Murder charges could be brought against gunman who tried to assassinate Reagan after coroner rules death of Brady is a homicide

 

 

This week's death of former White House press secretary James Brady, who survived a gunshot wound to the head in a 1981 assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan, has been ruled a homicide, District of Columbia police said Friday. Federal prosecutors said only that they are reviewing the ruling. But a law professor and an attorney for John Hinckley Jr., who was found not guilty by reason of insanity in the shooting, said bringing new charges against the 59-year-old in Brady's death seemed unlikely. "I think it (the medical examiner's ruling) will mean nothing," long-time Hinckley attorney Barry Levine told The Associated Press. "No prosecutors will bring such a case. The notion that this could be a successful prosecution is far-fetched. There is no legal basis to pursue this." +1 FILE - This March 30, 2011, file photo shows former White House press secretary James Brady, left, who was left paralyzed in the Reagan assassination attempt, looking at his wife Sarah Brady, during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington marking the 30th anniversary of the shooting. This week's death of former White House press secretary James Brady, who survived a gunshot wound to the head in a 1981 assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan, has been ruled a homicide, District of Columbia police said Friday, Aug. 8, 2014. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File) Brady lived through hours of delicate surgery and further operations over the past 33 years, but never regained normal use of his limbs and was often in a wheelchair. An autopsy revealed the cause of death to be a gunshot wound and its health consequences, and the manner of death was ruled a homicide, according to a news release Friday from District police spokeswoman Gwendolyn Crump. Nancy Bull, district administrator for the Virginia medical examiner's office, which made the ruling, declined to disclose any more results of the autopsy and referred inquiries to District police. Besides partial paralysis from brain damage, Brady suffered short-term memory impairment, slurred speech and constant pain. His family said he died Monday at age 73 at his Virginia home from a series of health issues. William Miller, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Washington, said the office "is reviewing the ruling on the death of Mr. Brady and has no further comment at this time." District police and the FBI are also reviewing the case. Tung Yin, a professor of law at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon, said Friday that it's rare that the act that could be considered the cause of a homicide occurred so long ago. "It seems a little bit unprecedented," Yin said of the Virginia medical examiner's ruling. He said such cases more likely involve a person in a coma who dies some time later. He said bringing such a case could cause problems for prosecutors, because Hinckley Jr. was found was found not guilty by reason of insanity. "A jury has already concluded on the same incident that he (Hinckley Jr.) was not guilty. Nothing today changes that," Yin said, even if prosecutors say Hinckley is no longer insane. "That doesn't change what he was 33 years ago." Hinckley Jr. attempted to assassinate Reagan outside the Washington Hilton Hotel on March 30, 1981, just two months into the new president's term. Reagan nearly died from a chest wound. Three others, including Brady, were struck by bullets from Hinckley's handgun. In 1982, Hinckley Jr. was found not guilty by reason of insanity of all charges in a 13-count indictment, including federal counts of attempted assassination of the president of the United States, assault on a federal officer and use of a firearm in the commission of a federal offense, as well as District of Columbia offenses of attempted murder, assault and weapons charges. The District of Columbia offenses included charges related to the shooting of Brady. Levine said prosecutors would have the additional challenge of proving that Brady's death this week was the result of an act 33 years ago. "How do you prove causation beyond a reasonable doubt?" he asked. Gail Hoffman, a spokeswoman for Brady's family, said the homicide ruling "is not a surprise to any of us." She said the family would respect whatever prosecutors think is appropriate in dealing with the ruling. Levine said Hinckley wanted to express his deep sympathy for Brady's family. "He has the highest regard for (James) Brady," he said. Officials at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, where Hinckley is a patient, have said that the mental illness that led him to shoot Reagan in an effort to impress actress Jodie Foster has been in remission for decades. Hinckley has been allowed to leave the hospital to visit his mother's home in Williamsburg, Virginia, and can now spend more than half of his time outside the hospital on such visits. Levine doesn't expect the homicide ruling to affect Hinckley continuing to be allowed to continue the visits. Brady undertook a personal crusade for gun control after suffering the bullet wound. The Brady law, named after him, requires a five-day wait and background check before a handgun can be sold. President Bill Clinton signed it into law in 1993.   