Six Shots at a Nation's Heart

By Ed Magnuson

Again, a moment of madness threatens a President and tarnishes the U.S.

The final Sunday of March began with a slight haze and soft breezes; unseasonable temperatures in the mid-70s welcomed the blossoming dogwoods. The day was so balmy that Ronald and Nancy Reagan, after attending services at St. John's Church, took a short noontime stroll back to the White House, passing the pink magnolias in Lafayette Park.

Shortly after 12:15 p.m., a pudgy young man with unkempt blond hair stepped off a Greyhound bus after a three-day ride from Los Angeles. He leaned against a pole in Washington's seedy terminal, then sat restlessly in a blue plastic seat. He seemed in no hurry to go anywhere.

Enjoying a rare day without guests or meetings, the Reagans lunched together in the White House. They stayed indoors, catching up on some unstrenuous household chores. One of them was to hang pictures in the President's study in the family quarters.

The visitor to Washington was John W. Hinckley Jr., 25, of Evergreen, Colo. He was in a surly mood. He snapped at a waitress who served him a cheeseburger in the terminal restaurant. He ate alone at the rear of the room, then walked back into the station's lobby, stalking about impatiently for an hour. He seemed to be waiting for someone.

The Reagans admired a collection of miniature western saddles given to them by their California friend Walter Annenberg. They carried a dozen of the miniatures to the Oval Office and arranged them for display on a table at the left of the President's desk. Then they dined together in their residence. It had been a comfortable day.

Hinckley checked into the Park Central Hotel on 18th Street. It is just two blocks west of the White House and directly across the street from Secret Service headquarters. It often houses visiting Secret Service agents. The cheapest room is $42 a night, moderate by Washington standards. Hinckley sat for hours in Room 312. He made two local telephone calls, using the hotel's direct-dial system.

The sky turned a lead gray on Monday, Ronald Reagan's 70th day in office. A monotonous drizzle formed puddles on the city's streets. But the weather was still warm and the rain did not dampen Reagan's spirits. At an early morning breakfast with 140 sub-Cabinet-level officials of his Administration in the East Room, Reagan gave a pep talk. He quoted Thomas Paine, declaring, "We have it in our power to begin the world over again." Then followed short meetings with his senior staff in the Oval Office and a national security briefing. All were in the normal workday pattern.

Hinckley got up early. He stopped in the Lunchbox Carryout Shop, just a few doors from his hotel, for coffee at 7:30 a.m. An hour later, he ordered breakfast in Kay's Sandwich Shoppe, adjacent to the hotel. He sat alone at the counter.

Reagan greeted two dozen Hispanic leaders in the Cabinet Room and conferred with them in private after photographers were allowed to take a few pictures. Aides Lyn Nofziger and Elizabeth Dole sat in on the meeting. One topic of the discussion: Reagan's efforts to place Hispanics in Government positions.

Hinckley was out of his room at 10 a.m. when a maid checked it. A two-suiter suitcase filled with clothes was spread open. A copy of TV Guide was near the bed. Also in the room was a newspaper clipping about the President's schedule, which disclosed that Reagan would leave the White House at 1:45 p.m. to address a session of the AFL-ClO's building and construction trades department at the Washington Hilton. The President had lunch at the White House in the family quarters. He ate an avocado and chicken salad, sliced red beets and an apple tart. Then he worked on his Hilton speech and stretched out for a brief rest.

When he returned to the hotel about noon, Hinckley asked the desk clerk whether he had received any telephone calls. There were no telephone messages in his key box. Then at 12:45 p.m. he sat in his room and began to write a five-paragraph letter on lined note paper. It started: "Dear Jodie, There is a definite possibility that I will be killed in my attempt to get Reagan." It ended: "This letter is being written an hour before I leave for the Hilton Hotel. Jodie, I'm asking you to please look into your heart and at least give me the chance with this historical deed to gain your respect and love. I love you forever." It was signed: "John Hinckley." Hinckley sealed the letter to Actress Jodie Foster, 18, a freshman at Yale University whom he had never met, but did not mail it.

The President climbed into his armor-plated black Lincoln limousine at 1:45 p.m. for the seven-minute drive to the Hilton. With him was Michael Deaver, his closest personal aide, Labor Secretary Ray Donovan and two Secret Service agents: Drew Unrue was driving, and Jerry Parr, chief of the presidential protection detail, sat in the right front seat. Following them in the motorcade was Presidential Press Secretary Jim Brady. Half an hour earlier, his deputy, Larry Speakes, had asked, "You going with the President to the hotel?" Brady's casual reply: "Yeah, I think I will." With other agents following in the "battlewagon" protective car, the caravan moved swiftly through the ram-slick streets to the hotel. Everything was going smoothly; the trip seemed quite routine.

