the 60s they belt this wonderful grand ballroom, and they knew for vips they will want their own secure special entrance. they built it here. ease of access for limousines. now what is interesting about it. if you look up here the you will see the driveway, curving driveway. the architects didn't consult the secret service in building the entrance. they realize, secret service they came up this way, stopped here and kept driving up, if they just left the limo here for the president to come in and go, the limousine would get stuck in the curves, so hulking and a police cruiser to keep people from coming down. by doing that if the cop didn't get the car started and they often stalled out back then they couldn't get away they could get trapped up there in an attack. so what they would have to do, leave the president here, back the limousine around. back it up. park it around here. this sidewalk is smaller than it was then. right about where the curve is, they would back the limousine up. the limousine is facing towards

t street. t street. the limousine is facing this way. the back door is open. what's cool about the back door. lincoln continental. armored lincoln continental. and 13,000 pound. you know? stop it, you know, tank rifles around. or something. this was a '72 lincoln, stopped making the backward doors in the late 60s. haven't figured out why they have the back opening door. the agents called them suicide doors. the reason, if they ever left them open, when they drove, they would rip them off. they wouldn't close. they had to make sure the doors were always closed. so they park right there. this had an attendant risk. by doing it this way the president would be in the open. at around 2:00, 1:30 about that time. john hinckley, deranged, troubled, 25-year-old from evergreen, colorado, who was obsessed with jodie foster, we know, infamously obsessed with jodie foster. hinckley is a strange character. i tried to write him in the most balanced way possible.

people differ on whether he was really insane at that moment. the jury decided that he was. he had an obsession with jodie foster. it started earlier. he saw the movie taxi driver and began to fantasy about jodie foster, his life mirrored the main character in taxi driver, a violent film. the taxi driver, a former army vet wants to kill, a presidential candidate. to up press a woman he admires. so, he starts focusing on, jodie foster played a prostitute. over time it becomes more and more obsessive. in his mind he wants to up press her. he thinks the only way to impress her would be to shoot the president of the united states. he hangs out at blair house, during the transition in 1980, 1981, stalking the president, watching the president elect. he actually stalked carter. in october, he was in, october 1980, he was in -- dayton, ohio.

and he got within arm's view. he didn't bring it with him. left them at the bus station. he regretted that. he had been stalking presidents and stuff. there he was with reagan. right there. he comes, actually in l.a. he takes a bus across country. arrives the day before the shooting. at that moment, in the documents i read, people have interviewed him, doctor, psychiatrist, psychological report, he hasn't made up his mind to kill or shoot the president. he doesn't know the president is in town. but he wants to talk a bus from d.c. to new haven to get foster. envisioning killing himself, her, and both of thecm in an or gee of violence. eats breakfast, at the park central hotel. buys the washington star newspaper. flips it open. page a 4, the president's schedule. there he is at the hilton. i will take my.22 caliber, and go up there and see how close i can get and what happens. he writes her a letter at 12.

467895 p.m., at old park plaza, park central hotel in downtown washington. no longer exists. a lot of history in this day gets torn down the you will find. waiting behind a rope line. 15 feet past where the open door is for the limousine. he has a.22 caliber gun in his pocket. it's, it's loaded with devastator bullets, tipped with lead, an explosive. they blow of when they hit things. he is sitting, waiting, waiting, waiting. reagan comes out. can't believe he is this close, 15 feet from the president. agents surrounding him. three cops. agent right there. hinckley pulls out his gun. and envisions himself dying in ape bua burst of gunfire. suicide by cop, secret service agent. he starts shooting. >> advise, we've had shots fired. shots fired.

we have some injuries. >> mr. president. [ gunfire ] >> a wealth of documentary material from this day that explains what happened. a lot of video. three networks shot video of it. there is still photographs. the best, two groups of really great still photographs. one taken by ron edmonds, his fourth day as white house photographer for ap. he was around here some where. he shoots over the limousine. and he has the, the great shots of par throwing reagan into the car. then you have the white house photographer, who is trailing reagan in this area. and he is shooting pictures that way. and by doing -- using those two pictures, you got to get a sense of what is happening. you watch the video. it is all two dimensional. in the fbi reports i dug up.