Reagan's shooter John Hinckley is allowed to visit his mother's house for 17 days EVERY MONTH during breaks from his mental institution Would-be assassin John Hinckley Jr now needs to only spend about half of every month in a mental institution He was confined to St Elizabeth's Hospital after being found not guilty by reason of insanity from the 1981 shooting Has been allowed to leave the D.C. hospital to visit his mother's home in Virginia for varying amounts of time starting in 2006 Started with three- to four-day visits and now up to 17-day visits John Hinckley Jr will soon be spending more than half of every month outside of his Washington mental hospital as his monthly visits to his mother's house have been extended to 17-days per trip. Hinckley was found to be insane when he shot and wounded President Ronald Reagan in 1981. Since 2006, he has been allowed to leave the hospital to visit his mother's Virginia home but for varying amounts of time. +3 Being held: John Hinckley Jr, seen here in 2003, was ruled insane after shooting and wounding President Ronald Reagan in 1981 and has been in a mental institution since The length of those visits has increased over the years with the goal that Hinckley ultimately live outside the hospital full time. In December, a judge ruled that Hinckley should be allowed to make visits of up to 17 days, an increase from previous 10-day visits. The judge laid out the parameters of the monthly visits in an order Tuesday. Hinckley's lawyer says he expects the 17-day visits to start in March and called the judge's order a 'milestone.' +3 The moment before: President Reagan was leaving the Washington D.C. Hilton when Hinckley attacked +3 Aftermath: Hinckley did not hit Reagan directly but a bullet hit the presidential limousine and it then ricocheted and hit the President in the chest Hinckley was 25-years-old when he opened fire as President Reagan as he left a Washington D.C. hotel on March 30, 1931 in an attempt to impress actress Jodi Foster after becoming obsessed with her in the film Taxi Driver. He fired six shots and one of the bullets ricocheted off the presidential limousine and hit Reagan. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was ordered to be confined at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in D.C.   Murder charges could be brought against gunman who tried to assassinate Reagan after coroner rules death this week of press secretary paralyzed in attack is homicide James Brady never fully recovered after being shot in the head in 1981 John Hinckley Jr was found not guilty by reason of insanity, but Friday's ruling could allow for new charges The death this week of press secretary James Brady, who was paralyzed during an attempted assassination against President Reagan in 1981, has been ruled a murder. Brady, 73, had used a wheelchair since the shooting outside the Washington Hilton Hotel, and his speech was slurred. A medical examiner ruled Friday that his death on Monday was a result of the grievous injuries he received in the attack. Scroll down for video +4 Charges: The death on Monday of former press secretary James Brady, who was shot during an attempted assassination against President Reagan, has been ruled a homicide +4 Attack: This photograph from March, 1980, shows a U.S. secret service agent with an automatic weapon watching over James Brady (center and Washington DC police officer, Thomas Delahanty, left) the president's secretary, after being wounded in an attempt on the life of President Ronald Reagan in Washington The gunman, John Hinckley Jr, is in a mental hospital after he was found not guilty of attempted assassination by reason of insanity. However, the ruling over Brady's death opens up the possibility that a murder charge could be brought against him, NBC4 reported. District of Columbia police spokeswoman Gwendolyn Crump said that the department was notified of the homicide ruling earlier today. NBC justice correspondent Pete Williams said: 'We are a long way from knowing what the federal authorities are going to do with this.' Any charges made against Hinckley could have an impact on efforts by his family to get permanent leave from a secure hospital granted for him. +4 New charges: John Hinckley Jr, pictured taking a stroll near his mother's house earlier this year, was found not guilty of attempted