Rechecking rooms at 1:15 p.m. to replace some used towels, the maid found Hinckley in the room, wearing a light-colored jacket, sport shirt and casual pants. He stood by the bathroom door and watched without expression as she hung the towels. Shortly afterward he left for the Hilton. It was almost a mile away, less than a half-hour walk. If he went by cab or bus, he was unnoticed.

The President received a standing ovation as he entered the Hilton's International Ballroom to address 3,500 union representatives. It was the largest audience he had faced in person since his Inauguration. As he made his pitch for the union members to support his economic program, Reagan's delivery was uncharacteristically flat. He drew only tepid applause, even meeting silence at a few punch lines. Only one sentence in the 18-minute speech would later be remembered. Noted the President: "Violent crime has surged 10%, making neighborhood streets unsafe and families fearful in their homes."

Outside the Hilton, on an adjacent sidewalk, Hinckley was pacing nervously.

John M. Dodson, a Pinkerton's detective AZ agency computer specialist, was watching the Hilton's lower-level VIP entrance from the seventh floor of a nearby office building. Dodson noticed the young man wearing a tan raincoat. "He looked fidgety, agitated, a little strange," Dodson recalled later.

A group of TV and still photographers also awaited Reagan's exit in what they call "the bodywatch" --the need to record any presidential calamity, or what Reagan has termed "the awful-awful." Other reporters were there, some with microphones and tape recorders, to ask the President for his reaction to the latest showdown between the government and Lech Walesa's independent labor movement in Poland. As always, curious onlookers pressed in for a glimpse of the President. They included some union members who had either arrived late for the lunch or left it early to get a closer view of Reagan. There were women with Kodaks, children, and even a mayor, Charles Wright of Davenport, Iowa.

The unmarked entrance, consisting of steel double doors under a concrete canopy, was designed precisely to provide security for Presidents and other celebrities who attend affairs at the Hilton. The doors open onto a 13-ft.-wide sidewalk that runs along a curving driveway at the base of a 15-ft.-high stone retaining wall. On this day the Secret Service had roped off an area along this curving wall about 25 ft. from the doors. The press and other onlookers jostled for position behind the rope.

Among them was John Hinckley.

Standing close to the wall, he complained about the press, which had been griping about onlookers getting in the way. ABC Cameraman Henry Brown had protested that the press area had been "penetrated" by people who were "interfering with our work." Replied a man whom Brown assumed was a Secret Service agent: "We'll try to do something." A.P. Radio Reporter Walter Rodgers pushed his way along the wall, extending his fishpole mike, when he heard the young man complain about the reporters: "They ought to get here on time. They think they can do anything they want. Don't let them do that. "

Reagan left the ballroom stage and walked down a 100-yard carpeted corridor that leads to the VIP exit. When he stepped out onto the sidewalk, the drizzle had stopped. The President flashed one of his usual jovial smiles as he headed toward his car, parked 15 ft. from the exit and 10 ft. from the press rope. Agent Unrue was in the driver's seat; the engine was running. Reagan raised his right hand high, waving to people standing across the driveway.

Agent Parr was at Reagan's right side.

Aide Deaver was at his left, between the President and the press group. Brady walked a few steps behind Deaver and closer to the wall. Agent Timothy McCarthy waited at the limousine, standing behind the open rear door. Washington Patrolman Thomas Delahanty, drawn away from his normal duties with the police canine squad to help guard the President, stood near the press rope. Reagan, now just a few feet away from his car, turned to his left and waved toward the reporters.

r. President, Mr. President," came a familiar shout from behind the rope. A.P. Reporter Michael Putzel was trying to ask Reagan a question. Brady stepped ahead of Deaver to help field any press queries. Still smiling, Reagan looked past McCarthy, Deaver, Brady and Dejahanty and at the milling group behind the rope.

The man in the tan raincoat reached out to point a .22-cal. "Saturday night special" at the President. The chambers of the revolver contained six Devastator bullets, designed to explode on impact. He shot twice, paused, then fired off four more rounds--all in a scant two seconds.