great diagrams, with tape and measurements that was helpful. i have come here a few times. coming here is kind of difficult. if you notice this thing, obviously wasn't here that day. they built after to protect the president. then you have -- the little -- the little gardening area is new. and i'm told they put that in actually to keep spectator as way from the wall where hinckley was and the sidewalk is shortened. he is right here. he sees reagan about there. where is reagan? >> reagan is right about where you are standing right there. >> this far away. >> yeah, 15 feet. they say 15 feet. measured it. reagan was 15 feet from hinckley when the shots were fired. if you go to a basketball court. any basketball court in the country. get on the free-throw line. and you look at it. you are -- you know, just the distance of a free-throw. how close he was. that's 15 feet. he also got the secret service, did a -- there are a lot of great reports they did on this.

they interviewed all the agents who were there that day. and a lot of witnesses. and i forwarded those and got those. i was able to know what everyone said they did. that usually kind of matched up with what the video and picture showed. that was helpful. it was also helpful to get in their head what was happening. i interviewed them all too. and i also got the, some fbi reports. there is great fbi report. no one has seen reagan's fbi interview, shortly after the shooting. gave an interview. fbi agents. that was sealed. i got it unsealed through my process. and reagan -- was coming out, he said he was coming out here. saw the reporters, but he wasn't going to talk to the press. and -- you can infer from that the reason he didn't want to talk to the press, he kind of made some stumbles. they wanted to keep him more on message in that period before. so he wasn't going to answer any impromptu questions it wasn't worst it to him. he also said if hinckley had only waited. because he was going to get, climb on to the running board of the limousine. raise himself up and wave to a group of 200 spectators across

the street. his back would have been to the president, to hinckley as he waved. hinckley didn't wait. hin leak stathinhinckley starte. 2:27 p.m. we know because the moment the gunfire end, secret service agent calls on the raidio to secret service headquarters at the white house. an agent there looks up at their clock. and notes it is exactly 2:27 p.m. he shoots. shoots six shots. the first one hits jim brady, press secretary in the head. he falls down. second one hits a d.c. police officer who turned around to check on the president's progress. gets hit in the back. falls down. screams i'm hit. hits the ground. now the path to the president is clear. wide open. hinckley has a range of 20, 30 feet. he has done target practice. he can hit stationary targets. 20, 30 feet. jerry parr lead secret service agent, meanwhile in .4, i tried to time it. very difficult. in .4 second, has grabbed the

president of the united states the moment he hears the gunfire. thrusts him behind tim mccarthy. swivels his body, takes a built in the chest. the first bullet hits brady. second one, hits another, and third one, flies over reagan's head and lodges in a window of the building. recover it. a cool photo of one of the bullet holes in the windows. fourth one hits mccarthy. turned like this to wear a bullet. hits him in the chest. spins him around. as they're behind him. credits mccarthy with trying to save the president's life. the next hits the armor of the window, bulletproof window, just as you see the president flashing behind it. parr. the sixth one cracks across the parking lot. no one knows where that one went. parr gets him in the limo. slams the door shut. the driver of the limo, former army veteran, real stressful job driving the president, not because you are worried about situations like this, you are

worried about dropping the president at the wrong entrance. hugely embarrassing. very stressful driving the president. waiting. waiting. waiting. he could hear the shots through the open door. if the door had been close heed wouldn't hear the shots. shuts the door. he is like i got to get out of here. but in his mind he is worried. he had seen his buddy, tim mccarthy throw on the ground. he didn't want to run over mccarthy with a 13,000 pound armored limousine. they drive away. head out this way towards connecticut avenue at that moment. what they didn't know at the time was 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 it to the limousine off the bullet later removed from the president. as reagan is diving it hits him right here in the side, right around here. lodges an inch from his heart. >> we're going to get in a taxi and follow the ride of the limousine. and do you think this is roughly the way it was parked? >> roughly 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 where the door was. all right. you are going to go out here and make a left down connecticut and then make a right on, continue connecticut down 17th street. and then make a right on pennsylvania. can you do that? >> so, paint us the picture inside the limo while we are driving here? >> jerry parr, the agent looks out the window. sees there is a pop mark on that door, that window where the bullet has, your window. and he also notices the three guys down on the sidewalk as they pull away. he goes this is bad, a shooting. props reagan up in the seat you are in. reagan is like this, like a tired basketball player. and he runs his body, inside his, coat, and his hand, through his hair to check to see if there is blood. no blood. he feels good. he tells the driver to tell, on his radio. jerry parr lost his radio.

