No dictator in his right mind would live in Washington's historic Blair-Lee House for a minute. Its severe, four-story facade rises almost flush with the sidewalk on broad, busy Pennsylvania Avenue. Its two entrances are only ten steps above street level. Unless the blinds are drawn, passers-by can peer up into its shutter-framed, white-curtained windows. But if Harry Truman had any misgivings for his safety when he moved into the old residence two years ago while the White House was being made over, he gave no sign of it. Only the Secret Servicemen worried: to them, Blair-Lee House was a perilous place. Agents with submachine guns were posted behind both front doors. Uniformed White House guards (who are under the direction of the Secret Service) were stationed at two sidewalk sentry booths and at posts along the curb. Day after day, month after month, fighting monotony, they doggedly worked their eight-hour shifts, watching the limousines which swept up to the house, the streetcars, trucks and cars which rumbled along out in the street, the pedestrians who sauntered day & night under the windows, the shoving throngs of the curious which clotted up when the President came out across the sidewalk. Nothing ever happened.
Faint Click. One quiet, unseasonably hot afternoon last week, a burly White House cop named Donald Birdzell was reacting like a bear in a zoo to the rigors of boredom and the demands of duty. He paced. Then he stood before the Blair House steps, got his weight back on his heels and stared solemnly toward the street. As he did so a sound—a faint, metallic click—disturbed him. He turned his head.
On the sidewalk, ten feet away from him, stood a neat, dark man in a pinstriped, blue-green suit. The man was silently and carefully aiming a German P-38 automatic pistol at him. It went off—just as Birdzell jumped, clawing for his own revolver. The guard bolted instinctively for the street—partly to draw the gunman's fire away from the President's quarters, partly to leave a clear field for the Tommy gunner behind the door. Then hell's own corn popper began to grind in front of Blair-Lee House.
The gunman pivoted, shooting. Birdzell, out in the streetcar tracks of Pennsylvania Avenue, turned and began firing back. A bullet hit one of his legs and he sank to one knee. Another bullet hit his good leg. He tumbled forward, and went on banging steadily away with his pistol held braced at arm's length on the pavement before him.
The Second Man. As other guards and Secret Service men went into action, a second neat, dark man darted up to the guards at the west sentry booth, yanked out a Luger and began shooting at point-blank range.
A uniformed private named Leslie Coffelt went down, dying, with bullets in his chest, stomach and legs; Plainclothesman Joseph H. Downs toppled over, shot in the stomach and chest. There was one last cacophony of shots, shouts and tinkling glass. The first gunman, bending over, frantically trying to reload, was hit and sprawled out, hat awry, heels kicking; the second lurched backward over a low boxwood hedge, stone dead with a bullet through his ears.