[accessed December 5, 2012].

104. The rifles and ammunition belonged to the faculty occupant of the Pavilion, who had forgotten about them. It was all innocent enough-but it might not have been under other circumstances. In presidential security, assumptions should never be made.

105. Kessler is author of In the President's Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2009). See also Ronald Kessler, "Threats Against Obama Prompt Secret Task Force," Newsmax, July 26, 2010,

http://www.newsmax.com/RonaldKessler/Obama-threats-Secret-Service-task-force/2010/07/26/id/365617

[accessed June 2, 2011]; Mark Memmott, "Alleged White House Shooter Charged With Attempted Assassination," National Public Radio, November 17, 2011,

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/11/17/142470201/alleged-white-house-shooter-charged-with-attempted-assassination?ft=1&f=1001&sc=tw&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

[accessed November 18, 2011]. "Man Pleads Guilty After Threatening to Kill President During DNC," WBTV.com, October 26, 2012,

http://www.wbtv.com/story/19927214/donte-sims-guilty-threatening-kill-president-obama-twitter-dnc

[accessed October 31, 2012].

106. JFK's limousine is now on display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. The museum's archivists told me, "After the assassination, the midnight-blue, un-armored, open convertible was radically changed. A permanent roof, bullet-proof glass, and extensive armor-plating made the car much more secure. Wearing sedate black paint in place of the distinctive blue, the car served Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon as front line transportation and remained in the White House fleet as a backup through 1977." The White House approved the plan to refurbish Kennedy's car "around December 12, 1963" and a "committee was formed ... representing the Secret Service, Army Materials Research Center, Hess & Eisenhardt, and Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company." Changes to the limousine included: a "complete re-armoring of [the] rear passenger compartment; the addition of [a] permanent non-removable top ('green house') to accommodate transparent armor; the replacement of [the original] engine with [a] hand-built, high compression unit, providing approximately 17 percent more power; the addition of [a] second air conditioning unit in [the] trunk; the addition of certain electronic communication devices; the reinforcement of some mechanical and structural components, e.g., front wheel spindles and door hinges, to accommodate additional weight; the complete re-trimming of [the] rear compartment, eliminating damage resulting from the assassination; [and] a new paint treatment, 'regal Presidential Blue Metallic with silver metallic flakes that glitter under bright lights and sunshine.' " E-mail from the Benson Ford Research Center at The Henry Ford Museum, July 3, 2012. One wonders whether LBJ and Nixon ever thought about the fact they were riding in the car in which JFK was killed. The events in this limousine made Johnson president and eventually led to Nixon's political resurrection, after all. The November 22 automobile also served as a symbol of presidential vulnerability and mortality.

107. See "Kennedy Limousine Redone for Johnson," New York Times, June 14, 1964. It isn't that an FBI director didn't need or deserve a bulletproof car. Rather, it is that no one believed his boss, the president, should have the same protection.

11. INEVITABILITY: THE ASSASSINATION THAT HAD TO HAPPEN.

1. Warren Commission Report, chapter VIII, p. 446, History Matters website,

http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wr/html/WCReport_0235b.htm

[accessed October 4, 2011]; Gerald Blaine with Lisa McCubbin, The Kennedy Detail: JFK's Secret Service Agents Break Their Silence (New York: Gallery Books, 2010), 196.

