go to q&a.com. this program is also available as c-span podcasts. there's a new website for american history tv where you can find our schedules and preview our upcoming programs. watch featured video from the weekly series as well as access the history tweets, history in the news and social media from twitter and foursquare and follow history tv every weekend on c-span3 and online at cspan.o cspan.org/history. on march 30th, 1981, a would-be assassin fired six shots at president ronald reagan outside of the washington hilton hotel two miles from the white house. washington post reporter

delwilber met us on the sidewalk where the shooting took place to tell us what happened that day. >> ronald reagan was here delivering a speech to the afl-cio. he was excited to give the speech. he actually wrote it by hand. [ "hail to the chief" ] >> at 2:25, 2:26 or 2:27 he merges from the entrance behind this area, and this is new. it is a bunker, and if you will see, this is the entrance or the door, a steel door where the president emerged and left. he built this actually the entrance especially for the president. when they built it in the 1960s, they built this wonderful grand ballroom and for the vips they

wanted the secure entrance so they built it here for ease of access to the limousines. what is interesting is that you will look up here and see the driveway and the curving driveway and the architects did not consult the secret service on building the entrance, so they realized the secret service if they came up here and stopped here and kept driving up and left the limo for the president to come in and go, the limousine would get stuck in the curving, because it was hulking and also a police car always stationed there to prevent people from coming down. so if the cop didn't get the car start and they stalled out back then, they could not get away and trapped up there in an attack. so what they would do is to leave the president here, and back the limousine around and back it up and park it here. now, this sidewalk is smaller than it was then, but right about where the curve is they would back the limousine out here, and this is faced out to "t" street. the limousine is facing this

way. what is cool about the back door is that is an armored lincoln continental and 13,000 pounds and stopping a tank rifled round or something, and this is a '72 lincoln where they stopped making the backwards door in the late '60s so i don't know why they had the backward opening doors, but the agents called this em suicide doors. the reason they called them suicide doors because if they left them open when they were driving they would rip them off. they would not close. so they had to make sure they were closed. so an attendant here, and by doing this, the president was out in the open. at 1:30, john hinkley, a deranged troubled 25-year-old from colorado was infamously obsessed with jodie foster. hinkley is a strange character and i tried to write him in balanced way as possible.

people differ if he was insane at that moment, but the jury decided he was. he had an obsession with jodie foster which started a few years earlier. he saw the movie "taxi" and started to be obsessed with her. and then bickle who is a taxi driver who wants to kill a woman he admires. so jodie foster played a prostitute in the movie, and so in his mind he wants to impress her. and in his mind he thinks that the only way he can impress her is to shoot the president of the united states. so he hangs out at the blair house in the early 1980, and 1981 stalking the president and the president-elect, and he actually stopped carter. in october of 1980, he was in dayton, ohio, and he got within arm's reach of the president. he didn't bring the guns with him, because he left them at the

bus station. he regretted that. he had been stalking presidents and stuff, he was right there with reagan. he comes and actually in l.a. and takes a bus across the country and arrives the day of the shooting, and the documents that i have read and the people who have sper viewinterviewed h had not made up his mind to kill the president, because he didn't know that the president was in town. so he is trying to get to new haven to meet to foster, and so he decides s ts to go to the c and he buys a paper, and he sees that the president is at the hilton. so he decides to take the little gun and go up close to see what can happen. he writes a letter at the old park plaza hotel at park central hotel in downtown washington,

and no longer, because it was torn down. a lot of the history of this day is torn down, you will find. and he is waiting behind the rope line 15 feet past where the open door is in the limousine. he has a ..22 calib22 .22 calibe has lead izide which blows up when it explodes, and so he can't believe he is so close. agents are surrounding him, and loof line, and hinkley pulls out the gun and he envisions himself dying in a burst of fire and suicide by cop or secret service agent, and starts shooting. >> mr. president -- [ gunshots ]