bust off from the sleeve mike in the melee, lost his transponder. he can't use the radio. he tells the driver to use the microphone here to radio to headquarters that they're heading become to the white house. actually use 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. where he got the title of the book from. >> so they're heading back now toward the white house. and the driver of the limousine,

just hurdling down connecticut avenue. it's closed to traffic. there wouldn't be traffic here in 1981 on march 30th, they closed the street for the limousines expected ride back. now at about, they're driving along. remember the limousine is a loan. they have no -- support. they have left motorcade behind. the follow-up car, armored follow up car, two guys, bran dibran brandishing uzis, and another agent gets up by them. the police cars are starting to follow up. police motorcycles ahead of the limousine. as they're going through, right about here, jerry parr realizes that something is wrong with the president. he is having trouble breathing. i am having trouble breathing. what's wrong, are you having a heart attack. is it your heart? and then he starts dabbing blood from his lips. from parr's training he knows that means it is oxygen rated from the lungs that isn't good. jerry parr has to make a call.

you know, the guy is struggling. medical facility at the white house. most secure place in the world. doesn't know world war iii or go to the hospital. if he getz oes to the hospital, reagan is not hurt, it can set off an economic crisis. he says i can't risk it. i got to go to the hospital. which had no agents at it. no security there. there could have been other assassins in the city waiting for the president there. he makes the call. they head to the hospital. they're going to go to the hospital. they get on the radio. we are going to george washington emergency room. let's get there fast. and parr gets on the radio and says, let's hustle. let's hustle.

awe because he can't say on the radio, reagan is hurt. they don't use reagan's name. they know people, assassins, news media could be listening to the open radio communications hence they use code names. they abandon crown, the white house, to go to -- the hospital. now about this time, maryanne gordon, unsung hero. one of the few female agents in the secret service. she devised motorcade and drove the routes to the hilton and to the hospital an to the white house. wanted to make sure all routes were clear, weren't blockages. they want to make sure they knew where everyone was going. drew unr of tue had driven to t hilton he knew the routes didn't have to practice he knew them. they're heading down, gordon realizes she doesn't have a raidy to communicate with the police cars in front.

she realizes, she is in the front right seat of the spare limousine, armored limousine. she goes you know what, these cars, these cops are going to go to the white house they don't know where we are going. they think we are going to the white house. we better get in front of the presidential limousine now. she tells the driver, you better get in front of the presidential limousine because if he is going to lose that police escort in a few second. she did not want drew unrue. a lot going on in the car. she didn't want him to have to think of how to get to the hospital. she wanted to be a battering ram. they didn't know what was going on in the world. as i said before, you know they don't know if there are other people lurking to get him. so she needs to make sure if there is a car that gets in front of the limousine. she has to take the hit, not the president. meanwhile, the president's condition, seemed to be having a harder time breathing. reagan himself felt like somebody hit him with a hammer. he felt him so bad. some body hit him in the back with a hammer. struggling. struggling to breathe. here is really interesting. they're driving down here. the spare limousine in front.

they start making, a hard pivot to make, an angled strechet. the meanwhile the police cars keep going. i got the d.c. police tapes. they're amazing, you hear donald bell, the sergeant, in one of the lead cars, goes, my god they have turned to the hospital. they turned to the hospital. they start going this way. they're going along. heading towards the circle. and drew unrue asked jerry parr do we want to go the wrong way around the circle. jerry is no, no, no. we want to go around. jerry didn't want to hit any on coming traffic. too dangerous. but old hospital now is at 22nd. a big, world war ii era bunker building. really ugly. that's the new hospital. in fact, that's where my two sons were born at that hospital. they run around the circle. that's where the old hospital was. this is the new hospital. they built this in 2000.

