: The Helm Is Right Here

While Air Force Two refueled in Austin, Vice President George H.W. Bush watched the TV replay of the shooting with (from left) House Majority Leader Jim Wright of Fort Worth; Texas Gov. Bill Clements and his wife, Rita; and U.S. Rep. Jim Collins of Dallas. (Courtesy George Bush Presidential Library and Museum)

When Ronald Reagan was shot, Al Haig famously declared that he was “in control,” but it was the vice president from Texas who stepped calmly into the breach. At the center of a diamond formation of Secret Service agents, Ronald Reagan stepped from the secure VIP exit of the Washington Hilton and onto the damp sidewalk. When a small crowd yelled greetings from across T Street, his movie-star smile instinctively materialized. The new president crossed the pavement to a Lincoln parade car and heard the familiar voice of ABC White House correspondent Sam Donaldson rise above the din: “What’s the latest on Poland, Mr. President?” Command and Control: Tested Under Fire — When Ronald Reagan was wounded in an assassination attempt, Vice President George Bush raced to Washington from Texas. It was 2:27 p.m. on March 30, 1981, and the Soviet Union was poised to invade Poland to suppress a labor uprising. Reagan merely turned toward the press line and waved. Next to Donaldson, a 25-year-old man in a trench coat flexed his knees and raised his hands in a marksman’s stance. With a revolver he had purchased at a Dallas pawnshop, John W. Hinckley Jr. fired six shots. It was the 70th day of the Reagan presidency. Accounts of the afternoon tend to be dominated by the sensational storyline of Secretary of State Alexander Haig’s declaration that “I’m in control here.” But Vice President George H.W. Bush’s pitch-perfect reaction to the crisis lies largely unexplored in the shadow of history. He had only recently been Reagan’s energetic opponent, a fact that was fresh in the memories of Reagan loyalists. The steady hand he showed after the assassination attempt would linger in the minds of his admirers as one of the defining moments of his public career. Now 90, Bush consented to an email interview for this story. His comments, along with hours of tapes from inside the White House Situation Room, never seen photographs taken aboard Air Force Two and interviews with participants in the crisis shed new light on the day Reagan became the fifth sitting president to be shot and the only one who lived. “I recall thinking about Nancy and the president when I first heard how bad the situation really was,” Bush told The News. “Even though it was still early in the administration, I didn’t think about them as president and first lady, but rather as friends.” ‘God, don’t let me run over Timmy’ Hinckley’s first two bullets hit Press Secretary Jim Brady in the forehead and policeman Tom Delahanty in the neck. Standing almost against the car, Secret Service Agent Tim McCarthy turned to shield the president and was lifted off his feet as a bullet struck his chest. In the driver’s seat, Agent Drew Unrue watched his friend McCarthy fall from view. Behind the president, Secret Service Special Agent in Charge Jerry Parr grabbed Reagan’s waist and left shoulder and hurled the 70-year-old headfirst onto the floor of the armored limousine. His chest crashed against the transmission hump as Parr landed on top of him. Jerry Parr The instantaneous reaction of Parr to shots fired by John Hinckley saved the life of President Ronald Reagan. Joining the Secret Service in 1962, Parr protected four vice presidents and in 1979, he began protecting President Jimmy Carter. On the sidewalk, agent Ray Shaddick shoved their dangling feet inside and slammed the door. “Get out of here! Go! Go! Go!” Parr shouted. With the rest of the motorcade still curbside, Unrue veered left and prayed, “God, don’t let me run over Timmy.” The president’s car sped off toward the safety of the White House. Parr raised his head and saw a spider web mark from a stray round on the bulletproof passenger window. “Someone really tried to kill the president,” he thought. He helped Reagan sit up. Parr ran both hands up under Reagan’s arms and across his back in search of blood. He found none. The agent reached over the seat for Unrue’s radio microphone. Using Reagan’s code name, he said, “Rawhide is OK. Rawhide is OK.” But Reagan grimaced. “Is it your heart?” Parr asked. “I think you broke my rib,” he said. Reagan reached in his jacket pocket for a paper napkin he had grabbed after his speech at the Hilton. He wiped his lips and saw blood. “I must have cut the inside of my mouth,” he said. The massive car sprinted through the brick-lined tunnel under Dupont Circle, where sirens echoed as a police car and motorcycle escort passed and assumed the lead. The Secret Service follow-up car, a black Cadillac with exterior handrails, was now behind. On the left and right running boards, Secret Service agents held Uzi submachine guns. Eighty seconds after the shooting, Parr looked at the ashen Reagan and said, “Mr. President, we’re going to G.W. Hospital.” The tan-colored backup limousine passed Reagan’s car and merged into the speeding procession behind a D.C. police car. Unrue radioed to Secret Service Agent Mary Ann Gordon in the front seat of the backup limo: “We wanna go to the emergency room of George Washington.” “Am I dying?” Unaware of the new destination, the police escort continued toward the White House. The backup limo, followed by the president’s car, turned abruptly onto Pennsylvania Avenue. Six blocks later, the abridged motorcade screeched to a halt under the Washington Circle port-cochere at G.W. Hospital. The first out, Parr reached back for the president but was waved off. Reagan stepped from the car, adjusted the waistband of his pants and buttoned his suit coat. “He’s fine,” thought Deputy Chief of Staff Mike Deaver who watched from the back seat of the Secret Service control car. But when Reagan walked through the door of the emergency room, his knees buckled and he collapsed. Parr and Shaddick caught him under the arms. Stepping from the backup limousine, Reagan’s personal physician, Dan Ruge, suspected a heart attack. President Ronald Reagan is shoved into an armored limousine by Secret Service Agent Jerry Parr (right of Reagan) during an assassination attempt. At far right, Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy turns to shield the president. (The Associated Press) In Trauma Bay 5, a nurse placed a cuff on Reagan’s arm, pumped it up and listened for his blood pressure. “I don’t hear anything,” she said. “Am I dying?” Reagan asked. “My God, he’s Code City,” thought a paramedic as he stared at the president’s colorless face. It was ER slang for Code Blue, when a patient is near death and requires immediate cardiac resuscitation. Leaning down with a stethoscope, surgical resident Wes Price heard normal breathing in the right lung but almost no sound at all in the left. With the president’s suit cut away and piled on the floor, he was turned on his side. Under Reagan’s left armpit, Price found a narrow slit. Intern Drew Scheele had served in Vietnam. “That’s a gunshot wound,” he said. A bullet had hit the armored rear quarter panel of the limousine, flattened like a dime and ricocheted. As Reagan raised his arms to break his fall, the bullet, now flecked with black auto paint, pierced his left side, punctured a lung and stopped an inch from his heart. The president’s chest was filling with his own blood.

