Read Online A Clear and Present Danger by Buck Sanders - Free Book Online
Authors: Buck Sanders
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peephole in the door to the private box reserved by the theatre for President and Mrs. Lincoln; he made certain that the door
could not be latched in the normal way from the inside; and he even constructed a device with which he could bolt the door
himself after he had gained entry for his murderous deed.
After killing Lincoln with a single shot, Booth injured himself in flight, actually breaking a leg. Even so, the President’s
security was so lax that a man with a broken limb managed to flee the city in the dark of the night.
But even the assassination of Abraham Lincoln failed to bring about proper and permanent Presidential protection.
Sixteen years later, President James A. Garfield was gunned down in a Washington railway depot some four months after being
sworn into office. Like John Wilkes Booth, Garfield’s assassin—one Charles J. Guiteau—was a man whose repeated public utterances
about assassinating the President should have guaranteed him a prominent place in even the crudest file of individuals to
be kept under surveillance and away from the vicinity of the President.
And even this Presidential assassination would not be a catalyst to Congressional action. William McKinley would have to fall.
It was on September 6, 1901, while President McKinley was attending the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo, New York, that
a young anarchist named Leon F. Czolgosz slowly moved through a throng around the President and his party, quietly removed
a .32 caliber Iver-Johnson revolver from his belt, and jammed it up against the President’s breast bone, firing twice before
being beaten senseless by a swarm of local police and a handful of soldiers accompanying the President.
On that occasion, the President’s guard had seemed adequate, in terms of the sheer number of men around him, and in terms
of accurate intelligence. Twice the schedule for McKinley to receive the public was postponed when his guards heard of anarchist
plots to kill him. But McKinley himself refused to cancel his appearance altogether, telling his aides, “Why, no one would
want to hurt me!”
Theodore Roosevelt became President upon McKinley’s death. He managed to convince the public and the Congress that the Presidency
offered the surest route to the grave since Russian roulette, and saw to it that the Treasury Department’s Secret Service
unit, busied heretofore with the formidable battle against rampant counterfeiting, was assigned the additional task of protecting
the President and the Vice President. It became the single most difficult job to be laid before the doorstep of a law enforcement
agency anywhere in the world.
Teddy Roosevelt himself would be the victim of an assassin’s attempt eleven years after assigning the Secret Service its sobering
responsibility. He was saved from death by gunfire when the would-be assassin’s bullet was slowed on its path to Roosevelt’s
heart by a thick manuscript of the speech he carried in his inside breast coat pocket.
In the next few decades, President Franklin D. Roosevelt would nearly be killed by Giuseppe Zangara, whose five shots squeezed
off at Roosevelt in a Chicago appearance between F.D.R.’s election and 1933 inauguration managed instead to kill Mayor Anthony
Cermak. Zangara, it was learned, had originally intended to kill lame-duck President Herbert Hoover, but decided at the last
minute on Roosevelt, as the newcomer would be a handier target.
Following F.D.R., President Harry S Truman would be the target of a pair of Puerto Rican nationalists bent on gaining world
attention through assassinating the President. Then Gerald Ford, in the mid 1970s, would twice be the target of assassins,
one of whom, “Squeaky” Fromme, had been a member of the Charles Manson murder cult. Richard Nixon would be stalked by one
Arthur Bremer, who, like Zangora before him, switched his sights and gunned down Presidential candidate George C.
peephole in the door to the private box reserved by the theatre for President and Mrs. Lincoln; he made certain that the door
could not be latched in the normal way from the inside; and he even constructed a device with which he could bolt the door
himself after he had gained entry for his murderous deed.
After killing Lincoln with a single shot, Booth injured himself in flight, actually breaking a leg. Even so, the President’s
security was so lax that a man with a broken limb managed to flee the city in the dark of the night.
But even the assassination of Abraham Lincoln failed to bring about proper and permanent Presidential protection.
Sixteen years later, President James A. Garfield was gunned down in a Washington railway depot some four months after being
sworn into office. Like John Wilkes Booth, Garfield’s assassin—one Charles J. Guiteau—was a man whose repeated public utterances
about assassinating the President should have guaranteed him a prominent place in even the crudest file of individuals to
be kept under surveillance and away from the vicinity of the President.
And even this Presidential assassination would not be a catalyst to Congressional action. William McKinley would have to fall.
It was on September 6, 1901, while President McKinley was attending the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo, New York, that
a young anarchist named Leon F. Czolgosz slowly moved through a throng around the President and his party, quietly removed
a .32 caliber Iver-Johnson revolver from his belt, and jammed it up against the President’s breast bone, firing twice before
being beaten senseless by a swarm of local police and a handful of soldiers accompanying the President.
On that occasion, the President’s guard had seemed adequate, in terms of the sheer number of men around him, and in terms
of accurate intelligence. Twice the schedule for McKinley to receive the public was postponed when his guards heard of anarchist
plots to kill him. But McKinley himself refused to cancel his appearance altogether, telling his aides, “Why, no one would
want to hurt me!”
Theodore Roosevelt became President upon McKinley’s death. He managed to convince the public and the Congress that the Presidency
offered the surest route to the grave since Russian roulette, and saw to it that the Treasury Department’s Secret Service
unit, busied heretofore with the formidable battle against rampant counterfeiting, was assigned the additional task of protecting
the President and the Vice President. It became the single most difficult job to be laid before the doorstep of a law enforcement
agency anywhere in the world.
Teddy Roosevelt himself would be the victim of an assassin’s attempt eleven years after assigning the Secret Service its sobering
responsibility. He was saved from death by gunfire when the would-be assassin’s bullet was slowed on its path to Roosevelt’s
heart by a thick manuscript of the speech he carried in his inside breast coat pocket.
In the next few decades, President Franklin D. Roosevelt would nearly be killed by Giuseppe Zangara, whose five shots squeezed
off at Roosevelt in a Chicago appearance between F.D.R.’s election and 1933 inauguration managed instead to kill Mayor Anthony
Cermak. Zangara, it was learned, had originally intended to kill lame-duck President Herbert Hoover, but decided at the last
minute on Roosevelt, as the newcomer would be a handier target.
Following F.D.R., President Harry S Truman would be the target of a pair of Puerto Rican nationalists bent on gaining world
attention through assassinating the President. Then Gerald Ford, in the mid 1970s, would twice be the target of assassins,
one of whom, “Squeaky” Fromme, had been a member of the Charles Manson murder cult. Richard Nixon would be stalked by one
Arthur Bremer, who, like Zangora before him, switched his sights and gunned down Presidential candidate George C.
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