At the first sound of firing, Deaver ducked. The President's grin vanished. He looked startled, bewildered. Instinctively, Agent Parr pushed Reagan's head down, shoved him hard through the open car door. Reagan's head struck the roof of the doorway. Both men landed on the transmission hump ahead of the rear seat, Parr on top of the President. "Take off!" shouted Parr to the driver. "Just take off!"

The limo lurched out of the driveway. Deaver, who had crouched beside the President's car until he saw Reagan was in it, ran for the Secret Service control vehicle. "Oh, my God, it's happening!" he thought. The shots had been so close to him that he could "feel the concussion and smell the powder." In the car, he shouted, "Let's get out of here!" He grabbed Presidential Assistant David Fischer and, referring to Reagan, asked, "My God, Dave, is he all right?"

Brady lay on the sidewalk, blood seeping from a wound in his head and trickling into an iron grating. He tried to rise. Rick Ahearn, a White House advanceman, cradled Brady's face and shouted: "A handkerchief, a handkerchief!" Dropped in the turmoil, a police pistol lay incongruously beside Brady's head. McCarthy had been trained to try to block any shots at the President with his own body; when the firing began, he turned away from the limousine toward the assailant. Hit in the abdomen by a bullet that might well have struck the President, McCarthy whirled away from the gunman and fell prone. Patrolman Delahanty, a bullet lodged in his neck, lay screaming in pain near the rope.

Along the wall, agents, police officers and a union member leaped on Hinckley. He struggled furiously for at least 20 seconds before the gun was wrestled away from him. One agent brandished his Uzi submachine gun to emphasize orders to his colleagues as well as to fend off any threat from the aghast and screaming crowd; for all he knew, it might hold other assailants. Another agent, jammed against the wall in the melee, waved his pistol toward the menacing street. "Get a police car! Get a car!" cried the men holding Hinckley. Handcuffing Hinckley and throwing a jacket over his head, the officers shoved him toward one police car, but found the rear door locked. They pushed him into a second and sped off to Washington police headquarters, some 30 blocks away.

The three wounded men still lay on the ground. After five agonizing minutes, an orange and white Washington ambulance, parked at the Connecticut Avenue entrance to the hotel, pulled around into the T Street driveway. Paramedic Bobby Montgillion jumped out, ran to Brady and grabbed his hand. "I asked if he knew what was going on," recalled Montgillion. "He squeezed my hand."

Brady lost consciousness as he was lifted onto a stretcher and placed into the ambulance with an oxygen mask clamped to his face. Two more ambulances, their sirens wailing, arrived to take Agent McCarthy and Patrolman Delahanty to separate hospitals.

In the President's Lincoln, Reagan protested: "Jerry, get off me. You're hurting my ribs. You really came down hard on top of me." The agent apologized and helped Reagan sit upright on the rear seat. The car was speeding down Connecticut Avenue toward the White House. Said Parr later: "I ran my hands over his body, under his arms, his back." He detected no wound. The limousine was less than 15 seconds away from the Hilton when Reagan said again that his ribs hurt. "He complained of having some problems with his breathing," said Parr. "He was getting an ashen color. Then he started to cough up some blood. My first impression was that somehow a rib had broken and punctured a lung." Reagan had the same mistaken idea. He later said: "It hurt, but I thought it was a broken rib."

Parr ordered the driver to turn right and rush toward George Washington University Hospital, 1 1/2 miles from the Hilton. By radio Parr advised the Secret Service command post at the White House: "Rawhide is heading for George Washington." Rawhide is Reagan's apt Secret Service code name. His limousine is called Stagecoach.

As Reagan's car pulled up to the hospital's emergency entrance, Parr opened the right rear door and called for help. Two more agents, following in the battlewagon, helped the President walk toward the entrance. Reagan had gone about 45 ft., said Parr, when he sagged. "He was perhaps going into shock, but I never sensed it was life threatening. He was just pale, shook up." Only after the agents had lifted Reagan onto the table in the trauma unit and scissored off his coat and shirt did anyone realize that the President had been shot.

The first reports all said that the President had escaped harm. Nancy Reagan learned of the shooting minutes after she returned to the White House from a luncheon meeting. Her own Secret Service escorts told her that her husband was at the hospital, but they too were unaware that he had been wounded. She reached the hospital only minutes after his limousine.

The White House staff first learned of the shooting when David Prosperi, one of Brady's assistants, ran to a Hilton telephone. He reached the White House and demanded to talk to Assistant Press Secretary Larry Speakes, shouting: "This is an emergency!" To Speakes, Prosperi cried: "The President has been shot at! And Brady's been shot!" Speakes quickly told Staff Director David Gergen. James Baker, the White House Chief of Staff, was sitting in his office when Gergen rushed in at 2:30 p.m. to shout: "Brady's been hit!"

