we interrupt programming -- >> we don't know precisely what happened. >> oh my god, he's been shot. >> the president of the united states has been shot. >> i could see it through the viewfinder. even now -- >> an inch from his heart. >> he was minutes away from not making it. >> who is the shooter? >> then he says, if you know about that, you know about everything. >> a bizarre motive. >> he felt the relationship was real. >> he was a really severely disturbed person. >> and his crime changed history. the shooting of ronald reagan, next.

on january 20th, 1981, ronald wilson reagan was sworn in as the 40th president of the united states. >> i, ronald reagan, do solemnly swear -- >> as with most new administrations, reagan's first couple of months are rocky. >> and this is the 70s day of reagan's presidency. things were not going particularly well. he had a very low approval rating, the lowest of any president that early in his first term. it's a monday and reagan has one big event that day, to deliver a speech to afl-cio. it's 2:00, kind of gray day in washington.

and ronald reagan's motorcade has just arrived for a speech at the vip entrance reagan walked into at 2:00 p.m. when he arrived. >> government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives. >> the event is covered by all the major networks. for abc news photographer hank brown, it's a routine job. >> we're the pool crew that travel with the president wherever he goes. we wanted to get the picture of the president walking out of the on hotel and getting in the limo. >> 15 feet from that door was a rope line. all that the cameramen, everybody's laughing. >> it was unsecured, no i.d. checks. people thought it was a press line, it wasn't. anyone could be behind that line. you see hinckley's face about three rows back. totally passive. no reaction at all.

>> i got my camera out, aimed it at the door the president was coming out. i could see it through the viewfinder even now. >> reagan is walking towards his limousine, secret service agents are surrounding him as he goes to the war. >> 15 feet from him is john w. hinckley jr. he pulls out his .22 revolver. and unleashes six shots in 1.7 seconds. 1.7 seconds is the time it takes me to say 1.7 seconds. it's that fast. the first shot hits jim brady, the press secretary, in the head. >> brady is seen here between reagan and secret service agent jerry parr. >> the second shot, it's tom

delahanty, a d.c. police officer, in the back. >> get out! get out! >> third shot goes high, hits that building across the street right there. the fourth shot hits timothy mccarthy, secret service agent, square in the chest. he's not wearing a bullet-proof vest. he falls to the ground. the fifth shot hits the armored, bullet-proof window of the car. as reagan and parr flash behind it, diving in. the sixth shot cracks across the driveway. no one knows where that sixth shot went until later. they realized it slapped off the side of the car, slipped through a gap between the door and the door frame. >> i thought it was firecrackers. and the next thing i knew, one of the secret service agents behind me just seized me here by the waist and plunged me headfirst into the limo. >> the agent is 50-year-old jerry parr, head of reagan's secret service detail. >> as we go in, i go in on top of him.

i'm sure i hit my radio or my gun or something hit him in the back. >> and i said, jerry, get off, i think you've broken a rib of mine. >> jerry parr is looking out the window, he's pulling out this way. he says three men down, a bullet mark in the left window. he knows there's been an assassination attempt and that limousine is alone. parr checks reagan out really quickly. he seems okay. reagan thinks he's okay. >> i rub my hands up under his coat, felt all around his belt with my hands. no blood. ran my hands up under his arms, no blood. >> rawhide is reagan's secret service code name. on this day there's no better code name for a president than rawhide for ronald reagan. >> we're going to ground. >> back to the white house, back to the white house, rawhide is okay.

>> we interrupt, there's been a late development, shots reported fired outside the hotel where president reagan spoke a short while ago. here's bernard shaw in our washington bureau. >> okay, my apology. details are very sketchy at this moment. we don't know precisely what happened, we don't know the sequence. first of all, the president is safe. >> safe, yes. but not okay. >> reagan starts complaining of pain in his back, his chest and his side. not feeling so good. >> just then, i coughed. and i had a handful of bright, red, frothy blood. >> and he said, i think i've cut the inside of my mouth. i said, let me look. and it was pretty profuse. >> parr knows this is big trouble. so he has a decision to make. do i head back to the white house, the safest place in the known universe? or does he avert to george washington hospital, the nearest trauma center, where there's not an ounce of security? >> do we want to go to the emergency room, george washington? >> that's a roger.

