The Day Reagan Was Shot Trailer![]() Notes On the Day Reagan Was Shot: A Timetable to Power? What is going on in an administration when a Cabinet member cannot see the President himself alone? Why would an administration that was truly being run by a president be. The Day Reagan Was Shot. The author reveals previously undisclosed transcripts of the deliberations in the White House Situation Room. On this day in 1981, President Ronald Reagan was shot in the chest at the side entrance of the Hilton Washington hotel by John Hinckley Jr. Uncover detailed information about The Day Reagan Was Shot (2001). Explore interactive visualizations about the cast, ratings, awards, and more. Twenty years ago this spring, on March 30, 1981, President Ronald Reagan was shot by a young man named John W. The time was 2:30 p.m. As the president’s national security. President Ronald Reagan has been shot and wounded after a lone gunman opened fire in Washington. He is currently undergoing emergency surgery at George Washington University Hospital but there are unconfirmed reports he walked. Thursday marks the 25th anniversary of John Hinckley's attempt to assassinate President Ronald Reagan. Hinckley seriously wounded Mr. Reagan and permanently crippled his White House press secretary, James Brady. Rating is available when the video has been rented. A clip from the film The Day Reagan Was Shot. Notes On the Day Reagan Was Shot- -A Timetable to Power? What is going on in an administration when a Cabinet member cannot see the President himself alone? Why would an administration that was truly being run by a president be run in that fashion. Former Treasury Secretary Donald Regan recounts just such a problem in his book For The Record: From Wall Street To Washington (New York: St. Martin's, 1. 98. 8, 1. From first day to last at Treasury, I was flying by the seat of my pants. The President never told me what he believed or what he wanted to accomplish in the field of economics. I had to figure these things out like any other American, by studying his speeches and reading the newspapers. At first it was difficult to believe that such a management policy cold be intentional. His efforts in this area, I've learned, were gargantuan and Machiavellian. Some of the material here may be a bit repetitive (some of it appears in \ldblquote Alexander Haig and the First Edition of The Immaculate Deception in the present book), but it probably bears repeating and the reader may want to reflect on its implications.<. Tarpley and Chaitkin describe the nature of Bush's plans in detail, pointing out. These were the official, secret structures of the U. S. Nothing of this is to be found in the U. S. All of these structures revolved around a secret command role of the then vice- president, Bush . March 2. 5, l. 98l, Vice- President George Bush named to lead the U. S.'Crisis Management Staff' as part of the National Security Council System. March 3. 0, l. 98. President Reagan shot. May l. 4, l. 98. 2, Bush' s position as chief of all covert action and defacto head of U. S. But Tarpley and Chaitkin note that this role had been assumed much earlier- -that the Cabinet had internally approved the . Looking at the events that actually occurred on the day of the shooting. Five hours after Reagan was shot, Bush led a Cabinet meeting which decided 'officially' (though it is clear there was a internal debate led primarily by Alexander Haig- -whose subsequent behavior is best explained by the extreme nature of the . This, even though the official police investigation was not even started, much less completed at this time. In short, the Cabinet was clearly pressured by Bush to come to this conclusion. Hinckley was arrested by airport authorities in Nashville. Reagan had been in Nashville on Oct. Carter arrived there on Oct. Jodie Foster had indeed received a series of letters and notes from Hinckley, which she had passed on to her college dean. The dean allegedly gave the letters to the New Haven police, who supposedly gave them to the FBI. Hinckley had been buying guns in various locations across the U. S. Hinckley's parents' memoirs refer to some notes penciled by. Hinckley which were found during a search of his cell and which . No explanation was offered of how it was determined that Hinckley acted alone . According to a wire service account, 'The file made no mention of papers seized from Hinckley's prison cell at Butner, N. C., which reportedly made reference to a conspiracy. Those writings were ruled inadmissible by the trial judge and never made public.' The FBI has refused to release 2. Hinckley. He was remanded to St. Elizabeth Mental Hospital where he remains to this day, with no fixed term of service . Hinckley , sr., the gunman's father, to the U. S. Ainsworth's pedigree is impressive: he was a foreign area analyst for the State Department, an advisor during Vietnam, and chaired an international committee . The largest contributor to World Vision is the U. S. Agency for International Development. One bullet struck the President in the chest. Another inflicted a head wound on his press secretary, James S. Mc. Carthy, a Secret Service agent, was shot in the abdomen when he placed his body between the President and his assailant. A Washington police officer, Thomas K. Delahanty, was also wounded. Speaking in a whisper, he told me that shots