List of United States presidential assassination attempts and plots

Assassination attempts and plots on Presidents of the United States have been numerous: more than 20 attempts to kill sitting and former presidents, as well as the Presidents-elect, are known. Four sitting presidents have been killed, all of them by gunshot: Abraham Lincoln (the 16th President), James A. Garfield (the 20th President), William McKinley (the 25th President) and John F. Kennedy (the 35th President). Two presidents were injured in attempted assassinations, also by gunshot: Theodore Roosevelt (the 26th President) and Ronald Reagan (the 40th President). With the exception of Lyndon Johnson, every president's life since John F. Kennedy has been threatened with assassination.

Although the historian J.W. Clarke has suggested that most American assassinations were politically motivated actions, carried out by rational men,^[1] not all such attacks have been undertaken for political reasons.^[2] Some attackers had questionable mental stability, and a few were judged legally insane.^[3][4] Since the Vice President of the United States has for more than a century been elected from the same political party as the President, the assassination of the President is unlikely to result in major policy changes. This may explain why political groups typically do not make such attacks.^[5]

Presidents assassinated

Abraham Lincoln

The assassination of Lincoln took place on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, at approximately 10:15 p.m. Lincoln was shot once in the back of his head with a .44 caliber Derringer pistol by actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth while watching the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. with his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, and two guests. Major Henry Rathbone tried to stop Booth from escaping, but Booth stabbed him in the chest and slashed his arm to the bone with a dagger that he was also carrying. Soon after being shot, Lincoln's wound was declared to be fatal. The unconscious President was then carried across the street from the theater to the Petersen House, where he remained in a coma for nine hours before dying the following morning at 7:22 a.m. on April 15.^[6]

Booth was tracked down by Union soldiers and was shot and killed by Sergeant Boston Corbett on April 26, 1865. Booth apparently believed that killing Lincoln would radically change U.S. policy toward the South.

Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William H. Seward were targeted in the same plot. However, Johnson's would-be assassin, George Atzerodt lost his nerve and failed to go through with the attack, while Lewis Powell, who was assigned to kill Seward, was only able to inflict largely superficial injuries due to a combination of his gun misfiring and intervention from Seward's family.

James A. Garfield

The assassination of James A. Garfield took place in Washington, D.C., at 9:30 a.m. on Saturday, July 2, 1881, fewer than four months after he took office. Charles J. Guiteau shot him twice, once in his right arm and the other in his back, with a .442 Webley British Bulldog revolver. Garfield died 11 weeks later, on September 19, 1881, at 10:35 p.m., of complications caused by infections.

Guiteau was immediately arrested. After a highly publicized trial which lasted from November 14, 1881 to January 25, 1882, he was found guilty and sentenced to death. A subsequent appeal was rejected, and he was executed by hanging on June 30, 1882 in the District of Columbia, two days before the first anniversary of the attempt. Guiteau was assessed during his trial as mentally unbalanced and possibly suffered from some kind of Bipolar disorder or from the effects of syphilis on the brain. He claimed to have shot Garfield out of disappointment for being passed over for appointment as Ambassador to France. He attributed the president's victory in the election to a speech he wrote for Garfield.^[7]

William McKinley

The assassination of William McKinley took place at 4:07 p.m. on Friday, September 6, 1901, at the Temple of Music in Buffalo, New York. McKinley, attending the Pan-American Exposition, was shot twice in the abdomen at close range by Leon Czolgosz, a self-proclaimed anarchist, who was armed with a .32 caliber revolver wrapped up in what seemed to be a bandage. The first bullet ricocheted off either a button or an award medal on McKinley's jacket and lodged in his sleeve but the second shot pierced his stomach. McKinley died eight days later, on September 14, 1901, at 2:15 a.m. after his health took a turn for the worse.

Members of the crowd captured and subdued Czolgosz. Afterward, the 4th Brigade, National Guard Signal Corps, and police intervened, beating Czolgosz so severely it was initially thought he might not live to stand trial. On September 24, after a rushed, two-day trial in federal court, Czolgosz was sentenced to death. He was executed by electric chair in Auburn Prison on October 29, 1901. Czolgosz's actions were politically motivated, although it remains unclear what outcome he believed the shooting would yield.