>> but ronald reagan's life literally on this day hung in the balance of a split second and a mere inch. and i'm not exaggerating. >> outside the hotel, the scene is chaotic. in the bedlam, the shooter is tackled. >> there was pushing, there was shoving. you hear the agents scream, get him out of here, get him out of here. at the same time, an ambulance was arriving. so i immediately went back to filming the scene. i thought, i have to preserve history. it brought tears to my eyes. i still see brady lying there. i still think about delahanty.

i see his face. i still see mccarthy being lifted up off the ground and being thrown back by the bullet. >> within minutes of the shooting, president reagan arrives at george washington hospital. he insists on walking in. >> a nurse met me and i told her, i'm having a little trouble breathing. >> the president was at the point where we in medicine would say he was ready to crash. >> the next thing i knew then were my knees began to turn to rubber and i wound up on a gurney. >> if he had gone to the white house, they would have dragged him out of the car, looked him over, found out he was in big trouble, put him back in the car, drove him -- it would have taken 10, 15 more minutes. he didn't have that time. a nurse there is trying to get his blood pressure, she can't detect it.

he's not doing so good. she's going, oh my god, i'm going to lose the president of the united states. >> i didn't know i was shot. >> i really do believe he was minutes away from not making it. >> the shot that got me caromed off the side of the limousine and hit me while i was diving into the car. and it hit me back here under the arm and then hit a rib. and that's what caused an extreme pain. and then it tumbled, it turned, instead of edgewise, and went tumbling down to within an inch of my heart. >> first lady nancy reagan is in a solarium at the white house when she gets the news. >> george opfer, who was head of my detail, he said, there's been a shooting, but don't worry, the president's all right. george kept saying, you don't have to go, he's all right, he hasn't been hurt. i said, george, i'm going. you better get the car because i'm going.

>> she comes into the e.r. and the first thing ronald reagan says to her is, honey, i forgot the doctor. >> as he preps for surgery reagan stays in character and jokes with his doctor. >> he looked at me and says, i hope you're all republicans. i'm a notorious liberal democrat. and i said, mr. president, today we're all republicans. >> as the main head surgeon is digging through reagan's chest trying to find this bullet fragment, worried it could slip into an artery and shoot into the president's brain and kill him, dr. david adelberg reached his hand in the president's chest, gently cupped the president's beating heart in his hand, and held it aside. a 31-year-old surgical intern literally held the beating life of the president of the united states in his hand. >> while reagan is in surgery, the suspect, john w. hinckley jr., of evergreen, colorado, is

being questioned. >> he admitted who he was. he made no attempt to hide who he was. >> the fbi and secret service have two questions. why did he do it? and, did he act alone? >> he said to them at the time, you'll understand why i did this when you see my room. >> according to sources, john hinckley jr., the accused gunman, may have tried to kill mr. reagan because of an infatuation with a young actress. uh-oguess what day it is!is?? huh...anybody? julie! hey...guess what day it is?? ah come on, i know you can hear me. mike mike mike mike mike... what day is it mike? ha ha ha ha ha ha! leslie, guess what today is? it's hump day. whoot whoot! ronny, how happy are folks who save hundreds of dollars switching to geico? i'd say happier than a camel on wednesday. hump day!!! yay!! get happy. get geico. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more.

we can report that shots were fired as president reagan left the washington hilton hotel following that address we carried live here on cnn. >> the suspect was rushed to district of police headquarters. >> john w. hinckley jr., age 25, is a complete mystery to his captors. >> when i walked into the room, john hinckley was just sitting quietly on a seat, showed no emotion.

>> secret service agent stephen colo is among the first to see hinckley. >> he told me his wrist hurt because of the handcuffs that were placed on him and his throat hurt, someone hurt his throat when they arrested him. well, certainly in my mind it was not typical that he was complaining about himself after he had just shot a number of people. >> as investigators begin to question hinckley, white house press secretary jim brady's wife, sarah brady, is at home with their 2-year-old son. >> we were sitting in our rec room watching television when they announced it. >> the president did not appear to be hurt, according to united press international. >> i thought to myself, oh, that's great. never dreaming that jim would even have been with him, for some reason. but the phone rang immediately. it was a friend of mine. and she had heard that jim had been shot.

