Highlights of our coverage. You are watching American History tv 48 hours of programming on American History every weekend on cspan3. Follow us on twitter for information on our schedule of upcoming programs and to keep up with the latest history news. On march 30, 1981, a wouldbe assassin fired six shots at president Ronald Reagan outside the Washington Hilton Hotel two miles from the white house. Washington post reporter, del quentin wilber, author of rawhide down the nearassassination of Ronald Reagan met us on the sidewalk where the shooting took place, to tell his story of that day. Ronald reagan was leaving this hotel after delivering a speech to the aflcio. Reagan, a Longtime Union man himself was kind of excited to , give this speech. He actually rewrote it by hand. [applause] at 2 25, 2 26, 2 27, he emerges from this entrance behind this area, this is new, they built this after the shooting. Its a bunker, and if you look inside over here, youll see the entrance, the door, a steel door, where the president emerged and left. They built this actually this entrance especially for the president. When they built this hotel in the 1960s, they built this wonderful grand ballroom and they knew that for v. I. P. s, they would want their own security entrance so they built , it right here, ease of access for limousines. Whats interesting about it is, if you look uphere and see the curving driveway, the architects didnt consult the secret service in building the entrance. So they realized, the secret service, if they came up this way, stopped here and kept driving up, if they just kept the limo here for the president to come and go, the limousine would get stuck up there in the curves because it was so sloping and also there was police car stationed up there to keep people from coming down. By doing that if the cop didnt get the car started and they often stalled out back then, they couldnt get away and they could get trapped up there in an attack. So what they would have to do is they would leave the president here, back the limousine around, back it up and park it right around here. This sidewalk is smaller than it was then. But right about where the curve curb is, they would back the limousine up like this. So the limousine is facing out towards t street. The limousine is facing this way. The back door is open. Now whats cool about the back door is this is a lincoln continental, armored lincoln continental. About 13,000 pounds, it would stop a tank rifle round or something. This was a 1972 lincoln. They stopped making those backward doors in the late 1960s. I havent figured out why they would have the backwardopening doors, but the agents called them suicide doors. If they ever left them open when they drove, they would rip them off. They would not close. They had to make sure the doors were always closed. They parked right there. This had an attendant risk right . By doing this, the president would be out in the open. At around 2 00, 1 30, about that time, john hinckley, a deranged , troubled 25yearold from evergreen, colorado, who was obsessed with jodie foster, we all know, infamously obsessed with jodie foster. Hinckley is a really strange character and i tried to write him in the most balanced way possible. People differ on whether he was really insane at that moment. The jury decided that he was. He had an obsession with jodie foster and it had started a few years earlier, in 1976, he saw the movie taxi driver and began to fantasize about jodie foster. His life began to mirror travis bickell. The main character in a very violent film where bickell is a taxi driver, a former army vet who wants to kill a president ial candidate to impress a woman he admires. So he starts focusing on jodie foster who played a prostitute in that movie. And over time, it becomes more and more obsessive. He realizes in his mind that he wants to impress her. He thinks the only way he could impress her would be to shoot the president of the united states. He hangs out at the blair house during the transition in 1980, early stalking the president. 1981, watching the president elect. He actually stalked carter. In october 1980, he was in dayton, ohio and he got within arms reach of the president , he didnt bring his guns with him. He left them in the luggage at the bus station. He regretted that. So he had been stalking president s and stuff. He was in l. A. He takes a bus across country. In the psychological reports, he has not made up his mind to shoot the president. He does not know the president is in town. But he wants to take a bus from d. C. , to new haven to get foster. And hes envisioning himself, killing himself, killing her, in this orgy of violence. Hes at the Park Central Hotel and he buys and he buy as copy of the washington star newspaper and he flip it is open, on page a4, theres the president s schedule and there he is at the hilton. He said im going to take my little gun, my. 22caliber and go up there and see how close i can get and what could happen. He is waiting about 15 feet past where the open door of the limousine is. He has a gun in his pocket. It is loaded with bullets. He is waiting. Reagan comes out. He is 15 feet from the president. Theres agents surrounding him. Hinckley pulls out his gun and he envisions himself dying in a burst of gunfire, suicide by cop, suicide by secret Service Agent. And he starts shooting. Shots fired, shots fired. There are some injured. Mr. President [ gunshots ] theres a wealth of documentary material from this day that explains what happened. Three networks shot video of it. Still photographs, two really great still photographs, one was taken by ron edmonds, it