An Assassin's Bullet Almost Plunged the Nation

??Leading news agencies and political analysts are mounting questions about the role of the United States Secret Service following a ‘massive security breach’ at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, during which a shooter tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump.

The events of 14 July rekindled sad memories of United States Secret Service chequered history. Even before he took the oath of office, Abraham Lincoln was the object of plots to kidnap or kill him. On April 14,1865, John Wilkes Booth, a fanatical Confederate sympathizer, learned that Lincoln would be attending a play at Ford’s Theatre that evening. Booth made his way to Lincoln’s box, snuck in, and shot him in the back of the head. The president died the next day.

President James A. Garfield was unguarded as he walked through a waiting room toward a train in the Baltimore and Potomac Railway station in Washington on the morning of July 2, 1881. Charles J. Guiteau emerged from the crowd and shot the president in the arm and then fatally in the back. On September 19, 1881, Garfield died of his wounds.

While the assassination shocked the nation, no steps were taken to protect the next president, Chester A. Arthur.

Unlike Lincoln and Garfield, McKinley was being guarded when Leon Czolgosz shot him on September 6, 1901. McKinley was at a reception that day in the Temple of Music at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. Bullets slammed into McKinley’s chest and stomach. Eight days later, he died of blood poisoning.

Unsuccessful assassination attempts were made on President Andrew Jackson on January 30, 1835; President Theodore Roosevelt on October 14, 1912; and Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 15, 1933 before he had been sworn in.

In fact, when the White House was opened, a deranged man wandered in and threatened to kill President John Adams. Adams invited the man into his office and calmed him down.

On November 1, 1950, two Puerto Rican nationalists tried to force their way into Blair House to kill President Harry S Truman.

Writing in his much acclaimed book, In The President’s Secret Service Ronald Kessler revealed that, before his trip to Dallas on November 22,1963, Kennedy received warnings about possible violence there. United Nations Ambassador Adlai Stevenson called Kennedy aide Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and urged him to tell the president not to go to Dallas. Stevenson said Senator J. William Fulbright also warned Kennedy.

?President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was shot during a motorcade drive through downtown Dallas. He died in the emergence room of the Parkland Memorial Hospital 32 minutes after the attack. He was the third President to be assassinated in office since Abraham Lincoln and the first since President McKinley in 1901.

Before Trump, in March 1981, Ronald Reagan was the last US President to have been injured in an assassination attempt. He was shot outside a hotel in Washington DC shortly after taking office. After attempting to assassinate President Reagan, John W. Hinckley, Jr. was found not guilty by reason of insanity on June 21, 1982.

Bush was attending a rally in Tbilisi, in 2005 with Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili when a hand grenade was thrown toward him. Both men were behind a bulletproof barrier when the grenade, wrapped in cloth, landed about 100 feet away. The grenade did not explode, and no one was hurt.