tow the line. these people are in bed with big corporations and they want teddy roosevelt to do what they want. he lets them think he is going to do what they want because he wants the nomination. he is politically ambitious a once he gets in office he does what he wants, which is infuriating the corporate powers in new york state and they threatened to cut off contributions to the politicians so, platt wants to get rid of teddy roosevelt so he approaches approaches -- the election of 1900 is around the corner. and he approaches mckinley who is running on the republican ticket and want him to take teddy roosevelt on the ticket, take them off his hands. now, mckinley is wary but he realizes that there is a progressive movement that is coming up in many republicans are progressives. he is more of a conservative but

he feels was teddy roosevelt on the ticket as a progressive that it would give good talents to the ticket so he accepts roosevelt onto the ticket and then in 1901, at a exposition in buffalo, mckinley is shot and teddy roosevelt becomes president of the united states. now, he finishes up the first term, the mckinley term we will call it and he decides to run on his own in 1904 and he makes a promise that he will not run again. he would just be a two-term president and this was in keeping with the tradition set by george washington. no president up until then had run for more than two terms. so almost immediately when he makes that commitment he is kind of sorry, but he finishes out his term in 1908 and he handpicks william howard taft to be his successor. but he and taft are different personalities. taft is a conservative.

roosevelt is a progressive. their temperaments are different. taft really didn't want to be president but his wife pushed him. he would rather be a judge. he goes on to the supreme court later. teddy roosevelt loves the political life, loves the leadership and the bully pulpit and all that. so, roosevelt and taft have a falling out during taft's presidency. roosevelt is off in africa a game hunting and people are writing to him. you have got to come back. the republican party is coming apart at the seams. taft is doing things you won't like. he is backtracking on the environment. teddy roosevelt was a big environmentalist. so teddy roosevelt comes back. he decides to run against taft in the primaries but the primaries then are not winding in 1912.

and so, taft gets the nomination in 1912 and people approach teddy roosevelt about running on a third hardy ticket and he says i will do it, but if you can raise money. to big-money men come along. he raises several million dollars and he kicks off his campaign by using the expression my hat is in the ring. this was coined by teddy roosevelt and he runs as the bull moose progressive. now he ends up, he gets a higher percent of the vote than any other third-party candidate. he gets close to 28% of the vote. taft is 22% and because of this split in the republican party, woodrow wilson becomes president with 43% of the vote so one of the ironies of roosevelt is that one of the things he objects to about taft, he can't pull the

party together but at the same time by roosevelt running he splits the party. so, wilson wins the election and that is it for roosevelt. he dies in 1919 but he is considered -- if you look at polls that historians take about great presidency is up there. he is in the top five so he was a great president during his first two terms in office. and i think he runs in 1912 mainly for ego reasons. he can't stand to be out of the limelight. let me make another point about the third hardees. one of the things we find about parties is that during the 19th century, ideas tend to animate third parties than they go out and they get candidates. what happens in the 20th century probably because of the growth of the media with the radio, television, the ease of

transportation, personalities become dominant. you think of third-party candidates you think of nader, you think of wallace and you think of perot and you think of teddy roosevelt. these are all dynamic individuals. and third parties are rise in the 20th century because of these individuals and then the issues become a part of it but they don't dominate. >> in partnership with bright house networks, booktv spent some time in tampa, florida where we visited include books which is known as tampa's only full service independent bookstore. now on booktv, from inc. would books, del quintin wilber reporter from "the washington post" recalls the assassination attempt on president ronald reagan on march 30, 1981. >> the author of this book, "rawhide down" the near

assassination of ronald reagan and as you can tell a lot of people ask me, where did this idea come from? you must he must have remembered it. no i didn't. i was six. i was six years old at the time and i don't have any recollection of the day of the reagan assassination. i'm going to stand up actually. is right with you guys? so i have actually no recollection of this day. in fact i came across this book quite by accident. i covered the federal courthouse for "the washington post" and in covering the federal courthouse for "the washington post" i got to cover hearing for john hinckley jr.. as we all know john hinckley nearly killed reagan and three other men on march 30, 1981 and was found not guilty by reason of insanity. he has been housed at saint elizabeth hospital ever since and being found not guilty by reason of insanity, he gets periodic hearings to get him more freedom. in 2008 i was covering a bunch of hearings involving hinckley in which they are arguing about

whether to let them get a driver's license or continue his progress in treatment to get eventual freedom. and, to get more extended home visits and unaccompanied visits to his mother's. i covered this hearing and it was kind of interesting. i've got to tell you sitting just 15 feet from this person who nearly killed us revered president was really strange because he showed no emotion in anything. they were talking about affect and how disappointed he was when he went out by himself and of the community and no one wanted to talk to him. it was as if someone had taken a mask of his face the night before when he was sleeping and put it on for the hearing. there was nothing. so i covered the hearing and moved on. anyone who says anything about journalism who covers the federal court, you are writing the stories all the time. i wrote my stories and forgot about a -- for about -- forgot about them. this guy calls me to his office and he says you know, it is to

talk about an unrelated, undercover investigation so unrelated that it was about ethiopian taxicab drivers bribing d.c. officials. if you know anything about d.c. government, maybe i shouldn't say this because we are on c-span but if you know anything about d.c. government officials it is not that unusual to have someone getting bribe. so i'm like okay i get it, i get to this hearing or this meeting and we were at a conference. it is not the story come he can't do that. you know that is interesting but i have to do my job. i get up from the conference table and i hear him and he comes back and he slapped something heavy in my hand. i looked down at what it was a gun. i was like bo it is serious now. this is a new level of intimidation from the fbi to plot the gun in my hand. usually i get it dead fish or something like that but this is a gun. they really don't want me to write this story. that is hinckley's on. i went, wow. what is it doing in your desk