>> the white house immediately sends a car to take sarah to the hospital. >> i for some reason, i just thought, he's been winged. you know. it just never dawned on me that he'd been badly hurt or -- or killed. i just kept thinking he was shot in the arm. >> it was very obvious that he was seriously injured with a gunshot wound to the head. but he was alive. and he probably should not have made it. but he got exceedingly great medical care from a doctor named art kobrine. >> with her husband on the way to surgery hospital workers usher mrs. brady into a secure waiting room. >> mrs. reagan came in, and she came over to me, and we hugged each other. and she said, i am so scared. and i said, i am too. >> while surgeons work to save the shooting victims, suspect john hinckley is transferred to the fbi's washington field office for questioning.

two senior fbi agents are assigned to conduct the interview. as a courtesy, they invite secret service agent steve colo to sit in. >> i was there in a liaison position at that time. keep in mind the secret service could not be part of the investigation, because technically the secret service is at fault any time one of our protectees has been shot or injured. >> before the questioning begins the agents inventory hinckley's personal possessions. >> when they opened the wallet, there was a picture. the belief was that the picture of this attractive woman came with the wallet. because she was somewhat recognizable as like a young starlet, but none of us knew her name. there was a piece of paper that was stuck in the billfold section that had a telephone number on it. one of the fbi agents said, oh, that's a connecticut telephone number. it meant nothing to me at the time. >> when the interview begins,

hinckley doesn't react well to the questioning by his fbi interrogators. so they ask agent colo to step in. within minutes, hinckley opens up. >> he told me about the different doctors that he had been to. he talked about dropping out of school. he talked about his relationship with his parents. and how annoyed they were with him. so i asked him, how could he explain his issues? and he says, i have no direction in life. i decided to take a long shot. so i said to him, i saw the piece of paper with the telephone number. the number that goes to connecticut. when i said that to him, he all of a sudden became animated. here was a guy who was almost stoic in his answers, and all of a sudden now he is twitching and he says, well, if you know about that, you know about everything! and i knew i hit on a really important fact.

and i had no idea what he was talking about. so i said to him, i know, but i have to hear it in your words. he said, well, the telephone number goes to yale university. goes to jodie foster's room. and bingo. that was the picture in the wallet. >> back at the hospital, dr. kobrine is meticulously removing bullet fragments and damaged tissue from jim brady's brain. the surgery is slow, delicate, and dangerous. >> at one point they're hearing on the radio that jim brady's died. someone rushes in to say, they're reporting jim brady's dead. what do they think, i'm operating on a corpse? that's what he said. >> and they kept it totally away from us. because we had no television or anything like that, which is really good. >> but a lot of people did hear. including friends who were watching tv with the bradys' 2-year-old son, scott.

>> when they announced his death they showed his picture. scott said, oh, there's my daddy, and went up and kissed the screen. but of course he didn't -- he didn't know. >> after five hours, dr. kobrine emerges from the operating room. >> the minute i saw his face, i knew it was successful. i mean, it was a miracle. >> against all odds, jim brady survives. though he'll be permanently disabled and wheelchair-bound for the rest of his life. the other victims also undergo surgery and survive. secret service agent tim mccarthy was hit in the chest. and d.c. policeman tom delahanty was shot in the back. that evening, fbi agents searched john hinckley's washington, d.c. hotel room. >> hinckley had laid out, and this was the bizarre thing, really bizarre.

he had laid out there from the morning's newspaper and the president's schedule, he had beside that a statement really in the form of a letter to the actress jodie foster. >> in his letter, hinckley writes, i am doing all this for your sake, jodie. i'm asking you to please look into your heart and at least give me the chance with this historical deed to gain your respect and love. i love you forever, john hinckley. >> it was when we read the letter from the hotel room that we finally put the pieces together. >> it looked to all of us, gut feeling, this is a lone gunman and there was the motive, to impress this actress. >> we can understand political motives. but here we have a must have of love. so... [ gasps ] these are sandra's "homemade" yummy, scrumptious bars. hmm? i just wanted you to eat more fiber. chewy, oatie, gooeyness...

