throughout the weekend here on american history tv on c-span 3, watch personal interviews about historic events. our bookshelf features the best known history writers. revisit key figures, battles and events during the 150th anniversary of the civil war. visit college classrooms across the country during lectures in history. view our complete schedule at c-span.org/history and sign up to have it e-mailed to you by pressing the button. >> on march 30th, 1981, a would-be assassin fired six shots at president ronald reagan

at a hotel two miles outside the white house. del wilber, author of "rawhide down: the near assassination of ronald reagan" met us at the site to tell us his story of that day. >> ronald reagan was leaving this hotel after delivering a speech to the afl-cio. reagan, a longtime union man himself was kind of excited to give this speech. actually rewrote it by hand. >> 2:25, 2:26, 2:27 emerges from behind this area. this is a bunker. if you look over here you'll see the entrance, the door, a steel door.

where the president left. they built this entrance specially for the president when they built this hotel in the 1967s they built this wonderful grand ballroom and they knew for v.i.p.s they would want a special secure access and built it for limousines. what's interesting about this, you'll see the driveway, the curving driveway. the architects didn't consult the secret service in building this, so they realize the secret service that they came up this way, stopped here and kept driving up, if they just left it here for the president to come in here and go. the limousine would get stuck up there and go because it's so hulking and there's a police car always up there to prevent people from coming down, and by doing that, if the cop like didn't get it the star started and they often stalled back then

they couldn't get away and could get trapped up there in an attack. so what they would have to do is leave the president here, back the limousine around, back it up and park it right around here. now this sidewalk is smaller than it was then but right about where the curve, is they backed the lime seen up like this so the limousine is facing out towards t street. this is t street. the limousine is facing this way. the back door is open. what's cool about the back door is this is a lincoln continental. armored lincoln continental and about 13,000 pounds. stop a tank rifle round or something. this was a '72 lincoln. stopped making the backwards doors in the late '60s. can't figure out why they would have the backward agent say doors and the agents called them suicide doors. the reason they would call them suicide doors, if they left them open they would rip them off. so they parked right there. this is,had an attendant risk. by doing it this wait president would be out in the open. now around 2:00, 1:30 about that time, john hinckley, a deranged troubled 25-year-old, was obsessed with jodie foster, as we all know, infamously obsessed with jodie foster. hinckley is a strange character,

and i tried to write him in the most balanced way possible. people differed on whether he was real insane at that moment. the jury decided that he was. he had an obsession with jodie foster. he saw the movie "taxi driver" and began to fantasize about jodie foster. his character mirrored bickel who is a taxi driver, former army vet works wants to kill a presidential candidate to impress a woman he admirers and he starts focusing on jodie foster who played a prostitute in that move and becomes more and more obsessive. in his mind he wants to impress her and thinks the only way he could impress her is to shoot the president of the united states, so he hangs out at blair house during the transition period in 1980, in early 1981 stalking the president, watching the president-elect. he actually stalked carter. in october 1980 he was in

dayton, ohio, and he got within arm's reach of the president, but he didn't bring his guns with him. left him in the luggage at the bus station, and he regretted that. so he had been stalking presidents and stuff and there he was with reagan right there, and he's like -- he comes -- he's actually in l.a. takes a bus across country and arrives the day before the shooting, and at that moment from the documents i've read and the people that interviewed him, the doctors of psychologist, hasn't made up his mind to shoot the president. doesn't even know the support in town. wants to take a bus from d.c. to new haven to get foster. he's envisioning killing himself, killing her in this orgy of violence. eats breakfast the morning of the shooting, at the park central hotel and buys a copy of "the washington star" newspaper and on page a-4 there's the president's schedule and he's at the hilton. you know what, i'm going to take my little gun, my .22 caliber

and go up there and see how close i can get and what can happen. he writes her a letter at 12:45 p.m. at the old park plaza hotel, park central hotel in downtown washington. no longer exists. got torn down. a lot of history in this day gets torn down, you'll find, and he's waiting right over there behind the reap line 15 feet past where the open door is for the limousine. he has a .22 caliber gun in his pocket. it's loaded with devastator bullets which are tipped with lead azide, and lead azide is a high explosive so they blow up when they hit things. so he's sitting there waiting, waiting, waiting. hinckley can't believe he's that close to the people. agent right there. hinckley pulls out his gun and envisions himself dying in a burst of gunfire, you know, suicide by cop, suicide by secret service agent, and -- and he starts shooting.