drawer? it struck me as kind of odd that this historic artifacts should be in a museum or it should be someplace like the smithsonian are the reagan library or something and this gun is in a desk drawer. it is like a conversation starter. i found that very odd. so i went to the library. i'm going to read now. i'm not the smartest guy in the world but i'm not stupid. i have to go learn more about it. so i went to the library. not a single book on it. couldn't find one. there was one about the 25th amendment for the academic and one about hinckley's trial which was good but i wanted more about him. if you look at the book jacket you see this guy here, agent jerry parr who saves reagan's life not once but twice i would come to learn. now i'm really curious and i'm going to call jerry parr up and see if you'll talk to me. i didn't think he actually would. the secret service and they are secret for a reason. i didn't think jerry would talk to me but i got jerry parr on

the phone and after five minutes of smalltalk he said okay i will meet you. i think was crew pence or adele. we go there and we have rusty sam watches and anyone who knows jerry parr knows once you get them talking he does not stop talking so after two hours i might wow, this is a great story to tell. then i started interviewing other people, doctors and nurses and white house officials and flew out to denver colorado. on this day we all know what happened with al hague. i'm in control. everyone thinks i'm in charge but i'm in control. his words that tagged him for the rest of his life. while i tracked down richard allen national security pfizer. on this day allen brought a personal tape recorder into the situation room one of the most secure prams in the government. have we all seen this iconic image in the situation room and you see how they pixelated out. if you look at if there are pictures in front of hillary clinton clearly at the compound

and they exploited them so we can't see the resolution of the satellite image. this room is one of the most secure in the u.s. government. dick allen brought his personal recorder and for four foreign half-hour staffing ran and i'm the first guy outside of his small circle that got to listen to all four and a half hours of that day. i know precisely what happened, not just in the situation room but around the world because that is where anything funneled, all the reports. sometimes it helps if i set the scene on why this day is important and why i came to believe that march 30, 1981 and near assassination as is important historically as if there had been a real assassination. at first i wrestled with it. you know, it is not as important. he lived in that is wide no real scholarship has been devoted to this thing. but in many ways this shaped reagan and shape the country in shape both of them in a way very

similar to an actual attempt and in fact reagan's wife hung in the balance of a split split-second, split-second decision in a mere inch. and i don't usually say -- there's a new book out, what could happen or what might happen in history. what if things have been different? what if the confederacy had won the civil war? i think it is actually okay when life hangs in the balance of a split second decision to wonder what would the world look like today if george h. w. bush had woken up as president of the united states on march 31, 1981? it was that close. the day starts as a normal day. reagan wakes up at 7:00 a.m. and goes through his normal routine. he delivers a speech to the washington hellhole tell and people always ask me what surprised you? there were a multitude of things that surprised me. what you think you know about arch 30, 1981 that iconic image we have seen of the shooting outside we really don't know.

i didn't know it until i finished interviewing 125 people in reviewing more than 10,000 pages of reference many not seen ever before. and and a little thing surprise me. for example, ronald reagan, he read a script. people headed and stuff to read. the speech he delivered that day to the afl-cio, a totally preteen speech. he wrote it by hand. that taught me something about ronald reagan. he didn't just read scripts, he wrote them. he delivers his speech. 2:27:00 p.m. he is leaving the washington hilton hotel and what is interesting about this hotel is it is just like a character in and of itself. in the 50s and 60s they built this hotel to court court the president of the united states to the international ballroom to deliver speeches like 3000, 4000 people. it is a beautiful hotel. if you look down from the air and look at a satellite image it looks at the seagoing flight the way they designed it.

all the room downtown so you get a few of them all. is beautiful. and they designed a vip entrance just for the president of the united states. a beautiful entrance. you yucca mountain is filing -- spiraling staircase. that is the savior more they take the president on something goes wrong and then he walked down the hall and they have these beautiful president of the -- pictures of the presidents lining the whole. they put all this attention to it but they didn't consult the secret service on the design of the driveway. a key error. this driveway, you have the t. street entrance the main entrance here looking this way so here is the vip entrance. the driver connects them in the driveway keeps going up to connecticut avenue. it is narrow and winding, so narrow and winding in fact that the 13,000-pound limousine wouldn't be able to negotiate the terms and the curves. it might get stuff -- maxed up going to curve and they would have to race out of there.

they couldn't guarantee they could get to limousine out that way. effect that a police car stationed at the top to prevent other cars from coming down to a revisit. back in the 70s car stalled out all the time and in this day a police car stalled out before the limousine and they were worried the secret service was nervous that if his limousine stalled out something bad would happen. the limousine with a stock and it was like crossfire and things would happen. so what they did was, the services decision, the service decided to say thing to do is to drop the president often back up the car and pointed towards t street. we will make them walk in public for 25 feet and that is safer than ending the limousine stuck on the curb. 2:27 p.m. reagan exits the hotel. in his left shoulder is jerry parr who wasn't even supposed to be there this day. jerry parr was supposed to be routine government stuff that day but he tapped another agent said you know what? johnny i want to go with the president today because i want to get to know him better. i don't feel like i know him.

jerry parr protecting carter during the election, jimmy carter during the election entering the transition. here is protecting reagan on this day. he wasn't even supposed to be there. he took the shift walking towards limousine. five feet from the limousine 15 feet from president reagan is an unsecured.. when i say insecure, anyone could stand there. unit reporters like sam donaldson was there on the body watch. he is really there to make sure if anything happens he is there. you have some union guys sitting around going let's get up close and maybe we can count the wrinkles on his face. then you have john hinckley. john hinckley was coming from california to d.c. to new york city and then on to new haven connecticut where he wanted to kill. kill himself or kill both of them. that object of affection was jody foster the actor. he attended sister with her since 1976. he wanted to go there to get her and he was coming through d.c..