this one opened in 2002. tore the old building down in 2003. and they pull into the emergency room. reagan, they drive up. limo pulls up. parr jumps out. reagan, indicates to parr, i want to get out on my own. i don't need a hand out, don't need to be carried. he comes out. reagan, parr, he want to be a cowboy. so reagan gets up, walks out. hitches up his pants even to get them right. walks to the door. everyone follows him. an agent scouted ahead of them. medical crews are getting there. the nurse is asking how he is doing. he looks ashen. doesn't look very good. he collapses, bam, just falls on the ground. his knees hit the ground, but ray and jerry catch him. suddenly a whole hoard of people are carrying hum im to the trau bay. they throw him on the gurney. nurse, paramedic, doctor initially treat him, thought he was going to die. thee looks that bad. this guy is dead. their nightmare. their hand are shaking. president of the united states. we have to treat him. doing medical protocols to save his life.

throwing in ivs, throwing in, they're getting long lines into him. and someone is -- got oxygen mask on him to get him air. you got to stabilize some one's blood pressure really fast who has been shot which will kill you. a nurse can't get his blood pressure. she can't hear it. she has to get it by feeling. feels the brachial artery to feel where the blood pressure is. counts 60. anything below 90, shock. a lot of trouble. this guy is in trouble. they don't know he has been shot. think he has had a heart attack. jerry parr tells them that they thing he broke a rib. when they came hurdling, landed on the transam, for the transmission, jerry parr believes he punctured a lung. this is going bad. jerry parr is, praying, let this guy live. thinking to kennedy. not another one. can't lose another one. this is crazy. they throw the ivs, following proper protocols which really had come into existence in the last ten years, you know, reagan

really is lucky. not only did the secret service ramp up training and save his life. at the same time this hospital, not this one, that hospital, only became a certified level one trauma center two years before reagan maup center two years before reagan was shot. even years before that, emergency medicine was the backwater of the medical establishment. they'd only begun to realize people who were victims of trauma. when they come to realize is you have to treat first and diagnose later. he you stabilize and get the blood pressure up. don't let them go into shock. stabilize, stop the bleeding and then fix what's wrong. esthey're going through a checklist. everyone knows exactly what they have to do that the second. if you have to think, it takes too much time. everyone does it. reagan's blood pressure goes up. he begins to be stabilized. a doctor comes in and realizes they roll him over, they can't hear any breath sounds in his

left lung. a surgical intern or not a surgical intern, he was and anesthesia intern comes in and he had been milling about, even put the oxygen mask on his face till someone else came. he's a vietnam veteran. he had been in a helicopter and almost died and he was rescued out of a rice paddy. he looks down and he goes hey, that's a bullet hole. tiny little flat slit because the bullet had flattened and hit him like a buzz saw and goes through and tears up arteries. oh, man, he must be filling with blood or air. so they get a chest tube. dr. joep giordano ho established the unit here and made the emergency room what is today and what it was then takes over and inserts the chest tube. blood just keeps coming. that's when they're like uh-oh, usually in 85% of gunshot victims in the chest, chest tubes stop the bleeding.

why? you drain the blood. the lung reexpands which puts pressure on the bleeding arteries and capillaries and it's still coming. this is starting to concern them. they get ben aaron working across is the street at the time. he's the chief thoracic surgeon at the hospital, realizes we have to take this guy to surgery. we have to fix him. at 2:57 p.m., a lot of doctors took notes and i used these to build this time line. exactly a half hour after he was shot they wheel him to the of or. he sees his wife and replayses a line jack dempsey used after the world heavyweight championship. honey, i forgot to duck. and he really said it. doctors heard him say it. i have notes they said it. people always wondered did he say that stuff. he said everything. these weren't made up by republicans or administration. he sees jim baker and ed meese

who is had rushed here to talk to him, and he sees mike defer, his three top aides. troy ca, they run things. who's minding the store? and you know, he's cracking jokes. so they wheel him to the or. here's reagan going to the operating room. he believes the role of president is his role to play, it's a role to play. would he pass up a great operating room moment? copass up a great operating moment? i can't get in his head. at the takes off the oxygen mask and says i hope you're all republicans to all the doctors. joe giordano who set up the system that saved reagan's life the third time this day says mr. president, today we're all republicans. that's ironic because joe giordano is about as liberal as they come. the nurses and doctor suspect when he was in the or, he knee things were very tense and he

