12 

Assassins’ Target

MEETING WITH THE PRESIDENT

August 26, 1975

6:40 to 7:18 p.m.

Alone

I told him that there were complaints about the Secret Service and that I personally thought they were out of line in Chicago and Milwaukee. The President said there was some rumors of threats—maybe that had something to do with it.

DICK, if there were rumors of threats, you or I should have been told and we weren’t. WHAT WENT ON. We should make sure that [Special Agent in Charge Richard] Keiser doesn’t tell the President rumors like that without telling you or me.

The President said I want to bend over backwards to have those people to not be offensive. I said I was going to talk to Keiser. He said fine.¹

In any presidency there is an inherent tension between the requirement to do everything reasonable to protect a President’s safety and a President’s understandable desire to meet and shake hands with fellow Americans. In September 1975, one year into the Ford presidency, two events brought that tension front and center in dramatic fashion.

Only a few weeks earlier, David Packard, a senior advisor who had been a founder of the Hewlett-Packard company and had served as the Deputy Secretary of Defense in the Nixon administration under Secretary of Defense Mel Laird, had come to the White House to discuss with the President a challenging but important issue. Given the unique circumstances resulting from the resignation of both a Vice President and a President in recent years, the issue he wanted to discuss was what would take place in the event President Ford did not survive his presidency. This was a critically important and a historically unique question. In our lifetimes, President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated, and there had been concerns about President Nixon’s health during the long Watergate crisis. David Packard and I agreed it was important to raise these issues with the President: questions of command and control of America’s nuclear arsenal and what actions might have to be taken in the event of still another assassination or the incapacity of the President and the Vice President. Ford asked for a briefing on the matter and I had suggested that the Vice President have a separate briefing as well.²

But these thoughts were not at the front of our minds, at least not then. The summer of 1975 had been filled with other issues and concerns. Betty Ford, for example, had appeared on 60 Minutes, talking openly about things most other First Ladies had avoided—such as her outspoken support for an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution. She also got quite personal, telling interviewer Morley Safer she would probably try marijuana if she were a teenager, that she’d seen a psychiatrist, and that “I wouldn’t be surprised” if her daughter told her she had had an affair. The unusually forthcoming First Lady sparked a sensation across the country and led a fair number of Ford aides to raise questions about her effect on the Republican Party’s conservative base. I, for one, believed you’d be howling into the wind by trying to tell Betty Ford what she could or could not say. Over time, as it became clear Americans across the spectrum admired Betty’s outspokenness and general zest for life, the worries eased.³

The summer of 1975 also featured a continuation of some hardly unprecedented differences between various officials—Bob Hartmann was suspected of leaking stories to the media against Henry Kissinger, which Kissinger, understandably, was not happy about. He was determined to identify the leaker. “He may have a legitimate gripe,” I advised the President in August, “but you do not want to have your administration get like Nixon’s did about that problem of leaks.”⁴ Vice President Rockefeller was trying to persuade people into backing various policy proposals he’d developed, which concerned key Presidential aides, including Alan Greenspan. Based on feedback I’d received from a number of quarters, I raised a caution flag to the President. The Vice President is enthusiastic and many key staff members were reluctant to disagree with the positions he takes, I said. “That is not a criticism of the Vice President, it is a criticism of the circumstance that you deal with as President because those people are afraid to deal with him—they are afraid to speak up when he is present, they are afraid to speak up even when he is not present and you just ought to be aware of it.”⁵

There were lingering discussions and differing views concerning America’s intelligence-gathering activities, further reports of Governor Reagan’s political activities, and the advent of new crises. Added to those immediate tasks were: a looming financial crisis in New York City and a search for a new Supreme Court Justice to replace the retiring William O. Douglas. The President outlined his criteria for the post: quality, confirmability, age—so that the nominee could be there for a while—breadth on the Court so the Court did not have eight people of any one category, some diversity, and finally that the individual should be moderate to moderate conservative.⁶ (Ultimately, he nominated John Paul Stevens.)