assassination by reason of insanity. He could now be charged with murder EXCLUSIVE: Reagan shooter John Hinckley visits mother A court had recently ruled that he could spend 17 days a month with his family in Virginia, but a judge warned at the time that he still 'exhibits deceptive behavior'. As part of a carefully monitored program, the 58-year-old is allowed to stay on an exclusive gated estate set among the lush greens of a golf course near Williamsburg, Virginia. Hinckley was in his 20s when he fired several shots at President Reagan outside a hotel on March 31, 1981, apparently in an attempt to get the attention of Jodie Foster. One bullet missed the President's heart by about an inch, and he lost nearly half his body's blood supply. +4 Campaign: After the attack, which left Brady, pictured with his wife Sarah in 2011, paralyzed he became an advocate for gun control Three others, including Brady who was hit in the head by a bullet, were seriously wounded. The press secretary was left paralyzed on the left side of his body and later dedicated his life to gun control by starting the Brady Campaign which has been the most vocal campaign to outlaw assault weapons. Police officer Thomas Delahanty and Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy recovered from their wounds.   This is John Hinckley Jr., the would-be assassin of President Ronald Reagan, pictured for the first time since a court ruled he can spend 17 days a month away from a mental home where he has been for the last three decades. Clutching a bottle of soda in his hand and casually dressed, the 58-year-old enjoys his freedom on a stroll on Easter Sunday near his mother's home. Hinckley is rarely seen since his incarceration at a secure metal health facility following the assassination attempt in March 1981. Scroll down for video +13 Smirk: Hinckley took a stroll on Easter Sunday near the home of his mother, Jo Ann, in Williamsburg, Virginia +13 Freedom: Hinckley has spent three decades in a mental hospital. His family and lawyers have been fighting for his eventual re-integration into society +13 Mingling: A judge ruled last year that Hinckley can spend more time out with his mother, unsupervised. The judge said he must better socialize with locals in the area with a view to getting a job and making friends +13 Support: Jo Ann, 86, has been steadfast in her loyalty to her son and has turned mental health campaigner But his appearance in public follows a court ruling last December when a judge agreed to increase the amount of unsupervised visits Hinckley Jr. could have with his mother, Jo Ann. By being expanded to 17 days a month his family hope it will lead to his eventual release. But the judge warned that he still 'exhibits deceptive behavior'. As part of a carefully monitored program, he is allowed to stay on an exclusive gated estate set among the lush greens of a golf course near Williamsburg, Virginia. These exclusive photos are the first time Hinckley has been seen at his home since being found not guilty by reason of insanity in the attempt of President Reagan's life. Wearing a blue fleece jacket, cream chinos and black sneakers, Hinckley Jr emerged from his mother's detached home near the historic town. He passed several joggers who were completely unaware of his global notoriety. As part of the conditions of his 17-day release he is also allowed to drive a Toyota Camry. He has to carry a GPS monitored cell phone and, although unconfirmed, the Secret Service are said to watch his movements from a distance. His 86-year-old mother has stood by her son since being locked away. She has spent a large part of the three decades promoting mental-health awareness and aiding in his rehabilitation. At the time of the assassination attempt she said: 'We were dumbfounded. I did not think any of us would survive'. Mrs Hinckley, who was widowed in 2008, agreed to allow her son to stay at her home as part of his eventual return to society. Neighbors on the quiet, tree-lined street rarely see her and she never talks about her son. +13 On the road: Hinckley has been allowed the use of a Toyota Camry while on his extended release EXCLUSIVE: Reagan shooter John Hinckley visits mother   Trip: Hinckley was out and about again on Monday, driving away in this car. He went to visit a white-haired man. the judge overseeing his release said it was important for him to 'socialize' When in Williamsburg, Hinckley is a regular customer at fast food restaurants near his home. The young staff at his favourite Wendy's restaurant have no idea of the identity of their customer who usually orders a cheeseburger, fries and coke. All of the servers were born at least two decades after Hinckley Jr's assassination attempt. He was roughly their age, in his early 20s, when he became fixated with actress Jodie Foster, then one of the best known child stars in