Where's “The Football”? The first bullet John Hinckley fired at Ronald Reagan struck Press Secretary Jim Brady in the head and missed Lt. Col. Jose Muratti by inches. Bullet No. 2 struck Washington D.C. policeman Thomas Delahanty in the neck. As Delahanty fell forward, he landed against the leather briefcase attached to the wrist of Col. Muratti, who was seeking cover on the sidewalk. Inside that case were the emergency war orders needed to launch a nuclear war. Known as “The Football,” it is almost always within reach of the president. (Photos Courtesy Reagan Presidential Library)

Army Lt. Col. Jose Muratti (green uniform at rear) carries the “football,” a briefcase containing plans to launch a nuclear attack. Muratti walks to the left of Press Secretary James Brady who will be struck in the forehead by John Hinckley’s first bullet.

The first two shots hit Brady in the head and D.C. police officer Tom Delahanty in the neck, narrowly missing Muratti’s head. As Muratti falls to the pavement, Delahanty falls face down, almost on top of the nuclear football.

As Muratti looks up and sees the president’s limousine about to depart, he places his hand on the football.

Deputy Chief of Staff Michael Deaver peeks at the scene from above the trunk, shortly before the door is closed and the president’s limousine departs. As agents and police seize Hinckley, Muratti begins to stand.

Thirteen seconds after Hinckley’s first shot, Muratti has left the scene. Here he is seen entering the front passenger seat of the Secret Service control car.

