Rawhide Down_ The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan - Del Quentin Wilber [76]
The agent said nothing and continued out the door.
Colo, who was detailed to the service’s Washington field office, had been one of the two dozen agents assigned to guard Reagan at the Hilton. That morning, however, he had been told that, instead, he should finish the paperwork documenting an accident involving his government-issued car. After the shooting, Colo had been dispatched to police headquarters to act as a liaison among local authorities, the FBI, and the service.
His supervisors couldn’t have picked a better man for the assignment. Colo, a native of New Jersey, had spent three years on the D.C. police force before joining the Secret Service in 1976. Since then, he’d remained in Washington, where he had investigated fraud artists, hardened criminals, and a number of men and women who wanted to kill the leader of the free world. He had also questioned scores of suspicious and unstable characters who appeared at the White House. His work for both law enforcement agencies had given him considerable insight into troubled minds.
When he arrived at D.C. police headquarters soon after the shooting, Colo was surprised by the acrimony and chaos in the homicide office. FBI agents were battling with police officers over jurisdiction, and the officers were yelling back. Several officers who clearly hadn’t visited homicide in years wandered among the desks, curious about the man who had shot the president. Police radios crackled with news from the scene at the Hilton.
Colo tracked down Eddie Myers, the homicide detective who had tried to question Hinckley, and Myers gave him permission to take some Polaroid photographs of the suspect. Colo planned to check the pictures against those already in the agency’s files; he also wanted to pass a few of the photos to other investigators who would then show them around town to see if anyone recognized the gunman.
About an hour after Colo took his pictures, the bureau won the jurisdictional dispute with the D.C. police. At 5:15 p.m., FBI agents took Hinckley to their field office in southwest Washington. Two agents, showing professional courtesy toward the Secret Service, asked Colo to join them on the ride. They also invited Detective Myers.
Colo sat next to Hinckley, who spoke not a word on the short trip to the bureau’s field office. Hinckley had still refused to say anything to anyone about the shooting or his motive. Myers and other investigators had grown increasingly sure that Hinckley was a disturbed loner; he had a psychologist’s business card in his wallet, after all. But Colo and the FBI agents were not so sure. Terrorists and killers, many of whom were part of elaborate plots, were often disturbed. And all three agents had seen too many investigations founder when someone rushed to judgment; before reaching any firm conclusions, it was always best to track down every possible lead. And they had no time to waste. Co-conspirators might be hiding in the city and waiting for the right moment to strike again, or they might use the coming hours to flee the country. As they sped toward the FBI’s field office, the agents knew there was only one way to find out quickly whether their suspect had acted alone. They would have to get him to crack.
* * *
IN THE SITUATION Room, the secretary of state was becoming increasingly agitated. As other officials discussed how to properly calibrate the administration’s public statements or worried about the gunman’s potential associations, Haig remained concerned about how to control the flow of information to the public.
“We’re going to be on a straight line from the hospital,” Haig said. “So anything that is said, before it’s said, we’ll discuss at this table, and any telephone calls that anybody is getting with instructions from the hospital”—his voice rose to a near shout—“come to this table first!”
Then Haig smacked the table hard with a hand—thwap! “Right here! And we discuss it and know what’s going on.”
Richard Allen elbowed Fred Fielding