he was on a layover. after eating his egg mcmuffin sandwich he opened the newspaper and on a for he saw the present schedule. maybe i'll take my gun up to the hilt and see how close i can get he thought. yet a small 22 caliber revolver in his pocket. headstock carter during the campaign and in his mind he thought if i got the president i will earn her affection. she will know who i i am. in fact he got within arm's reach of carter at a rally in dayton ohio in october but he left his gun at the bus depot. he had stopped with reagan during the translation and at some point transfer to reagan realizing was a -- reagan was a bigger figure. so here he is 2:27 p.m. as reagan is emerging from the vip entrance and in hinckley's right pocket is a 22 caliber revolver meant to explode on impact. he left 37 rounds of of reagan ammunition in his bag to collect

the six bullets that are supposed to explode on impact or collect 2:27 p.m. he pulls out the gun. the fur shop pitts jim brady and ahead. he falls to the ground in the second shot hits tom callahan and he falls to the ground. jerry parr, 50 rolled secret service agent is are they reacting. he is shoving reagan towards the open limousine door. the third shot goes high. and my surprise that third shot went high? hinckley took it tone of target practice but not at moving targets and jerry parr had 4/10 of a second, that was as close as i could time it, not a scientific time. close as i could get it because it is happening really fast. he is grabbing the president present before you register these were real gunshots and shoved them towards the open limousine door. the fourth shot hits tim mccarthy in the chest and he turned to take a bullet just like that. to mccarthy is not wearing a bulletproof vest. he falls to the ground. the fifth shot hits the bulletproof window for limousine. this car is cool by the way.

this car has backward opening doors. normally the agents do not like these backward opening doors. normal doors if the car is facing you guys like this on my hands like that these open this way like the old lincoln's in the 60s. the suicide doors, these are suicide doors. they couldn't leave anywhere until they were shot and in new york they almost ripped one off when they left early in the tour heads ike signed poster something and it almost came off. if it would have been a regular door would have hit the shore and shut -- door and shut it. today that door saved his life or protected him because of blocked the bullet so they block behind it to get him into that limousine. the six shot cracks across the driveway and at that moment no one knows where that six shot one. later they were determined that the six shot hit the side of the car slid through a gap that white between the door in the door frame and hit reagan five inches below his left arm. they tumble into the car, the door shuts and they take off. often like to ask people everyone here seen a

presidential motorcade at least on tv? in d.c. i get stuck at them all the time. you are stuck in traffic and they go on and on and on. jerry parr is propping him up in the backseat and he looks out the window in the seas three bodies on the ground. bullet mark in the left window. he knows there has been an assassination attempt and that limousine is along. taken off and left everyone behind. that limousine was taken off from connecticut avenue toward the white house and the safest place in the known universe and the driver swerved to carve barely avoids hitting a woman pushing a stroller across the street and keeps going straight down towards the white house. jerry parr it's on the radio and says rawhide is okay. rawhide is okay. rawhide is reagan secret service codename. there is no more apt code for president than this one for reagan on the stay. they had taken off towards the white house. parr has rubbed his hands around his body and through his hair and there's no blood. reagan says he thinks he is okay. jerry parr breathes a sigh of

relief. we came really close and we were lucky, we barely made it because i knew three people had been shot in this was close. 30 to 40 seconds later the story changes completely. reagan is complaining of pain in his chest, bright frothy blood is appearing in jerry parr knows there is a problem. the bright frothy blood is probably from the looks because it has been automated and it is frothy and bubbly. that means oh my god, reagan doesn't even know he has been shot by the way. he thinks he has broken a rib on being transferred to the car and punctured her lung. so does jerry parr. here is jerry parr's decision. what does he do? he heads back to the white house and this is the height of the cold war. are there other assassins lurking around? let's think back to one of the last attack patients in washington d.c.. lincoln. there were conspirators all over the place. they even had a medical team. hospital, not one shred of security, not a single agent.

parr makes the call, we are going to the hospital. this looks to back. usa training this is bright frothy blood is a problem. they get to the hospital in three minutes after the shooting, just three minutes. they get there and by the way, the motorcade is reassembled. in the rearview mirror the driver looks in the rearview mirror, sees a follow-up car, the armored follow-up car behind them. to agents hanging onto the running board holding -- picture that scene. they're going 65 miles an hour down connecticut avenue. they peel off and head towards the hospital. reagan insists on walking and. jerry parr thinks he is trying to be a cowboy. walks in, walks in 15 feet, collapses like a dead weight into the arms of his agent. i interviewed a paramedic who is right there. infected paramedic i knew from from the d.c. police department. he was there 30 years ago.

he said del i thought the president was code eight. that means you is going to die. they carry him onto the gurney, the trauma they and the nurses sitting there going please don't die, please don't die. it look that bad. they put them on a gurney and other nurses are crying. they're cutting off his clothes. anything that nancy reagan has gotten anybody, but they are shearing off the suit. they don't even think twice. they cut off the suit and they are strapping blood pressure cuffs on him and she's trying to get his blood pressure and she can't get it. tears are streaming down her face. she is a flashback from the one time she saw her father cry. 1963 when you watch the film of the kennedy assassination. reagan looked up that. the doctor said he was not going to make it. she could not get his blood pressure. she kept trying to get his blood pressure and couldn't get it. she eventually used her finger on his bronchial artery and she got it.

60. 60 me to run shot. that is a big problem but they do their job. get this. this one technician runs a three-foot line from his elbow all the way to his heart. again monitor the situation and there's all this gadgetry. she does this line and then she looks up. what are all these guys in suits with guns? she looks down, oh my god that is the president of the united states. shoestring and she can't do her job. she turned around -- smelling salts to get herself back to work. that is how intense this moment is. they realize eventually he has been shot. they find a little nick -- they usually bring a time with me and i forgot my time but if you have a dime, take a look at a time. that is what they pull it look like the shape of a dime.

imagine getting hit edgewise. it hits in five inches below the left armpit, tumbles through his lung tissue tearing up arteries and blood vessels and all that good stuff in the lungs and they realize that is why there is no blood out. internally he is bleeding like crazy. they inserted chest tube and that solves the problem almost all the time. it shows off the bleeding arteries and capillaries and you don't have to do anything else. they stick it in blood pours out and keeps pouring out. keeps pouring out and infect reagan would lose more than half of his blood this day. betake his blood pressure at his age the trauma he suffered i had one of the doctors who is there. he is a top trauma surgeon at maryland center and he did the calculation for me. debt calculations on the stuff. survivability rate, the injury bug gunshot, age, more than 50% of people in that category die with this one. reagan is sitting there in blood is coming out. they taken to surgery.

