Advisor Richard Allen would traditionally have held it. Reagan persuaded an upset Haig not to resign, and the secretary reportedly pounded the table in frustration and anger.

  When news of the shooting reached the White House, Haig was there and Bush was not. The vice president was visiting Texas for the first time since the inauguration. Haig urged him to return, but the voice connection to Bush aboard Air Force Two was weak. It is unknown whether the two men heard each other.

  By 2:35 p.m., Bush had been told of the shooting. Early reports said Reagan was unharmed, so he left Fort Worth and flew to Austin for a speech. At 3:14 p.m., 47 minutes after the shooting, Haig sent him a coded teletype message. It said the president had been struck in the back and was in serious condition. It recommended that Bush return to Washington at the earliest possible moment. Air Force Two refueled in Austin and then flew back at what its pilot described as the fastest speed in the plane's history. The aircraft had no secure voice communications, so Bush's talks with the White House were intercepted and given to the press.

  Within five minutes of the shooting, Cabinet members began gathering in the White House Situation Room. White House counsel Fred Fielding was already preparing for a transfer of presidential powers under the Twenty-fifth Amendment. Chief of Staff James A. Baker and Counselor Edwin Meese went to the hospital, still believing that Reagan was unharmed. In the Situation Room, no one knew whether the attack was part of a larger plot by terrorists or a foreign intelligence service such as the KGB. Tensions with the Soviet Union were high because of the Solidarity movement in communist Poland.

  The Cabinet also worried that the Soviets might exploit the instability to launch a nuclear attack. The American military then detected two Soviet ballistic missile submarines patrolling unusually close to the East Coast. That position could let their missiles reach Washington two minutes faster than usual.

  Haig, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and Allen discussed the location of the nuclear football, the submarines, a possible Soviet move against Poland and the line of succession. Allen recorded these meetings with the participants' knowledge, even though tape recorders are not normally allowed in the room. Five hours of those tapes have since been made public. The group obtained a duplicate nuclear football and Gold Codes card and kept them in the Situation Room. Reagan's football was still with the officer at the hospital, and Bush also had a card and a football.

  The participants discussed raising the military's alert status without changing the DEFCON level. They eventually concluded that the number of Soviet submarines was normal. One pair was taking over a patrol area from another pair, a relief that routinely happened at the end of a month. Still, one of the four submarines sat unusually close to the coast. Given the tension over Poland, Weinberger ordered the Strategic Air Command onto alert and did not reveal the status to the public.

  Once Haig learned that Reagan was in surgery, he declared that the "helm is right here. And that means right in this chair for now, constitutionally, until the vice president gets here." Haig was wrong. As secretary of state, he stood fourth in the line of succession, behind Bush, Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill and the Senate's president pro tempore, Strom Thurmond. O'Neill and Thurmond would have had to resign their positions to become acting president. Others in the room knew he was mistaken and said nothing, to avoid a confrontation. Allen later recalled that Haig kept insisting he was in charge and senior.

  Meanwhile, in the White House Briefing Room, CBS reporter Lesley Stahl asked deputy press secretary Larry Speakes who was running the government. Speakes answered, "I cannot answer that question at this time." Haig wrote a note ordering Speakes off the dais and then walked in himself. He made a statement that became controversial.

  "As of now, I am in control here, in the White House, pending the return of the vice president and in close touch with him."

  Stahl described Haig as "visibly shaken." The Associated Press wrote that his voice choked and quavered and his arms trembled. Those in the Situation Room reportedly laughed when they heard the line. Allen later said, "I was astounded that he would say something so eminently stupid." Haig later insisted that he had been answering who was running the executive branch, not who stood next in line.

  Haig also told reporters that "There are absolutely no alert measures that are necessary at this time or contemplated." While he spoke, Weinberger was raising the military's alert level. Back in the Situation Room, Haig objected, because the move made him look like a liar. Weinberger, as deputy commander-in-chief, was outranked only by Reagan in the National Command Authority. Weinberger and others accused Haig of exceeding his authority, and Haig told them to "read the Constitution."

  Aboard Air Force Two, Bush watched Haig's briefing. Meese told him that Reagan was stable after surgery. The vice president reached Andrews Air Force Base at 6:30 p.m. and chose not to fly by helicopter to the White House. "Only the president lands on the South Lawn," he told a military aide. Bush later said the landing would have "made for great TV" but would have sent the wrong message. He also noted that the South Lawn lies beneath the president's bedroom window, where the First Lady was waiting for news. Marine Two flew to Number One Observatory Circle instead.