Hollywood for her portrayal of a teen prostitute in Martin Scorsese's 'Taxi Driver'. A college dropout, he was living off an allowance from his wealthy parents John and Jo Ann who were based in Denver, Colorado. In 1980 Hinckley learned that Jodie Foster was attending Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. He began to follow her across country until he was able to establish contact with her on two occasions. Hinckley Jr. believed he could never establish a relationship with Jodie Foster unless he could do something that would draw her attention. +13 Chaos: On March 31, 1981, Hinckley opened fire on Reagan outside the Hilton Hotel in Washington DC. The president was hit under the arm and the bullet missed his heart by an inch     Infamy: Hinckley was trying to get the attention of Jodie Foster, who he was stalking after he saw her in Taxi Driver. Reagan joked to Nancy, pictured together here four days after the shooting: 'Honey, I forgot to duck' +13 Obsession: Prosecutors found masses of material which showed Hinckley's dark fascination with Foster, trial evidence above. In his hotel room in DC hours after the attack, police found a letter to her in which he wrote: 'There is a definite possibility that I may be killed in my attempt to get Reagan' On the morning of March 31, 1981, he stood among a small crowd outside the Hilton Hotel in downtown Washington DC. Inside the President was addressing a union conference. As Reagan emerged flanked by his security detail Hinckley Jr. opened fire with a six shot .22 revolver. He wounded James Brady, a policeman and a Secret Service agent before his last shot ricocheted off the president's armor-plated limousine and struck Reagan beneath his left armpit as he was being bundled into the car by other agents. The bullet penetrated within an inch of the president's heart. One lung flooded with blood and Reagan,68, lost half his body's blood supply. Doctors said that had the Secret Service not rushed the president to a nearby hospital as quickly as they did, he might have died. A trauma team led by Dr Joseph Giordano was hastily assembled to receive the president. As he was about to be put under anesthetic Reagan joked, 'Please tell me you're all Republicans'. His surgeon Dr. Giordano, a Democrat, replied, 'Today, Mr. President, we're all Republicans'. The operation lasted about three hours, and the President's humour continued when his wife Nancy arrived in the emergency room, telling her 'Honey, I forgot to duck'. Hinckley Jr did not attempt to flee and was held at the scene where photographers and TV news crews had captured the pandemonium that followed as the shots rang out. In the would-be killer's hotel room police found a letter he had addressed to Foster. 'There is a definite possibility that I may be killed in my attempt to get Reagan,' Hinckley wrote. Foster later said she had never heard of Hinckley Jr. Brady was the most seriously wounded after being struck by a bullet in the head. He was left paralyzed on the left side of his body and later dedicated his life to gun control by starting the Brady Campaign which has been the most vocal campaign to outlaw assault weapons. Police officer Thomas Delahanty and Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy recovered from their wounds. +13 Hidden: Despite his notoriety, Hinckley has rarely been pictured since his trial. Here, in this photo from 2003, Hinckley is pictured being driven to cour tin an attempt to be given greater freedom Hinckley was charged with 13 offenses but found not guilty by reason of insanity on June 21, 1982. Prosecutors had argued that he was legally sane and the verdict caused widespread anger among politicians and the public. Several US states rewrote laws regarding insanity while in Montana, Idaho and Utah the laws were scrapped altogether. Hinckley Jr was sent to the St Elizabeth's Hospital, a 300-acre site in Washington DC, where he was diagnosed with narcissistic and schizoid personality disorders. In 1987, after applying to a court for home visits, his hospital room was searched and staff found photos and letters showing a continued obsession with Jodie Foster. He had also tried to find the address of mass killer Charles Manson and became a pen pal of serial killer Ted Bundy. As a result he was denied the chance for home release and his parents, who had moved to Virginia from Colorado, despaired that he would ever be set free. But in 1999 a court granted him limited release to spend time with his parents, elder sister Diane, 61, and brother Scott, 64. These ended up being revoked after he was found to have smuggled material about Foster back into his hospital room. By 2005 he was granted permission to spend three nights a month at his parent's home after psychiatrists for the Government agreed his psychotic disorder was in full remission. +13 Fast food junkie: Hinckley