Fifty-seven minutes after the shooting, the crisis management team convenes in the White House Situation Room. A duplicate nuclear football is brought to National Security Adviser Richard Allen (on the left, wearing glasses). He keeps it at his feet underneath the table throughout the crisis. In the absence of the president and vice president (who was on Air Force Two in Texas), Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger (leaning on table, far right) has command and control of American nuclear forces.

“Two agents are down” At Fort Worth’s Carswell Air Force Base, Vice President Bush shook hands with a line of police officers. In the distance, the vigilant roar of B-52s echoed across Lake Worth. George H.W. Bush On March 24, Reagan signed an order making Vice President Bush in charge of crisis management. In that role, he was supported by Allen’s National Security staff. Six days after the appointment, the first crisis arrived when Reagan was shot. Still boyish and energetic, the 56-year-old Bush bounded alone up the stairs of his Boeing 707. He was on schedule to make his 3:30 p.m. speech in Austin. The Strategic Air Command’s 7th Bomb Wing paused operations, and Air Force Two taxied to the center of the runway. In the plane’s shopworn cabin, a wood-paneled wall extended across three-fourths of the aisle and enclosed the small stateroom where Bush took his seat facing forward. At 1:43 p.m. Central, Maj. Stetson Orchard pushed forward four throttles. In the aft passenger section, a seated Secret Service agent got a message over his radio headset from Donna Sweeney in the Fort Worth office. He repeated it to the dark-haired Ed Pollard, head of Bush’s security detail. Ed Pollard Head of the vice president’s Secret Service detail. On board Air Force Two as it departed Fort Worth, he was the first to notify Bush of the shooting. Muscular and compact, Pollard leapt from his seat. With the momentum of takeoff pushing him back, he powered his way up the aisle past House Majority Leader Jim Wright and Rep. Bill Archer, who were seated to the right at a conference table. On a narrow bench near the stateroom door sat Bush’s appointments secretary Jennifer Fitzgerald and his executive assistant Chase Untermeyer. Pollard knocked and entered the stateroom. “Sir, we’ve just received word about a shooting in Washington,” he said. “There is no indication that the president has been hit. Word is that two agents are down. That’s all we have right now.” “Oh, no,” Bush said. “Where did it happen?” “Outside the Washington Hilton.” The landing gear retracted into the plane’s silver underbelly with a portentous “thunk.”

Ronald Reagan and George Bush celebrate their nominations for president and vice president at the Republican National Convention in 1980. (MCT) Voodoo economic policy

