Rawhide Down_ The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan - Del Quentin Wilber [115]
Earlier that morning: Interviews with former Secret Service agents Jerry Parr, Johnny Guy, and James E. Le Gette, as well as Parr’s wife, Carolyn.
Hollywood’s version of an agent’s: Reagan thought the film was terrible, writing in a later memoir that the studio agreed not to release it in Hollywood to protect its actors’ reputations. “Never has an egg of such dimensions been laid,” he wrote in Where’s the Rest of Me? (p. 83). After the assassination attempt, Reagan also told Parr that the movie was the worst he had ever made.
He often told friends that devising: Interview with Parr; Zach Nauth, “Fan Who Saved Life of President to Get His Reward Today,” LAT, February 15, 1985, p. 5.
As morning light: Government psychiatric report; Hinckley’s whirlwind of travel in the months leading up to the assassination attempt were documented in a trial stipulation. His belongings were cataloged in trial testimony, trial stipulations, witness testimony, and FBI reports.
drab hotel room: Photographs of room introduced at trial, USAO.
But returning to Evergreen: Government psychiatric report; testimony of psychiatrists at Hinckley’s trial, as well as the testimony of his parents, Jo Ann and Jack Hinckley.
As he stepped from the car: Hinckley and Hinckley, Breaking Points, p. 138; testimony of Jo Ann Hinckley.
he pondered suicide: Dr. William T. Carpenter, a psychiatrist who examined Hinckley for his defense, testified that the gunman was thinking about these things on the morning of March 26. “He decided, then, to go to the East Coast, his final destination being New Haven, where he planned to end it all [with] either suicide or the homicide-suicide plan being foremost in his mind.” In the weeks before he took a bus to Washington, Hinckley often pondered a dramatic conclusion to his life. “He had to do something to end it,” testified Dr. Thomas G. Goldman, another defense psychiatrist who examined Hinckley. “He could not live. He made some motions towards looking for a job. Basically, he was selling his property to raise enough money to make another trip to the East where he thought he would do something, kill himself, kill Miss Foster, possibly kill both of them.”
On Thursday, March 26: Stipulations entered at Hinckley’s trial, as well as the government psychiatric report and testimony by government and defense psychiatrists.
The four-day trip: Government psychiatric report.
A minister who boarded: Reverend Richard Parke, the minister traveling with Hinckley, was interviewed by government psychiatrists and his comments were included in their report. Parke confirmed the report’s details in phone and e-mail interviews.
He didn’t even tell the minister: Parke learned Hinckley’s last name by seeing it on a luggage tag, according to the government psychiatric report.
he barely had enough energy: Government psychiatric report; testimony of various defense and prosecution psychiatrists.
the jumbled detritus: FBI reports and trial testimony.
Just after nine a.m.: Government psychiatric report.
On his walk back to the hotel: Government psychiatric report. “He noticed the president would be at the Hilton,” the report states. “He noticed the schedule without excitement, put down the paper and took a shower.”
2: The Man
When President Reagan: DDPRR.
the space looked much as: Photographs of Oval Office, RRPL; photographs of Oval Office displayed at www.whitehousemuseum.org.
the Resolute desk: Interview with Fischer; White House Historical Association website.
resigned himself to a bit of discomfort: The desk was raised two inches by adding a wooden base at some point between October 1981 and August 1982, according to Monica McKiernan, curatorial assistant in the White House Office of the Curator.
miniature bronzed saddles: Reagan Diaries, p. 25. Reagan received these statues from Walter Annenberg, one of his wealthy California friends, on March 12. According to Time magazine, “Six Shots at the Nation’s Heart,” on April 13, 1981, Reagan and his wife put these saddles