is said to love ordering a cheeseburger, fries and a coke at his local Wendy's One condition of the release was for Hinckley Jr to see a psychiatrist once a week in Williamsburg. In the last decade the amount of time Hinckley Jr. has been allowed out has increased as doctors said he was no longer a danger to the public or himself. While at St Elizabeth's he struck up a romantic friendship with a former patient Cynthia Bruce. She has never talked about their relationship. Last year U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman expanded the length of the home visits to 17 days a month. In a 106-page report he said Hinckley Jr must show he can better integrate himself into the community and socialize with others in Williamsburg before a full release can be considered. The judge wrote that allowing Hinckley Jr to have longer home stays could help him find a possible job and make new friends, adding he was satisfied he 'will not be a danger to himself or to others'. But he stopped short of allowing a plea for him to spend 24 days each month with his mother. Friedman wrote that it would be 'unwise' to let Hinckley have more freedom without more evaluation. He warned Hinckley 'continues to exhibit deceptive behavior even when there are no symptoms of psychosis or depression'. Federal prosecutors had wanted a much slower release schedule and had pointed out Hinckley had lied about seeing two movies during one of his release periods. The lies were only uncovered because Secret Service agents were monitoring his movements. Hinckley's lawyer Barry Levine said his client was ready to be freed. 'John has demonstrated and continues to demonstrate that the conditions that existed back in 1981 no longer exist today,' Levine told the Washington Post. 'We think John is on a perfect trajectory moving toward unconditional release, and this is part of that.'

John Hinckley, Jr. – Manchurian Candidate For Who? John Hinckley, Jr. – Manchurian Candidate For Who? The CIA, George Bush, MKUltra, LSD, Scientology, James Earl Ray, John Lennon, Mark David Chapman, Artie Bremer, the Unabomber They’re all Here by  Trowbridge H. Ford Big John Hinckley - Can You See Me Now? The contrast behind the myth and reality regarding the health of American democracy when President Jimmy Carter sought re-election in 1980 could not have been greater. The liberals and responsible conservatives who had brought about the resignation of the rampaging Nixon thought that constitutional government had been restored, or at least secret government had been significantly reined in. But actual conditions, despite appearances, had become worse thanks to leaders of covert rule finding new ways to perform old operations. The CIA had been slimmed down, particularly the Operations Directorate where the adoption of more technical means for the collection of intelligence, and through the retirement and death for some of the worst offenders – especially former DCI Richard Helms, CI chief James Angleton, and “Executive Action’s”William King Harvey. [Editors Note: Dear VT readers. This is a full magazine presentation, roughly 5500 words.  Mr. Ford has put together an amazing piece of work here which we felt should not be condensed. On these complicated historical controversies there are not really any shortcuts to connecting the dots. For your time investment we have tried to make this an interesting read and it's loaded with historical links. Let us know in the comments if we have succeeded. Thanks. Jim W. Dean] But that process had been more than compensated by old troublemakers finding new homes in other agencies, current ones finding ways to operate behind the backs of their nominal superiors, and old agent capability, especially in the production of mind-control, obtaining new technology and candidates for covert operations. The Secret Team’s, to use Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty‘s terminology, hopes that Theodore Kaczynski (aka the Unabomber) had the makings of a perfect Manchurian Candidate for killing President Carter’s re-election chances, despite promising testing, proved unfounded. Kaczynski, though connected to all the right people while at Berkeley at the end of the 1960s through Colston Westbrook’s Black Cultural Association, was not politically motivated enough to become a predictable robot. "And I took the Road Less Traveled"...Walt Whitman The loner mathematician, while he was finally recruited from Montana where no skeptics would suspect CIA involvement, was not willing to go after targets it had in mind, no matter how hard his co-conspirator brother David drove him, or how much drugs he was given. Ted Kaczynski had it in for university colleagues, especially those who supported the build-up of technology the Agency was interested in, and air lines which permitted them to experiment all around the world, as his FBI