A failure to protect

MARY REICHARD, HOST: This is WORLD Radio and we thank you for joining us today! Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: assassinations and attempted assassinations in this country.

It’s a sad fact that our American past includes those horrific acts, beginning with the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865.

REICHARD: Assassins took the lives of two more presidents while they were in office: James Garfield in 1881 and William McKinley in 1901.

President Theodore Roosevelt survived an attack in 1912 while he was seeking office a second time.

BROWN: Here’s WORLD’s Kristen Flavin with an historical account of a handful of assassination attempts over the last 61 years

TIM MCCARTHY: We take the oath, we train for it…

KRISTEN FLAVIN: Tim McCarthy was a Secret Service Agent for two decades.

MCCARTHY: But we never know if we're going to do it when that critical incident takes place, that if you're going to respond to your training…

He was just 10 years into his career when his training was put to the test.

SOUND: [Shots fired] 

March 30th, 1981, the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan, the last known assassination attempt on a president, ex-president, or presidential candidate before last Saturday’s attack on former President Donald Trump.

SOUND: [Chaos following shooting]

Reagan was leaving the Hilton in Washington when shots rang out—six in less than two seconds. Three men around the president lay wounded. Press Secretary James Brady—shot in the head, policeman Thomas Delahanty—shot in the back, secret service agent Tim McCarthy—shot in the chest.

MCCARTHY: I saw a little blood on my shirt and I heard the gunshots, of course, right away so it didn’t take much to put two and two together.

It was McCarthy who stood between the president and the shooter. Special Agent in Charge Jerry Parr tackled Reagan into the limousine.

Experts believe Parr’s actions saved the president from being shot in the head. Parr examined Reagan as they sped for the White House.

JERRY PARR: He said I think I’ve cut the inside of my mouth. He reached into his pocket, took out a napkin and it was covered with bright red frothy blood. And I looked at that blood and I knew from my training that it was oxygenated. It had been in his lungs and now it was in his mouth and there was a lot of it. It was abundant. It was spilling down in front of him and on my coat and I just made a quick decision and I said, “I’m taking you to the hospital.”

There they found out Reagan’s wounds were extensive. One of the bullets had ricocheted off the limousine and struck Reagan in the side—breaking a rib and puncturing his lung. The president needed 12 days at the George Washington University Hospital to recover.

That was the most recent attempt on a president—it failed.

Rewind 20 years, a CBS news bulletin interrupts regularly scheduled programming.

AUDIO: In Dallas, Texas three shots were fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade in downtown Dallas. The first reports say that President Kennedy has been seriously wounded by this shooting.

One hour later, newsman Walter Cronkite is back on the air.

WALTER CRONKITE: From Dallas, Texas, the flash—apparently official—President Kennedy died at 1pm central standard time. 2 o’clock eastern standard time. Some 38 minutes ago.

John F. Kennedy’s assassination, November 22nd, 1963—the beginning of a string of assassination attempts on public figures over the next decade.

Beginning just five years after JFK’s death…

KENNEDY: So my thanks to all of you and on to Chicago and let’s win there. [Applause, cheering]

… an assassin took the life of his younger brother, Robert, a candidate for president in 1968.

REPORTER: Senator Kennedy has been shot, is that possible? Is that possible?

RFK was campaigning in Los Angeles having addressed supporters in a hotel ballroom. His security team warned him not to, but he left the venue through a crowded kitchen passageway.

A reporter at the scene captured footage of what happened next.

REPORTER: Hold him, hold him! We don’t want another Oswald!

Robert F. Kennedy, pronounced dead 26 hours later—June 5th, 1968.

Next election cycle—1972—Democratic presidential candidate George Wallace.

AUDIO: [Cheering turns to screaming, gunshots]

Wallace was shot four times at a campaign rally in Maryland May 15th.

AUDIO: [Screaming]

Wallace survived, but the gunshots left him paralyzed from the waist down, and he’d quit the race a month and a half later.

In 1975, President Gerald Ford escaped two attacks just weeks apart. He was not injured in either one.

The attack on former President Trump comes 52 years after the attempt on Wallace, more than 40 years after Reagan, and serves as a reminder to former Secret Service Agent McCarthy.

MCCARTHY: Protection is a very tough assignment because any mistake can be fatal, no question about it.

As McCarthy watched the shooting last Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania, he noticed similar security lapses in the attack on Reagan.

MCCARTHY: If a protectee of the Secret Service is injured, it's not a victory, it's a failure. So this is a failure. And now we're going to have to look at what happened and what can be corrected so it doesn't happen again.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

REICHARD: Historic audio for this report came from CBS, ABC, and C-SPAN.

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