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president recognize began had just delivered a fairly well-received speech at the hilton washington hotel. then, shots. >> within 24 hours of the assassination attempt, the fbi and secret service are digging deeply into john hinckley jr.'s background. >> leads were going out all over the country. we literally took his life apart to track him off every receipt he ever had, any dollar that was spent that we could track. we wanted to know where he'd been and what he had done as far back as we could go. >> what they found was a long trail of despair, deceit, and delusion. hinckley had a seemingly normal childhood. growing up in an affluent suburb of dallas, texas.

he played sports as a boy and did well in school. but as he grew older, hinckley began to withdraw. his parents chalked it up to shyness. >> from the time hinckley graduated from this high school, highland park, in 1973, until his arrest, there was also a personality change. he had become quieter, more introverted, somewhat of a recluse. >> in 1973, hinckley moved to evergreen, colorado, with his parents. they hoped he would go to college. he did for a while, attending texas tech off and on for a few years, but never graduating. mostly he spent time in his room, alone, writing gloomy poems and playing his guitar. ♪ >> dreamed of being a songwriter, musician. so for a summer he spent some amount of time out in l.a.

pretending he was going to sell his music to companies and all that stuff. >> certainly had a grandiose view of himself, an exaggerated view of his accomplishments as a composer and as a musician. >> he didn't do anything. he sat and watched tv in his apartment. he didn't go anywhere. >> he seemed like such a lost soul. he goes out to hollywood expecting something and just ends up in a room by himself, going to see this movie over and over. the "taxi driver" movie. >> investigators soon realize that the movie "taxi driver" is a central influence on hinckley's life. so much that hinckley even adopts the persona of the lead character, played by robert de niro. that of a disturbed vietnam vet named travis bickle. hinckley begins dressing in army fatigues like bickle. he begins drinking peach brandy like bickle. and he becomes obsessed with

guns and assassination, like bickle. >> he saw that movie 15 times, "taxi driver." a very violent movie. and he becomes obsessed with jodie foster in this movie. >> jodie foster plays a 12-year-old prostitute named iris. >> he felt the relationship with jodie foster was real, not something based on her role in a movie. he was just one of these warped guys. >> while the fbi investigates hinckley, ronald reagan is recovering at george washington hospital which has been transformed into the seat of government. >> the white house is always wherever the president is. everything had moved there. the decisions were being made. the staff was over there. it was so strange. >> it's turmoil around here. i thought for intensive care, you know, everybody would be whispering. but it's like grand central station. >> everything was very surreal for a couple of days there.

i mean, it just -- it was like living in a movie. >> has the president at all asked or has he been told about the condition of his press secretary? >> he is -- he is not aware of the number of -- of the other people who were shot and injured, at this time. >> it isn't until reagan asks his staff if anyone else was shot that he's told about officer delahanty, agent mccarthy, and press secretary jim brady. >> he called me down, said he was so sorry. i -- i told him, you know, that jim was doing what he loved to do the most. i kind of tried to reassure him. but he was very emotional about it, of course. >> reagan also wants to see the secret service agent who took a bullet for him, tim mccarthy. >> reagan looks at him, and maybe he senses something in mccarthy, i don't know. reagan looks at him and says, so tim, mccarthy, reagan, brady, and delahanty.

what'd this guy have against the irish? >> he handled it very well. as he said to us in his interview, he didn't know what had happened. he still managed to make jokes about it, bringing his personality forward to make everybody in the country feel better about themselves. >> everybody but john hinckley jr.