>> shots fired. shots fired. there are some injuries. >> mr. president. [ gunfire ] >> there was a wealth of documentary material from that day that explains what happened. a lot of video. three networks shot video of it. there's still photographs and there's two groups of really great aystl a white house photographer from a.p. his fourth day as the white house photographer for a.p., and he was around here somewhere. he shoots over the limousine, and he has the great shots of parr throwing reagan into the car. then you have the white house photographer who is trailing reagan in this area, and he's shooting pictures that way. and by using those two pictures you need a sense of what happened. watching the video, still all

two-dimensional and the fbi reports that i dug up in this, there's some great diagrams that kind of map out where everything is, and they laid it out with tape measurements and everything. that was very helpful, and i've come here a few times but coming here is kind of difficult because if you notice this thing obviously wasn't here that day. they built after that to protect the president, and then you have the little gardening area is new, and i'm told they put that there to keep spectators away and the sidewalk is shorter. he's right here and reagan is right about there. >> where is reagan? >> right about where you're standing. >> this far away. >> 15 feet. they say 15 feet, they have measured it, and reagan was 15 feet from hinckley when the shots were fired, but if you go to a basketball court, any basketball court in the country and get on the free-throw line and you look at it, you're -- you're -- you know, it's just the distance of a free throw.

that's how close he was. that's 15 feet. i also got the secret service did -- there are a lot of great reports they did on this. interviewed all the agents that day and a lot of witnesses. i forwarded those and got those. i knew what everyone said they did, and that usually matched up with what the video and picture showed and that was helpful. helpful to get in their heads of what was happening. i interviewed them all, too, and i also got some fbi reports. for example, a great fbi report. no one has seen reagan's fbi interview shortly after the shooting. he gave an interview to the fbi agents. that was sealed and i got it unsealed through my foia process and reagan was coming out here and saw the reporters but he wasn't going to talk to the press, and -- and you can infer from that that the reason he didn't want to talk to the press, he kind of made some stumbles and wanted to keep him on message in that time before and he wasn't going to answer any impromptu questions. just wasn't worth it for him. he also said if hinckley had only waited. he was going to climb on to the

running board of the limousine raise himself up and wave to a group of about 200 spectators across the street. his back would have been to the president as he waved. i mean, his back would have been to hinckley. hinckley didn't wait. hinckley started shooting. it is 2:27 p.m. and we know it's 2:27 p.m. because the moment the gunfire ends, secret service agent calls on the radio to the headquarters, the secret service headquarters at the white house, and an agent there looks up at their clock and finds out -- and notes that it's exactly 2:27 p.m. so he shoots. took six shots. the first one hits james brady, the press secretary in the head. the second one hits tom delahanty, a d.c. police officer works turned around to check on the president's progress. he falls down and says i'm hit. now the path to the president is clear. it's wide open. hinckley has an effective range of 20 to 30 feet. he's done target practice, can hit the stationery targets 20 to 30 feet. jerry parr, reagan's main secret service agent in 0.4 seconds has grabbed the president of the united states, the moment he

hears the gunfire, thrusts him behind tim mccarthy, another secret service agent who swiveled his body and takes a bullet in the chest. the first bullet hits brady. the second one hits delahanty, the third one flies over reagan's head and lodges into a building across the street. they actually recover it. a picture of the bullet hole in the lobby of one of those buildings and the fourth one wears mccarthy, hits him right in the chest, spins him around. just as they are behind him. jerry parr credits mccarthy for saving the president's life. the next bullet hits the armored limo doe, so the bulletproof window, just as you could see the president flashing behind it with jerry parr pushing him in the limousine. and the sixth one cracks across the parking lot. no one knows where that one and jerry parr gets him in the limo. someone slams the door shut.