was his fourth day as white house photographer for the a. P. He was around here somewhere. He shoots over the limousine and he has the great shots of par throwing reagan into the car. Then you have the white house photographer, who is trailing reagan in this area. And hes shooting pictures that way. And by doing, using those two pictures, you get a sense of whats happening. You watch the video, but its still all twodimensional. In the f. D. R. Reports that i dug up from this, theres some great diagrams that map out where everything is. They laid it out with tape measurements and stuff. That was very helpful. And ive come here few times. But coming here is kind of difficult. Because if you notice, this thing obviously wasnt here that day. They built this after two detect the president. And then you have the little gardening area is new and im told they put that in actually to keep spectators away from the wall where hinckley was. And the sidewalk is shorter. Hes like right here and he sees reagan right about there. Where is reagan . Reagan is right about where youre standing right there. So this far away . Yeah, about 15 feet. They say it is 15 feet. They measured it and reagan was 15 feet from hinckley when the shots were fired. If you go to a Basketball Court, any Basketball Court in the country and you get on the freethrow line and you look at it, youre, its just the distance of a free throw, thats how close he was, thats 15 feet. The secret service did, there are a lot of great reports they did on this. They interviewed all the agents who were there that day and a lot of witnesses. I forwarded those and got those. I was able to know what everyone said they did. That usually kind of matched up with what the video and the pictures showed. That was helpful. But it was helpful to get in their heads of what was happening. I interviewed them all, too. And i also got some fbi reports. There is a great f. B. I. Report no one has seen reagans f. B. I. Interview shortly after the shooting. That was sealed. I got it unsealed through my foia process. And reagan was coming out. He said he was coming out here and he saw the reporters, but he wasnt going it talk to the press. And you can infer from that, is that the reason he didnt want to talk to the press, he kind of made some stumbles and they wanted to keep him more on message during that period before. So he wasnt going to answer any impromptu questions, it wasnt worth it to him. He also said, if hinckley had only waited, because he was going to get on, he was going to climb onto the Running Board of the limousine, raise himself up and wave to about a group of about 200 spectators across the street. His back would have been to hinckley as he waved. But hinckley didnt wait. Hinckley started shooting. It is 2 27 p. M. And we know its 2 27 p. M. , because the moment the gunfire ends, secret Service Agent calls on the radio to the headquarters, the secret Service Headquarters at the white house. And an agent there looks up at their clock and finds out, notes its exactly 2 27 p. M. So he shoots, six shots. The first one hits jim braidy, the press secretary, in the head, he falls down. The second one hits tom delahany, a d. C. Police officer. Who had turned around to check the president s progress. And he turns around and shouts im hit. Now the path to the president is clear, its wide open. He has an effective range of 20 to 30 feet. Hes done target practice and can hit stationary targets at 20 to 30 feet. Jerry parr, the lead secret Service Agent, in. 4 of a second. Ive tried to time it its very difficult. In. 4 of a second, has grabbed the president of the united states, thrust him behind tim mccarthy, another secret Service Agent who swivelled his body and takes a bullet in the chest. The first bullet hits braidy the second one hits delanaty and the third one complies over rag reagan reagans head and lodges in a window across the street. The fourth one hits mccarthy who is turned like this to take the bullet. Hes not wearing a bulletproof chest. Just as theyre behind him, jerry park credits tim mccarthy for helping save the president s life. The next bullet hits the armored limo window. So the bulletproof window. Just as you see the president flashing behind it, with jerry parr pushing him in the limousine. And the sixth one cracks across the parking lot. No one knows where that went. And then jerry parr gets him in the limo, someone slams the door shut. And the driver of the limo, a former army veteran, real stressful job driving the president. He said not because youre worried about situations like this. But youre always worried about dropping off the president at the wrong entrance. Its usually embarrassing. He would never live it down. Its hugely stressful. Hes waiting, he could hear the shots through the open door. If the door would have been closed he wouldnt have been able to hear the shots because its so heavily plated. He shuts the door, hes got to get out of here. In his mind, hes worried because he saw his buddy, tim mccarthy fall to the ground and he didnt want to run over mccarthy with a 13,000pound limousine. It would probably kill him. So they head straight up connecticut avenue. Hinckleys final shot, the sixth one had ricochetted off the back Quarter Panel of the limousine. The match it to the bullet. And as reagans diving it hits him right here in this side, right around here. And lodges an inch from his heart. Were going to get in the taxi and follow the ride of the limousine. And do you think this is roughly the way it was parked . This is roughly pretty close, it was this direction, like this. Out there towards t street and the rear