people ask me, and i often tell this to anyone who has been a journalist there's always a moment in a book or a story for you feel like he you really got it. he really got the story. for me that was when i tracked down dr. david adalbert. why am i interviewing a 31-year-old surgical intern? well because it is 30 years later and while it is very lucky to get all the facts, got the medical records and i got the secret service report. i have fbi documents and interviewed all of these people. you have to interview more more people because the memories are faded though they are highly acrid if done on a day like this and seared in the memories. you need to interview anyone in the room. even more so than if he did five years later are three years later or two years later so i tracked down david adalbert. david adalbert woke up that day to do a gallbladder surgery or something. here he is on the trauma they doing the chest surgery on ronald reagan. the main surgeon, veteran

surgeon is in reagan's chest feeling with his fingers in the lung tissue to find a bullet bullet that he is worried the bullet may slip into an artery and shooting to reagan's brain. meanwhile dr. david adalbert, 31-year-old surgical intern reaches his hand inside of reagan's chest gently pumps the presence beating heart in his hand and holds it to the side. this room by the way surrounded by armed secret circuit -- service agents with disease and handguns ready to pounce if anyone did anything out of place. i don't know how they would no. they had never been an operating room. this 31-year-old kid is holding reagan, the life of the president in his hands. just like that. so that is what this day was about. i like to say reagan's wife hung in the -- reagan's wife hung in a split second decision of a mere inch.

it was a split-second. the bullet hits reagan in the head. he hesitates at the scene, secret service agent had done previously. reagan was a sitting duck. if he doesn't go the hospital and instead goes to the white house the doctors told me in fact i was on a panel in baltimore with one of the trauma surgeon and he said ronald reagan would not have been -- survived if he went to the white house. that is where they pluck the bullet from reagan's heart. that close, one inch. it was that close. we also learned something about ronald reagan. i came into this -- i'm not a presidential historian. i'm just a court reporter painter get get a ton it, people and read a lot about ronald reagan and interviewed a lot of his advisers, james baker and ed meese and all the guys close to him. what you realize about ronald reagan on this day and what in what it meant to him, reagan had the lowest approval rating of any president at this point in

their first term in u.s. history. that when we look back, what do the reagan library gave a talk. i got a tour of the reagan library. it is pretty close to do the museum and everything. it is all blue. back then the colors were switch. blue with republican and read this democrat. i did know that so that's pretty cool. he crushed carter in a landslide. this was a landslide and yet this early in his first term he has are the hippies had went and impact the very influence a columnist attended that the very morning and said the honeymoon was over. reagan a shot. people didn't know what to think about reagan. this actor is president and the last four presidents have been failures. they did good things that lyndon johnson didn't seek a full second term and richard nixon resigned in the watergate. jerry ford had three years and carter was a -- and put it the country turn to? 69-year-old ronald reagan, former actor to pull us out of trouble. the economy was in great. we had just suffered this

humiliating moment with the iranian hostage crisis and were impotent on the world stage. we are turning to a former actor for health and then you shot. let's remind everyone the last four sitting presidents, shot while in the -- office all by. here is reagan, shot, great. than we then we learned, he sees his wife in emergency room. she comes in and if you know anything about nancy and ronald reagan there was no one in their lives but nancy and ronald reagan. they love each other that much even to this day. and i was at the reagan library i overheard nancy reagan talking to jerry pryor because jerry parr came with me and i heard her say thank us for giving me my life back. this is 30 years later. she comes into the er. reagan caesar and says, honey, i forgot to duck. cracks a joke. i have to tell you, i am shot and that the chest tube in my site and by the way the chest of the doctors tell me is extremely

painful. i'm not sure i'm cracking a joke. this guy is cracking a joke. he gets will than to surgery, emergency surgery to remove the bullet by the way. he sees the three top advisers and says who is minding the store? he gives wilton to surgery, right at that moment he pops his elbow upon the operating table and takes off the oxygen masten says i hope you are all republican. [laughter] lies back down. these words got out of the public and what did the public think? well you know, he is a tough guy kind of, older but a tough guy. he is a rancher. oh my god he really is like this. we all knew reagan had a scripted presidency. he was an an actor and elected that way. it was his own script and he wrote by hand. reagan was very scripted. this davis cup got thrown out the window at 2:27 p.m.. there's one thing i know, when you are facing death you see the true meaning of someone. you see their soul in a way.

that is what the public side and ronald reagan. this is a guy who left at death. okay he is shot in the world seems to be going into chaos. with al hague who is saying i'm in control. the president of the united states, genshaft, walks into the er and cracks jokes. that is comforting. that is powerful, right? that is what you would expect from a cowboy. that was ronald reagan. his approval rating shot up and not because of the sympathy but because we had a sense of who he was. we like him. it helped him get a lot more stuff down later in life. introduce -- interviewed lou cannon and david broder before he died. david broder may be the best political columnist who ever lived and he said this is a day that ensured he would never be out of office for stuff like iran-contra and other scandals that would have killed another president. people said i can celebrate reagan the person from reagan the politician and they like the person.

i think that helped them. reagan also viewed, thought he'd been spared for a purpose. he was very spiritual, very religious and he believed he had been spared for a purpose. he told many people that. but no talk about ronald reagan can end on something like that. it has to end with clips. reagan quips and reagan stories. i would like to tell you if you. for example i hope we are all republican. for years people thought what a spontaneous joke. no, he was in the er and woke up beside jerry parr, his agent said i hope they are all republican. jerry down and said, what? jerry is going out of his mind. this is not a time for jokes. jerry parr is going oh my god what is happened? this guy is wrecking jokes.