the driver of the limo, former army veteran, real stressful job driving the president, not because you're worried about situations like this, but you're always worried about dropping off the president at the wrong entrance, hugely embarrassing. never live it down, very stressful job driving the president. he's waiting, waiting, waiting, could hear the shotshr open door. if the door was closed he couldn't have heard because the car is so heavily plated. he's seen his buddy tim mccarthy and he didn't want to run over mccarthy with the 13,000 pound limo. they head straight out connecticut avenue at the moment. what they didn't know at the time hinckley's final shot, the sixth one, had ricochetted off the back quarter panel of the limousine. actually they recovered the black paint and matched that off the bullet that was later removed from the president and as reagan is diving hits him right here around here and lodges an inch from his heart. >> we're going to get in the taxi and follow the ride of the limousine. do you think this is roughly the way it was parked. >> pretty close this, direction

like this, out there towards t street and the rear door, rear part of the limo was almost touching the sidewalk. remember, the sidewalk is smaller here than it actually was so right about here is probably where the door was. all right. so you're going to go out here and you're going to make a left down connecticut and then you're going to make a right, you know, continue connecticut down 17th street and then make a right on pennsylvania. can you do that? >> so paint us the picture inside the limo while we're driving here. >> jerry parr, the agent, looks out the window and sees there's a pock mock on that door, on that window where the bullet is. and -- and he also noticed the three guys down the sidewalk as they pull away. he goes now this is bad. there's been a shooting of the props reagan up in the seat you're in. reagan is kind of like this, like a tired basketball player, and he runs his body -- inside his coat pocket -- his coat and his hands through his hair to see if there's any blood. no blood. feels pretty good and tells the driver to tell on his radio

because jerry parr has lost his radio. he lost his transponder, and so he can't use his radio to tell everyone what they are doing so he tells them to use the microphone here to radio down to headquarters that they are heading back to the white house. actually they used the code word crown, and he takes the radio from drew and says rawhide is okay. rawhide is okay. rawhide is ronald reagan's code name. that's where i got the title of the book from. >> rawhide is okay. follow up. rawhide is okay. you wanna go to the hospital or back to the white house? >> we're going to crown. >> okay. >> back to the white house. back to the white house. rawhide is okay. >> so they are heading back now towards the white house.

and drew is flying, the driver of the limousine just hurtling down connecticut avenue. it's closed to traffic. wouldn't be traffic here in 1918 on march 30th because they closed the streets for the limousine's expected ride back. now at about -- as they are driving along, remember, the limousine is alone. they have no support. they have lost the motorcade behind. the followup car, armored followup car with two men brandishing uzis catches up to him and the spare limousine with the president's physician in and another agent finally gets up near them. they are going along and the police cars are now starting to follow up and the police motorcycles are getting ahead of the limousine and as they are going right through about here jerry par realizes there's something wrong with the president. he's having trouble breathing. are you having a heart attack? is it your heart and reagan said he doesn't think so and he

starts dabbing blood from his lap and from parr training he knows it's oxygen probably from the lungs and that isn't good so jerry parr has to make a call. this guy is struggling. have a medical facility at at the white house, doesn't know if it's world war iii or he can go to the hospital. if he goes to the hospital and reagan is not hurt, that could set off a major economic question. that's what's going through his mind. economic questions. he said you know what, i can't risk it. i'm going to the hospital which had no agents at it. no security there. there could be other assassins in the city waiting for the president there and he makes it a call and they head to the hospital. they are going to go to the hospital so they get on the radio and say we're going to george washington, the emergency room and let's get there fast and parr get on the raid yes and says let's hustle. let's hustle. >> roger, we want to go to the emergency room of george washington. >> that's a roger. >> go to george washington fast. [ inaudible ] >> get an ambulance, i mean, get

the, um, pressure there. >> correct. we've made the call. >> horsepower, horsepower. let's hustle. >> because he can't say on the hospital reagan's hurt. they don't use reagan's name. they know assassins and news media can be listening to the open communications so they use the code names. they abandon the crown. they go to the hospital. now at about this time marion gordon, kind of an unsung hero this day, one of the few female agents in the secret service. she's -- she devised the motorcade that day in routes and even drove the routes to the hilton and to the hospital and to the white house and wanted to make sure all the routes were clear. weren't blockages. they wanted to make sure they knew where everyone was going. drew had driven a motorcade to the hilton not too long before that so he knew all the routes and didn't have to practice