Following the assassination of President William McKinley, Congress directed the Secret Service to protect the President of the United States as part of its mandate.

John F. Kennedy

The assassination of John F. Kennedy took place on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, at 12:30 p.m. CST (18:30 UTC). Kennedy was fatally shot while riding with his wife Jacqueline in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza. He was declared dead a half-hour after the shooting at Parkland Memorial Hospital.

Lee Harvey Oswald, an employee of the Texas School Book Depository in Dealey Plaza, was arrested shortly after at the Texas Theater. At 11:21 a.m. Sunday, November 24, 1963, while he was handcuffed to Detective Jim Leavelle and as he was about to be taken to the Dallas County Jail, Oswald was shot and fatally wounded in the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters by Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub operator who said that he had been distraught over the Kennedy assassination. The shooting by Ruby was televised, as Oswald's transfer was being covered by the media. Oswald was taken unconscious by ambulance to Parkland Memorial Hospital where he died at 1:07 p.m..

The ten-month investigation of the Warren Commission of 1963–1964 concluded that President Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald and that Oswald had acted entirely alone. They also concluded that Jack Ruby acted alone when he killed Oswald before he could stand trial. Nonetheless, polls conducted from 1966 to 2004 found that as many as 80 percent of Americans have suspected that there was a plot or cover-up.^[8][9] Doubts and conspiracy theories continue to persist.

Assassination attempts

Andrew Jackson

Illustration of Jackson's attempted assassination

• January 30, 1835: Just outside the Capitol Building, a house painter named Richard Lawrence attempted to shoot Jackson with two separate pistols, both of which misfired. Lawrence was apprehended after Jackson beat him severely with his cane. Lawrence was found not guilty by reason of insanity and confined to a mental institution until his death in 1861.^[10]

Abraham Lincoln

• February 23, 1861: The Baltimore Plot was an alleged conspiracy to assassinate President-elect Abraham Lincoln en route to his inauguration. Allan Pinkerton, eponymous founder of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, played a key role in protecting the president-elect by managing Lincoln's security throughout the journey. Though scholars debate whether or not the threat was real, Lincoln and his advisers took actions to ensure his safe passage through Baltimore.
• August 1864: A lone rifle shot missed Lincoln's head by inches (passing through his hat) as he rode in the late evening, unguarded, north from the White House three miles to Soldiers' Home (his regular retreat where he would work and sleep before returning to the White House the following morning). Near eleven o'clock pm, Private John W. Nichols of the Pennsylvania 150th Volunteers, the sentry on duty at the gated entrance to the Soldiers’ Home grounds, heard the rifle shot and moments later saw the President riding toward him "bareheaded." Lincoln described the matter to Ward Lamon, his old friend and loyal bodyguard.^[11][12]

William Howard Taft

• In 1909, Taft and Porfirio Díaz planned a summit in El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, a historic first meeting between a U.S. president and a Mexican president and also the first time an American president would cross the border into Mexico.^[13] Diaz requested the meeting to show U.S. support for his planned eighth run as president, and Taft agreed to support Diaz in order to protect the several billion dollars of American capital then invested in Mexico.^[14] Both sides agreed that the disputed Chamizal strip connecting El Paso to Ciudad Juárez would be considered neutral territory with no flags present during the summit, but the meeting focused attention on this territory and resulted in assassination threats and other serious security concerns.^[15] The Texas Rangers, 4,000 U.S. and Mexican troops, U.S. Secret Service agents, FBI agents and U.S. marshals were all called in to provide security.^[16] An additional 250 private security detail led by Frederick Russell Burnham, the celebrated scout, was hired by John Hays Hammond, a close friend of Taft from Yale and a former candidate for U.S. Vice-President in 1908 who, along with his business partner Burnham, held considerable mining interests in Mexico.^[17][18][19] On October 16, the day of the summit, Burnham and Private C.R. Moore, a Texas Ranger, discovered a man holding a concealed palm pistol standing at the El Paso Chamber of Commerce building along the procession route.^[20] Burnham and Moore captured and disarmed the would-be assassin within only a few feet of Taft and Díaz.^[21]