>> there is a wealth of documentary material that explains what happened that day. three networks shot rvideo of i. two great still photographs. one was taken by ron edmonds the fourth day of the white house photographer for the a.p. and he was around here right here, and he shoots over the limousine, and he has 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 which by doing that, and using the two pictures you have a sense of what happened and it is all still two dimensional and the fbi reports i dug up on this, there are great diagrams mapping out where everything is, and they lay it out with tape

and measurements, and that is helpful. coming here is difficult, because if you notice that this thing is obviously not here that day. they built this to protect the president. then you have the little gua gardening area is new. i am told they put it in to keep the spectators away from the wall where hinkley was, and the sidewalk is shorter. so he sees him right there. >> and where is reagan? >> he is right there where you are standing right now. >> this far away? >> yes. >> 15 feet. >> they say 15 feet and they have measured it. reagan was 15 feet from hinkley when the shot was fired. but if you go to any basketball court in the country and go to the free-throw line and look at it, it is the distance of a free throw how close he was. that is 15 feet. and also, the secret service, there are a lot of great report s they did with the agents there, and i got those, and i

was able to know what everybody said they did. that matched up with what the video and the picture showed. that is helpful, and helpful to get into their heads what was happening. i interviewed them all, too. i got some fbi report, and for example, a great fbi report, and nobody has seen reagan's fbi report after the shooting. he gave an interview, and it is sealed, and goit that i got tha by the foia process. the reason he did not want to talk the press is that that they wanted to keep him on message and so he would not answer any impromptu questions. it was not worth it to him. he said if hinkley had waited, because he was going to climb up on the waiting board and raise up to wave to the spectators and he would have had the back to

hinkley and waved, but hinkley didn't wait. he started shooting. it is 2:27 p.m., and we know it is, because the moment that the gun fire ends, secret service calls on the radio to the white house and an agent there looks up at the clock and finds out that it is exactly 2:27 p.m., and he shoots six shoots. the first one hits jim brady, the secretary who falls down, and the next one hits a d.c. police officer who falls down and screams "i'm hit" and falls to the ground. the path is clear. hinkley has an effectively close range and he has done target practice and he can hit stationary targets 15 to 20 feet. so meanwhile in 0.4 seconds, the agent grabs the president and thrusts him behind tim mccarthy

who is another secret service agent, and swivels his body to take the bullet. the first one hits brady and then delahunt and then the third one he takes. the fourth one hits mccarthy who is turned like this to wear the bullet. he is not wearing a bulletproof vest and spins around. and tim mccarthy is credited with saving the life of the president. but the next but let hits the bulletproof window as you could see the president flashing behind him with jerry par pushing him into the limousine. and the sixth one goes across the parking lot, but nobody can find that one. and the driver of the limo, a former army veteran, and real stressful job who said it was stressful driving the president.

he said you never know what is going to happen, but he was waiting, waiting, waiting, and if the door had been closed, he wouldn't have heard the shots, because it is heavily plated, and he shuts the door, and he has to get out of there, but he is worried, because he had seen his buddy fall down, and he did not want to run offhis buddy with the 13,000 pound limousine and kill him. so they went up this avenue. what they did was that hinkley's final shot, sixth one, had ricocheted off of the back quarter panel of the limousine, and they later matched it up removed from the president. as reagan is diving, it is right here and lodges into the heart. >> we are going to get into the taxi and follow the ride of the limousine. do you think that this is roughly the way it was parked? >> it was roughly this direction like this. out towards "t" street, and the rear part of the limo was

touching the sidewalk. remember that the sidewalk is smaller here than it was, and right about here is where the door is. >> and you are going to go out here and make a left around connecticut and make a right to continue connecticut down 17th street. then make a right on pennsylvania. can you do that? >> so, paint us the picture inside of the limo while we are driving here. >> so jerry par, the agent looks out to see the pock mark which has the bullet, your window. he also notices the three guys down the sidewalk as he pulls away and says this is bad. he props up reagan, and reagan is kind of like this, like a tired basketball player, and he runs the inside of the coat pocket and his hands through the hair to see if there is any blood, and he doesn't find any. so he tells the driver to tell on his radio that he lost his

transponder in the maly -- mele, and they use the code word crown. he takes the radio from him and says that raw hide is okay. raw hide is okay. raw hide is ronald reagan's code name, and that is where i got the tite of of the book. >> raw hide is okay. follow up. raw hide is okay. >> do you want to go to the hospital or back to white house? >> we are going to crown. >> okay. >> back to the white house. back to the white house. raw hide is okay. >> so they are heading back now towards the white house. and drew is flying, the driver of the limousine hurling down connecticut avenue. there wouldn't have been traffic

