Rawhide Down_ The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan - Del Quentin Wilber [110]
* * *
IN JUNE 1982, John W. Hinckley Jr. was found not guilty by reason of insanity of attempting to assassinate the president; the jury reached the same verdict on twelve other charges related to the shooting. The eight-week trial focused heavily on the testimony of psychiatrists who had examined Hinckley. It also featured videotaped testimony from Jodie Foster, who, though scarred by her brush with the would-be assassin, completed her education at Yale and then continued her film career.
Since his trial, Hinckley has been confined to St. Elizabeths Hospital for the mentally ill. The terms of his confinement require that he remain there until a federal judge determines that it is safe to free him.
Both St. Elizabeths’ doctors and Hinckley’s lawyers have in recent years argued that Hinckley’s depression and his unspecified psychotic disorder have been in remission for years and that his narcissistic personality disorder has receded. Accordingly, they have petitioned a federal judge to grant Hinckley—who turned fifty-five in May 2010—more freedom in preparation for the day when he is eventually released. Often over the objections of prosecutors, U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman has granted Hinckley frequent and lengthy unsupervised visits with his mother at her home in Williamsburg, Virginia. (Hinckley’s father died in 2008.) In 2009, Friedman also ruled that Hinckley could obtain a driver’s license. Hinckley still spends his time much as he did in the months before shooting President Reagan—composing music and playing his guitar. Though his boyish looks have faded, his hair remains sandy blond and his face displays the same emotionless affect that so puzzled detectives and investigators thirty years ago.
* * *
IN JANUARY 1989, Ronald Reagan rode quietly into retirement. One of his first acts was to visit his tailor and replace the suit that had been cut to shreds in the GW emergency room. Over the next few years, he dedicated much of his time to writing his memoirs, giving speeches, and cutting wood on his sprawling ranch.
A decade before his death in 2004, Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. But he refused to allow the devastating affliction to darken his outlook on life. When he performed his final act as a public man in November 1994, Reagan once again displayed the optimism that had always been so central to his character.
“I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life,” he wrote in his own hand. “I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead.”
NOTES
A Note on Sources
Writing a detailed history about a single day three decades ago is a substantial challenge. Fortunately, I was able to unearth a wealth of documentary evidence in the form of hundreds of pages of Secret Service and FBI reports, confidential court records, long-forgotten trial transcripts, closely held audiotapes, and the contemporaneous notes and diaries of a number of people who participated in the drama that unfolded on March 30, 1981. I supplemented that record with interviews of more than 125 people, many of whom played a part in what happened that day. In deciding whether to trust memories of such distant events, I used the standard of a person’s “best recollection,” as long as it squared with the official record or the memories of other participants. On occasion, I relied on newspaper and magazine articles published soon after the assassination attempt. Sometimes, of course, I had to make a judgment call about whether to use a detail, a line of dialogue, or a sequence of events recalled by someone who was present at some point during the day re-created in this book. In every instance, my objective was to provide a scrupulously accurate record of what actually occurred, and my fervent hope is that I did not fail those who took so much time to tell me their stories in the expectation that I would get them right.
In constructing these notes, I chose not