Theodore Roosevelt

• October 14, 1912: Three and a half years after he left office, Roosevelt was running for President as a member of the Progressive Party. Before a campaign speech in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, John F. Schrank, a saloon-keeper from New York who had been stalking him for weeks, shot Roosevelt once in the chest with a .38 caliber revolver. The 50-page text of his campaign speech folded over twice in Roosevelt's breast pocket and a metal glasses case slowed the bullet, saving his life. Schrank was immediately disarmed, captured and might have been lynched had Roosevelt not shouted for Schrank to remain unharmed.^[22]

After discerning he was not mortally wounded, Roosevelt finished his speech with the bullet still lodged in his chest.^[23] Afterwards, he went to a nearby hospital, where the bullet was found between his ribs. Doctors decided it would be too risky to remove it, so the bullet remained in Roosevelt's body for the rest of his life. He spent two weeks recuperating before returning to the campaign trail. Despite his tenacity, Roosevelt ultimately lost his bid for reelection.^[24]

At Schrank's trial, the would-be assassin claimed that William McKinley had visited him in a dream and told him to avenge his assassination by killing Roosevelt. He was found legally insane and was institutionalized until his death in 1943.^[25]

Herbert Hoover

• On November 19, 1928, President-elect Hoover embarked on a seven-week goodwill tour of several Latin American countries. While in Argentina, he escaped an assassination attempt by Argentine anarchists, led by Severino Di Giovanni, who tried to blow up his railroad car. The plotters had an itinerary but the bomber was arrested before he could place the explosives on the rails. Hoover did not refer to the incident. His complimentary remarks on Argentina were well received in both the host country and in the press.^[26]

Franklin D. Roosevelt

• On February 15, 1933, in Miami, Florida, Giuseppe Zangara fired five shots at Roosevelt. The assassination attempt occurred less than three weeks before Roosevelt was sworn in for his first term in office. Although the President-elect was not hurt, Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak was killed and five other people were wounded. Zangara was found guilty of murder and was executed on March 20, 1933. The writer John William Tuohy has suggested that Cermak, who was a strong foe of Al Capone's Chicago mob, was the intended target, not Roosevelt, but this is not a consensus of historians.^[27][28]

Harry S. Truman

• In the summer of 1947, pending the independence of Israel, the Zionist Stern Gang was believed to have sent a number of letter bombs addressed to the president and high-ranking staff at the White House. The Secret Service had been alerted by British intelligence after similar letters had been sent to high-ranking British officials and the Gang claimed credit. The mail room of the White House intercepted the letters and the Secret Service defused them. At the time, the incident was not publicized. Truman's daughter Margaret confirmed the incident in her biography of Truman published in 1972. It had earlier been told in a memoir by Ira R.T. Smith, who worked in the mail room.^[29]

• On November 1, 1950, two Puerto Rican pro-independence activists, Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola, attempted to kill Truman at the Blair House, where Truman lived while the White House was being renovated. In the attack, Torresola mortally wounded White House Policeman Leslie Coffelt, who killed the attacker with a shot to the head. Torresola also wounded White House Policeman Joseph Downs. Collazo wounded another officer, and survived with serious injuries. Truman was not harmed at all but was at risk. He commuted Collazo's death sentence, after conviction in a federal trial, to life in prison. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter commuted it to time served.^[30]

John F. Kennedy

• December 11, 1960: While vacationing in Palm Beach, Florida, President-elect John F. Kennedy was threatened by Richard Paul Pavlick, a 73-year-old former postal worker. Pavlick intended to crash his dynamite-laden 1950 Buick into Kennedy's vehicle, but he changed his mind after seeing Kennedy's wife and daughter bade him goodbye.^[31] Pavlick was arrested three days later by the Secret Service after being stopped for a driving violation; police found the dynamite in his car. Pavlick spent the next six years in both federal prison and mental institutions before being released in December 1966.

