There is a fascinating article by Larry Getlen in today's NY Post. He highlights events detailed in a new book, Hunting the President: Threats, Plots, and Assassination Attempts — from FDR to Obama by Mel Ayton. These dangers are far more common than we know. Every president, regardless of party or ideology, has thousands on file at any moment, usually around 400 or so regarded as serious. Here are some specific examples, edited by and comments added by yours truly:
On Nov. 1, 1950, with the White House undergoing renovations, President Harry Truman was napping upstairs across the street at Blair House. As he slept, two Puerto Rican nationalists, 37-year-old Oscar Collazo and 24-year-old Griselio Torresola, approached from opposite directions. Collazo was armed with a Walther P-38 and Torresola with a Luger, both 9 mm pistols. Torresola noticed White House police officer Leslie Coffelt and shot him three times. Collazo approached the front door and shot Officer Donald T. Birdzell in the leg. Awakened by the shooting, Truman looked out the window and saw one of the officers lying wounded on the street. He stuck his head out to ask who had been hit, but a Secret Service agent yelled at him to get back inside. The leader of the Secret Service would later reprimand the President for this risky, reckless act. While agent Stewart Stout, inside Blair House, awaited the assassins with a sub-machine gun, Collazo was taken down at the building’s door, while Torresola shot another officer before the mortally wounded Coffelt felled him with a shot to the head, the officer’s final act before dying in service of his country. Sounds like an episode of 24.
Before killing Robert Kennedy in 1968, Sirhan Sirhan wrote in his diary of his desire to kill Lyndon Johnson. And months before murdering Kennedy’s brother in 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald grabbed a gun and intended to attend a speech by former Vice President Richard Nixon, who had talked about having Fidel Castro, Oswald’s idol, removed from power. Oswald’s wife, understanding his murderous intent, locked him in a bedroom and threatened to call the police. This is more circumstantial evidence of Oswald's guilt in JFK's assassination.
JFK came close to never taking the oath of office. In December 1960, a month before his inauguration, 73-year-old Richard Pavlick parked his car outside of Kennedy’s Palm Beach, Florida mansion. Underneath his blue suit coat he wore as much dynamite as would fit, all wired to a switch in his pocket. The Secret Service later called the explosives enough to have blown up a small mountain. Pavlick, who had followed the President-elect from town to town and photographed his Hyannis Port home in order to check out the security measures, planned to ram his car into Kennedy’s limousine and then flick the switch. Was he the first would-be suicide bomber? Waiting outside the mansion, he watched Kennedy leave the building with his wife and children. Kennedy got into the car as Jackie watched and waved. Pavlick hesitated because, he later said, he didn’t want to hurt the family. He tried again later that day as Kennedy attended church, but when the President-elect left, he was surrounded by kids. Pavlick abandoned the attempt and flew home, intending to return four days later. The Secret Service, which had been tipped off by people who received ominous postcards that Pavlick sent from campaign stops, arrested him at home, and he wound up in a mental institution for six years.
In 2005 George W. Bush was giving a speech in the nation of Georgia when Vladimir Arutyunian, 28, threw a live, Soviet-made RGD-5 hand grenade toward the podium where the President was standing. The grenade hit a girl, cushioning its impact and didn’t explode because it had been wrapped in a red handkerchief, which kept the firing pin from deploying. The FBI later said that had the grenade exploded, it was close enough to the President to have possibly killed him. I do not recall having heard or read about it. Scary stuff.
Business at the floating bookshop returned to normal today, ending the terrific five-day run it enjoyed. My thanks to the two ladies who bought books, and the gentleman who swapped.
Vic's 4th Novel: http://tinyurl.com/bszwlxh
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Vic's Horror Screenplay on Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/cyckn3
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