These controversies and issues—important, to be sure—were promptly put on pause when we were quite suddenly faced with a considerably more pressing concern: President Ford’s mortality.

On Friday, September 5, 1975, President Ford was in the historic Senator Hotel in Sacramento, across from the California State Capitol building where he was scheduled to meet with the state’s new Governor, Jerry Brown. At approximately 10:00 a.m., he left the hotel with his Secret Service detail. He moved toward a sizable gathering of people, several rows deep, who had come out to greet the President. They were lined along the side of a path through the large park in front of the state Capitol. As Ford crossed L Street onto the Capitol grounds, he deviated from the plan—but in a way that hardly surprised anyone who worked with him. He moved immediately toward the many well-wishers who had gathered to see him and started shaking hands left and right.

The President was pulling—as he had on his trip to Japan—what is often called an unscheduled “grip and grin” session. This understandably raised the pulse of the Secret Service agents—as well as the concern of those whose task it was to keep the President on schedule—but it was certainly not a surprise. Gerald Ford was a man of the people. He had concluded it was worth the risks given the challenges the country and he had faced together—and overcome—to meet and engage personally with his fellow Americans. Further, very simply, he liked people and, given his midwestern friendliness, he truly appreciated their coming out to meet him.

As the President approached a stand of trees on the left, a woman in the second row of the crowd caught his eye. She was wearing, Ford later recalled, “an unusual red or orange dress.” The woman, he recounted, “had gray-brown hair and a weathered complexion.” Ford assumed she was going to shake his hand, but he hesitated to greet her. His sensitivity and awareness was understandable. As a member of the Warren Commission, which had been assigned the responsibility to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Ford was fully aware of the dangers that lurked for prominent public figures surrounded by crowds. While he felt it was important to greet as many people as he could, he was still sensitive to the reality of the potential threats a President faces. Apparently something about this woman—perhaps her “unusual” brightly colored dress—stood out for him. Suddenly, when he was just a few feet away from her, he noticed she was gripping an object. It was a .45 caliber pistol, which she began to raise in the direction of the President.

The threat that September morning in California was thwarted quickly. An alert Secret Service agent beside the President had also seen the pistol. True to his training, he did not hesitate before pouncing on the would-be assassin. The quick-thinking team of agents then grabbed the President by his shoulders and moved him down and out of the possible line of fire. As he was being rapidly moved away toward the state Capitol building to safety, Ford turned and looked back just long enough to see a flash of red as several officers wrestled to the ground the armed woman who had set out that morning to assassinate the President of the United States.

The would-be assassin turned out to be a woman named Lynette Alice “Squeaky” Fromme, a twenty-six-year-old follower of the notorious mass murderer Charles Manson. The so-called Manson Family had been responsible for the brutal murders of five people, including actress Sharon Tate, in August 1969. Fromme was a fanatic, but reportedly had not taken part in the murders herself. She had, however, done her part as a loyal “Family” member to support Manson and his followers when they were on trial. She had carved an “X” into her forehead after Manson had done the same. She had also served a jail sentence for trying to tamper with a witness in the Manson trial by lacing her hamburger with LSD.

Rudderless with her cult leader behind bars, Fromme contended she believed that smog from automobiles was going to cause California’s redwoods to collapse. She asserted that by killing President Ford she would draw more attention to the plight of the trees.

“It didn’t go off,” she kept saying after her attempt at assassinating the President was thwarted by Secret Service agents. “It didn’t go off. Can you believe it?” That was the result of her inexperience or Providence, or both. Her pistol had four bullets in its magazine, but the slide had not been properly pulled to move one of the bullets into the firing chamber.⁷ The assassination attempt happened so quickly, and the President’s schedule was so busy, that he may not have had time to fully absorb the shock of what had happened and that the President of the United States might well have been shot dead in that instant. He went on with the business of the day.