  Reagan's surgery ended at 6:20 p.m., but he did not regain consciousness until 7:30 p.m. He therefore could not invoke Section 3 of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to make Bush acting president. Bush arrived at the White House at 7:00 p.m. and did not invoke Section 4. He took charge of the Situation Room meeting. It received word that the planned Polish national strike was cancelled, and new satellite images showed no Soviet troop movements near Poland. Informed of Hinckley's October 1980 arrest in Nashville, the group judged that he had probably acted alone. Allen remembered that, despite "brief flare-ups and distractions," the team worked well together.

  At 8:20 p.m., Bush spoke on national television. "I can reassure this nation and a watching world that the American government is functioning fully and effectively," he said. "We've had full and complete communications throughout the day."

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• 6. Evidence and Airwaves

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  The day after the shooting, Hinckley's revolver went to the ATF. In just 16 minutes, agents learned that it had been bought at Rocky's Pawn Shop in Dallas, Texas, on the 13th of October 1980. It held six Devastator cartridges, each containing a small charge of aluminum and lead azide meant to explode on contact. Only the bullet that struck Brady actually exploded. On the 2nd of April, doctors learned that the others could go off at any time. Volunteers wearing bulletproof vests then removed the bullet from Delahanty's neck.

  The FBI took over the investigation on the Saturday after the shooting. Agents obtained a warrant and searched Hinckley's hotel room. They filmed and photographed the entire room before touching anything, and then looked for fingerprints in case an accomplice existed. FBI Agent Thomas J. Baker said that what they found was "bizarre." On the desk, he said, "so that we could find him, was his entire plan." Hinckley had left a map of where he was going and the morning paper open to the president's diary. Weeks of follow-up work traced his travels around the country and his visits to firing ranges. Baker concluded that Hinckley "was a mentally disturbed man."

  Meanwhile, several cameras had captured the shooting on videotape, including those of the three big television networks. ABC began airing footage at 2:42 p.m. All three networks wrongly reported that Brady had died. ABC anchorman Frank Reynolds, a close friend of Brady, had to retract the report. Visibly upset, he told his staff on the air, "Let's get it nailed down, somebody! Let's find out!" ABC also first reported that Reagan had not been injured, and another network wrongly said he was undergoing open-heart surgery.

  CNN had no camera of its own at the scene, but it used NBC's pool feed. By staying on the story for 48 hours, the network, less than a year old, built a reputation for thoroughness.

  Shocked Americans gathered around television sets in homes and shopping centers. Some cited the alleged Curse of Tippecanoe, while others recalled the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. Newspapers printed extra editions with gigantic headlines. The United States Senate adjourned, interrupting its debate on Reagan's economic proposals. Churches held prayer services.

  Hinckley asked the arresting officers whether that night's 53rd Academy Awards ceremony would be postponed because of the shooting. It was. Reagan, a former actor, had taped a message for the show, which went ahead the next evening. The NCAA championship basketball game between Indiana and North Carolina was not postponed. An audience of 18,000 in Philadelphia held a moment of silence, and Indiana won.

  The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell before the New York Stock Exchange closed early, then rose the next day as Reagan recovered. Television schedules shifted too. ABC temporarily renamed the lead character of The Greatest American Hero, which had debuted that March, from "Ralph Hinkley" to "Hanley." NBC postponed an upcoming episode of Walking Tall titled "Hit Man."

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• 7. Recovery and Reform

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  On the morning after his operation, Reagan received visitors and signed a piece of legislation, because his staff wanted him to appear to be recovering quickly. He left the hospital on the 11th of April, joking that the first thing he would do at home was "sit down." His doctors, impressed by his progress, still advised him to stay out of the Oval Office for a week. At first he worked two hours a day in the residential quarters. He led no Cabinet meeting until day 26. He did not leave Washington until day 49, and he held no press conference until day 79. Ruge thought the recovery was not complete until October.

  Reagan returned to the Oval Office on the 25th of April to a standing ovation from staff and Cabinet members. He pointed to their teamwork while he was away and insisted, "I should be applauding you." On the 28th of April he addressed both houses of Congress. He introduced his planned spending cuts, a campaign promise, using a medical recovery theme. He received "two thunderous standing ovations," which The New York Times deemed a salute to his good health as well as his programs.

  His approval ratings, which had reached up to 60% until March, climbed to nearly 70% in the following months. Privately, Reagan believed that God had spared his life for a greater purpose. Meetings with Mother Teresa, Cardinal Terence Cooke and fellow shooting survivor Pope John Paul II reinforced that belief, although he was not a Catholic.

  His daily life changed. Reagan installed a gym in the White House and exercised so regularly that he gained muscle and had to buy new suits. Nancy Reagan feared for her husband's safety. She asked him not to run for reelection in 1984 and began consulting the astrologer Joan Quigley. Reagan never again walked across an airport tarmac or got out of his limousine on a public sidewalk as president. His plans for the following month were cancelled, including a visit to Mission Control in Houston during STS-1, the first flight of the Space Shuttle. Bush called the orbiting astronauts instead, and Reagan visited Mission Control during STS-2 that November.