One year earlier, it had been inconceivable that Reagan’s and Bush’s destinies would seamlessly merge and propel them both to the White House. In the Pennsylvania GOP primary, Bush uttered three words that almost doomed his political rise. At Carnegie Mellon University, he dismissed Reagan’s plan to cut taxes, increase defense spending and balance the budget as “voodoo economic policy.” “That really pissed off Reagan,” says Richard V. Allen, who was the Californian’s foreign policy specialist. Richard V. Allen Reagan’s National Security Adviser was in command of the Situation Room. He and his staff were tasked with supporting the crisis management team. On the afternoon Reagan was shot, Allen captured nearly five hours of conversation in the Situation Room with his personal tape recorder, which sat in plain view on the conference table. A month later, Bush dropped out of the race. In his diary, he pondered, “What’s it going to be like? Driving a car, being lonely around the house?” But on a July night when Reagan was nominated, fate intervened. At 11:35 p.m., a plan to pick Gerald Ford as his running mate collapsed during a meeting between Reagan and the former president. After Ford left the nominee’s 69th-floor suite at the Detroit Plaza Hotel, Reagan explained to his inner circle, “All this time, my gut instinct has been that this is not the right thing.” The room was silent until Reagan asked, “Well, what do we do now?” “We call Bush,” said Allen, who had already put out feelers to see if the Texan could embrace the platform — voodoo economic policy and all. He could. At 11:38 p.m., Reagan grabbed the phone and invited Bush to be his running mate. “The far-right hand” “Bush found in Ronald Reagan somebody who himself valued friendships and good relations, so they hit it off splendidly,” said Untermeyer. Chase Untermeyer Untermeyer resigned his seat in the Texas House of Representatives to become executive assistant to Vice President Bush. He was with Bush almost the entire day and night of the attempted assassination crisis on March 30, 1981. “I already looked at Ronald Reagan as a friend and someone I respected,” Bush told The News. “There was no doubt who was the senior partner in our relationship, but our trust and friendship had grown with each passing day.” Conservatives around Reagan, however, were suspicious of the moderate Ivy League vice president and his former campaign manager Jim Baker, the new White House chief of staff. James A. “Jim” Baker III A Houston lawyer and Bush’s 1980 campaign manager, Baker was appointed White House chief of staff over the more obvious choice of Reagan loyalist Ed Meese. A savvy Washington operator, Baker was President Gerald Ford’s campaign manager in 1976. At a meeting in the West Wing, the Harvard-educated Untermeyer introduced himself to Deaver. “Chase Untermeyer?” Deaver said. “Sounds like a George Bush staff name. Are you a third or a fourth?” “The administration was becoming divided between ‘us,’ the Reaganites, and ‘them,’ the moderates, recalled Reagan’s longtime assistant Helene von Damm. Reagan joked about his team at his first Gridiron Club dinner: “The right hand doesn’t know what the far-right hand is doing.” “Vicar of foreign policy” But that was office politics. Actual, palpable tension radiated from the office of Secretary of State Alexander Haig, who saw himself as “the vicar of American foreign policy.” Alexander Haig The Secretary of State, Haig had been White House chief of staff and the de facto president in the final days of the Richard Nixon presidency. A retired four-star general, he was the most combative member of Reagan’s team. “He has teed half the cabinet off,” Reagan wrote in his diary six days before the shooting. Reagan appointed Dick Allen to be his national security adviser. At Haig’s insistence, a meeting was called with Baker, Allen and Reagan counselor Ed Meese on Jan. 20, 1981 — perhaps the most dramatic Inauguration Day in Washington’s history. The country rejoiced that Iran had released 52 American hostages the moment Reagan was sworn in. Outgoing President Jimmy Carter and his staff had stayed up all night in the Oval Office negotiating with Tehran. The sleepless Carter left his post only when he had to join Reagan at the North Portico for the ride to the swearing in. Amidst this political cacophony, Haig presented a draft of his “National Security Decision Memorandum.” “We all came in our cutaways or whatever goofy suits we had,” Allen said. “Haig proposed he had sovereignty of everything outside the three-mile [territorial waters] limit.” “He’s seeing things that aren’t there” By tradition, Allen would have been in charge of managing any crisis for the executive branch of the government. His West Wing office was just outside the doors of the Situation Room. But Haig wanted crisis management in his portfolio. According to Allen, “I said to the president, ‘How about we assign George Bush as crisis manager?’” Allen and his National Security Council team would serve as staff for Bush. The solution pleased Reagan, who signed the necessary paperwork on Tuesday, March 24.