needed them to act normally and reduce the tension in the room. he was in the hospital till april 1th, 1 days after the shooting and 13 days total. and when he was in the operating room, he went through surgery. ben aaron retrieved the bullet. 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 insure his own team was there his normal team. he had a 31-year-old surgical intern with him. that 31-year-old surgical intern, david addle berg reached into the president's chest and pulled the president's beating heart aside with his hand. think of that, the president's heart in your hand. they find the bullet, they stitch up the bleeding, stitch him up, send him to the recovery room where he regales the world with hilarious liners that he

wrote by hand, they're written by hand in the reagan library. 1991, the tenth anniversary of the shooting reagan came here for an anniversary event and to support the brady bill for gun control, which was a big deal for reagan to do that. and they named the emergency room the ronald reagan institute of emergency medicine. >> obviously they must have changed some procedures. what -- did they do anything wrong that day? >> what's interesting to me about that whole thing is that the '70s, the secret service is realizing that the world, there are a lot of political assassinations. we lost bobby kennedy in '68, martin luther king, not a lot changed in their training culture. in the '70s, a bunch of agents in l.a. started training better, how to react in i split second. they adopt this kind of training to improve how quickly they react so the secret service agents like jerry parr react almost instantly to the gunfire.

if you look at what happened to kennedy and george wallace in '72, they were debacles. kennedy was shot and the drive kept driving straight. they weren't trained to act without thinking. they let him walk outside like this. inside they checked everybody who went in. at the this bomb-sniffing dogs check the speech before they went in, checked the names of everyone who came in contact with the president. yet let an unscreened rope line and the guy has a gun. there's irreconcilable, something going on with the secret service where they're prepared for the worst but don't try to prevent the worst. that's something after it's done, have you bunkers like that. when the president visits a hotel that doesn't have a garage he can pull into it or this kind of thing, what they do is they build a tent. so they did that and used magnetometers everywhere. jerry parr, they started

installing metal detectors at the white house after this house and seized an inordinate amount of guns from old ladies in the south 0 who came to visit the white house. in the last 30 years, no president has been shot at. there are things that make us kempbd about their safety. those social yists who shook obama's hands. they didn't have weapons. what if the guy had been a. >> you jit so master. the guy that threw his shoes at bush in iraq. we don't know what he could have been in those. this country of georgia somebody threw a grenade that landed pretty close to bush. so they've done a good job at keeping people and threats away. but you know, in this era in this open society it's a very difficult job to have. i found it interesting that this day played such a key role in reagan's ultimate success. what's amazing to me is that in mid-march, two weeks before the shooting a poll show reagan had the lowest approval rating of

any president at that time in their first term. 59% approval rating which is really low for a president in his honeymoon. he crushed carter in a landslide. everyone loved ronald reagan. but that's not true. at the had he controversial policies. he wanted to cut spending and lower taxes and those wres actually controversial things at that time and increased defense spending. people were unsure about him. well, he gets shot. he performs amazingly this day. people begin to separate the man they admire from the politics as a leader. he gets a lot accomplished after this moment in the next year and forms a bond between him and the public. luke cannon, biographer, told me you know dell, what this day did, it was kind of like they -- reagan's character under fire and his heroism he cracked jokes in the emergency room, he cracked jokes in the or. he cracked jokes kind of laughing at death and people saw this on tv.

it was a real live event. dawn of the 24-hour news cycle. people were listening to coverage and they kind of felt like it was their aunt or uncle or their grandfather who was shot. and they formed that bond with him. i think that carried him through. i think it kept him from getting in a lot more trouble in places where presidents, other presidents would have faced a lot rougher time. >> explore an interactive time line, view photos and videos, listen to audio clips and read government documents at author dell wilbur's book website, rawhide down.com. this is c-span3 with politics and public affairs programming throughout the week and every weekend, 48 hours of people and events telling the american story on american history tv. get our schedules and see past programs at our websites. and you can join in the conversation on social media sites. sneeng up here on s