List of United States Presidential assassination attempts
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is a list of U.S. Presidential assassination attempts. There have been eighteen attempts to kill sitting and former United States Presidents and Presidents-Elect. Four attempts on sitting Presidents have succeeded; the 16th, 20th, 25th and 35th US Presidents were all assassinated in office.
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[edit] Successful assassination attempts
[edit] Abraham Lincoln
April 14, 1865: Attending the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., President Abraham Lincoln was shot in the back of the head by John Wilkes Booth, a well-known actor and Southern sympathizer; he died the next morning. Booth was also shot and killed by Boston Corbett 12 days later while on the run holed up in a northern Virginia barn, and a number of others were implicated (including four who were hanged) in a widespread conspiracy to assassinate government leaders.
[edit] James A. Garfield
July 2, 1881: Less than four months after taking office, while waiting in the Baltimore and Potomac Railway station in Washington, D.C., accompanied by Secretary of State James G. Blaine, president James Abram Garfield received two bullets in the back by Charles J. Guiteau, a man who had previously petitioned the Garfield administration to appoint him ambassador to France. Garfield succumbed to his wounds nearly three months later (19 September), a death hastened by poor care from his doctors.[1] Several inserted their unsterilized fingers into the wound to probe for the bullet, and one doctor punctured Garfield's liver in doing so. Guiteau was found guilty and hanged; the case prompted the passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, which placed most federal employees on the merit system and marked the end of the so-called "spoils system".
[edit] William McKinley
September 6, 1901: Attending the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, president William McKinley received two bullets in the chest by anarchist Leon Czolgosz. Ironically, the newly-developed X-ray machine was displayed at the fair, but it was thought of merely as technological novelty; no one thought to use it on McKinley to search for the bullet, a procedure that might have saved his life. McKinley died of his wounds on 14 September, and Czolgosz was later executed by electrocution.
[edit] John F. Kennedy
November 22, 1963: While travelling in an open car in Dallas, Texas with Texas Governor John Connally and their wives, the popular and charismatic president John Fitzgerald Kennedy was struck by two sniper bullets. The first bullet hit Kennedy in the neck and Connally in the chest. Seconds later, another bullet hit Kennedy in the head. The back of Kennedy's head exploded, projecting blood and pieces of brain into the air and splashing across the rear of the presidential car as well as a police officer on a motorcycle. He died 35 minutes later at Parkland Memorial Hospital.
Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested later the same day and charged with shooting Kennedy. Oswald himself was shot and fatally wounded two days later by nightclub owner Jack Ruby. The Warren Commission concluded that Oswald was the sole assassin, but the conclusions dissatisfied the majority of the American people. In the 1970s the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that at least one other sniper was probably involved in the assassination. Some theories say that Kennedy was killed by the CIA, the military-industrial complex and Vice President Lyndon Johnson, in collaboration with the Mafia, oil companies, the anti-castrist camps and the FBI. Another theory says that Kennedy was killed by Cuba and the USSR. The real truth will probably never be known.
[edit] Unsuccessful assassination attempts
[edit] Andrew Jackson
January 30, 1835: At the Capitol Building, a house painter named Richard Lawrence aimed two flintlock pistols at the President, but both misfired, one of them while Lawrence stood within 13 feet of Jackson and the other at point-blank range. After firing the two pistols, Lawrence was apprehended after Jackson beat him with his cane. Lawrence was found not guilty by reason of insanity and confined to a mental institution until his death in 1861.
[edit] Theodore Roosevelt
October 13, 1912: No longer president, Roosevelt was running for the Progressives. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, John Schrank shot Roosevelt once with a revolver. A 100-page speech folded over twice and the metal glasses case in Roosevelt's breast pocket slowed the bullet. Roosevelt insisted on giving his speech with the bullet still lodged inside him. He later went to the hospital, but the bullet was never removed. Schrank said that the ghost of William McKinley had told him to avenge his assassination. Schrank was found legally insane and was institutionalized until his death in 1943.
[edit] Franklin D. Roosevelt
February 15, 1933 (one month before being sworn in for his first term in office): In Miami, Florida, Giuseppe Zangara fired five shots at Roosevelt's motorcade. Four people were wounded and the mayor of Chicago, Anton Cermak, was killed. Zangara was found guilty of murder and was executed March 20, 1933. Many researchers believe Cermak, not Roosevelt, was the intended target that day, as the mayor was a staunch foe of Al Capone's Chicago mob organization.[citation needed]
[edit] Harry S. Truman
November 1, 1950: In Washington, D.C., Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola ambushed the Blair House where Truman was residing temporarily while the White House was undergoing major renovations. Torresola was killed by guards, and Collazo was wounded. Collazo was found guilty of murder, assault, and attempted assassination of the president. He was sentenced to death. Truman commuted the sentence to life in prison. President Jimmy Carter freed Collazo in 1979 [1].