  Thomas Delahanty recovered but was left with permanent nerve damage in his left arm and was forced to retire from the Metropolitan Police Department. Tim McCarthy recovered fully and was the first of the wounded men to leave the hospital. Jerry Parr was hailed as a hero. He received Congressional commendations and was named one of four "Top Cops" in the country by Parade magazine. In his autobiography he called the day both the best and the worst of his life. Parr came to believe that God had directed his life so that he could save the president, and he became a pastor after retiring from the Secret Service in 1985. He died in a Washington hospice on the 9th of October 2015, aged 85.

  The two Cleveland labor officials who had tackled Hinckley both fell ill after the shooting. Frank McNamara died on the 18th of September 1981, aged 62. Alfred Antenucci died on the 9th of May 1984, aged 71.

  James Brady survived, but his wound left him with slurred speech and partial paralysis that required a wheelchair full time. He remained press secretary for the rest of the administration, though mostly in name. Brady and his wife, Sarah, became leading advocates for gun control. They joined the lobbying group Handgun Control, Inc., later renamed the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, and founded the nonprofit Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Their work led to the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, passed in 1993. Brady died on the 4th of August 2014 in Alexandria, Virginia, aged 73. The District of Columbia medical examiner ruled his death a homicide caused by his wounds.

  The gun control debate had already intensified after the handgun murder of John Lennon in December 1980. Reagan had opposed stricter handgun control after Lennon's death and repeated that opposition after his own shooting. At an event marking the tenth anniversary, he changed course and endorsed the Brady bill. He called March 30 an anniversary he would "just as soon forget, but cannot." Four lives, he said, were changed forever by a "Saturday-night special," a cheaply made .22 caliber pistol bought in a Dallas pawnshop. He argued that the bill, then before Congress, might have prevented the shooting.

  In 1994, Reagan made numerous appeals in support of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban in the House of Representatives. Two representatives, Republican Scott L. Klug and Democrat Richard Swett, credit his efforts for their decision to vote for it. The bill passed by a margin of 216-214.

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• 8. Foster and Hinckley

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  Jodie Foster was 18 when the shooting made her a target of the media. Reporters and paparazzi hounded her. She took a semester off from Yale and had to be escorted everywhere by a bodyguard. The attack also produced other stalkers. Edward Michael Richardson, 22, shared a similar obsession with her, according to the Secret Service. He carried a loaded handgun and planned to kill her, but he changed his mind after watching her perform in a college play.

  Hinckley demanded that Foster testify at his trial. Their lawyers agreed that she would do so in a closed session in March 1982. Only Foster, Judge Barrington D. Parker, the lawyers and Hinckley were present, and a videotape could be introduced as evidence at trial. Foster did not look at or acknowledge Hinckley. He threw a pen at her and shouted threats before U.S. marshals surrounded him and removed him from the room.

  Foster has commented on Hinckley on only four occasions. She spoke at a press conference a few days after the attack, wrote an article for Esquire magazine in 1982, and gave an interview to Charlie Rose on 60 Minutes II in 1999. In 2021 she spoke about it to the comedian Marc Maron on his podcast WTF with Marc Maron. She has ended or cancelled several interviews when the event was mentioned. She told Maron she chose silence to avoid being known mainly as the actress tied to that incident. She also credited her mother, a former publicist, with helping her through the media frenzy.

  On the 21st of June 1982, Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity on all counts. Defense psychiatric reports had found him insane, while prosecution reports had declared him legally sane. On his lawyers' advice, he did not testify. After the trial, he wrote that the shooting was "the greatest love offering in the history of the world." He showed no regret at the time.

  The verdict brought widespread dismay. The United States Congress and a number of states rewrote their laws on the insanity defense. A new test moved the burden of proof about a defendant's sanity from the prosecution to the defendant. Three states abolished the defense altogether.

  In 2015, federal prosecutors announced that they would not charge Hinckley in connection with Brady's death. A jury had already found him insane at the time of the shooting, and the ban on double jeopardy stood in the way of overturning that finding. Washington, D.C., also followed the common law "year and a day" rule when the shooting occurred. The district abolished the rule before 2014, but the ban on ex post facto laws blocks upgrading charges for deaths from acts committed while it applied.

  Hinckley was confined full time at St. Elizabeths Hospital, a psychiatric facility in Washington, D.C., until 2006. After that he began spending gradually more time at his mother's home. On the 10th of September 2016, he was permitted to leave the hospital permanently and live with her full time, under court supervision and with mandatory psychiatric treatment. The Washington Hilton would later be the site of a foiled assassination attempt on the administration of President Donald Trump in 2026.

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