had been fired at the President.. Adams told me that the President was being taken to George Washington Hospital. There were other wounded. I asked if the Secret Service knew who did the shooting. Adams had no information about that as yet.. On the way inside Adams told me for the first time that the President had been wounded. I immediately wen to Jim Baker's office. Most of the senior staff of the White House were gathered in Baker's office. Allen, the National Security Advisor. Haig agreed, so down we went. No formal orders or procedures were established. Questions were raised regarding executive authority, the 'football' . Haig put in a call to the Vice- President. They gave me the first information the Situation Room got on the assailant . This proved difficult. It was a German- made, Florida- assembled . Saturday night special. It had been sold to Hinckley by a Dallas pawnshop. The bullets were long- nose . I was told that the President's wound was probably from a ricochet. During the earlier moments, when the room was full of hustle and bustle, reports on the President's condition were fragmentary.. Weinberger reported he had stepped up the alert status of strategic forces.. Haig was quick to question this, asking very sharp and demanding questions. Weinberger remained calm but, judging by his tone of voice, was very annoyed at Haig's questioning his actions.. There were cries of 'Get that guy off!' and 'Why is he saying that?' and 'Who authorized that?' . He jumped up and left the room. Dick Allen slipped out of another door. A few moments later the rest of us saw Haig, with Allen at his side, on TV from the Whtie House press room, saying he was in charge, and so forth.* (*Folklore and my own memory notwithstanding, Haig never said that he was 'in charge.' His actual words were, 'As of now I am in control here, in the White House, pending return of the Vice- President and in close touch with him. If something came up, I would check with him, of course.'? Is he mad?' Weinberger said, 'I can't believe this. He's wrong; he doesn't have any such authority.' No one else commented except Casey, who said, . He asked me how it had happened. I said I couldn't account for it; I guess Al took it on himself. Haig talked to him; so did I. Murphy sent him coded messages when we found that we were not on a secure line when talking to Air Force Two. Weinberger chided Haig for what he called his misstatements on TV as to who was in charge. Haig told him to check his Constitution. Cap replied that he knew that in the absence of the President \i he \i. We Cabinet members had never been instructed on the chain of command under various circumstances, and as we had not been brought into NSC meetings, we knew nothing of battle plans and so on. At the end of the message describing the President's condition, someone had added the words, 'Brady died.' I announced this sad news to a stunned group. Allen asked for a moment of silent prayer. Apparently someone relayed this information to the group at the hospital and we got word back that it was not true. I ordered them to check and double- check. Meanwhile TV broke the same erroneous story- -only to have to retract it later. The Vice President arrived with Ed Meese . George asked for a condition report . It was determined that all Cabinet members had such clearance. I checked with the Vice President and Jim Baker, and it was decided that it would be a good idea for me to appear in order to show that all was calm. If the financial markets needed soothing, I could do that. Even less did the men gathered in the Situation Room know what action they were authorized to take or expected to take. But the Administration had been in place for only seventy days. These men were new to their jobs and new to each other. They performed remarkably well under the circumstances. After the fact, we learned that the threat to the President's survival had been far graver than we realized . Mc. Carthy with Philip W. Smith (New York: Dell, 1. Hinckley, Jr., started shooting at the President. The section's primary duty is to keep tabs on potential threats to the President and other senior government officials. It is an important job within the service, but not usually a particularly exciting one. Mostly it consists of conducting background checks and following up on bits and pieces of information on individuals who could pose a threat to anyone the Secret Service is protecting. My partner for the day was a young black agent named Danny Spriggs, who, after a promising college football career, had been drafted as a defensive back by the Dallas Cowboys before he joined the Secret Service. We would be the PI (Protective Intelligence) team for President Reagan's speech that day at the Washington Hilton. Normally there would have been a second, two- man team working with us, but due to illness and other demands on the office that day there were no other agents available to form a second team. The Secret Service's Office of Protective Intelligence uses computers to keep tabs on approximately 4. President. Of these, about 3. Senior Secret Service officials said that the FBI had never informed the service of this arrest. Stuart Knight later told a congressional investigating committee. But for whatever reason, Hinckley wasn't on the list of people considered potentially dangerous to the President