Peter Teeley, press secretary to Vice President George Bush, immediately placed a radiotelephone call to his boss, who had just left Fort Worth-Dallas airport aboard Air Force Two after speaking to the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association. He was on his way to Austin to address the Texas legislature. Teeley told Bush that the President was not hurt.

Baker rushed to tell Presidential Counsellor Ed Meese the news; Meese too had heard it. He had punched a button on a Secret Service computer that tracks the President; it showed that Reagan was at the hospital. Both hurried to the White House residence to inform Nancy but discovered that she was already on her way to the hospital. Back in his office, Baker took a telephone call from Deaver at the hospital. The President was not wounded, said Deaver, but Brady was badly hurt. "Oh, Jesus!" exclaimed Meese, listening on an extension.

Presidential Aide David Fischer took over the telephone at the hospital to keep the line open. Secretary of State Alexander Haig called Baker on another phone to ask about the shooting. "I will keep you advised," said Baker. Two minutes later, Deaver was on the hospital phone, speaking in somber tones. Then Reagan's personal physician, Dr. Daniel Ruge, came on to deliver the bad news: the President had been hit after all.

In rapid succession, Treasury Secretary Donald Regan--whose department includes the Secret Service--Haig and others joined the group of White House staffers in Baker's office. Initially, there was little talk of military alerts or providing for a transfer of power; they discussed such matters as notifying Brady's wife and Reagan's children. Meese suggested that he and Baker go to the hospital. It was a questionable move, since it separated the dominant troika (Meese, Baker and Deaver) from the Situation Room in the White House. Recalled one participant: "Meese was like a rock. Baker was shaken."

While the troika set up a mini-command post at the hospital, Haig, Regan, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and National Security Adviser Richard Allen moved to the Situation Room in the White House basement. It has elaborate communications links to U.S. military commanders and embassies throughout the world. CIA Director William Casey and Attorney General William French Smith soon joined the group.

Only Haig had been through a crisis in Government before. One of his first acts was to reach Bush. Since the telephone link was poor, Haig said that he would send a wire by a secure radiophone telecopier that Bush should read immediately. The message: "Mr. Vice President, the President has been struck."

Aboard the plane, Bush gave the order:

"We're going to refuel in Austin and go back." Then he wondered aloud: "How could anybody want to kill such a kind-hearted man?"

When Bush's plane landed in Austin, Secret Service agents insisted he stay on board. Recalled one of his aides there:

"The first thing on our minds was security. If they got the President in Washington, were they waiting for the Vice President in Austin?" Texas Governor William Clements and his wife visited Bush as the plane was refueled. Then it headed from Texas back to Washington.

At 3:10 p.m., some 35 minutes after the Secret Service had learned that Reagan had been shot, the White House finally informed the press of the injury. That delay, and others that followed, contributed to a sense of confusion as television networks, breaking off regular programming, struggled to sift fact from rumor.

Haig contributed to the tension when, with the best of intentions, he sought to clear up any potential confusion about whether the U.S. Government was functioning, particularly among America's allies--and enemies--abroad. He was in the Situation Room about 4 p.m.

when Speakes gave reporters in the White House a brief explanation of Reagan's presurgery treatment at the hospital.

While TV cameras caught the scene, Speakes was asked, "If the President goes into surgery and goes under anesthesia, would Vice President Bush become the acting President at the moment or under what circumstances does he?" Replied Speakes, who was not prepared for the question: "I cannot answer that question at this time." Watching, Haig sent a note to Speakes. It said, in effect: "Get off the air." The delivery of the note alarmed reporters present, particularly when Speakes understandably refused to dis close its contents and left the rostrum.

Haig felt that any uncertainty over who was in charge could be dangerous.

He rushed upstairs to the briefing room and tried to convey a sense of calm. In stead, he was perspiring, his voice shook, and his hands trembled. He assured reporters that there was no command vacancy, that communications were open with the Vice President, and that no spe- cial military-alert measures were necessary. But then he blundered. Asked, "Who's making the decisions?" he replied:

"Constitutionally, gentlemen, you have the President, the Vice President and the Secretary of State in that order and should the President decide he wants to transfer the helm to the Vice President, he will do so. He has not done that. As of now, I am in control here, in the White House, pending return of the Vice President."