at this hour, john hinckley jr. pleads not guilty to charges he tried to kill president reagan, and body his lawyer and the government agree he is economy tent to stand trial. >> from the moment he was arrested the issue of sanity became paramount to the legal teams assigned to prosecute and defend john hinckley. >> facing a judge for the first time, hinckley stood while the clerk read the 13-count indictment. among the spectators were hinckley's parents. they watched intently as the clerk asked their son, how do you plead? in a clear, loud voice the 26-year-old hinckley answered, not guilty. >> you know, hinckley is an interesting person, but not interesting at the same time. >> there didn't seem to be much there. you could not form a rapport with him. he seemed to have little expression of emotion. >> dr. will carpenter, a research psychiatrist at the university of maryland, was hired to give an expert opinion

in hinckley's defense. >> i believe that i spent about 44 hours evaluating him. most of that would have been in interviews with him. he was self-centered but he wasn't narcissistic. it was more like kind of a loner who doesn't have much else going on. and then would get grandiose ideas, including delusional ideas. >> he made up a whole girlfriend for his parents. for a year. she didn't exist. >> she seemed awfully real to him at times. but it's very much to manipulate his parents so that he could be off and doing what it was that he intended to do without their interfering. >> in the summer of 1980, hinckley read a story about jodie foster. the 18-year-old actress was taking a sabbatical from hollywood to attend yale university. so hinckley told his parents that he was going back to college. but at yale, not texas tech. >> so he makes up a whole elaborate ruse to his parents

about how he's going to go to yale for a writing class that doesn't exist. the whole time he spent stalking foster. he finds out where she lives, slipping notes under her door, he's on the phone with her. he taped these calls. >> who is this? oh, no, who is this? >> this is jodie? >> who is this? >> this is john. >> john who? oh, no, not you again. look, i really can't talk to you, okay? do me a really big favor. you understand why i can't, you know, carry on these conversations with you? you understand it's dangerous and it's not done and it's not fair and it's rude. all right? well, i understand that but it's the same thing. okay? >> so you just don't ever want -- >> no, been really nice talking to you though. >> he started to yell at the recorder, hang up, hang up! because this is what we tell our wife or our daughter. you hang up right away.

>> they're just really sad and pathetic calls. he's reaching out to this woman he idolized and wanted to be part of. so he gets in his mind, if i get the president of the united states, she'll love me. she'll want me. she'll know who i am. so he starts talking jimmy carter. >> it was just a month before reagan was elected. he and president carter were campaigning hard for every vote. >> in october 1980, john hinckley gets within arm's reach of jimmy carter at an event in dayton, ohio. >> one week later, hinckley is in nashville, tennessee, still stalking carter. when hinckley leaves, airport police find several guns in his luggage. >> he was arrested, never fingerprinted and photographed for carrying a weapon, the information was never sent to the secret service. >> they took the weapons, he paid a fine, and that was the end of that.

>> wind days, hinckley is in dallas where his sister lives. shopping for more guns at rocky's pawn shop. he buys two roves for $98, including the one he'll use to shoot president reagan. >> he purchased it legally at the time, caliber .22, it was a very light-weight, snub-nose handgun. >> he'd actually gone to firing ranges. he'd train order given himself training. >> john hinckley took a lot of target practice. he took a lot of target practice. he never shot at moving targets. and jerry parnham's moving the president toward that open door. >> december 8th, 1980, john hinckley's fragile world begins to crack when he hears shocking news from new york city. >> the news ripped through the air in shock waves. john lennon shot and killed in the apartment building where he lives.

the suspect is identified as mark david chapman. >> hinckley idolized lennon. that new year's eve, he locks himself in his room at his parents' house, drinks peach brandy, plays his guitar, and wallows in his own misery. ♪ sometime during the night, hinckley writes in his diary, john lennon is dead. forget it. it's just going to be insanity. i still think about jodie all the time. anything i might do in 1981 would be solely for jodie foster's sake. i want to tell the world that i love her. uble uble getting out of bed in the morning because my back hurt so bad. the sleep number bed conforms to you. i wake up in the morning with no back pain. i can adjust it if i need to...if my back's a little more sore. and by the time i get up in the morning, i feel great! if you have back pain, toss and turn at night or

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valentine's day, 1981. john hinckley, the man who will soon shot ronald reagan, leaving more notes for jodie foster. on one postcard he writes, one day you and i will occupy the white house. please do your best to remain a virgin. you are a virgin, aren't you? but this time, hinckley is not just leaving her notes. he's contemplating a violent act. >> he had guns with him when he was in new haven. stalking jodie foster. just unsure what he was doing with it.