2. According to the Secret Service, "One of the purposes of the Dallas trip was to afford to as many of the people of Dallas as possible an opportunity to see the president in the limited time available. [Agent Win] Lawson was so informed and was also informed by the White House staff that the motorcade from the airport to the luncheon site (the Trade Mart) should take approximately 45 minutes." In other words, the president was completely vulnerable to attack for fully three-quarters of an hour, as he passed 200,000 unscreened people. "Report of the United States Secret Service on the Assassination of President Kennedy," C. Douglas Dillon Papers, Box 43, Folder, "The President's Committee on the Warren Report," John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts. JFK aide Kenny O'Donnell did not show the president a letter from a Democratic National Committeeman named Byron Skelton advising JFK to steer clear of Dallas. "Showing the letter to the president would have been a waste of his time," O'Donnell later wrote. Kenneth P. O'Donnell, David F. Powers, and Joe McCarthy, "Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye": Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), 19. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., says that Adlai Stevenson told him there was "something very ugly and frightening" about Dallas and that he (Schlesinger) should pass on his (Stevenson's) concerns to Kennedy. Schlesinger never did; Stevenson was initially grateful for his colleague's discretion. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), 1021. Press secretary Pierre Salinger did not show JFK a letter from a Dallas woman who was worried that "something terrible" would happen to the president if he visited her city. Salinger assumed that Kennedy would have "dismissed the warning out of hand." Pierre Salinger, P. S.: A Memoir (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995), 15455. See also Jules Witcover, "Kennedy's Aides Got Hints of Peril in Texas," Los Angeles Times, August 2, 1971.

3. The U.S. Secret Service was established in 1865 to deal with a massive counterfeiting problem that arose once the Civil War had concluded. "After the assassination of President McKinley in 1901, the U.S. Secret Service was specifically designated to protect the president of the United States." "United States Secret Service Lecture Outline on Protection of the President for Guidance of Special Agents Appearing Before Police Schools," C. Douglas Dillon Papers, Box 42, Folder, "The President's Committee on the Warren Report," John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts.

4. See Michael K. Deaver, Nancy: A Portrait of My Years with Nancy Reagan (New York: William Morrow, 2004), 140. Del Quentin Webber has explained how difficult it was for Mrs. Reagan to get beyond the assassination attempt: "A natural worrier, Nancy Reagan found herself sobbing uncontrollably at times. She lost weight and became panicky whenever her husband left the White House gates ..." Del Quentin Webber, Rawhide Down: The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan (New York: Henry Holt, 2011), 22324. Stuart Spencer, one of Reagan's closest campaign advisers, had this to say about Mrs. Reagan after the assassination attempt on her husband: "She was scared to death after that. She even lobbied [the president] not to run again. She had real qualms. If she asked me once, she asked me fifteen times whether he should run again or not. It wasn't the fear of winning or losing. Every time he went out after that, she had a fear of him getting shot. Why did she talk to Joan Quigley and all these astrologers? She was looking for help ... [The president] was very fatalistic about it, but she was scared to death. Big change in her." Stuart Spencer, interview, excerpted in "Reagan Officials on the March 30, 1981 Assassination Attempt,"

http://millercenter.org/academic/oralhistory/news/2007_0330

[accessed July 13, 2011].

5. Transcript of LBJ-Hoover telephone call, 10 A.M, November 23, 1963, reprinted in Max Holland, The Kennedy Assassination Tapes (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 71.

6. The successful presidential assassins had political motives of various sorts. Lincoln's John Wilkes Booth was a Confederate sympathizer. Charles Guiteau had sought a political appointment from Garfield and was embittered by his rejection-although he was also mentally disturbed, if not insane. McKinley's Leon Czolgosz was an anarchist who wanted to bring down the established order. And Oswald clearly had some combination of political and personal intentions.

7. David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Touchstone, 1995), 550.

8. Hans L. Trefousse, Andrew Johnson: A Biography (New York: W. W. Norton, 1989), 351.

9. See Associated Press, "Arrest Two Girls in Plot: Buenos Aires Police Hold Them, with Two Men, as Anarchists." New York Times, December 13, 1928, and Associated Press, "Anti-Hoover Plot Barred by Raid in Buenos Aires; Reds Seized With Bombs." New York Times, December 12, 1928. "CNN's Gut Check for December 11, 2012," CNN.com, December 11, 2012,

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/12/11/cnns-gut-check-for-december-11-2012/

[accessed December 12, 2012].