That, of course, is not the constitutional order of succession; both the Speaker of the House and the President pro tern of the Senate, as elected officials, rank ahead of the Secretary of State. Perhaps realizing his mistake, Haig was annoyed minutes later when Weinberger interrupted Haig's discussion in the Situation Room about the succession provisions of the 25th Amendment. With a slight edge in his voice, Weinberger said jokingly, "Al, we already heard you explain your view of the Constitution." Haig stopped and glared at the Defense Secretary. "You should check the Constitution," Haig replied. Everyone in the room sensed the tension. Then the moment passed.

Far more soothing to a wondering nation was the surprisingly agile and articulate medical briefing at George Washington University Hospital. It was given by Dr. Dennis O'Leary, a former Marine major who has taught medicine at George Washington since 1973 and is now dean for clinical affairs. Handling repetitive and sometimes inane questions with precision and amiability, O'Leary insisted that the President "was at no time in any serious danger. He has a clear head and should be able to make decisions by tomorrow."

At Washington police headquarters, Hinckley, sweating but mostly silent, was held in a third-floor homicide squad room while federal and local officials decided who had jurisdiction in his case. The feds won, and Hinckley was photo graphed and fingerprint ed by the FBI. At 11:52 p.m. the heavily guarded Hinckley was whisked into a U.S. district courtroom to be charged formally with the attempted assassination of the President, a crime carrying a maximum life sentence upon conviction, and assaulting a federal officer. Before dawn, he was moved into a small prison cell at the Marine Correctional Facility in Quantico, Va. Just two weeks ago

Reagan had gone horseback riding at Quantico.

Early Tuesday morning, Reagan asked about the man who had shot him, phrasing the question in his usual casual manner: "Does anybody know what that guy's beef was?" Later in the day, Dr. Ruge told Reagan for the first time that three others had been wounded. Said Reagan: "That means four bullets hit, good Lord." He wondered if the gunman had fired deliberately at the others or whether they had been struck by shots aimed at him. "I didn't want a supporting cast," he said. His eyes filled with tears as he talked about the others. "I guess it goes with the territory," he said sadly.

As news of the shooting flashed around the world, many nations expressed sympathy for the President but predictably criticized the American tendency toward mayhem. "I pray your injuries are not serious," cabled Britain's Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt relayed his "deep horror," and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat his "extreme shock and sorrow." Japan's largest daily, Yomiuri Shimbun, said the attack "proves that violence is deep-rooted in U.S. soil."

West Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung charged that America is "a country of pistols on hips." Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev expressed his "indignation" at "this criminal act" and wished Reagan "a full and speedy recovery."

Meanwhile the Communist Party youth newspaper, Komsomolskaya Pravda, depicted the U.S. as a society "where terror is a phenomenon of daily life." And Iran's Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini said about Reagan, even before he knew the President was not seriously hurt: "We are not going to mourn for him."

Abroad, as in the U.S., there was a sense of deja vu. "Oh no, not again!" said a man in Helsinki as he picked up a newspaper at a kiosk. A newspaper in Athens charged that--what else?--the CIA was responsible.

At home, former Presidential Candidate John Anderson declared that "we are all diminished, we are all demeaned, by an act of violence of that kind." The Wall Street Journal observed in an editorial that "the forces that move men to violence seem to be on the upsurge" and "we are dismayed at our impotence before them." Noted the Los Angeles Times:

"Doctors said ... that he was in stable condition.

The country is not." Admiration for the President's courage and calm under fire, as well as for the vitality of his 70-year-old physique, was widespread but not universal. At the Academy Central School in Tulsa, a few students clapped and cheered when they heard news of the assassination attempt.

Former President Carter praised the Secret Service and said the assault showed again the need for gun control. A surprising possible convert to that cause was South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond, who said he is at least willing to consider banning the importation of parts for Saturday night specials. Senator Edward Kennedy said he would again propose legislation to outlaw totally the manufacture and sale of that type of gun. But Carter noted that members of Congress "didn't move after 1963. They didn't move when George Wallace was attacked.

And they didn't move after Bobby Kennedy was killed. These guns that are only used to kill someone, not for hunting, ought to be regulated, but I predict they won't be."

Within moments of Hinckley's arrest the FBI dispatched its agents to weave a net of evidence that would form the legal case against him. They found the unmailed letter to Jodie Foster in his Washington hotel room --a note that amounted to a highly explicit confession. The investigators also found a tape recording of telephone conversations between Hinckley and a woman who might have been Foster; it is possible that Hinckley made the calls anonymously.