there was in her sitting there. at first i didn't believe jerry and i thought jerry might be confused. what happened in the award later and in the er. this was 30 years later and he was 80. but i seem to learn jerry parr's embry to this day is phenomenal. i finally got the radio transcripts and heard the call. jerry was way by the word. i did didn't know at the time. tracked down a nurse, the fun pumping the blood pressure cuff. at the end of the interview i said that reagan's anything? she said the i, she said i hope you are all republican. she didn't go to the zero are so i thought oh my god, that was to people. the technician also heard him. reagan said the line in the er. think what this means. he says line in the r. and it falls flat. maybe i will use it later and he puts in his it in his back pocket. [laughter] to deliver it later. i thought wow that is really cool. then i got into his thermography. that was early in the research. i watch a lot of reagan movies and rote a lot about reagan's

acting. he is acting the role as president. that is his role. he viewed that as a role to play. he really to. wait a minute, yet 53 movies. what were ronald reagan's two best knowns? kings row and -- all-american. what were his two best scenes? hospital and deathbed scenes. if there is a guy who knew the importance of delivery of a good line at a key moment when the world is watching, when everyone around him is going basically crazy and nervous and he wants to calm them down it is ronald reagan. i benefited in researching the book and people say why now? why are you doing this 30 years later? this is the best time to tell a story for several recent. one i got the archival record released after a lot of work. people are still alive so i can interview them more than 125 people. many of them will not be around here in 20 years from now so i got to combine all all the cynics and together.

10 years ago, 20 years ago i would not be able to do it. why did she do it five years after? because i was 11. dorta been a terrible book. maybe with some crayons, okay? okay? 20 years from now it just wouldn't work so it is a perfect time to tell the story right here. when i say that i made mean that little things like david who is a surgeon. he is a resident did a couple of things. he went home and wrote a 10 page diary of what he did that day. down to, they are going down the hallway to the african room from the er and even vote i use my left hand to gently grabbed a waste of the first lady and push her near the gurney so she wouldn't get any obstructions on the way to the operating room. details like that is a researcher and a reporter and as a writer you just salivate over. and there is another. the next day, ronald reagan typical fashion has gone through the night ended with amber and i got to see these notes.

are going to recover room his wife -- writing this wonderful know. know. all in all i would rather be in philadelphia. take me to l.a. so -- mayor where i can see the air i'm breathing. [laughter] if i had this much attention in hollywood i never would have left. everyone is hovering around him. they're big ones dhume like what does the future hold? he did this stuff. he is fine and he finally gets -- there's a wonderful moment. reagan would not stop talking in the nurses wanted them to get the rest. he just won't stop talking. his first words were -- his first word after being shot. the nurse comes and takes a wet washcloth and puts it on reagan's eyes and says mr. president i don't want to be rude but it is time to shut up and go to sleep. he goes to sleep. reagan there was one thing he respected and that was his nurses. white? in the 1940s he nearly died. he had viral pneumonia and

nearly died but he credits the nurse with saving his life because she got them coaxed into breathing even when he wanted to stop reading. fender said shut up, okay i'm going to shut up. laid back down i went to sleep. he is in the icu. he science is important very bill and it had to be signed that day. this one nurses like, mr. president these people are coming to see us. mr. president, can i have your teeth so i can brush them for you? these are my teeth. she is like oh sorry. most people who are 70 years old in the icu don't have their own teeth. [laughter] they brushed his hair and combed his hair. he uses brylcreem and doesn't actually wash it that often. he uses brylcreem. is how he kept a natural, whatever, it is really amazing. in fact what is interesting is many people wondered if he dyed his hair. a man who came in and eventually inserted a chest tube, the first

thing he thought i saw broken was i guess he doesn't die his hair after all. that is amazing how these things. anyway, did they are in this room in the icu, and i believe baker, meese and -- and they tell them what happened. one of them said, i wish i knew which one, says mr. president i want to tell you the guy who shot you is from a good family but he is crazy. [laughter] and reagan goes, i was kind of hoping it would be the kgb. [laughter] on second thought, he would not admit that. and that exchange was chronicled by a nurse in the room who went home that day and wrote down five pages of notes detailing everything she said to the president. i got her on the phone and i was talking to her. she said i took some notes. i'm not sure i'm allowed to read them to you though. i said oh you are, please read them. she read them and almost like

that, and i love that because if you really think about what he is saying is a is turning this tragedy into a joke and reinforcing the time. this was the height of the cold war. reports are literally coming. i saw them, they're coming across top officials desks in the country warning about an imminent soviet invasion. here reagan is talking about the kgb, bringing it all back in a joking way. wanting to reassure everyone around him that he was okay and to kind of highlight the time. and so, that is basically the book with a lot of other stuff in it. if anyone has any questions, i am happy to answer. >> the first thing is, is there one interview you didn't get that you wish you would have and where was nancy won it all happened? >> i wish i had gotten nancy reagan. she had stopped doing book interviews and it was

interesting because i had to give a talk at the reagan library and she was there. imagine this, you are talking about what she admits is the most tragic day of her entire life and you are up on a stage with 300 people, maybe three to people there, this is the reagan library. library. a big draw. in walks nancy reagan and takes a seat in the front row. right there. [laughter] so in my mind i'm saying what can i say in what can't i say? she is right there and it is her library in a way. what do i do? i'm just want to got to stick with the normal program. i couldn't think of what not to put them. i wish i had gotten her. she was very polite afterwards and she said i liked your book and i like to talk. and the other question was? >> where was she at the time? >> this is where it's at peripheral characters. she was at the white house.

she just on a luncheon. she felt kind of weird at the luncheon. something was off. she made her agents take her back to the white house. she walked into this leery minute the time she was working on redecorating the white house with two people she had brought from hollywood. one guy she brought from hollywood to redecorate -- remember the controversy next controversy is there today because there they are in this lariam. the shooting comes over the secret service. her lead agent is down and w. max extinguishes the command post below the oval office. he hears all the stuff in the races upstairs because he knows he needs to be the one to break the news to nancy reagan because if he is not they are in deep trouble. they will be chasing her out the door of the white house to the hospital. he needs to control the situation. he gets up the stairs in comes the room and there she is. she can already tell something is wrong. she reads them instantly. she is a very perceptive person. she has positives and negatives like everybody and over the years she has gotten -- anyway,

over the years. [laughter] anyway, one thing she is is very perceptive. she was one of reagan's best political minds. she read stuff that are then any other advisory. there she is. she knows immediately what is wrong. something is wrong. there's a shooting and he is going to the hospital but he is okay. they didn't know he'd been shot yet. way to go into the hospital if he is okay? pretty soon george offers looking at her back and she is heading down the stairs. he is trying to delay her. finally he knows he is not going to win this argument so you is give me a few minutes to get the car. they pull up to cars and again they get in their cars and go. he locks the doors. i have to keep people out and i have to had to keep her in. they get stuck in traffic six blocks from the hospital. halfway there, they get stuck in traffic because it is a mob scene. he is in the front seat and she is right behind him.