them, but he already knew them, so they are heading down and marion gordon realizes she doesn't have a radio to communicate with the police cars in front. she's in the front right seat of the spare limousine, armored limousine, and she says these cars are going to keep going to the white house because they didn't know where we're going. we better get up in front of presidential limousine right now. sells the driver you better get in front of the presidential limousine because if he's going to lose his police escort in a few seconds. she didn't want drew to -- there's a lot going on in the car, a lot to do. didn't want him to have to think about getting to the hospital and wanted to be a battering ram. didn't know what was going on in the world, as i've said before. they don't know if there are other people working to get them so she needs to make sure if there's a car in front of the limousine she has to take the hit, not president and meanwhile in the president's condition, he seems to be having a harder time breathing and reagan himself felt like someone had hit him

with a hammer. just struggling and struggling to breathe. this is really interesting, right? they are driving down here and the spare limousine is in front. a hard pivot to make, an angled street. meanwhile, the police cars keep going and i got the d.c. police tapes. not that helpful, but they are amazing. can you hear a guy going donald bell, who is a sergeant, one of the lead cars, goes my god they have turned into the hospital. they have turned into the hospital and start going this way. going along and heading towards the circle, and -- and the driver asked jerry parr do we want to go the wrong way around the circle to get there faster? doesn't say wrong way and jerry says no, no, no. didn't want to hit any oncoming traffic because it would be too dangerous. the old hospital is at 22 nd big world war ii era bunker building, really ugly. that's the new building. that's where my two sons were born is at that hospital. that's where the old hospital was.

they built this one in 2000. this one opened in 2002. tore that old building down in 2003 and they pull that up. reagan, they drive up, the limo pulls up. parr jumps out. reagan indicates to parr that i want to get out on my own. i don't need to be carried. he comes out and reagan -- parr is going he wants to be a cowboy so reagan gets up, walks out, hitches up his pants, walks up to the door, follows him and agents have scouted ahead of them. medical crews are getting there and the nurses are asking how he's doing. looks really ash and doesn't look very good and collapses, bam, just falls on the ground. his knees hit the ground. ray shattuck and jerry parr catch him. a whole horde of people carrying him to the trauma bay. they throw him on a gurney. nurses, paramedic, a doctor who initially treated him all thought he was going to die.

looked that bad. it this is a nightmare. it's the president of the united states. start doing the medical protocols they need to save his life. throwing in ivs and getting long lines into him, you know, someone is, you know, got an oxygen mask on to give him air. got to stabilize someone's blood pressure really fast because it will kill you. a nurse has to get it palpably. she gets his brachial pressure. it's 60. anything below 90 is in shock this guy is in a lot of trouble. they don't know he's been shot. had a heart attack or something. think he broke a rib. when they came hurtling in the limousine, he landed on the transom, you know, for the transmission and jerry parr suspects he broke a rib and punctured a lung. he's thinking please let this guy live. thinking back to kennedy. can't lose another one. this is crazy. they throw the ivs. following all the proper protocols that had really come into existence in the last ten years.

reagan is very lucky because not only did the secret service ramp up their training and save his life but at the same time this hospital, not this one, but that hospital only became a certified level one trauma center two years before reagan was shot and even before that emergency medicine was the back water of the medical establishment and they had only just begun how to realize how to treat people and save them and what they have come to realize was that you have to treat first and diagnose later. don't worry about diagnosing. you know, don't try to fix stuff and wonder. you stabilize them, get the blood pressure up. don't let them go into shock, stabilize, stop the bleeding and then fix what's wrong so that's what they are doing. going crazy going through a checklist no. doctor ordering people what to do. everybody knows exactly what they have to do at that second because if you have to think you make mistakes. if you have to think it a t takes too much time. reagan's blood pressure goes over. he begins to destabilize. a doctor comes in and realizes.

they roll him over. they're trying to see what's wrong. a surgical intern, i guess he was the anesthesia intern at the moment comes in, and he had been milling about, put the oxygen mask on reagan's face until someone else came and he's a vietnam veteran and he had been shot in vietnam. actually been in a helicopter and almost died and was rescued out of r of a rice paddy, and they roll him over, hey, that's a bullet hole. the bullet had flattened, remember, and hit him like a saw, like a buzz saw and goes in and tumbles through and tears up some arteries and that's why he's bleeding. oh, man, must be filling with blood or air so they get a chest tube, dr. joe giordano who established the trauma unit and made the emergency room what it is today and then, takes over and inserts the chest tube. bloods starts pouring out. blood just keeps coming. that's when they are like uh-oh. usually in 85% of gunshot