door, the rear part of the limo was almost touching the sidewalk. Remember, the sidewalk is smaller here than it actually was. So right about here is probably where the door was. Youre going to go out here and make a left down connecticut and make a right on, continue connecticut down 17th street. And then make a right on pennsylvania. Can you do that . So paint us the picture inside the limo while were driving here. So jerry parr, the agent looks out the window and sees theres a pock mark on that window. Your window. And he also notices the three guys down on the sidewalk. He says, this is bad. There has been a shooting. He props reagan up in the seat youre in. He props him up. Reagan is kind of like this. Like a tired basketball player. And he runs his body, inside his coat, and his hands through his hair to check to see if theres any blood. And theres no blood, he feels pretty good and he tells the driver to tell his radio because jerry parr has lost his radio. It busted off in the melee and he lost his transponder, so he cant use his radio to tell everyone what theyre doing. So he tells the driver to use the microphone to radio down to headquarters that theyre heading back to the white house. They use the code word, crown. And he takes the radio from drew and says, rawhide is ok. Rawhide is ok. Rawhide is Ronald Reagans code name. Thats where i got the title of the book from. Rawhide is ok. Followup rawhide is ok. [inaudible] you want to go to hospital or back to the white house . Were going to crown. Back to the white house, back to the white house. Rawhide is ok. So theyre heading back now towards the white house. And drew is flying, the driver is just hurtling down connecticut avenue. Its closed to traffic, there wouldnt be here in 1981, march 30th, because they closed the streets for the limousines expected ride back. As theyre driving along now remember the limousine is alone. They have no support. Theyve left the motorcade behind. The followup car, the armored followup car with two guys brandishing uzis finally catches up behind them. And theyre going along. And the police cars are starting to now follow up and the Police Motorcycles are getting ahead of the limousine. As theyre going through, right about here, jerry parr realizes that something is wrong with the president. Because hes having trouble breathing, he says hes having trouble breathing, i dont know. He said whats wrong, is it a heart attack, is it your heart . And president reagan starts dabbing blood from his lips and from parrs training he knows thats oxygen from his lungs, that isnt good. So jerry parr has to make a call. This guy is struggling, they have a medical facility at the white house, its the most secure place in the world. He doesnt know if its world war iii, or he can go to the hospital. But if he goes to the hospital and reagan is not hurt, this could set off a Major Economic crisis. These are heavy questions. He says you know what, i cant risk it. I got to go to the hospital. Which by the way, had no agents at it. There was no security. There could have been other assassins in the city waiting for the president there. He makes that call and they head to the hospital. Theyre going to go to the hospital. So they get on the radio and say, were going to George Washington emergency room. And parr gets on the radio and says, lets hustle. Go ahead, drew. Roger, we want to go to the emergency room of George Washington. Thats a roger. Go to George Washington fast. Roger. Get an ambulance. He cant say on the radio they dont use reagans name. They know people, assassins and news media could be listening to the open radio communications, so they used code names. So they abandoned the crown. The white house, to go to the hospital. Now at about this time, Marian Gordon, who is kind of an unsung hero of the day, one of the few female agents in the secret service, she devised the motorcade that day and the routes. And she even drove the routes to the hilton and to the hospital and to the white house. She wanted do make sure that everyone knew where they were going. The limo driver knew all the routes. He didnt have it practice them. He already knew them. Theyre heading down and Marian Gordon realizes she doesnt have a radio to communicate with the police cars that are in front. And shes in the front right seat of the spare limousine. The armored limousine. She said, these cars, these cops are going to keep going to the white house because they dont know where were going. They think were going to the white house, we better get up in front of the president ial limousine. So she tells the driver, you better get in front of that president ial limousine. Because if hes going to lose his Police Escort in a few seconds and we cannot have, she didnt want drew to get, theres a lot going on in this car, he has a lot to do. She doesnt want him to have to think about how to get to the hospital and she wanted to be a battering ram. They didnt know what was going on in the world as ive said before. They dont know if enter are other people working to get him. So she needs to make sure if theres a car that gets in front of the limousine. She has to take the hit, not the president. Meanwhile, the president , his condition seems to have having a harder time breathing and reagan himself said it felt like someone hit him with a hammer. He felt so bad. He was struggling to breathe. So here its interesting, right . Theyre driving down here and the spare limousine is in front. And its a hard pivot to make. Because its an angled street. And meanwhile, the police cars keep going. Ive gotten the d. C. Police tapes. They were not that helpful. Theyre