he reaches -- she reaches over and grabs his shoulder. george i'm going to get out and walk out. what do you do if you are george author? we are going to get there in a minute. i can't let you out. i'm not going to let you out. they get there and she walks in and that is -- so for her and them, the idea that 30 years later she said jerry parr thank you thank you forgiving mewing life back in the most sincere way possible. it meant a lot to her. >> how did you get access to -- that had been previously released? >> that is a great question. there were a couple of instances. i'm a reporter and i filed a freedom of information act with the secret service which is not always have the best reputation because they are secret. for releasing stuff. i get a response back a year later, about a year later with three newspaper clippings and it

i am like what? we have lots of stuff and we are not going to give it to you because it is of his ongoing law-enforcement proceedings. hinckley is not a law enforcement proceeding. hinckley is a psychiatric evaluation. msa charge someone else there is no more law enforcement proceeding so i made this argument and i appealed. i got the post-attorneys to help me and we one. a year after that about, i got four new pages of secret service records and they were just, the neatest thing. ..

>> what did he tell the driver? she did remember. the driver's dead, the doctor is dead. what did she say? her report doesn't say it. i'm flipping through, flipping through, building the scene, i timely find the drivers. look at it. mary gordon turned to me and said, let's go. i got that. now, was that worth the effort? i really wanted it so bad, and i got it. this is a moment, the park central hotel, i couldn't tell whether it was red or brown brick because the pictures were all black and white. you know, i spent like two or three days figuring out the

color of the hotel. i timely gave up. i said they were red because i tracked somebody there, but there was a moment in the hospital where nap sigh reagan and everybody gathers in the chapel. nobody remembers what the chapel looks like, but i got a hospital administrator still on the job there and she remembered what it looked like. there was a piece of stained glass with nice lighting and everything. you get the documents that way. the fbi has a massive file on this day, and they released parts of it. i couldn't get it all released because it would take seven years, and this would come out on the 040th anniversary. these documents had never been released before. i asked for it. they always said no before. he passed in 2004, there's no

reason to keep it secret. they gave it to me, and it's quell because in it, he said if he would have waited a bit longer, i was going to get up on the side of the car and wave to everybody in the street. i would have been a sitting duck if he would have waited a few more seconds. the shots fired came out in 1.7 seconds. it was that fast. 1.7 seconds is the time it takes me to say 1.7 seconds. i forgot that. ucialgly i don't. >> how did the secret service secure the emergency room and the hospital when there was so many patients in there and probably family members going in and out? >> that's a good question. they set up a perimeter there very quickly and another agent was to, just like screen people

with the nurse. who belonged here and who didn't. she would be like, i don't know him. the agent would be like, leave. that's how they did it there. it's not a very big area either. it was even congested. in fact, the main surgeon who made the decision to take reagan to surge, two of the factors that weighed on his mind were not just the medical, he just kept bleeding, but also the political ramifications for leaving a bull let in the president, but this room is too chaotic. the operating room won't be like that. he made the decision. that was one the reasons. >> tell us about your writing process. how do you organize this much detail into a fashion you can use when you write? is there pieces of paper all over your office? how did you do it? >> yeah, it was like a train wreck.

no, it was hard, you know? it was, you know, i did each interview, unless it was in person, in its own file, and i noted what was important from each interview, and then i was fortunate. the book is laid out this the history of one day in time. really one day, a minute-by-minute account. i knew where i needed to be and where in time. there was some scenes i didn't know where to put it like if it happened at five or four. that's important when it's down to themen. there was a point in the book where we worked over one paragraph for over three hours on the phone. it was time line stuff. i had these medical records, and they are really, really great, but there's a little ambiguity in that, and i had to make decisions like when did one thing happen, when did it start, how do i do this? it's funny, there's a moment where he says there's two people in the entire world who know the answer to this, and that's you and me, and i don't care

anymore. [laughter] i was like, oh, okay. [laughter] well, i'll say this then, and, you know, it's really hard. sometimes you'd have to put a scene in some place and just write it in a way that that's where you think it went, but write it in a way you are not sure. it happened, but you don't know when. i was lucky in that aspect ands situation room stuff was easy because the tapes and so. i knew when they started and i knew when they ended, and there's gaps of a few seconds in between. i was down to the minute. on the tape it was 3:24 p.m. or 1524 is the time. there was an atomic clock in the room so i knew precisely. the medical records were great, so that's how i -- i was lucky, i decided -- i think one asked how you keep the books

streamline, anything that is boring, i cut out. there's a lot of stuff in the end notes, people on kendal people get annoyed because the book is 224 pages. it's 66% done and there's pages of end notes. i couldn't include it in the narrative because it clogs it up, but it's fun history. there's a great part of history i couldn't let die of reagan. in the book they go to germany, 1978 for a campaign visit, and -- not a campaign visit, but this is a visit where you take the governor from california around the world to show you the foreign policy credentials. they go to the berlin wall, and dick allen is as anti-communist as you can get. reagan goes, dick, i'll find a way to make this wall come down. words he echoed in office in

