Rawhide Down_ The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan - Del Quentin Wilber [33]
The spare limousine, the presidential limousine, the follow-up car, and the control car together made up the “escape package,” and they were never to be separated under any circumstances. Trailing the package was a staff car ferrying the president’s press secretary, Jim Brady, a bear of a man respected by White House officials and the press for his work ethic, honesty, and sense of humor. Earlier that day, as he juggled a press briefing, attended staff meetings, met with the president, and schmoozed with reporters, the forty-year-old press secretary had considered skipping this event. He was always caught in a tug-of-war between his two most important constituencies: the president and the pool of White House reporters. Relatively new to Reagan’s orbit of advisors, Brady was aiming to spend as much time with the president and his closest aides as possible, but he was also trying to improve his relations with the press. As the scheduled departure for the Hilton approached, Brady finally decided to travel with the president.
The string of limousines, official cars, police cars, and two police motorcycles added up to a motorcade fifteen vehicles long. With the police motorcycles leading the way, the president’s limousine rumbled up Connecticut Avenue and soon took a right onto Florida Avenue. Then, after a quick left onto T Street, the big Lincoln veered into the Hilton driveway, made a sharp left, and pulled up at the VIP entrance.
The ride had covered 1.3 miles in about four minutes. It was 1:50 p.m.
* * *
A FEW MINUTES before the president’s arrival, D.C. police officers Sergeant Herbert Granger and Officer Thomas Delahanty stood at the rope line, corralling seven reporters and ten spectators about thirty-five feet from the Hilton’s VIP entrance. It was the officers’ job to keep people away from the president and his motorcade.
At seven that morning, the two men had reported for work at the 3rd District police station to learn that they were among those being assigned to guard duty at the Hilton during the president’s visit. Granger sighed—he had stood post at the hotel a number of times before, and it was boring duty. He much preferred to work the streets, especially in high-crime neighborhoods. Worse, on a day like this he would have to sweat in the suffocating department-issue raincoat. Standing at his locker in the basement of the station house, Granger picked up his bulletproof vest. He knew it would only make him perspire even more. Hell, the sergeant thought, it’s just the Hilton. He tossed the vest back into his locker.
Delahanty, one of Granger’s officers, was currently assigned to the department’s K-9 unit, but his dog, Kirk, was ill that day, so he was available to work security. Before going to the Hilton, however, he visited the department’s dog training center and also drove to police headquarters to have a new departmental photograph taken. Over the weekend, he had spotted an out-of-date picture in the newspaper of an officer involved in a recent shooting, and he didn’t want his bosses handing out an old photo if he ever made the news. In the new photograph, Delahanty, forty-five, stared straight back at the camera, his tired-looking eyes framed by his square jaw and his long sideburns.
About forty-five minutes before the president’s departure from the White House, Granger, Delahanty, and five other officers piled into squad cars for the short trip to the Hilton, where the sergeant deployed his men around the entrance. Granger sent an officer to stand guard on a ledge overlooking the hotel’s VIP entrance, where Reagan would enter and leave the hotel, and arranged the others near the rope line and the Hilton’s doors.
Not long after Granger and his officers had taken their places, a Secret Service agent emerged from the VIP entrance and yelled, “They’re coming.”
Granger, a former military police officer frequently assigned to demonstrations and protests, had developed