when I made my check just three hours before he shot Reagan. Danny and I were standing to either side of the ballroom's main entrance to observe as many people as we could when they came in. Since someone could walk around it into the driveway, I went to that side of the crowd and positioned myself in line with the cameras, facing away from the doors through which the President would walk in a minute or two. It would be difficult for anyone to get through the camera crews and across the rope, but if someone tried to rush out of the crowd, I could quickly move across in front of the cameramen to stop him. The Day Reagan Was Shot. Twenty years ago this spring, on March 3. President Ronald Reagan was shot by a young man named John W. The time was 2: 3. As the President's national- security adviser, I was informed of the shooting almost at once and went immediately to the White House. A crowd of shocked but curious White House staff members had gathered in the office of James A. Baker, Reagan's chief of staff. Baker himself was at the hospital, along with the White House counselor Edwin Meese. Secretary of State Alexander Haig arrived at the White House shortly after I did. I asked Haig, Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan, the White House counsel Fred F. Fielding, the domestic adviser Martin Anderson, and David Gergen, a member of the White House staff, to accompany me to the Situation Room, located in the basement of the White House, secure behind electronic locks and guarded by uniformed Secret Service agents. That would prevent superfluous staffers from barging into the meeting, limit leaks, and effectively activate . The group was soon joined by Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger; Attorney General William French Smith; Transportation Secretary Drew Lewis; Richard Darman, a presidential deputy assistant; and Admiral Daniel Murphy, the Vice President's chief of staff. At about 3: 3. 0 Meese called from the hospital. We had virtually no information about the assailant or his motives, or about whether he had acted alone. Vice President Bush was in the air over Texas. The first assessments by the Pentagon revealed that more Soviet submarines than usual were off the East Coast. By tradition, and to encourage complete candor in the most- secret discussions and exchanges, there are no tape recorders allowed in the Situation Room's conference area. On this occasion, however, I considered a recording to be absolutely essential in order to preserve an indisputable record. I instructed my top assistant, Janet Colson, to bring my personal tape recorder to the conference room. The tape recorder was placed in the center of the table, in plain view of all participants. There was no surreptitious taping of this event, and no one objected. Following are selections from some of these tapes. They are being made public for the first time, twenty years after the event. Strategic Command (formerly the Strategic Air Command) and forces in Korea, whose normal condition is 4. After discussion about the location of the . We have a duplicate one here. HAIG: Get the football over here. ALLEN: There is one at the military aide's office. The football is in the closet .. I don't think we need the Chair of the Joint Chiefs over here, do you? Let's leave him over at the NMCC . This is a draft statement, but I want to put something else in it. FIELDING: Do you want any other Cabinet members? ALLEN: No, they should all be told to stand by. Here's the copy of that draft statement . You don't want the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs over here? WEINBERGER: Well, I want .. The conversation moved on for a time to Hinckley and to the condition of the press secretary, Jim Brady, badly wounded in the shooting. I'll have to testify on this, so we better get something started on hand- gun control. So anything that is said, before it's said, we'll discuss at this table .. And we discuss it and know what's going on. WEINBERGER: I have the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs coming on, Jones, in just a second. We're going to tell him to get alerts to the Strategic Air Command and such other units that seem to him to be desirable at this point. HAIG: What kind of alert, Cap? WEINBERGER: It's a standby alert .. Not here. HAIG: Right. DARMAN: Is that information not to be released up till .. ALLEN: It'll leak .. WEINBERGER: Well, until we know more about it. The alert, they'll probably put themselves on alert, but I just want to be sure. HAIG: Do we have a football here? Do we? ALLEN: Right there. REGAN: Al! Be careful! HAIG: Absolutely! That's why I toned down the message that was going out .. MURPHY: We've been down this path once before with Henry . The alert simply is that there are conditions which may require very quick actions. MURPHY: Are you sure that doesn't mean Defcon Three .. It's a matter of being ready for some later call .. HAIG: Yeah, I think the important thing, fellows, is that these things always generate a lot of dope stories, and everybody is running around telling everybody everything that they can get out of their gut .. The President, uh, as long as he is conscious and can function .. WEINBERGER: Well, that's right .. Needless to say, issues of legal authority were on everyone's mind. FIELDING: A rather technical thing is that the President