What I remember most vividly about the episode in Sacramento was President Ford’s demeanor, his seemingly natural manner in keeping everything moving along as if nothing extraordinary had occurred. As White House Chief of Staff, I was focused on seeing that he was safe. The President, however, must have felt that even a minor alteration in his tone or any change in his routine might be the wrong signal to send to the American people. His approach was commendable, even downright brave.

Only minutes after the President’s close call with “Squeaky” Fromme, we were at the East Entrance of the California State Capitol building, and very shortly he was sitting down in his scheduled meeting with Governor Jerry Brown. Having nearly lost his life, one might have imagined the President mentioning the threat to the Governor. But his meeting with the Governor went on for some time before the assassination attempt came up. President Ford stayed focused on the business at hand.

Speaking to reporters shortly after his meeting with Governor Brown and his address to the California state legislature, the President expressed his appreciation to the Secret Service. He added, “This incident under no circumstances will prevent me or preclude me from contacting the American people as I travel from one state to another and one community to another.”⁸

At the airport later that day, the President again wanted to shake hands with the people waiting for him. In this case, the Secret Service objected, and the President reluctantly relented.

Eventually, when the events of the day were over, the President did pause to reflect on the attempted shooting. In the cabin of Air Force One, perhaps in reaction to the concerned faces of staff members around him, including mine, the President grew quiet. Referring to the attempt on his life, he said, “Rummy, this is one of those things where you say a prayer and the good Lord takes care of you.”⁹

On November 19, 1975, after an occasionally farcical court trial during which she threw an apple at the judge,¹⁰ Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme was sentenced to life in prison for attempting to assassinate the President of the United States. In August 2009, at the age of sixty, she was released on parole after serving nearly thirty-four years of that sentence.

MEETING WITH THE PRESIDENT

September 11, 1975

9:01 to 9:14 a.m.

In the Cabin [of Air Force One]

The President called [Bob] Hartmann and me up to the Cabin and showed us the bullet-proof vest that the secret service had advised he wear. We talked about the extra weight and the fact that it would tire him and the fact that it might dehydrate him if it were warm up there and decided that the handling of it would be the only possible answer is, namely that we don’t discuss security matters^.11

On September 22, the President traveled to San Francisco to address a conference of the AFL-CIO. In light of the earlier assassination attempt in California, the Secret Service team was particularly attentive. San Francisco, Ron Nessen noted, was “well known for its population of liberal anti–Vietnam War, anti-establishment hippies.”¹² Still, Gerald Ford was not one to shy away from a commitment. Though our experience with “Squeaky” Fromme’s attempt to kill him was a sobering reminder of his and indeed every President’s mortality, he was determined to continue as before and in the manner he believed was appropriate for the President of the United States. That meant continuing his scheduled public appearances unabated. His speech to the AFL-CIO Union went ahead as planned and was carried off without incident. But shortly thereafter another near-catastrophe occurred.

MEETING WITH THE PRESIDENT

September 22, 1975

10:15 to 11:45 a.m.

Arrival in San Francisco.

Went to the AFL-CIO meeting. The President gave the energy speech [based on a plan by Nelson Rockefeller]. It was sad. I think it was a mistake. Ranks behind three or four major personnel errors in seriousness but very high. As we left to go up in the freight elevator, I walked out about two feet in front of the President. The President walked out next to Bob Georgine. And the elevator door fell down on the President’s head and stunned him badly. The minute it hit his head it bounced back up. It had, apparently, an automatic safety device, but it broke the skin. I then rode in the car with the President and [White House Dr.] Lukash over to the suite and in the St. Francis Lukash put some cold packs on the head.