1978. in the same trip before it happened, they're in a car all going to an event with high-ranking german officials, and reagan drives along, and allen is in the front seat and has to turn to look at roadside. dick, when did we get to einpart? [laughter] he goes, no, that's not a place, but it means exit in german. [laughter] oh! are there a lot of words with the word "fart" in them? [laughter] yes, governor, there are many. [laughter] reagan goes, can you write them down for me? dick allen jots down einfart and others. reagan puts them in his park and they are at the event with high

ranking officials and it's getting boring because people are translating, and reagan pulls out the list, looks at it, laughs to himself and puts it away. -that was funny. it didn't fit. i wanted to jam it in, but i didn't want to be lost in history. you have the absence of ronald reagan, cold war, we're going to knock this thing down, joking about the word fart on the same trip. [laughter] i thought that was great. >> were you already writing a book about reagan before the shooting, or how did you get involved in the beginning? and how long did it take you to put all that information together? >> well, i was 6 years old when the shooting happened, and i got interested in 2008 when i came across his gun, and across

hinkley when he was in the court. i knew there was a story to tell. it was from soup to nuts the comma, the beginning to the end, it probably took me 18 months to write and report it. a lot of saturdays in there, you know, so, probably a total of 18 months if you added all the time up. >> the gun still in the desk? >> no, it's not. a agent left of the fbi in 2009, collected the gun, and now it's in a private museum for the fbi at the fbi head quarters. priecht meaning -- private mening you only get invited to go. they let me. i wish i brought the photos with me. this picture of the gun has been photo shopped. i had it in my hand. i said i wanted to see the gun again. [laughter] it was in their vault in their basement by that point, a year and a half later. the former agent kept it in his

desk drawer and i want to see it again. you can see the woman's eyes roll. [laughter] they invited me to, the fbi vault where the archive and took me through and i saw dillenger's gun and i got to pull the trigger, and not with a bullet in it obviously, but i played with it, and there's some stuff that didn't make the end notes. the trigger pull is 18 pounds per pressure, a heavy gun, but for a revolver, but to get off the shots, it was a big deal at the trial because they wanted to show his intent. you can't just say the gun went off. you do, you have to like really squeeze it. that was kind of neat. >> are you working on something,

a follow-up maybe to another reagan book or another book of some kind? >> i would like to write another book, but i think, you know, finding -- you want to write something -- i really like this book, "rawhide down" because i liked the characters in it. i liked jerry par and the doctors, not just as people and characters in the book, but as professionals. i like heros. i like villains. i didn't find it that interesting, the shooter, but -- and so i, you know, you really want that, but i haven't found that again for another book, at project. i'm looking, obviously, but like and reagan, for example, my publicist would not like this if she heard me, but i'm not a

presidential historian. i'm not, you know, i'm just not, but i came to really understand reagan i feel like and the people who read the book on both sides of the aisle and buchanan who knows him better than anybody, i got the profiles mostly right, and i'm not sure i'm the right person to do anything more in depth on ronald reagan, but i enjoyed him as a character, really came to admire the guy. i approached his character in the book, him as a figure of kind of with some trepidation because so much was written about rand reagan, and ai approached this as, no, no, no, this book is not written before. i said, no, i swear. it has not been written before. we had the gulf oil spill, and there's 12 books out on it already. there's a fictional account, but no book. historians tepid to write -- tend to write these things.

this happened on the 70 day in office. i came at it from the other end, the side end, like as a crime story. i came at it as a crime story, the drama story, and then it ended up reinvolving around him because i liked him and admired him as a character and as a president. >> do you have a website or something to keep up with you? >> oh, yeah, rawhidedown.com or find me on facebook. everybody should find me on facebook. [laughter] or twitter. you wouldn't believe the number of people who spell my last name with u-r. it's crazy. [laughter] yes? >> [inaudible] >> that is a wonderful point of contention between the people who run the reagan library and

the fbi. the fbi told them, not me, but if there's evidence still for some reason, and they wont give it up. they want it. there's no reason for it to be evidence anymore, but, you know, the library has a duplicate gun on display. it's interesting. you get out there, the reagan library has a whole room dedicated, and there's four network film crews who filmed the shooting, and there's an interyule room with four displays. you watch this one, then that one, and this one and that one of the it's fascinating. the angles of everything, and even so, you don't figure if you watch it all, it's crazy. people watched this over and over again. like i have obsessively. you spot something new in each one. you do that, but you still can't really understand it until you get the reports and interviews of everybody and figure out what

they were doing when. it happened so fast. yes? >> the largest gun collection of the world -- [inaudible] >> you know, the gun was a semiautomatic turned into an automatic with a new handle on it, but it shot nine to 12 shots and it was designed if you pointed to the floor, it would just put bullets in you. >> [inaudible] >> my wife? she made an escape. she heard me give this talk all too often. [laughter] >> is there a situation where you discussed -- were they gets reports from the hospital? >> yes, in fact, it's really interesting. the secret service reports helped me loot about how chaotic it was. at one point in the room, you know, they were sitting there, and don, the treasury secretary,

he gets handed a note, jim brady is debt. he turns to dick allen. you hear it on the tape like a balloon that deflated. brady is dead. the national security adviser had driven jim brady to work on something. they were neighbors, they were friends. what we tend to forget is that these guys were not just working for this dude, but they really liked him as a friend. they liked jim brady. the agents liked tim mccarthy, you know? they liked tom and all these people. for them, this was a real moment. jim brady is dead. dick allen says, well, we should have a moment of silence, prayer, and reflectionment the room is dead quiet. the silence lasts for seven seconds. then they are back to work. there's too much to do. jim got seven seconds, but turns out he didn't die. in fact, there's a great

moment. i have to be careful because there's profanity, but there's a surgeon working on jim brady, and he saves his life, and he may have been the most technically, on this day, he had the most -- the biggest technical challenges. the bullet was here, exploded. shrapnel was on both sides of the brain, swelling like crazy, had a 50/50 chance of surviving. they listen to the radios and there's news reports, and they report jim brady is dead. it made it to the halls of congress where someone released it and everybody thought he died. they hear it, and he says what do you think we're operating on, a corpse? [laughter] as an author, there's moments, whether you get reviewed or whatever, david simon, the great crime writer in baltimore. there was the baltimore police beat, and david took me to

lunch. i bought him lunch actually. it was a favor for me. i took him to lunch. the editors say it's for the readers, do it for the reader. that is bs. it's about your sources. not in the sense that you write a story to kiss their but or make them feel good, but it's a story that's true to them. when they read it, it's true. that's always been my principle ever since. even if you hammer a guy and is unfair, somewhere he knows it's true. i got a e-mail from the surgeon. i got is three weeks ago, and he said, del, i know this happened 30 years, and i read your book. reading it made me feel like it was today. that made me feel good. i captured it from his perspective and made him relive it. that's hard to do. i felt good about that. everything else, if you got that right, i felt pretty good.