can pass the baton temporarily under the law, and we're preparing that right now .. What are the legal .. FIELDING: It's being prepared right now. HAIG: That's the pass the baton to the Vice President .. FIELDING: On a temporary basis. It passes to him in writing from the President until the President rescinds it. HAIG: Has somebody gone into the Eisenhower precedent on this? I think we need that from a public- relations point of view. FIELDING: Well, we may not want to put it out. HAIG: No, the things you want to make note of are first, precisely what happened, notification of the Vice President, assembly of the key crisis Cabinet, preservation of continuity of command, and that it was handled. WEINBERGER (on the telephone to the Pentagon): No, I think what we want to do is increase the degree of alertness so that in the event there should be anything required shortly, that could be done within a minimum amount of time .. Gergen interrupted to ask a question, and Haig declared that he himself was constitutionally the person in charge. GERGEN: Al, a quick question. We need some sense, more better sense of where the President is. Is he under sedation now? HAIG: He's not on the operating table. GERGEN: He is on the operating table! HAIG: So the .. And that means right in this chair for now, constitutionally, until the Vice President gets here. GERGEN: I understand that. I understand that. HAIG: Yeah. The other Cabinet members and senior staff knew better. But Haig's demeanor signaled that he might be ready for a quarrel, and there was no point in provoking one. In any event Weinberger had the military command authority. WEINBERGER: We've got the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Joint Chiefs in the Military Command Center. The alert has been raised from a normal condition to a standby condition under which they can move to a much higher degree very quickly. There is no, there will be no publicity about it. And the degree of alertness at the moment is going to commanders only, so that there would not be a lot of leaks right away from the men. All of that on the basis that at this point it looks like an isolated incident, but there isn't enough information and we want to remain alert. So that's where the armed forces stand. At this point I moved a few feet from the Situation Room conference area to the adjacent communications center to speak on a secure telephone line with Meese, at the hospital. I brought the tape recorder with me. During those few minutes deputy press secretary Larry Speakes answered questions from the White House press corps. Asked who was running the government, Speakes responded, . Because I had been on the phone, I was unaware of what Speakes had said. HAIG: Why don't you come with me? Allen (to staff): Okay, I'll be back later .. HAIG: How do you get to the press room? ALLEN: Up here. HAIG: Yeah .. Speakes .. ALLEN: Did he walk in up here? HAIG: He's up there now. ALLEN: Christ almighty, why's he doing that? PRESS STAFFER: They want to know who's running the government. ALLEN: Oh, well, just a minute .. HAIG: We'll assemble them .. The Secretary of State! The Secretary of State! There was chaos in the press room. Speakes stood there, frazzled and slightly dazed, sensing that his remarks had caused a problem. Haig went directly to the rostrum. Until that moment he had been intensely focused on the crisis and had been steady, although testy and combative. Now I could see his knuckles turn white as he grasped the lectern; his arms shook and his knees began to wobble. I moved closer, thinking he might lose his balance or fall. Fortunately, the lectern shielded these involuntary body movements. Haig began his now famous presentation by describing actions we had taken in the Situation Room, adding mistakenly that . Who is making the decisions? HAIG: Constitutionally, gentlemen, you have the President, the Vice President, and the Secretary of State, in that order, and should the President decide he wants to transfer the helm to the Vice President, he will do so. As of now, I am in control here, in the White House, pending the return of the Vice President and in close touch with him. If something came up, I would check with him, of course. Personal footnote: In his book Caveat (1. Haig created a scenario in which I provided the rationale for his lunge to the press- room lectern: . He had not been part of our group. He had no current information. It was essential to reassure the country and the world that we had an effective government. As noted, I was not in the conference area, where Speakes's briefing could be heard, and as we arrived in the press room, I still did not know precisely what Speakes had said to cause Haig's alarm. The conversation took on a sharp and combative tone as the impact of Haig's impromptu press conference began to sink in. REGAN: Preliminary investigation by the FBI and the Secret Service, no plot, no reason why the suspect shouldn't be in the area. They're conducting a background investigation in Lubbock, Texas. He stayed at the Park Central Hotel here, which is one block from the Executive Office Building. WEINBERGER: We have the SAC bases .. The nearest submarine is . Al, are you listening? Not enough to worry about. They're in and out there all the time, but it is a close approach.
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