NOTE: About 11:45 I went down to the street and mixed around with the demonstrators that were out there and they were a pretty scruffy bunch. . . . That city gives you a weird feeling. I went back upstairs and was fully convinced that the President shouldn’t work that crowd, which is why I stayed close to him as we went downstairs . . . which is exactly what the Secret Service concluded, Kennerly had concluded, and Terry [O’Donnell] and Red [Cavaney] had concluded. I guess it didn’t take a genius to figure it out.¹³

In an attempt to avoid giving the press much of a view of the injury to the President’s head—and given an emerging false narrative that Ford was something of a stumbler—I was determined to try to move the President past the large crowds waiting to see him in the lobby of the hotel and also gathered outside. We advised him to move quickly into the limousine parked at the curb on Post Street, directly in front of the hotel entrance waiting with the right back door open. The President heeded our advice and avoided shaking hands with the large group that had gathered in the lobby. Instead, waving with both hands, smiling, and saying hello, he headed quickly out of the front door of the hotel. As we exited and were walking the few steps toward the open back door of the waiting limousine, Ford began waving to the large crowd that had gathered outside on both sides of the street. At that moment, we heard the loud crack of a gunshot fired at the President.

We learned later that Oliver Sipple, a thirty-three-year-old former Marine, had been on his way to San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf and happened by the St. Francis hotel, where the President had been speaking. He saw the large crowd waiting to greet President Ford and decided to wait with them. The ex-Marine had waited on the sidewalk across from the hotel for almost three hours. His patience may well have saved President Ford’s life and, since I was standing beside him, possibly mine as well.

During Sipple’s wait, he had noticed a middle-aged woman milling about. When the President finally emerged from the front entrance of the hotel, Sipple waved and started to clap for the President along with the others in the crowd. It was then that Sipple noticed a chrome-plated gun in the woman’s hand, which she had raised and was aiming toward the President.¹⁴

“Gun!” Sipple, the former Marine, yelled loudly, grabbing the woman’s arm just as her pistol fired. The Vietnam veteran later recounted that the moment was “probably the scariest thing that ever happened in my whole life.”¹⁵

Hearing that outburst and the gunshot, the President ducked, as did I. The bullet whizzed past his head and hit the front wall of the hotel just behind us. Secret Service agents Ron Pontius and Jack Merchant pushed the President forward through the open door and down onto the floor of the backseat of the thirteen-thousand-pound armored Lincoln Continental limousine. The three of us moved into the car on top of the President.

For the first several blocks after leaving the hotel, we stayed flat on top of President Ford. As the motorcade sped from the scene, we heard the President’s muffled voice from below us. “C’mon, Rummy, you guys get off,” he said. “You’re heavy!” The President’s motorcade raced to the airport.

Betty Ford, who had been featured at a separate event in Pebble Beach, arrived at the San Francisco International Airport a few minutes after the President had boarded Air Force One. She walked the few steps down the aisle on Air Force One toward the President’s table, sat down across from him, and asked cheerfully, “How did they treat you?” referring to his meeting with the union members. She had not been told of what had happened. The President didn’t say anything. She showed interest but no emotion as I described our eventful morning to her. As always, Betty Ford was a steady hand.

The individual who fired the pistol at the President was soon identified as a woman named Sara Jane Moore, a Marxist radical who had been picked up by the local police a day earlier on an illegal handgun charge but had been promptly released.¹⁶ She had been standing across the street, about forty feet from the President, when she fired. “I do regret I didn’t succeed, and allow the winds of change to start,” Moore said immediately after the shooting. “I wish I had killed him. I did it to create chaos.” Needless to say, emotions were running high given the tension involved with the President coming back to California only seventeen days after the earlier assassination attempt in Sacramento.

Ron Nessen, who had leaped into the second car in the President’s motorcade, lashed out as he sped away. “Goddamn California!” he yelled, pounding the door and front seat with his fist. “Why . . . did we ever come back here! I hope we never come back to this . . . state.”¹⁷ As it happened, Ron had jumped into the wire service car, which also included the White House UPI reporter Helen Thomas.

During the flight back to Washington, D.C., the President remarked that the Secret Service agents and state and local law enforcement had performed their duties in an outstanding manner, and he asked that his thanks be expressed to them all.