amazing, you can hear a guy going, donald bell, who is a sergeant, one of the lead cars goes, my god, theyve turned to the hospital. Theyve turned to the hospital. They start going this way. Theyre going along, heading towards the circle. And the driver asked jerry parr, do we want to go the wrong way around the circle to get there faster. We want to go the wrong way around the circle and jerry is like no, no, no. We want to go around. Jerry didnt want to hit any oncoming traffic. It would be too dangerous. The old hospital is at 22nd. Its a big, world war iiera bunker building, really ugly. Theres the new hospital. Thats where my two sons were born, at that hospital. They run around the circle they pull in. The going to the emergency room. Parr jumps out. Reagan indicates he wants to get out on his own. And reagan, parr says, he wants to be a cowboy. You know. So reagan gets up, walks out. He hitches up his pants, even, to get them right. He walks to the door, everyone follows him. An agent has scouted ahead of them. The medical crews are just get dlg and the emergency crews ask him how hes doing. He looks really ashen. He doesnt look very good. He collapses, bam, he falls to the ground. His knees hit the ground, and ray shallic and jerry parr catch him. A port of people carry him to the trauma they. The nurses, nurses, paramedic, a doctor who initially treat him all thought he was going to die, he looked that bad. They thought, this guys dead. This is a nightmare. Their hands are shaking. They start instantly doing the medical protocols to save his life. Theyre throwing in ivs, getting long lines on him. Someone has got an oxygen mask on him to give him air. You have to stabilize someones Blood Pressure really fast hell go into shock, it will kill you. A nurse cant feel his Blood Pressure. She has to palpate the brachial artery. And she registers 60. Anything below 90 is in shock. He was in a lot of trouble. They dont know he is in shock. They think maybe he had a heart attack in. Jerry parr and some others tell the nurse, we think he broke a rib in the limousine. When they came hurtling in the limousine. He landed on the transom, the transmission, and jerry parr suspects he broke a rib and punctured a lung. This is clearly going bad. Jerry parr is praying, please let this guy live. Hes thinking back to kennedy. We cant lose another one. This is crazy. They throw the ivs, theyre following all the proper protocols which had really only come into existence the last ten years. Reagan really is lucky. Not only did the secret service ramp up their training to save his life. But at the same time that hospital only became a certified level one trauma hospital two years before reagan was shot. And even before that, emergency medicine was the backwater of the medical establishment and they had only just begun to realize how to treat victims of trauma and save them. What they had begun to realize is you have to treat first and diagnose later. Dont worry about diagnosing. Dont try to fix stanley cup. Dont try to fix stuff. You stabilize it, get the Blood Pressure up. Stop the bleeding. Dont let them go into shock. Stabilize, stop the bleeding and then fix whats wrong. Theyre doing now, going crazy, theres no doctor ordering people what to do. Everyone knows exactly what they have to do at that second. Because if you have to think you make mistakes, if you have to think, it takes too much time. Everyone does it. Reagans Blood Pressure goes up. He begins to be stabilized. You know, a doctor comes in, realizes you know, they roll him over, trying to feel whats wrong. They cant hear any breath sounds in his left lung. They roll him over, a surgical intern, i guess he was an anesthesia intern at that moment comes in and he had been milling about. He put the oxygen mask on reagans face until someone else came. He is a vietnam veteran. He had been shot in vietnam. He had been in a helicopter and almost died. He was rescued in a rice paddy. They roll him over and he looks down and says, hey, thats a bullet hole. Its a little slit. The bullet had flattened and hit him like a buzz saw. It tumbles through and tears up some arteries. That is why hes bleeding. Oh, man, he must be filling with blood. And or air. So they get a chest tube. Dr. Joe giordano, who had established a trauma umtnit and made the emergency room today what it is then. Takes over and inserts a chest tube. Blood starts pouring out. Blood just keeps coming and theyre like, uhoh. Usually in 85 of gunshot victims in the chest, chest tubes stop the bleeding. Why . You drain the blood. The lung reexpands. But its still coming. Its still coming. The blood wont stop. This is starting to concern them. They get ben aaron, the chief thoracic surgeon at the hospital. Realizes we have to take this guy to surgery. We have to fix him. At 2 57 p. M. , a doctor took notes and i used the notes to build a timeline, not even a halfhour after he had been shot, they start wheeling him to the o. R. And this is where reagan delivers some of his best lines just before being delivered to the o. R. He sees his wife. And he reprizes a line that jack dempsey used in his world championship, honey, i forgot to duck. He really said it. The doctors heard him say it. People always wonder, did he really say is that stuff . He said everything. These werent made up by republicans or his administration. He said this stuff. Then as hes wheeled to the o. R. , he says jim baker and ed meese who had rushed here to talk to him. And he sees mike deaver, these are his three top aides and hes, whos minding the store . Hes cracking jokes. So they wheel him to the o. R. Heres reagan going into