yes? >> on the book tour, where have you been, and where will you go? will you do letterman or howard stern or leno? >> do you have any idea how? [laughter] >> i had some fun. i was october bill o'riley show. some other news shows. i've been in baltimore, rich monde, and you know, it's, you know, you do it, after this, oif an event in late may in pennsylvania, and a couple things in june at the henry ford museum is having an vermont, that's where they keep the presidential limousine.

they have an event in late september where i get to go to. i have not seen the presidential limousine in person, just many picture. i keep ongoing on these side talks, but it's funny. i determined the limousine weighed 13,000 pounds, and i'm calling the curator and one thing is to triple check, if your mother says she loves you, check it out. i'm talking to the curator, talking about angles and what was the gap between the door and the door frame, but he couldn't tell because they fixed it after the shooting. i said, hey, what's the weight of the car? i have a press release from the 1960s when ford gave them the car of the weight at 13,000 pounds. he said, oh, 10,000 pounds. we weighed it. i said, oh, oh, it lost 3,000 pounds? 10,000 now, 13,000 at the time of the shooting. where did the 3,000 pounds go? did they just exaggerate the weight at the time, or was

there -- what did they take out of the car if it weighed 13,000 pounds. i called a secret service agent. i said, ray, question, the limousine is now 3,000 pounds later. i want to get the weight right. bill was like, that's classified. oh, okay. who knows what so, it's cool to know, but they will not tell me. >> oh, wow. >> time for the signing and thank you so much. [applause] >> for more information, visit the book's website at rawhigh-- rawhidedown.com.

>> how do you think the industry, the book industry changed over the last 10-15 years? >> i have to say the word former book editor was the saddest words that i know because there's so many of us now, so many the newspapers have dropped their book pages. i'm very proud of the st. petersberg times that they still have two pages, but what is changes is both the way people are reading, in other words, the vehicle, and i think to some extent what they are reading, but mainly how they are reading is what's changing. we emphasize -- when book editors always covered the latest books tied into the publishing industry in bookstores and so on, and so i

think there's one thing that's happening is people are kind of disassociating themselves with the usual traditional vehicles, and so they are looking for -- people love books and want to read. i don't think that's changed, but they are looking for other ways of reading in an easier read and younger people are used to the handheld devices and see nothing wrong reading on the devices. old fogeys don't want to books, but the content is still the same. i'm happy about that. >> what do you think the paper got rid of their book review section? >> you know, i really don't know. i think it's a big mistake. they say there's no advertising for the book pages which is true enough. the book industry is on the ropes. bookstores don't advertise. they don't have advertising in the sports sections either. i think their rationale is misplaced because that is their client. that is their customer,

readers. i never understood why they didn't emphasize books and reading in their pages. i guess, i think the "st. petersberg times" has been ahead of the curve in that way. >> changing in technology -- what do you think that means for more independent bookstores? how do they keep up? >> well, i think some of them are incorporating some of this, some of them are. they are figuring out that they have to go with the flow, and i think there's going to be, in the future, books on demand in bookstores. people will come in and actually, a book will be produced for them on the spot. it's already happened. it's -- people are -- the book industry is very old-fashion the. when the paper back came out, people said that's it. nobody will read anymore. they were dime trashy novels, and they said that's the end of reading.

paperbacks were the beginning of the mass democratic distribution of books. i think all this alarmism is misplaced too, but you can understand it's a very old-fashioned industry. someone once said it's a 19th century industry living in a 22nd century world. it's kind of schizophrenic, and so some are adapting better than others, obviously. some are, you know, folding. ones like haslams, i'm happy to see, this huge wear house of space and still people are coming. it's a tourist destination for people. talk to inkwood in tampa, that's the other model which is a small, very personal, get to know your customers, call them up with a book comes, you hand sell them, but has lawn mower has the aspect of -- haslams has the aspect of used

books. e-books revolutionize the way the people read. it's the vehicle is the way they read. >> some people i know they said with the closing of borders and barnes & noble not doing well that this is almost the end of bookstores because people are not reading like they used to. >> when the megastores came on the scene, they also predicted the end of reading. they said those megastores shut down reading and up dependent stores are going to run out of business. the independent stores created the aba to stay alive. not all of them made it, but, you know, some people are cheering the end of the megabookstores. i happen to like them because they did a lot of activities in tops, a lot of book signings and active in the community. to me, that's the key. getting involved with people, bringing them in for various other reasons, not just

expecting them to wander by to read a book. it's easier to order a book on amazon, but if you have a reason to come to a bookstore because you are going to meet other readers, or you are a writer, and these are communities that overlap, people who write and people who read, this is why the self-publishing industry now is becoming so popular and flourishing and why amazon is getting involved in it and why barnes & noble will start doing it. they are starting to publish their own books because they are starting to understand there's a connection between people who want to read, people who want to write, and people who want to obviously publish in all its forms, so i think that those successful ones have understood that they have to draw the community in, and you have to have the destination -- a bookstore has to be a destination not just to buy a book because they can do that easier online. it has to be for other reasons. >> and as a person who has

founded a bookstore, can you tell about that process and what role do the book festivals have? >> well, here's what i thought about the book festival way back then is that i had gone to the miami book festival in the early 1990s, and i just was amazed because it was so much fun, and you know, here are me people, you know, all gathered together. i said, you know, why can't we do? i asked the publishers, why do you send authors to certain places and not others? they said, there's places with book festivals. i said, why not us? we started this book festival, and the first time we held it, we didn't know what we were doing. we just asked authors to come. we had some really big names, betty fernand came to our first festival. lots of people showed up, but i think there was this need, again, like i'm saying, for people to reach other people.