The President relaxed and requested that the Navy steward bring him a libation. With black humor flowing, the mood on board Air Force One, Nessen recalled, was “a mixture of relief and hysteria.” After we touched down in Washington, D.C., around midnight, the President told reporters, “I don’t think any person as President ought to cower in the face of a limited number of people who want to take the law into their own hands.” That was not, however, a statement without controversy.

*  *  *

With the President having been targeted for assassination twice in less than three weeks, the concern in the country as well as in the White House was high. A U.S. Senate committee held hearings on the Secret Service and the President’s safety, with former presidential nominees in both parties—Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ), former Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey (D-MN), and Senator George McGovern (D-SD), among them—all urging their friend President Ford to minimize any activities that could risk possible exposure to still another assassination attempt. Bill Simon, the Secretary of the Treasury Department, which had as one of his responsibilities overseeing the Secret Service, testified that the number of threats to President Ford had tripled since the two recent assassination attempts in California.

Senator Goldwater phoned me with a message for the President. “For Christ’s sake, the President should stay home. He doesn’t need to chase his tail all over the country. He’s got the presidency sewn up if he can stay alive.”¹⁸ Congressman John Rhodes, another Arizona Republican, was less colorful but offered the same advice. “Thank God they missed him,” but tone down the travel. Yet another member of Congress, Dr. Tim Carter of Kentucky, called saying that the President’s determination to travel and defy threats to his life could amount to an invitation to crazy people.¹⁹

Other revelations from that widely watched Senate hearing, as reported by The New York Times, included:

Federal agents were seeking a member of the American Indian Movement armed with automatic weapons who had indicated to undercover agents that he had been interested in the President’s movements.

An alcoholic in Belleville, Ill., who is a former mental patient and had offered an undercover agent $25,000 early this month to kill Mr. Ford, has been arrested, and is now in a mental institution.

The last six persons involved in political assassinations or attempted shootings of prominent Americans were not on the Secret Service “trip list” of suspected assassins. The six are Miss Moore, Lynette Alice Fromme, Arthur H. Bremer, Sirhan B. Sirhan, James Earl Ray and Lee Harvey Oswald.²⁰

I was deeply concerned that President Ford stood a chance of being shot and killed or wounded during his presidency. If someone—anyone—was determined to kill a president, and was willing to accept that they would likely be killed or captured in the process, the Secret Service would have an extremely difficult time preventing it, particularly with Presidents determined to mix with the American people.

What might come after the successful assassination of the President—or more specifically who might come—was also of interest. Nelson Rockefeller’s personality, as noted, was not a good match for the responsibilities of the presidency. And Rockefeller continued to offer new reasons for concern.

On one occasion, a senior White House staff member came to me and said that Vice President Rockefeller had told him that Secretary of Treasury John Connally, whom Rockefeller viewed as a political rival, had come back from the Middle East with gems of some sort. The unspoken implication, without any evidence, was that there might have been something improper about it. When I received that report, as Chief of Staff I felt an obligation to meet with the Vice President and to ask him about it. If it were true and if the Vice President knew something possibly illegal had occurred, I told him that either he or I as White House officials had an obligation to talk to White House Legal Counsel and/or the U.S. Attorney General. The Vice President, while not denying what I had been told he had told the senior staff member, backed away from what had been reported to me and indicated that he had no information that required us to initiate an investigation. It was all in all a bizarre episode.

To this day, I believe that the assassination of still another President would have proven to be a serious jolt to the social bonds of our democracy, especially at that moment in our history when tensions over Watergate were still raw. A steady leader would be needed at the helm to steady the ship of state. To our nation’s good fortune, Gerald R. Ford survived to complete his term in office.

