Rawhide Down_ The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan - Del Quentin Wilber [147]
Paul Kelly, Secret Service agent.
Ernest Kun, Secret Service agent.
James Le Gette, Secret Service agent.
John Magaw, Secret Service agent.
Timothy McCarthy, Secret Service agent.
Russell Miller, Secret Service agent.
Eddie Myers, D.C. police homicide detective.
George Opfer, Secret Service agent.
Jerry Parr, Secret Service agent, special agent in charge of the presidential protective detail.
Ed Pollard, Secret Service agent.
Robert Powis, special agent in charge of the Washington field office of the Secret Service.
Richard Qulia, FBI agent.
Ray Shaddick, Secret Service agent, a shift leader on the presidential protective detail.
John Simpson, Secret Service agent, assistant director for protective operations.
Danny Spriggs, Secret Service agent.
Joe Trainor, Secret Service agent.
Drew Unrue, Secret Service agent.
Fran Uteg, Secret Service agent.
Jim Varey, Secret Service agent.
Frederick White, assistant director of administration, Secret Service.
MEDIA
Sam Donaldson, White House correspondent, ABC News.
Ron Edmonds, White House photographer, AP (winner of the Pulitzer Prize for photos he took of Reagan being pushed into the car. One is on this book’s front jacket).
Bill Plante, CBS News.
Dan Rather, anchor, CBS News.
Lesley Stahl, White House correspondent, CBS News.
EXPERTS
Michael Bohn, former director of the Situation Room.
Dr. David Boyd, former director of Emergency Medical Services Systems, a division of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.
John D. Feerick, professor of law, Fordham University Law School.
John Finor, president of the Association of Firearm and Tool Mark Examiners.
Harry Teter, executive director of the American Trauma Society.
Dr. Donald Trunkey, professor of surgery, Oregon Health & Science University.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I came to this book quite unexpectedly. One day in July 2008, I attended a hearing at which doctors and lawyers for John W. Hinckley Jr. were urging a federal judge to grant the would-be assassin more freedom from St. Elizabeths Hospital. I had just started covering the D.C. federal court beat for my newspaper, the Washington Post, and when I took a seat in the front row of courtroom 29A, I didn’t know much about Hinckley or his attempt to kill President Ronald Reagan in March 1981. About all I remembered was that Hinckley had wounded Reagan and three other men, including press secretary Jim Brady, outside of the “Hinckley Hilton,” the moniker given to the sprawling hotel by many Washingtonians, and that later Hinckley had been found not guilty by reason of insanity. But there I was—just fifteen feet from a man who nearly assassinated a president—as his lawyers and the court’s prosecutors argued over the scope of potential privileges, and Hinckley’s siblings testified about his life in recent years.
As the hearing wore on, I found myself closely studying the psychiatric patient sitting at the defense table. Dressed in a dark blazer and gray slacks, Hinckley spent much of the hearing resting his chin on his hand while wearing a blank expression on his face. He neither frowned nor smiled, even when testimony delved into his sex life and the meaning of his music. It was as if a costume maker had cast an impression from Hinckley’s face while he was sleeping, and he was now wearing that emotionless mask for the world to see.
When that long day of testimony ended—the hearings would stretch over four more days—I went back to my office and filed a rather perfunctory story that described how Hinckley’s brother and sister did not view him as a danger to the community and thought he would benefit from getting a driver’s license and having more unsupervised time at their mother’s home. After finishing the article, I gave Hinckley no further thought.
A few days later, however, I was summoned to the FBI’s Washington field office by its top agent, Joseph Persichini Jr., who wanted to discuss an undercover investigation that he knew I had recently