Thrust innocently into a national spotlight she had not sought, the actress held a news conference at Yale to confirm that she had received many "unsolicited" love notes from Hinckley. None had mentioned the President, she said, and none had contained any hints of violence.

But the letters became so persistent that last month she gave the ones she had not earlier destroyed to her college dean. He turned them over to campus police, who found nothing in them that would warrant warning anyone else about Hinckley.

The FBI now has these letters.

Demonstrating the importance of registering handgun sales, the Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms within minutes discovered where Hinckley had purchased the weapon: at Rocky's Pawn Shop in Dallas. If Hinckley had somehow eluded capture, tracing this sale would have given the FBI the gunman's identity.

FBI agents are convinced that there was no plot, no conspiracy and that Hinckley had acted on his own. Nonetheless, they were busy tracing his past connections with the Chicago-based National Socialist Party of America. A neo-Nazi group, it claims to have expelled him in 1979 for being "too militant." Agents were also puzzling over evidence suggesting that the suspect may have been stalking Reagan in Washington last December, and that someone was expecting him in the city just before the shooting. In Hinckley's hotel room, police and FBI agents found clippings from a Dec. 10 article in the Washington Post. The next day Reagan visited the Hilton to address a meeting convened by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. Reagan left the hotel through the same exit he used when Hinckley tried to kill him. Agents so far have been unable to trace the two calls Hinckley made after checking into the Park Central. Hotel employees said two calls were made to his room. One was a wrong number --a woman trying to reach a relative who was registered elsewhere in the hotel. The other was from an unidentified woman who asked for Hinckley by name.

The rapidity of the shots fired at the Hilton made it difficult for the FBI to pinpoint the sequence of the multiple wounding. Studying the video tapes and the ballistics evidence, the FBI tentatively concluded that Reagan was hit after he had been doubled over by Agent Parr and was being pushed into his car. In a freak bit of chance, the bullet apparently bounced off the car's window frame and through the narrow gap between the open door and the car body.

But had the Secret Service done all it could to protect the President? As congressional committees began a series of post-assault probes, there was lavish praise for Agent McCarthy, who had stepped into the line of fire at the risk of his own life. Agent Parr too was complimented for his fast reaction. Contended one veteran agent: "Everyone did exactly what he was supposed to do. It was like watching a training film."

Still, how did the gunman get so close?

He carried no press credentials, which accredited reporters and cameramen wear about their necks and are supposed to keep visible at all times. The Secret Service insists there was no intention to create a closed press area at the Hilton site. The spectators were not considered intruders. Why was not the presidential car parked directly in front of the exit, instead of 15 ft. away? The Service claimed that the positioning permitted a faster exit and was normal. "They are wrong," insists TIME Photographer Dirck Halstead. "I've covered that exit many times, and the President's car was always right in front of it."

Secret Service Chief H. Stuart Knight indirectly criticized the FBI for failing to inform the Service that Hinckley had been arrested at the Nashville airport for carrying three handguns in his briefcase on Oct. 9. On that day Jimmy Carter had been in the city to make a campaign speech at the Grand Ole Opry house. Yet there was no evidence that Hinckley had been tracking Carter.

Spirited into a helicopter at the Quantico base by FBI agents, who made him bend over and run, Hinckley late last week was flown to an Army post near Washington. There he was transferred to a limousine and brought in handcuffs to a federal courtroom under security so tight that even the clerk of court had to show identification. A paramedic with an oxygen tank sat behind Hinckley in the courtroom. A court-appointed psychiatrist, Dr. James L. Evans, testified that his three-hour examination of Hinckley showed he was "mentally competent to stand trial." District Court Chief Judge William B. Bryant ordered that the suspect be examined further to establish his men tal condition. Hinckley's family had hired the firm headed by Defense Attorney Ed ward Bennett Williams to represent their son; the lawyers argued that any such examination should be done first by defense-chosen experts. Bryant denied the request but assured defense attorneys that their psychiatrists would have "equal access" to Hinckley.

Finally John W. Hinckley Jr. was flown by helicopter to the Federal Correctional Institution in Butner, N.C., where psychiatric examinations could take up to three months. The legal question may turn out to be whether he was sane at the time of the crime. The larger question for the U.S. was whether the course of its history must continue to be influenced by the mental misfits in its midst.

-- By Ed Magnuson.

Reported by Douglas Brew and Johanna McGeary/ Washington

With reporting by Douglas Brew, Johanna McGeary

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