List of United States Presidential assassination attempts

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This is a list of U.S. Presidential assassination attempts. There have been seventeen 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, and two others were injured. Additionally, some authors have theorized that two Presidents who died in office from sudden, unexpected illnesses, Zachary Taylor and Warren G. Harding, may have been the victims of assassinations.

Contents 1 Successful assassinations attempts 1.1 Abraham Lincoln 1.2 James A. Garfield 1.3 William McKinley 1.4 John F. Kennedy 2 Unsuccessful assassination attempts 2.1 Andrew Jackson 2.2 Theodore Roosevelt 2.3 Franklin D. Roosevelt 2.4 Harry S. Truman 2.5 John F. Kennedy 2.6 Richard M. Nixon 2.6.1 First assassination attempt 2.6.2 Second assassination attempt 2.7 Gerald R. Ford 2.7.1 First assassination attempt 2.7.2 Second assassination attempt 2.8 Jimmy Carter 2.9 Ronald Reagan 2.10 George H.W. Bush 2.11 Bill Clinton 2.11.1 First assassination attempt 2.11.2 Second assassination attempt 2.12 George W. Bush 3 Presidential deaths rumored to be assassinations 3.1 Zachary Taylor 3.2 Warren G. Harding 4 References

[edit] Successful assassinations attempts

[edit] Abraham Lincoln

Main article: Abraham Lincoln assassination

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; Lincoln died the next morning. ^[1] 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.^[2]

[edit] James A. Garfield

Main article: James A. Garfield assassination

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 was shot twice in the back by Charles J. Guiteau, a man who had previously petitioned the Garfield administration to appoint him ambassador to France.^[3] Garfield succumbed to his wounds nearly three months later (19 September), a death hastened by poor care from his doctors.^[4] 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".^[5]

[edit] William McKinley

Main article: William McKinley assassination

September 6, 1901: Attending the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, president William McKinley was shot twice in the chest by anarchist Leon Czolgosz. Coincidentally, the newly-developed X-ray machine was displayed at the fair, but it was thought of merely as a technological novelty; no one thought to use it on McKinley to search for the bullet, a procedure that might have saved his life.^[6] McKinley died of his wounds on 14 September, and Czolgosz was later executed by electrocution.^[7]

[edit] John F. Kennedy

Main article: John F. Kennedy assassination

November 22, 1963: While traveling in an open car in Dallas, Texas with Texas Governor John Connally and their wives, president John Fitzgerald Kennedy was shot and mortally wounded by rifle fire. He was pronounced dead 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,^[8] but the conclusions dissatisfied the majority of the American people.^[9] In the late 1970s the House Select Committee on Assassinations supported the majority of the Warren Report's conclusions, but also concluded based on controversial sound recording evidence that some sort of conspiracy was possible, a possibility the Warren Commission had not fully investigated.^[10] The assassination has been fodder for many conspiracy theories.

[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 (4 m) of Jackson and the other at point-blank range.^[11] Lawrence was apprehended after Jackson beat him with a 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: Three and a half years after he left office, Roosevelt was running for President as a member of the Progressive Party. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, John Schrank, a saloon-keeper from New York, 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. Amidst the commotion, Roosevelt yelled out "Quiet! I've been shot." 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. Roosevelt, remembering that Mckinley died after operations to remove his bullet, chose to have his remain. 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.^[12]

[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. 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. Some 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.^[13][14]

[edit] Harry S. Truman

Main article: Truman assassination attempt

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.^[15] 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.^[16]

[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.^[17] 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 spent the next six years in both federal prison and mental institutions before being released in December 1966.

[edit] Richard M. Nixon

[edit] First assassination attempt

April 14, 1972: Milwaukee, Wisconsin native Arthur Bremer arrived in Ottawa, Ontario on April 10 and spent five days in Canada's national capital in an effort to shoot and kill President Nixon, who was visiting the country during this time. On April 14, Nixon made a public appearance in a limousine at Parliament Hill, which Bremer attended, carrying a loaded revolver in his pocket. The presence of Vietnam War protesters and Canadian nationalists, however, led to increased security surrounding the President, and Bremer had great difficulty getting within firing range of Nixon. He did manage finally to get close enough, but the President was traveling by in his limousine with the windows closed, and Bremer was unsure whether any bullets would go through the glass of Nixon's limo. As a result, he didn't open fire and the President sped past unharmed. The following month Bremer shot U.S. Democratic Presidential candidate George Wallace, lodging a bullet in his spine and leaving him paralyzed for life.