>> spurned once more by foster and feeling suicidal, hinckley goes to new york city, still carrying the guns he bought in dallas. >> we talked about the guns and the whole history with guns, and he described, you know, having it with him when he was in new york, and he considered killing himself then. kind of standing on the place where chapman had been outside the dakota. >> but hinckley does not act on any of his thoughts. instead, he goes back to evergreen, colorado, where his parents live. >> came back and there was a lot of pressure between him and his father and mother about what was he going to do business his life. they recognized he had mental problems so they sent him to see a psychiatrist. >> hinckley first saw the psychiatrist the previous october. >> in one of the first sessions he tells the psychiatrist, hey, i'm really interested in guns and jodie foster, i'm obsessed with these two things. and after that the psychiatrist never asked him another question

about those two things. >> at one point, the psychiatrist, dr. john hopper, had told hinckley's parents that their son was simply immature. that he needed to grow up, get a job, and live on his own. the last of 15 sessions takes place four and a half weeks before the shooting. >> the mother of the troubled young man might have kept him home. the brother and the sister would have had him institutionalized. but the family followed the psychiatrist's advice, as troubled families will do, and to put it mildly, it didn't work out. >> his parents actually gave him the ultimatum, they were supplying the funding for his travels, and they were getting tired of it and they told him emphatically in his words that he had to clean up his act and get a job and they're cutting off his funds at the end of march. >> he was not capable of taking that as a challenge and then straightening his life out. he was more capable of drifting off as a loner into his own

fantasy world. >> and so at the end of march he makes the decision that he has to do something. >> six days before the shooting, hinckley flies to los angeles, then boards a bus to washington, d.c. from there, he'll go to new haven and commit his act of love for jodie foster. he even writes her another note, telling her to wait for him. >> his plan was to shoot foster, shoot himself, or kill both of them in this orgy of violence. that was his plan. >> on his way to yale, hinckley stops off in d.c. he checks into the park central hotel, sleeps, gets up, and goes for a fast food breakfast. >> it was just by chance that that morning he got up and read the paper and saw the president was going to the hilton to talk to the afl-cio. >> saw the president's schedule on page a4 of the "washington star" newspaper. i'm going to see how close i can

get to the president with my little gun. he wrote foster a note. takes a cab up to the washington hilton hotel, gets there, is behind the rope line, sees reagan approaching. pulls out his .22 caliber revolver. >> he thought something magical was going to happen that didn't have anything to do with ronald reagan, it had to do with some union he was going to have with jodie foster. >> by the spring of 1982, a year after the presidential assassination attempt, the four victims are all healing. jim brady's recovery is painfully slow but positive. though losing most use of the left side of his body, he retains his cognitive thinking and great sense of humor. agent tim mccarthy makes a full recovery and continues his career with the secret service.

d.c. police officer tom delahanty suffered a crippling wound that eventually forced his retirement. president reagan surprised his doctors and the nation, healing quickly for a man his age. as for john w. hinckley jr., his life story was a tabloid soap opera played out for a worldwide audience. >> about his alleged assailant, mr. reagan said, i hope and pray he can find an answer to his problem. said the president, he seems to be a very disturbed young man. >> even jim brady was compassionate. >> he said, well, he didn't hold any ill will toward him. but then again, he hoped he wouldn't win the irish sweepstakes. >> hinckley's motive seemed simply surreal. >> none of this was political. it was a way to try to force the recognition that should be

granted to him. >> in a surprising move, the judge in the case ordered jodie foster to give a deposition for the trial. it took place march 30th, 1982. the first anniversary of the shooting. by court order, hinckley was allowed in the room. when foster denied a relationship, hinckley became enraged. he had to be restrained and removed from the room. >> i received a great deal of unsolicited mail. i've never met, spoken to, or in any way associated with one john w. hinckley. last fall i received several unsolicited pieces of correspondence signed john w. hinckley or jwh, and i threw them all away. john hinckley's trial began yep, everybody knows that. well, did you know some owls aren't that wise?