here in march of 1981, because the road is closed. now, you know that there is no support, and they have left the motorcade behind. the armored follow-up car with two guys brandishing uzis comes up behind, and then another agent gets up to them, too. they are going along and the police cars are following up, and the police motorcycles are ahead of the limousine. as we go about here, jerry par realizes that something is wrong with the president, because he is having trouble breathing, and he says, what is toing on? i don't know. is itt your heart? but reagan says i don't know. but he is dabbing blood from the lips, and it is frothy, and he know from the training that is oxygen in the lungs. so jerry par has to make a call. this guy is struggling and a medical facility in the white

house, and the most secure place in the white house, or he can go to the hospital. but if he goes to the hospital, and nothing is wrong this can set off a severe financial crisis. and so he said i have to go to the hospital. so there was no security there and there could have been other assassins in the city waiting for him. so they decide to go to the hospital, and they say we are going to george washington, the emergency room, and get there fast. >> par gets on the radio and says, let's hustle. let's hustle. >> roger, we want to go to the emergency room, george washington. >> that is a roger. going to george washington fast. >> roger. [ inaudible ]. >> in the ambulance. and get there. [ inaudible ]. >> directly, make the call.

>> because he can't say on the radio that reagan is hurt. they don't know that the assassins or the news media can be listening, so they use code names and abandon the crown and go to the hospital. now, at about this time maryann gordon who is unsung hero to this day, and one of the few female agents in the secret service, and she devised the rurts that day, and drove the routes to the hilton and to the white house and she wanted to make sure that the routes were not blocked and wanted to make sure that everybody knew where they were going. drew had driven a motorcade to the hilton, so he knew the routes, and he didn't have to practice them, because he knew where they were. and then marian gordon realizes that she cannot communicate with the cars in front. so she is in the right front of

the armored limousine. she says that the cops are going to go to the white house, because they don't know where we are going. they think that we are going to the white house. we have to get in front of the presidential limousine. she tells the driver to get in front of the presidential limousine, because he is going to lose the police escort in a few minutes, and she did not want to get -- there is a lot going on in the car. there is a lot to do, and she did not want to have him thinking of how get to the hospital. and as i said before, they don't know what is going on in the world, and if there is other people lurking to get them. and she has to get in front of him to take the hit instead of the president. and meanwhile the president is having a harder time breathing, and reagan, himself, said it felt like somebody hit him in the back with the hammer. he is struggling, struggling to breathe. so this is interesting that they are going down here, and this is a hard pivot to make, because it is an angled street, and

meanwhile the police cars keep going. and i got the d.c. police tapes, but you can hear donald bell, a sergeant in one of the lead cars says, my god, they have gone to the hospital. they have gone to the hospital. so not long they had headed to the circle, and the driver asked jerry par, do you want to get to the long way around the circle? and jerry is like, no, no, no we don't want to go around, because he didn't want to hit any oncoming traffic, because it would have been dangerous. the old hospital now is at 22nd, a big world war ii era bunker, and really ugly. that is the new hospital and in fact, my two sons were born in that hospital. they run around the circle, and that is where the old hospital is. they built the new hospital, and this one opened in 2002, and tore the old building down in 2003.

they pull into the emergency room, and reagan they drive up with the limo, and par jumps out. reagan indicates to par, i want to get out on my own. i don't need a handout. i don't need to be carried. he comes out, and par is saying, he wants to be a cowboy. so reagan gets out and hitches up the pants, and the agents have scouted ahead of them, and the medical crews getting there, and the nurses are asking how he is doing, and he is ashy and he does not look good, and collapses, bam! and then he is caught, but suddenly a whole horde of people are taking him to the trauma bay. they throw him on the gurney, and the nurses and the paramedics and the doctor who treated him thought that this is to a man who is dead. then they realize it is the president of the united states. so they start throwing in ifs and getting long lines into him.