[edit] Second assassination attempt

February 22, 1974: Samuel Byck, diagnosed with bipolar disorder, planned to kill Nixon by crashing a commercial airliner into the White House.^[18] 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. The events surrounding this assassination attempt were portrayed in the film 'The Assassination of Richard Nixon'.

[edit] Gerald R. Ford

[edit] First assassination attempt

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.^[19]

[edit] Second assassination attempt

September 22, 1975: In San Francisco, California, Sara Jane Moore fired a revolver at Ford from 40 feet (12 m) away.^[20] The shot missed Ford because a bystander, Oliver Sipple, grabbed Moore's arm.^[21] Moore was sentenced to life in prison.^[22] Sara Jane Moore was paroled on Monday, December 31, 2007 from a federal prison after serving more than 30 years.

[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.^[23] 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. Charges against him were dismissed for lack of evidence.^[24]

[edit] Ronald Reagan

Main article: Reagan assassination attempt

March 30, 1981: John Hinckley, Jr. fired five 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.^[25] Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity. He remains in St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington D.C.. Hinckley was trying to impress actress Jodie Foster by mimicking a scene from the movie Taxi Driver.^[26] 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 (See Curse of Tippecanoe).

[edit] George H.W. Bush

April 13, 1993: Sixteen men, in the alleged employment 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.^[27] 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.^[28] The Iraqi Intelligence Service, particularly Directorate 14, was accused of being behind the plot.^[29]

[edit] Bill Clinton

[edit] First assassination attempt

September 13, 1994: Frank Eugene Corder, a 38-year-old truck driver from Maryland, committed suicide by crashing a two-seat, propeller-driven Cessna 150 aircraft onto the grounds of the White House. He apparently tried to hit the building. The plane touched down on the South Lawn and crashed through the branches of a magnolia tree planted by Andrew Jackson before coming to rest in a crumpled heap two stories below the Clintons' bedroom. At the time, President Clinton and his family were sleeping at Blair House, while repairs were being made to the ventilation system in the White House residence. Corder had no ill will toward Clinton and may have chosen the White House as a crash site for the publicity value. ^[30]

[edit] Second assassination attempt

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.^[31]

[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 61 feet (18 m) from the podium after hitting a girl, but did not detonate because of a chance malfunction in its detonator.^[32]

Arutinian was arrested in July 2005. He was convicted in January 2006, and was given a life sentence.^[33][34]

[edit] Presidential deaths rumored to be assassinations

[edit] Zachary Taylor

On July 4, 1850, President Zachary Taylor 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 consumed at an Independence Day celebration might have been the culprit. ^[35] By July 9, Taylor was dead.

In 1991, with permission from his descendants, Taylor's body was exhumed, and Larry Robinson and Frank Dyer conducted an autopsy at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. At the exhumation, observers noted that Taylor's body, while somewhat decomposed, was still instantly recognizable as the 12th President — Taylor's brow ridge remained intact. Investigating the possibility of assassination by means of deliberate poisoning, Dyer and Robinson detected traces of arsenic and sent the results to a Kentucky medical examiner, who determined the quantity of arsenic present — there is a faint amount of arsenic present naturally in the human body — was several hundred times less than there would have been had he been poisoned with arsenic.^[36] Despite these findings, assassination theories have not been entirely put to rest. Michael Parenti devoted a chapter in his controversial 1999 book History as Mystery to what he called "The Strange Death of Zachary Taylor". In it he speculates that Taylor was assassinated and that his autopsy was botched.

[edit] 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.^[37] 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 previously 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. Arriving at the Palace Hotel, he developed pneumonia. Harding died 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.^[38]

Naval physicians surmised that he had suffered a heart attack; however, this diagnosis was not made by Dr. Charles E. Sawyer, the Surgeon General, who was traveling with the presidential party. 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. 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". Although Means was later discredited for publically accusing Mrs. Harding of the murder, enough doubts surround the President's death to keep reputable scholars open to the possibility of murder.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] References

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