Rawhide Down_ The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan - Del Quentin Wilber [21]
The service also borrowed a number of techniques from the military, which drilled its members to react without thinking. This revolution in training was led not from the top but by the field office in Los Angeles, where agents had been growing increasingly alarmed at the rising number of attacks on dignitaries and political leaders around the world. Over coffee or beers, they lamented not having the skills to cope with such assaults in the United States. On their own initiative and with the consent of their supervisor, the agents enlisted the Los Angeles Police Department SWAT team and began staging mock attacks at rope lines, on motorcades, and at speeches. They trained at an abandoned hospital for alcoholics in nearby Saugus, where they set off explosions, fired live ammunition, and staged ambushes on fast-moving motorcades. The exercises were so realistic that several agents who had served in Vietnam suffered nightmares and combat flashbacks. After some resistance, the service’s headquarters eventually adopted a similar approach to training and began putting all agents through ever more complex drills and scenarios, each designed to teach instantaneous reactions in a crisis.
By 1981, the new training regime had become part of the service’s culture. Jerry Parr, like all the veteran agents, had lost count of the number of times he had practiced throwing himself in front of a candidate at a rope line, smothering a protectee behind a podium, or shoving a president into an armored limousine. And Parr’s training had taught him one thing above all: when faced with an actual threat, he could never freeze. Not for three seconds, not for one second. Without fail, he had to respond instantly.
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AT 9:15 A.M., President Reagan picked up the phone to speak with Helmut Schmidt in Bonn. Richard Allen and other White House officials sat in chairs near the president’s desk. The call started on a sentimental note, with Schmidt thanking Reagan for sending a condolence letter after the death of the chancellor’s father. Schmidt then said he hoped to deepen the ties between the two countries and that he was eager to meet with Reagan during an upcoming visit to the United States.
When Schmidt began talking about how they might better handle Leonid Brezhnev, the bellicose Soviet premier, the subject quickly turned to Poland. For months, laborers in the Solidarity movement had been agitating for more freedom in the wake of draconian economic policies and widespread food shortages; two weeks earlier, more than two dozen union activists had been beaten by police, leaving three seriously injured. Mass strikes, which could speed the country’s economic decline, were planned for the next day. The work stoppages would almost certainly push the Polish government to declare martial law, which in turn would probably spark violent protests. If that were to happen, the Soviet Union, which was already leading military exercises in and around Poland, might choose to intervene. In confidential memoranda, the CIA was reporting that Soviet officials had lost faith in the ability of the Polish government to contain the crisis. For weeks, intelligence assessments had painted an increasingly bleak picture, and now the CIA believed that Poland was at a “possible turning point.”
Schmidt warned Reagan that there was nothing his country could do militarily if Warsaw retaliated against the strikers or if the Soviets invaded Poland. He could apply economic pressure, though Poland was already billions of dollars in debt to West Germany. Reagan faced the same difficulty. He was not going to wage war against the Soviet Union over Poland, not least because direct conflict could easily lead to a nuclear confrontation. After fifteen minutes of discussion, the two leaders agreed to issue statements threatening to cut off financial aid to Poland if military force was used to quell the labor strife. Finishing the call, Reagan thanked Schmidt for his time.
The president spent the next hour receiving a briefing on national security and discussing a range of related