Once again, the task was to calm a distressed nation. President Ford was certain that he should just carry on. Any situation in which our political leaders are forced into isolation away from their constituents because of a few dangerous malcontents should not be tolerated. An unimpeded exchange of ideas, he added, was fundamental to our system of government. “The American people are good people—Democrats, Independents, Republicans, and others,” the President said. “Under no circumstances will I, and I hope no others, capitulate to those that want to undercut what’s all good in America.”²¹

I believed that implementing new security arrangements was necessary from a different standpoint—despite the reality that any new arrangement would not and could not assure perfect safety. I concluded that to do nothing would be “reckless.” Given the President’s attitude, I knew I was the one who needed to inject the proper degree of caution into the President’s schedule, since it was clear he would not. We agreed, at least at first, to have the White House press office tell the public: “We’re fully aware of the risks and aware of the circumstances. The President’s travel activities will be announced as they have been in the past. An appropriate security process is in place.”²²

At one point NBC News anchor John Chancellor called, explaining he had researched assassination attempts and spoken with a psychiatrist who cautioned that the President was likely doing exactly the wrong thing. By acting as if nothing had happened, he was broadcasting a message to all the psychopaths out there: “You can’t stop me!” What John Chancellor related from the psychiatrist he had talked to was a concern that the public position of the White House could unintentionally have the effect of goading possible assassins into thinking, “Oh yeah!?” and then perhaps making an attempt against the President. Finding the best words to reassure the American people without creating an added risk to the life of the President was not an easy task. There was at least a possibility that we would know if we had failed only once it was too late.²³

A few more days went by before we arrived at several specific security changes. We would announce the President’s schedule closer to the day, making his appearances a bit more spontaneous, thereby reducing the time available to a would-be assassin to plan an assault. At the appropriate time, I would carefully let it leak out that we were including the use of “plainclothes” Secret Service agents, officers who would be considerably more difficult to detect, in order to try to deter attacks or at least make it more difficult for them to succeed.²⁴

I was clear with the President. Our republic had already been through a great deal. Worst-case scenarios had been weighing on our minds and we needed to address them. And we had to do all we could to get his potential successor up to speed.

“Mr. President,” I said, “there’s a reasonable likelihood you could be killed or wounded. I’m going to develop some arrangements for the Vice President to be briefed and to know what the hell is going on in the government.”

“Fine,” he replied.

“I just don’t want you involved in it,” I responded.

“Fine,” he answered a second time.²⁵

I couldn’t fault him for his curtness. No normal person likes to dwell on his or her possible demise. And no U.S. President would want to think about abandoning the country at a time when steady leadership was so badly needed.

*  *  *

There was a metaphor for the broader problems the still new administration was experiencing, one that perhaps unconsciously underscored in the President’s mind the risks of a less than professional operation. An opportunity to address it occurred out of the blue, in the most unlikely of places—the quiet state capital of Connecticut.

After speaking at a dinner at the Hartford Civic Center, the President, along with members of his traveling team, boarded his motorcade and headed down the main thoroughfare to the airport. Usually local police assist the Secret Service team by temporarily closing off every intersection briefly before and until a President’s motorcade has passed. However, that evening, for whatever reason, one intersection was missed by the local police and not properly blocked. As a result, just as the President’s motorcade was passing, a 1967 yellow Buick, driven by nineteen-year-old James Salamites and containing several of his teenage friends, drove through the one unblocked intersection and, to everyone’s surprise, crashed directly into the back left side of President Ford’s limousine.

Recognizing that this could be yet another attempt on the President’s life, the Secret Service swarmed the scene. Salamites’s car was wrecked, while the President, the Connecticut Republican Chairman, and I, who had been sitting in the rear seat, had been abruptly thrown to the floor as the car smashed into the President’s limousine. We were relatively unscathed. “Well, the cat has nine lives,” the President said that evening as we proceeded toward the airport to avoid any further mishaps.²⁶

Though publicly and privately the President resisted blaming anyone for that accident, the event was an embarrassment for both the Hartford police and the U.S. Secret Service. It could well have led to a far more tragic result, for the President as well as for the teenagers who, because the intersection had not been blocked, had made history by crashing into the limousine of the President of the United States of America. This was, in my mind, and admittedly unfairly, an example of a too loose White House operation, one that needed to be tightened up.