At 6 p.m., Press Secretary Brady made the announcement. A vexed Haig called his wife, Patricia, at home and said, “Don’t unpack, honey.” At 6:30 a.m. the next day, Haig dictated his letter of resignation. But when Reagan called and calmed him, he put it away. In his diary, Reagan wrote, “Haig, all upset about an announcement that George B. is to be chairman of the Crisis Council. We chose George because Al is wary of Dick. Frankly, I think he’s seeing things that aren’t there. He has half the Cabinet teed off.” In Bush’s office, Untermeyer got a cool reception to a suggestion that a generous statement about Haig would soothe the situation. “I’ve got crises to manage,” Bush joked. “I have great respect for Haig” The day of the shooting began in routine fashion. Bush donned a simple gray suit in his second-floor bedroom at the vice president’s residence. As he went downstairs for his daily national security briefing, an early-morning rain fell outside the Victorian mansion on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory. Two miles away in his second-floor suite at the White House, Reagan chose a brand-new blue pinstripe suit that had been made by his Beverly Hills tailor as a gift from Nancy Reagan. He fastened gold cuff links to his white shirt, monogrammed “RR,” and knotted an elegant deep-navy tie before he joined his wife for breakfast. At 8:34, he exited the family elevator on the first floor and crossed the main hall to a reception in the Blue Room. Then, after a short walk down the West Wing Colonnade to the Oval Office, he sat with Allen for his daily national security briefing. Topic A: Poland. Both Reagan’s and Bush’s briefings were missing satellite images that would show movements of artillery and motorized units near Poland’s borders with East Germany, Czechoslovakia and the U.S.S.R. “There was a strong possibility that the Soviets might invade,” Allen said in a phone interview with The News. “But there was cloud cover over Eastern Europe, so we had no overheads.” The Navy’s ultra-secret underwater listening system, SOSUS, heard the usual two Soviet ballistic missile submarines churning the deep water off the East Coast. Vice President George H.W. Bush enters the Tarrant County Convention Center to make a speech to the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association. (Courtesy George Bush Presidential Library and Museum) As a light drizzle blanketed Washington, Bush’s green Marine helicopter lifted him up above his home, past the symmetrical hedges in the gardens of the British Embassy next door and toward Andrews Air Force Base. Within minutes, it settled on the tarmac next to the waiting Air Force Two. The majestic trappings of the presidency seldom adorn a vice president. Bush would make his first trip to Texas since the inauguration aboard a reliable workhorse. His Air Force Two first served President Eisenhower and had carried Lyndon Johnson from Fort Worth to Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. As part of Carter’s effort to make the presidency less regal, the familiar blue and white livery had been removed. The 707 was now plain white with a narrow yellow stripe. Under a cluster of umbrellas, Bush, Untermeyer and Fitzgerald, the appointments secretary, boarded the plane. Bush handed his raincoat to a steward. The new vice president was about to take a victory lap in his adopted home state that would begin with a morning stop in Fort Worth. In the afternoon, he would be at the Capitol in Austin to address a joint session of the Legislature. In the stateroom, Bush sat with speechwriter Vic Gold and prepared for the two topics he would inevitably be asked about: Poland and Al Haig. At 10:45 a.m. Central, the plane gently descended toward Carswell Air Force Base, a concrete asterisk of runways, shaded around the edges by a fresh growth of spring grass. A waiting motorcade took the vice president downtown. At the Tarrant County Convention Center, Bush held a press conference before a lunchtime speech. Reporters asked about a possible feud between the vice president and Al Haig. “Everything has been said about this and I don’t want to confuse it further by commenting,” Bush said. “I have great respect for Haig, and nothing has happened to diminish this.”

Secretary of State Alexander Haig leans down to confer with Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger in the Situation Room following the attempted assassination of President Reagan. White House staff director David Gergen (left) and CIA director William Casey (center, seated) look on. (Courtesy Reagan Presidential Library) The helm is right here

