(2 of 2)
The Secret Service keeps a list of some 25,000 people believed to pose potential threats to the President, and 300 to 400 considered especially dangerous. Yet none of the persons involved in wellknown assassination attempts since 1963 —Sirhan Sirhan, Arthur Bremer, Lynette ("Squeaky") Fromme, Sara Jane Moore and John Hinckley—ever appeared on the Secret Service list.
If the Service cannot always recognize —or stop—a potential assassin, can anything more be done to lessen the dangers? Many law enforcement officials recommend that Reagan wear a bulletproof vest when making public appearances.
Modern vests, made of fiber glass, are both lightweight and flexible.*Ted Gunderson, former head of the FBI's Los Angeles office, suggests that whenever possible, the President should exit a hotel or auditorium through a basement garage. The Secret Service argues that the President risks being trapped in a basement garage, and so prefers ushering him through an exit that leads to an open driveway—and the waiting limousine. Others recommend that the Secret Service start closing off streets around the exit to all spectators; some even suggest that the President entirely stop mingling and shaking hands with onlookers. Says Chicago Police Superintendent Richard Brzeczek: "It's time to consider keeping some distance between crowds and the President, offering them a fleeting glimpse instead of a slower wave."
But there are great drawbacks to isolating a President from the people he must serve. Presidents, like most U.S. politicians, relish contact with crowds; indeed, they may come to rely on that kind of interaction to keep them going in so grueling a job. Ronald Reagan has already demonstrated his fondness for pausing and responding to shouted cries of "Mr.
President! Mr. President!" as he moves about Washington — a practice his agents would dearly like to stop. Yet the ease with which an attack can take place was dramatically demonstrated to Reagan be fore last week's shooting. As then Candidate Reagan campaigned in Miami in November 1975, a college dropout named Michael Lance Carvin, 20, managed to break through the crowd and point a toy gun directly at him.
When an attack by a deranged loner occurs, there is not much that even the Secret Service can do. Sums up one senior agent: "We try to get our bodies between him and the bullets, and then get the hell out of there" — which is just what they did last Monday, efficiently and even heroically.
— By James Kelly.
Reported by Jonathan Beaty and Johanna McGeary /Washington
*If Reagan had been wearing only a "front-and-back" vest last week, his sides would have remained exposed and he probably would still have been wounded. Only the full, wrap-around model would have protected him.