10. Zangara was a mentally disturbed immigrant.

11. Amy Davidson, "The F.D.R. New Yorker Cover That Never Ran," New Yorker, May 5, 2012,

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/closeread/2012/05/the-fdr-new-yorker-cover-that-never-ran.html#slide_ss_0=1

[accessed January 30, 2013]; Kirk Semple, "This Means Lore!," Miami New Times, September 1, 1993,

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/1993-09-01/news/this-means-lore/

[accessed June 13, 2013]; "Woman Who Diverted Bullet From FDR Dies," Associated Press, reprinted in Victoria [Texas] Advocate, November 11, 1962; "Florida Corrections, Centuries of Progress, 19331935," Florida Department of Corrections website,

http://www.dc.state.fl.us/oth/timeline/1933-1935.html

[accessed June 13, 2013].

12. During the Clinton administration, Congress passed a law limiting Secret Service protection of former presidents to a maximum of ten years. The cost-cutting measure was rescinded in 2013 by Congress and signed into law by President Obama. Former chief executives and their spouses now once again receive lifetime protection. See Olivier Knox, "Obama Signs Law Giving Himself, Bush Lifetime Secret Service Guard," Yahoo! News, January 10, 2013,

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/obama-signs-law-giving-himself-bush-lifetime-secret-184305122-politics.html

[accessed January 11, 2013].

13. I have only covered assassination attempts on U.S. leaders. Unfortunately, the practice is worldwide and all too frequent. To offer just a few modern examples: During a live television debate in October 1960, a Japanese Socialist Party Candidate named Inejiro Asanuma was stabbed to death by a seventeen-year-old anticommunist named Otoya Yamaguchi. Yamaguchi told police that his only regret was that he had been unable to kill two other people, the chairman of the Japanese Teachers' Union and a Communist named Sanzo Nosaka. As briefly mentioned in the text, on August 22, 1962, French president Charles de Gaulle's black Citron DS was spotted speeding through the Paris suburb of Petit-Clamart, en route with Madame de Gaulle to their estate at Colombey. A host of would-be assassins unleashed a hail of bullets upon the presidential motorcade. One hundred and forty bullets, most of them coming from behind, killed two of de Gaulle's motorcycle bodyguards; twelve bullets shattered the Citron's rear window and punctured its rear tires. The unarmored car went into a front skid, but de Gaulle's skilled chauffeur was able to accelerate out of it and drive the presidential party to safety. On May 13, 1981, Pope John Paul II was shot four times while blessing crowds in St. Peter's Square in Rome. The gunman was a twenty-three-year-old Turk named Mehmet Ali Agca. The pope came close to death but managed to recover. On June 13, 1981, Marcus Serjeant, a seventeen-year-old British national, aimed a pistol at the queen and fired six rounds (blanks) before being overcome by guardsmen. The queen was on horseback, riding in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace, when the shots were fired. On November 4, 1995, a twenty-seven-year-old Jewish law student fired three shots at Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, who died from his injuries.

14. On December 19, 1960, President Eisenhower sent a letter to President-elect Kennedy that read, "I regret that it did not occur to me, earlier, to offer you as president-elect one facility that might be of some possible use, namely the use of a governmental plane. Knowing something about the problems of the Secret Service and their work in providing for the safety of the president-elect and his family, I think it possible that the use of such a plane, during this interregnum, might be of real utility to you." Kennedy wrote back on December 21: "Fortunately, I have been able to use the same plane that carried us through the fall and as I do not plan to travel very much between now and the 20th of January I believe it will serve us very satisfactorily." Personal correspondence, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum, Abilene, Kansas.

15. See "Nab 2 Gun Toters at Rally for Kennedy; 1 Is Minister," Chicago Daily Tribune, November 5, 1960; "2 Armed Men Seized in Kennedy Crowd," New York Times, November 5, 1960; and "Pair Meant Kennedy No Harm, Police Say," Los Angeles Times, November 7, 1960; see also