the operating room. He believes the role of president is his role to play. Its a role that would he pass up a great operatingroom moment . Couldnt pass up a good operating room moment. I cant get in his head. He leans up on his shoulder, takes off the oxygen mask and says, i hope youre all republicans to the doctors. Joe giordano who set up the trauma unit, who saved reagans life the third time this day says, mr. President , today were all republicans, thats ironic because joe giordano is about as liberal as they come. The doctors and nurses suspect that when he was in the o. R. , he knew he needed them to act normally and professionally and he needed to reduce the tension in the room. Thats why he did that. He was in the hospital for 11, until april 11th. 12 days after the shooting. And 13 days total. And when he was in the operating room, he went through surgery, ben aaron retrieved the bullet. And i interviewed, fascinating how routine the hospital tried to keep things. During his surgery, aaron, a very bythebooks, former military man, wanted to insure his own team was there, his normal team. Even had a 31yearold surgical intern with him. And the 31yearold surgical intern, david reached into the president s chest and pulled the president s beating heart aside with his hand to give ben aaron more room to find the bullet. They had to find the bullet. Think of that 31yearold, the president s heart in his hand, thats a powerful moment. They find the bullet, stop the bleeding, stitch him up, send him to the recovery room. Where he again regales the room with oneliners he had written by hand. The Reagan Foundation let me read these notes. The 1991, the 10th anniversary of the shooting. Reagan came here for an Anniversary Event and to support the brady bill for gun control. Which was a big deal for reagan. And they named the emergency room the Ronald Reagan institute of emergency medicine. In the secret service was realizing the were a lot of political assassinations could we lost robert kennedy, Martin Luther king, kennedy in 1963. Not a lot changed in the training culture. In the 70s, a bunch of agents out in l. A. Started training better. How to react in a splitsecond. And they adopt this kind of training to improve how quickly they react. So the secret Service Agents like jerry parr, Tim Macarthur react almost instantaneously to gunfire. If you look at what happened to kennedy and george wallace, they were debacles. Kennedy was shot in the neck and the driver keeps driving straight. No evasive maneuvers at all. They were not trained. They were not trained to react without thinking. Thats interesting, theyre prepared. But yet they let him walk out like this. Inside they had bombsniffing dogs check the speech before they went in they checked the names with everyone who came in contact with the president. But yet they let an unscreened rope line, 15 feet from the president wide open and the guy has a gun. So theres this incongruity irreconcilable something going on with the secret service where theyre prepared for the worst, but they dont try to prevent the worst. And thats something its done you have bunkers like this. When the president visits a hotel that doesnt have a garage they can pull into or this kind of thing, what they do is they they build a tent. So they did that. They also used magnetometers. The agent that saved his life, they started installing metal detectors at the white house after this. Jerry parr seized an inordinate amount of guns from old ladies from the south who came to visit the white house. If you look at the last 30 years, no president has been shot at. There are things that make us concerned about their safety. The socialites from virginia who snuck into the white house and shook obamas hand. They didnt have weapons. But you dont know what if the guy had been a karate master or done something to kill the president. The guy who threw his shoes at bush in iraq. We dont know what could have been in those. In this open society, it is a difficult job to have. I found it interesting that this day played such a key role. Played such a key role in reagans ultimate success. Whats amazing to me is that in mid march, you know, two weeks before the shooting, theres a poll that showed reagan had the lowest Approval Rating of any president at that time in the first term. Now its 59 Approval Rating, which is really low for a president in his honeymoon period. When we think back, crushed carter in a landslide, everyone loved Ronald Reagan, but its not true. He had controversial policies, stuff about el salvador coming up. He wanted to cut spending, lower taxes and those were controversial things at the time, increase defense spending. People were unsure about him. He gets shot. He performs amazingly this day. People begin to separate the man they admire from the politics as a leader and he gets a lot accomplished after this moment in the next year. And it also forms a bond between him and the public. Lou cannon who may be probably the most esteemed reagan biographer told me that what this day did, they really, reagans character under fire and his heroism, he cracked jokes in the emergency room, he cracked jokes in the o. R. , he cracked jokes after, kind of laughing at death. And people saw this on tv. It was a reallive event. The dawn of the 24hour news cycle. People were drawn to their televisions across the country and they felt like it was their aunt or their uncle or their grandfather who was shot and they formed that bond with him and i think that carried him through. It kept him from getting a lot more trouble in places where other president s would have faced a lot rougher time