victims in the chest, chest tubes stop the bleeding. why? you drain the blood, the lung re-expands, the expanding lung puts pressure on the bleeding arteries and capillaries and gets cut off. the blood won't stuff. starting to concern them. they get the chief thoracic surgeon at the hospital who comes over. realizes, you know, we have to take this guy to surgery. we have to fix him. at 2:57 p.m., doctor took notes and i used the notes to build the time line, not even half hour after he was shot, half hour after he was shot they deliver him to the o.r. delivers some of his best line. just before going to the o.r. he reprices a line jack demsey used after losing the world heavyweight championship in the 1920s. honey, i forgot to duck, and he really said it. doctors heard him say it, and i have notes that they said it. people always wanted to say that stuff. he said everything. weren't made up by republicans

or his administration. he said this stuff. then as he's wheeled to the o.r., he sees jim baker and ed meese who had rushed here to talk to him, and -- and -- and he sees mike defer, his three top aides and effectively known as the troika. who is minding the store, you know? he's cracking jokes. here's a guy, you know, so they wheel him to the o.r. here's reagan going to the operating room and he believes the role of the president is his role to play. it's a role. would he pass up a great operating room moment? could he pass up a great operating room moment? his mind? i can't get in his head. leans off his shoulder and takes off the oxygen mask and he says i hope you're all republicans to the doctors. joe giordano who set up the system that saved reagan's life the third time this day said mr. president today we're all republicans. that's ironic because joe giordano is as liberal as they came. when things were in the e.r. he knew things were very tense.

he needed them to act normally and professionally and needed to reduce the tension in the room and that's why he did that. he was in the hospital for 11 -- until april 11th. 12 days after the shooting, and 13 days total, and when he was in the operating room. he went into surgery. the bullet was retrieved. it's fascinating how routine the hospital tried to keep things during his surgery, you know. aaron, very by the books, former military man, wanted to ensure his normal team was there. even had a 31-year-old surgical intern with him and that 31-year-old surgical intern david attleburg reached into the president's chest and pushed the president's beating heart aside to find the bullet. think of that, 31-year-old intern, president's beating heart in your hand, a very powerful moment. in the recovery room he regales the world with hilarious lines where he wrote by hand.

the reagan foundation let me read these notes. 1991, the tenth anniversary of the shooting, you know, reagan came here for an anniversary event and to support the brady bill for gun control which was a big deal for reagan to do that, and they named -- named the emergency room the ronald reagan institute of emergency medicine. >> obviously they must have changed some procedures. what did they do? did they do anything wrong that day? >> what's really interesting to me about that whole thing, in the '70s the secret service is realizing that the world, a lot of political assassinations. we lost bobby kennedy in '68, martin luther king, kennedy in '63. not a lot changed in their training culture. in the '70s a bunch of agents out in l.a. started training better, how to react when they are shot. how to react in a split second, and they would adopt this kind

of training to improve how quickly they react so the secret service agents like jerry parr and tim mccarthy almost react instantaneously to the gunfire and look what happened to george wallace in 502, they were debacles. kennedy is shot in the neck and the driver keeps driving straight. in evasive maneuvers. not trained to react without thinking. that's right. they were prepared. let them walk out like this. inside meanwhile they checked everyone that went in. had bomb-sniffing dogs that checked the speech before he went in and checked the names of everyone who came in contact with the president and let an unscreened rope line 15 feet from the president wide out in the open and the guy has a gun so there's an incongruity irreconcilable, where the secret service is prepared for the worst, but they don't try to prevent the worst, and that's something after it's done. you have bunkers like this. when the president visits the hotel that lets say doesn't have a garage that he can pull into or this kind of thing, what they do is they -- they build a tent so they did that. also used magnetometers everywhere. jerry parr has a funny story, when they started installing

metal detectors at the white house they seized an inordinate amount of guns from old ladies in the south who came to visit at the white house so they took those kinds of steps. look at the last 30 years, no president has been shot at. now, there are things that make us concerned about their safety, the socialites from virginia who snuck into the white house and shook obama's hand. they didn't have weapons what if the guy had been a jujutsu master or did something to kill the president. the guy who threw a shoe at bush in iraq. don't know what could have been in those and in country of georgia somebody threw a grenade that landed pretty close to bush so they have done a good job at keeping people and threats away, but in this era in this open society a very difficult job to have. i found it interesting, you know, this day played such a key role in reagan's ultimate