[edit] John F. Kennedy
December 11, 1960: While vacationing in Palm Beach, Florida, President-elect John F. Kennedy's life was threatened by Richard Paul Pavlick, a 73-year-old former postal worker. Pavlick's plan was to serve as a suicide bomber by crashing his dynamite-laden 1950 Buick into Kennedy's vehicle, but the plan was disrupted when Pavlick saw Kennedy's wife and daughter bidding him goodbye. That attack of conscience foiled the opportunity, with Pavlick's arrest by the Secret Service coming three days later after he was stopped for a driving violation, with the dynamite still in his car. Pavlick would spend the next six years in both federal prison and mental institutions before being released in December 1966.
[edit] Richard M. Nixon
February 22, 1974: Samuel Byck planned to kill Nixon by crashing a commercial airliner into the White House. Once on the plane, he was informed that it could not take off with the wheel blocks still in place. He shot the pilot and copilot before killing himself.
[edit] Gerald R. Ford
September 5, 1975: In Sacramento, California, Squeaky Fromme, a follower of Charles Manson, drew a Colt .45 caliber pistol on Ford when he reached to shake her hand in a crowd. There were four cartridges in the pistol's magazine but the firing chamber was empty. She was soon restrained by a Secret Service agent. Fromme was sentenced to life in prison, where she remains.
September 22, 1975: In San Francisco, California, Sara Jane Moore fired a revolver at Ford from 40 feet (12 m) away. The shot missed Ford because a bystander, Oliver Sipple, grabbed Moore's arm. Moore was sentenced to life in prison.
[edit] Jimmy Carter
May 5, 1979: Ten minutes before Carter was about to speak at the civic center mall in Los Angeles, Raymond Lee Harvey was arrested carrying a pistol. He later told authorities that he and another man were hired to create a diversion so that Mexican hit men armed with sniper rifles could kill Carter.
[edit] Ronald Reagan
March 30, 1981: John Hinckley, Jr. fired six shots from a .22 caliber handgun at Reagan in Washington, D.C. One bullet ruptured Reagan's lung and lodged close to his heart. Another bullet entered the brain of press secretary James Brady. A policeman and a Secret Service agent were also critically wounded.[2] Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity. He remains in St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington D.C.. Hinckley was trying to impress actress Jodie Foster by mimicking a scene from the movie Taxi Driver. Reagan was the first sitting president to survive an assassin's bullet, and the fifth sitting president overall to be shot. He was also the first president elected in a year ending in zero (1980), not to die in office since James Monroe.
[edit] George H.W. Bush
April 13, 1993: Sixteen suspected terrorists, in the employ of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, smuggled a car bomb into Kuwait with the intent of killing Bush as he spoke at Kuwait University. The plot was foiled when Kuwaiti officials found the bomb and arrested the suspected assassins. Bush had left office in January 1993. On June 26, 1993, the U.S. launched a missile attack targeting Baghdad intelligence headquarters in retaliation for the attempted attack against Bush.
[edit] Bill Clinton
October 29, 1994: Francisco Martin Duran fired at least 29 shots with a semi-automatic rifle at the White House from Pennsylvania Avenue, outside the south lawn, thinking that Clinton was among the men in dark suits standing there (Clinton was in the White House Residence watching a football game). No one was hurt and Duran was sentenced to 40 years in prison.[3]
[edit] George W. Bush
May 10, 2005: While Bush was giving a speech in the Freedom Square in Tbilisi, Georgia, Vladimir Arutinian threw a live Soviet-made RGD-5 hand grenade towards the podium where he was standing and where Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili and their two wives and officials were seated. It landed in the crowd 18.6 metres (61 feet) from the podium after hitting a girl, but did not detonate because the red tartan (plaid) handkerchief wrapped tightly around it didn't allow the firing pin to deploy fast enough.[4]
Arutinian was arrested in July 2005 and admitted to throwing the grenade. He was convicted in January 2006, and was given a life sentence.[5][6]
[edit] References
- ^ A President Felled by an Assassin and 1880’s Medical Care New York Times, July 25, 2006.
- ^ 1981: President Reagan is shot BBC on this Day | March 1981
- ^ Summary Statement of Facts (The September 12, 1994 Plane Crash and The October 29, 1994 Shooting) Background Information on the White House Security Review
- ^ FBI says hand grenade thrown at Bush was liveThe Guardian | May 19, 2005
- ^ Bush grenade attacker gets lifeCNN.com | January 11, 2006
- ^ The case of the failed hand grenade attackFBI Press Room | January 11, 2006