At 1:45 p.m., Reagan made the six-minute trip by motorcade for his speech at the Washington Hilton. By 2:25 p.m., he had finished his address and was in a secure holding room while press and staff took their positions in the motorcade. With the president away from the office, Dick Allen enjoyed a rare swim at the University Club. As his silver hair sliced through the water, his driver reached down and tapped his head. “Something terrible has happened,” the driver said. Vice President George H.W. Bush uses the phone in his stateroom aboard Air Force Two following the shooting of Ronald Reagan. Secretary of State Alexander Haig had called Bush urging the Vice President to return to Washington. (Courtesy George Bush Presidential Library and Museum) Click to see more: At 2:50 p.m., Allen’s car pulled into the driveway of the White House where it passed Jim Baker and Counselor to the President Ed Meese as they left for the hospital. Inside the West Wing, he found Baker’s office crowded with anxious staffers. Haig arrived in his dripping raincoat. The Signal Corps established a tenuous telephone connection to Bush aboard Air Force Two and routed the call to the phone at Baker’s desk. With a finger in one ear, Haig said, “George, this is Al Haig! Turn around! Turn around!” It was unclear if either man heard the other. Allen headed downstairs to prepare the Situation Room. “I took it down from the chaos in Baker’s office,” he said, “to where I could determine who could get in and get out.” Allen was following the procedure laid out in the directive Reagan had signed six days earlier. But in one departure from procedure, Allen asked his assistant Janet Colson to go to his desk and retrieve a portable cassette recorder. “Dick Allen was in charge and was chairing it,” recalled domestic policy adviser Martin Anderson. “He reached out and put in the middle of the table a small tape recorder and announced that this was not ever done but he was going to record what happened.” “No one objected,” Allen said. Allen pressed Record and said, “15:24 in the afternoon.” At 3:26 p.m., Haig entered. “Did you get George?” Allen asked hopefully. “No,” Haig said. “He knows what he has to know.” Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger arrived, as did CIA Director Bill Casey; Secretary of the Treasury Don Regan; Attorney General William French Smith; congressional liaison Max Friedersdorf; Bush’s chief of staff, Adm. Dan Murphy; White House staff director David Gergen and others. Caspar Weinberger The Secretary of Defense was a former member of the Richard Nixon cabinet. Known as Cap the Knife for his cost-cutting prowess, he had command and control of military and nuclear forces in the absence of the president and vice president. With no information on the assailant, each pondered the unknown. Who wanted Reagan dead? At the top of the list was the Soviet Union. A secure red phone sat on the table in front of Haig. He told the group, “The helm is right here. That means right in this chair for now, constitutionally.” Across the table, Allen and White House counsel Fred Fielding knew better. “He constantly, incessantly drummed on some variant of ‘I am in charge, I am senior,’” said Allen. “Fred and I just nudged each other. We didn’t give a rat’s ass. George Bush would be running the show when he got there.” “Recommend you return to D.C.” On a sofa aboard Air Force Two, Congressmen Jim Wright, Bill Archer and Jim Collins gathered around a desk that held an enormous rotary-dial phone. Unlike on Air Force One, the line was not scrambled for security. Any amateur radio operator could have eavesdropped. A small color TV was on. The congressmen heard newsmen say Reagan was not hurt. Directly behind the plane’s cockpit, a Teletype clacked underneath a panel of radios. Unlike the telephone, it was designed for top-secret communication. Looking down at the machine, an Air Force crewman became the first person outside a small circle in Washington to learn the truth. A coded cable from Haig read: “Mr. Vice President: In the incident you will have heard about by now, the president was struck in the back and is in serious condition. Medical authorities are now deciding whether or not to operate. Recommend you return to D.C. at the earliest possible moment.” Lt. Col. John Matheny, out of uniform and in a khaki suit, delivered the message to Bush in the stateroom. An immediate return to Washington was not possible. The old plane carried 50,000 pounds less fuel than Reagan’s Air Force One. In the cockpit, Maj. Orchard continued the original flight plan to Austin. Air Force Two needed a gas station. “The crowd was just befuddled” On the ground in Austin, Gov. Bill Clements stood with his wife, Rita, Texas Secretary of State George Strake and about 500 others at Robert Mueller Airport. A motorcade waited to take the vice president to the Capitol for his speech before the Legislature. But a report that the president had been shot began to spread. “The crowd was just befuddled,” said Strake. At 2:25 p.m. Central, confused murmurs were drowned out by the turbine whine of Air Force Two as it taxied to a stop in front of the limousine and police escort cars. People looked up reverently at the American flag painted across the white tail. Vice President George Bush watches a TV replay of the assassination attempt on President Reagan as Air Force Two refuels in Austin. On the sofa is Texas first lady Rita Clements and Texas Secretary of State George Strake. On the far right is Dallas Congressman Jim Collins. (Courtesy George Bush Presidential Library and Museum) Inside, the hyper-alert Secret Service ruled that Bush should stay onboard. Clements, his wife and Strake boarded. “It was strange being on the plane at the time you didn’t know whether the president was dead or not,” Strake said. “Everybody was trying to seek out the honest condition of Reagan.” Clements squeezed onto the conference room sofa with Wright and Archer. Strake perched on an armrest beside Rita Clements. Collins stood in the aisle and leaned down next to Bush, who was in a large executive chair. Together, they watched a TV replay of the shooting. “How could anybody work up a feeling of sufficient personal malice toward Ronald Reagan to want him dead?” Bush asked. With Air Force Two refueled, Strake and the Clementses descended the stairs just after 3 p.m. Central and the door was closed behind them. The speeding plane leapt from the runway and disappeared into a point above the Eastern horizon.

Secretary of State Alexander Haig addressed the media following the assassination attempt on President Reagan. Haig advised the press that he was in control at the White House pending the return of the vice president. (Courtesy Reagan Presidential Library) Constitutionally, gentlemen