Richard Nixon

• April 13, 1972: Arthur Bremer carried a firearm to an event intending to shoot Nixon, but was put off by strong security. A few weeks later, he instead shot and seriously injured the Governor of Alabama, George Wallace, who was paralyzed for life (d. 1998). Three other people were unintentionally wounded.
• February 22, 1974: Samuel Byck planned to kill Nixon by crashing a commercial airliner into the White House.^[32] He hijacked the plane on the ground by force after killing a police officer, and was told that it could not take off with the wheel blocks still in place. After he shot both pilots (one later died), an officer shot Byck through the plane's door window. He survived long enough to kill himself by shooting. These events were portrayed in the film The Assassination of Richard Nixon.

Gerald Ford

• September 5, 1975: On the northern grounds of the California State Capitol, Lynette Fromme, a follower of Charles Manson, drew a Colt M1911 .45 caliber pistol on Ford when he reached to shake her hand in a crowd. She had four cartridges in the pistol's magazine but none in the firing chamber and as a result, the gun misfired. She was quickly restrained by Secret Service agent Larry Buendorf. Fromme was sentenced to life in prison, but was released from custody on August 14, 2009 (2 years and 8 months after Ford's death).^[33]

• September 22, 1975: In San Francisco, California only 17 days after Fromme's attempt, Sara Jane Moore fired a revolver at Ford from 40 feet (12 m) away.^[34] A bystander, Oliver Sipple, grabbed Moore's arm and the shot missed Ford, striking a building wall and slightly injuring taxi driver John Ludwig.^[35] Moore was tried and convicted in federal court, and sentenced to prison for life. She was paroled from a federal prison on December 31, 2007 after serving more than 30 years. (More than one year after Ford's natural death.)

Jimmy Carter

• Raymond Lee Harvey was an Ohio-born unemployed American drifter. He was arrested by the Secret Service after being found carrying a starter pistol with blank rounds, ten minutes before Carter was to give a speech at the Civic Center Mall in Los Angeles on May 5, 1979.

Harvey had a history of mental illness,^[36] but police had to investigate his claim that he was part of a four-man operation to assassinate the president.^[37] According to Harvey, he fired seven blank rounds from the starter pistol on the hotel roof on the night of May 4, to test how much noise it would make. He claimed to have been with one of the plotters that night, whom he knew as "Julio." (This man was later identified as a 21-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico, who gave the name Osvaldo Espinoza Ortiz.)^[36] At the time of his arrest, Harvey had eight spent rounds in his pocket, as well as 70 unspent blank rounds for the gun.^[38]

Harvey was jailed on a $50,000 bond, given his transient status, and Ortiz was alternately reported as being held on a $100,000 bond as a material witness^[36] or held on a $50,000 bond being charged with burglary from a car.^[38] Charges against the pair were ultimately dismissed for a lack of evidence.^[39]

Ronald Reagan

• On March 30, 1981, as he returned to his limousine after a speech at the Hilton Washington Hotel in the capital, Reagan and three other men were shot and wounded by John Hinckley, Jr.. Reagan was struck by a single bullet which broke a rib, punctured a lung, and caused serious internal bleeding. He was rushed to nearby George Washington University Hospital for emergency surgery and was then hospitalized for about two weeks. Upon release, he resumed a light workload for several months as he recovered.

Hinckley was immediately subdued and arrested at the scene. Later, he claimed to have wanted to kill the president to impress the teen actress Jodie Foster. He was deemed mentally ill and was confined to an institution. Besides Reagan, White House Press Secretary James Brady, Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy, and D.C. police officer Thomas Delahanty were also wounded in the attack. All three survived, but Brady suffered brain damage and was permanently disabled, and died in August 2014. His death was determined to be homicide because it was ultimately caused by the injury received in 1981. Although Hinckley remains in a mental institution today he frequently is allowed weekly trips to his family home. His family is trying to get him released. It has not been determined if formal murder charges will be filed against Hinckley as of August 17, 2014.