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john hinckley's trial began on may 4th, 1982. his defense, innocent by reason of insanity. >> under federal law at the time, once the defendant raised the defense of insanity, the prosecution had to disprove the insanity claim beyond a

reasonable doubt. >> professor richard bonnie is an expert on law and psychiatry. he wrote what is considered a definitive textbook on the hinckley trial. >> as far as the prosecution was concerned, the dominant diagnosis was that this was a person with a narcissistic personality disorder that was infatuated with jodie foster, and basically what he really wanted was to be tame miscellaneous. but that he was in touch with reality. as far as the defense was concerned, that he basically had a form of schizophrenia, a schizophrenic process disorder, that he was out of touch with reality, was descending into psychosis, that he was delusional. >> my interpretation of insanity goes back to the old m'naghten rule. and it's very simply, can the individual differentiate right from wrong? and clearly during my interview with john hinckley, he clearly understood the difference

between right and wrong. >> the prosecution argued that hinckley had carefully planned the attack. >> the fact that he was able to travel, the fact that he did look at the schedule, put that type of effort into planning this event. that's premeditated activity. >> the defense countered with dr. will carpenter's testimony on schizophrenia. >> in general, with illnesses like schizophrenia, people can do most things in life in an ordinary way. so they're not conspicuously crazy. they don't go into mcdonald's and order watermelons. hinckley did not have a lot of disorganization. pathology. his was much more the reality distortion, false beliefs, and his belief in those -- letting those guide his life.

>> it came down to our psychiatrist versus his psychiatrist. >> john w. hinckley jr. has been found not guilty by reason of insanity on all 13 counts. >> i was surprised at the verdict. >> i think almost everyone was surprised by this verdict. >> i would characterize it as astonishment. >> i think the reason it went in that direction is that the prosecution basically denied mental illness. >> this was a case in which there was much evidence in hinckley's own hand, in his writings, in his poetry, in his essays, to suggest that he was, in fact, degenerating into a psychotic killer by the time march of 1981 rolled around.

>> expecting a guilty verdict, hinckley had prepared a statement. from the start, all i wanted was for someone to love me. on march 30th, 1981, i was asking my family to take me back and i was asking jodie foster to hold me in her heart. my assassination attempt was an act of love. after the verdict, hinckley was committed indefinitely to st. elizabeth's hospital in washington, d.c. >> it wasn't till years later that i was assigned to the reagan detail and we had an opportunity when i was in the limo with the president to talk about john hinckley. his desire was that john hinckley got the necessary help that he needed. and then he said, but i have to tell you something, it hurt like hell. >> reagan had a very good way of putting things behind mill. he was very good at kind of separating himself from that moment. i don't think it bothered him. nancy reagan, it bothered her.

>> she was concerned about every time that they would make mention that john hinckley might be released she would come to me and say, steve, i just need to make sure that that won't happen. >> in 2003, the year before president reagan died, a federal judge ruled that hinckley was no longer a danger to himself or others and should be allowed limited visits to his mother's home in virginia. to this day, the secret service watches hinckley, tracking his whereabouts, the people he meets, even the books he checks out of the library. >> is he dangerous to other people still? will he do this again? >> i never had any sense that there was any deep remorse, and i don't think that he'd be very capable. he had mental illness at that time and there are still issues. clearly, i think that he is where he should be.

>> in the years after the assassination attempt, president ronald reagan's approval rating skyrocketed. >> mr. gorbachev, tear down this wall. >> he became one of the most popular presidents in american history. jim and sarah brady became vocal supporters of gun control legislation. their efforts paid off in 1993 with the signing of the brady handgun violence prevention act. it required federal background checks on commercial sales of handguns to individuals. unfortunately, the brady bill came too late for john w. hinckley. several months after the shooting, his father asked him what might have stopped him. hinckley replied, maybe if i'd had to wait a while to buy a

gun, had to fill out forms or get a permit first, or sign in with the police or anything complicated, i probably wouldn't have done it. today people are living longer than they ever have before. that's right. not only are we getting older, but our senior population is multiplying. during the next 35 years, the number of people over the age of 65 is expected to double, and demand for medications, specialists, and life-prolonging procedures are expected to skyrocket. but what does getting old today really mean? more birthdays, more bills. more walks, more walkers. more play, more pills. sure, most of the time old age seems like all coupons and early bird specials, but what happens when the day comes that we can't take care of ourselves?