someone has an oxygen mask on him to give him air, because you have to stabilize someone's air quickly or they will go to shock which will kill you. and a nurse has to get his pulse, and she goes for the brachial artery. she counts 90, and anything below 60 is in shock. i think they think he had a heart attack. and when he went into the limousine, he punctured a rib. this is clearly going bad. jerry par is praying, and thinking back to kennedy. oh, no, we can't lose another one. this is crazy. they are following all of the proper protocols which had come into existence in the last ten years, and reagan is lucky, because not only did the secret service ramp up the training to

save his life, and not only that, but the hospital became a certified level i trauma center one year before reagan was shot, and before then emergency medicine was the back water of the medical care, because they had just learned how the treat victims to saver them. what they realized treat first and diagnose later. you know, don't try to fix stuff and wonder what is broken, no. you don't let them go to shock. stabilize and fix what is wrong. that is what is going on, and a checklist and no ordering people what to do. everybody knows what they have to do at that second. if they stop to think, they make a mistake. and then the blood pressure is stabilize and a doctor realizes that they roll him over and trying to find out what is wrong. they roll him over, and a surgical intern or i gueesuess n

anesthesiolo anesthesiologyist. and they roll him over, and they say, hey, that is a bullet hole. tiny slit, because the bullet had collapsed and hit him like a buzz saw and tears up arteriear and that is why he is full of blood and/or air. and this is the doctor who established the emergency room then, and takes over, and inserts the emergency tube. blood keeps coming. that is when they say, oh, no. usually 95% of the victims, the blood stops because the

reexpanding lung will put pressure on the capillaries to cut it off. it is still coming and the blood won't stop. this is concerning them. they have ben aaron working across the street at the time. he is the chief thoracic surgeon at the hospital and realizes that we have to take this guy to surgery and fix him. at 2:57 p.m., and a lot of doctors took notes and i used them to build up the time line and not a half hour after he had been shot they start wheeling him no the o.r. this is reagan delivering the best lines before he goes in. he sees nancy reagan and he says the old jack dempsey line "honey, i forgot to duck." and he really said it. these were not made up by the administration, he said this stuff. adds he is wheeled to the o.r., he sees jim baker and ed meese who rushed to talk to him.

and this is mike deaver, and the aides. who is minding the store? you know, he is cracking jokes or whatever, and they wheel him to the o.r. and there is reagan going to the operating room, and then he believes that the role of president is the role for him to play. would he pass up a great operating room moment? i can't get into the head, but he leans up and removes the oxygen mask and says, i hope you are all democrats. and now the doctor who saved reagan's life for the third time this day, he said, mr. president, today, we are all republicans. and so he knew that he needed them to act normally and professionally and reduce the tension in the room. that is why he did that. he was in the hospital until

april 11th, 12 days after the shooting and 13 days total. and after surgery, ben aaron retrieved the bullet. it is fascinating how routine things were kept by the hospital. during the surgeon, very military and by the books man wanted to ensure that his team was there, and he had a 31-year-old surgical intern with him. and that 31-year-old surgical intern david eded ale ber ed ae the beating heart in his hand. that is a powerful moment. they stop the bleeding and send him to the recovery room and then he regale d the one liners written by hand, and the reagan foundation let me read the

notes, but on the anniversary of the shooting, reagan came here for an anniversary event and to support the brady gun control law. they named the emergency room the ronald reagan institute of emergency medicine. >> obviously, they must have changed some procedures, but did they do anything wrong that day? >> what is interesting to me about the whole thing is that in the o'70s, the assassinations ae happening in the worldch we lost bobby kennedy, and martin luther king jr. in '63. and then traininging as started to react better in a split second. they adopt this training to see how quickly they react. so the agents react almost instannously to the gun fire, but if you see what happened to george wallace, and jack

kennedy, it is a debacle. no evasive maneuvers at all. they were not trained to be trained without thinking. and meanwhile, they walked outside and checked everybody, and they had a bomb sniffing dog before the speech, and names of everybody in contest with the president. and they left a rope line outside of the president and the guy has a gun. so it is incongruity or something going on where they are prepared for the worst, but they don't try to prevent the worst. that is something that after it is done, you have bunkers like this, and when the president visits the hotel that doesn't have a garage he can pull into or this kind of thing, what they do is they build a tent. and now the agent who saved reagan's life, when they started to install metal detectors at the white house they seized

inori inordinate amounts of guns from people who visited the white house. now in the last 30 years, no president has been shot at. and the socialites who snuck in from west west to shake president obama's hands, who knows if they wanted to do some jujitsu move or we don't know, but in georgia, somebody threw a grenade that landed close to bush. so they have done a good job of keeping people and threats away, but in the open era, it is a difficult job to have. this day played a key role in regan's ultimate success. what is amazing to me is that in mid march, two weeks before the shooting a poll showing that