George H. W. Bush

• April 13, 1993: Fourteen men believed to be working for Saddam Hussein smuggled bombs into Kuwait to assassinate former President Bush by a car bomb during his visit to Kuwait University three months after he had left office.^[40] The plot was foiled when Kuwaiti officials found the bomb and arrested the suspected assassins. Two of the suspects, Wali Abdelhadi Ghazali and Raad Abdel-Amir al-Assadi, retracted their confessions at the trial, claiming that they were coerced.^[41] Bush had left office in January 1993. The Iraqi Intelligence Service, particularly Directorate 14, was proved to be behind the plot.^[42]

Bill Clinton

• January 21, 1994: Ronald Gene Barbour, a retired military officer and freelance writer, plotted to kill Clinton while the President was jogging. Barbour returned to Florida a week later without having fired the shots at the president, who was on a state visit to Russia.^[43] Barbour was sentenced to five years in prison and was released in 1998.
• September 12, 1994: Frank Eugene Corder flew a stolen single-engine Cessna onto the White House lawn and crashed into a tree. Corder, a truck driver from Maryland who reportedly had alcohol problems, allegedly tried to hit the White House. He was killed in the crash. The President and First Family were not home at the time.^[44]
• October 29, 1994: Francisco Martin Duran fired at least 29 shots with a semi-automatic rifle at the White House from a fence overlooking the north lawn, thinking that Clinton was among the men in dark suits standing there (Clinton was inside). Three tourists, Harry Rakosky, Ken Davis and Robert Haines, tackled Duran before he could injure anyone. Found with a suicide note in his pocket, Duran was sentenced to 40 years in prison.^[45]
• 1996: During his visit to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Manila in 1996, Clinton's motorcade was rerouted before driving over a bridge. Service officers had intercepted a message suggesting that an attack was imminent, and Lewis Merletti, the director of the Secret Service, ordered the motorcade to be re-routed. An intelligence team later discovered a bomb under the bridge. Subsequent U.S. investigation "revealed that [the plot] was masterminded by a Saudi terrorist living in Afghanistan named Osama bin Laden".^[46]

George W. Bush

• May 10, 2005: While President George W. Bush was giving a speech in the Freedom Square in Tbilisi, Georgia, Vladimir Arutyunian threw a live Soviet-made RGD-5 hand grenade toward the podium. The grenade was live and had its pin pulled, but did not explode because a red tartan handkerchief was wrapped tightly around it, preventing the safety lever from detaching.^[47] After escaping that day, Arutyunian was arrested in July 2005. During his arrest he killed an Interior Ministry agent. Convicted in January 2006, he was given a life sentence.^[48][49]

Barack Obama

• Cousins Tharin Gartrell and Shawn Adolf and their friend Nathan Johnson went to Denver allegedly planning to assassinate Obama during his acceptance speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, but officials said there was no substantial threat.^{[50][51][52][53]} The three men were arrested.^{[52][54][55][56][57][58]}
• A plot in Tennessee involved two white supremacists, Paul Schlesselman and Daniel Cowart, who planned to drive their car toward the Democratic nominee Obama and open fire with guns.^[59][60] They were arrested on October 22, 2008, before taking any action. Schlesselman and Cowart pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the threat in 2010 and were sentenced to 10 and 14 years in prison, respectively.^[59][61][62]
• A plot to assassinate Obama at the Alliance of Civilizations summit in Istanbul, Turkey, in April 2009 by a man of Syrian origins carrying forged Al-Jazeera TV press credentials was uncovered. The man confessed to the Turkish security services details of his plan to kill Obama with a knife with three alleged accomplices.^[63]
• In November 2011, Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, a man who believed he was Jesus and that Obama was the Antichrist, hit the White House with several rounds fired from a semi-automatic rifle. No one was injured. However, a window was broken.^[64]
• Another attempt was made in April 2013 when a letter laced with ricin, a deadly poison, was sent to President Obama.^[65]

Presidential deaths rumored to be assassinations

Zachary Taylor

On July 4, 1850, President Zachary Taylor fell ill and was diagnosed by his physicians with cholera morbus, a term that included diarrhea and dysentery but not true cholera. Cholera, typhoid fever and food poisoning have all been indicated as the source of the president's ultimately fatal gastroenteritis. More specifically, a hasty snack of iced milk, cold cherries and pickled cucumbers (pickles) consumed at an Independence Day celebration might have been the culprit.^[66] Taylor died five days later at 10:35 p.m. in the White House on July 9.

In the late 1980s, author Clara Rising theorized that Taylor was murdered by poison and was able to convince Taylor's closest living relative, as well as the coroner of Jefferson County, Kentucky, Dr. Richard Greathouse, to order an exhumation. On June 17, 1991, Taylor's remains were exhumed from the vault at the Zachary Taylor National Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky. The remains were then transported to the Office of the Kentucky Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. George Nichols. Nichols, joined by Dr. William Maples, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, removed the top of the lead coffin liner to reveal remarkably well preserved remains which were immediately recognizable as those of President Taylor. Radiological studies were conducted of the remains before small samples of hair, fingernail and other tissues were removed. Thomas Secoy of the Department of Veterans Affairs (and a direct descendant of Taylor's Democratic presidential opponent Lewis Cass), ensured that only those samples required for testing were removed and that the coffin was resealed. The remains were then returned to the cemetery and received appropriate honors at reinterment. The samples were sent to Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where neutron activation analysis revealed traces of arsenic at levels less than one percent of the level expected in a death by poisoning.^[67]

Warren G. Harding

In June 1923, President Warren G. Harding set out on a cross-country "Voyage of Understanding," planning to meet ordinary people and explain his policies. During this trip, he became the first president to visit Alaska (which was then a U.S. territory).^[68] Rumors of corruption in his administration were beginning to circulate in Washington by this time, and Harding was profoundly shocked by a long message he received while in Alaska, apparently detailing illegal activities by his own cabinet that were apparently unknown to him. At the end of July, while traveling south from Alaska through British Columbia, he developed what was thought to be a severe case of food poisoning. He gave the final speech of his life to a large crowd at the University of Washington Stadium (now Husky Stadium) at the University of Washington campus in Seattle, Washington. A scheduled speech in Portland, Oregon, was canceled. The President's train proceeded south to San Francisco. Upon arriving at the Palace Hotel, he developed pneumonia. Harding died in his hotel room of either a heart attack or a stroke at 7:35 p.m. on August 2, 1923. The formal announcement, printed in The New York Times of that day, stated that "A stroke of apoplexy was the cause of death." He had been ill exactly one week.^[69]

Naval physicians surmised that he had suffered a heart attack. The Hardings' personal medical advisor, homeopath and Surgeon General Charles E. Sawyer, disagreed with the diagnosis. Mrs. Harding refused permission for an autopsy which soon led to speculation that the President had been the victim of a plot, possibly carried out by his wife, as Harding apparently had been unfaithful to the First Lady. Gaston B. Means, an amateur historian and gadfly, noted in his book The Strange Death of President Harding (1930) that the circumstances surrounding his death lent themselves to some suspecting he had been poisoned. Several individuals attached to him, personally and politically, would have welcomed Harding's death, as they would have been disgraced in association by Means' assertion of Harding's "imminent impeachment." Means was later discredited for publicly accusing Mrs. Harding of the purported murder.

See also

• Curse of Tippecanoe
• List of incidents of political violence in Washington, D.C.
• Kennedy curse
• Thomas R. Marshall, vice president who was targeted by an assassin on July 4, 1916
• Threatening the President of the United States
• White House intruders
• Assassins (musical)
• Assassination Vacation

Notes

References

• Hammond, John Hays (1935). The Autobiography of John Hays Hammond. New York: Farrar & Rinehart. ISBN 978-0-405-05913-1. 
• Hampton, Benjamin B (April 1, 1910). "The Vast Riches of Alaska". Hampton's Magazine 24 (1). 
• Harris, Charles H. III; Sadler, Louis R. (2009). The Secret War in El Paso: Mexican Revolutionary Intrigue, 1906-1920. Albuquerque, New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press. ISBN 978-0-8263-4652-0. 
• van Wyk, Peter (2003). Burnham: King of Scouts. Victoria, B.C., Canada: Trafford Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4120-0901-0.