code name prefix indicated. The Unabomber showed his unreliable character in the wake of the failed hostage rescue mission in Iran (Operation Eagle Claw)by following up his attack on an American Airline flight to Washington with a crude bomb sent to United Air Line president Percy Wood on June 9, 1980. Kaczynski set Wood up by writing first in the name of Enoch W. Fischer, recommending that he, and other leaders of the capitalist world read Sloan Wilson’s new book, Ice Brothers, which would be arriving in a separate wrapper. A Demo of Kaczynski's Book-Pipe Bomb This nostalgic account by Wilson – the author also of best-sellingThe Man in the Grey Flannel Suit – of his service during WWII in the Greenland Patrol was a telling reminder of just how far the author and Kaczynski had fallen out with their wartime buddies. This was particularly the case with Ted’s most ambitious brother David in the post-war grab for personal glory. For those interested in pursuing red-herrings on the internet about the book, see Ross Getman’s website where he claims that Kaczynski, a neo-Nazi, found inspiration for his anti-Semitism in its pages. Characteristically, the Bureau questioned Sloan rather than David Kaczynski about the book’s significance, once the Unabomber was finally caught. Ronald Reagan in His Prime Ronald Reagan’s biggest contribution to the covert campaign against Carter’s re-election then became the expertise that Dr. Earl Brian, his former Secretary of Health, supplied for mind-control operations. The CIA’s Dr. George White, had been obliged officially to close down experiments in California, and former head of the Technical Services Staff Dr. Sidney Gottlieb was driven to convenient suicide because of legal questions arising in 1979 about painter Stanley Milton Glickman’s incapacity, another unwitting CIA guinea pig from a quarter century before in Paris. Brian, like George Bush, Theodore Shackley, and William Casey, would ultimately be linked to the “October Surprise”, and the Reagan Justice Department’s theft of PROMIS software from Bill Hamilton’s INSLAW company to keep track of foreign counterintelligence (Jonathan Vankin and John Whelan, The 60 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time, p. 119ff.). But actually Dr. Brian, like White and Gottlieb, was most closely connected to “LSD surprises”, what had led to tennis professional Harold Blauer’s death from forced injections, andDr. Frank Olson’s most suspicious death in 1953. Dr. Sidney Gottlieb approved of an MKULTRA on LSD in this June 9, 1953 letter Brian even tried to establish in 1975, with Governor Reagan’s support, a center for the study of violent behavior in the Santa Monica Mountains, what would permit all kinds of mind-control operations with complete secrecy under UCLA professor Dr. Louis “Jolly” West’s leadership, but the fallout from Watergate prevented the California legislature from authorizing such a reckless initiative. West – as Henry Martin and David Caul indicated in a long 1991 series about the state’s continuing mind-control program for the Napa Sentinel – was a product of the University of Minnesota’s Morse Allen, the leading expert on making Manchurian Candidates. He had worked at Oklahoma for 15 years with John Gittinger, the developer of the crucial Personal Assessment System for finding potential ones. ( For more, see obituary, “Louis Jolyon ‘Jolly’ West,” The Los Angeles Times, Jan. 7, 1999.) The CIA's Dr. Louis Jollyn West At Oklahoma, West, as John Marks indicated in The Search for the ‘Manchurian Candidate, became the leading recipient of secret funding for LSD experimentation (p. 63), what ultimately led to certain people being programmed with sufficient doses of the drug not only to betray their countries but also their families, even their spouses. LSD, in an operational setting, could make the patient into a paranoid madman, set on destroying his marriage and memory. Coming to UCLA in 1968, just after the assassinations of MLK and RFK, West was very successful in securing grants, over $5 million for himself from the National Institutes of Mental Health, and as much as $14 million in a single year for his Neuropsychiatric Institute from a wide range of sources. He used these for conducting experiments on controlling allegedly violent individuals – what gave all kinds of opportunities for creating them through the assistance of cooperating, professional informants. Though West feigned to be a great civil libertarian, and made a point of providing free expert opinion in public interest cases (See his letter in the June 24, 1976 issue of The New York Review of Books about Patty Hearst’s unsuccessful defense.), he, and side kick Dr. “Oz” Janiger, were such pavlovians when it came to drugs that Aldous Huxley, the greatest proponent of LSD’s liberating qualities, could not abide their obsessions. (See Huxley’s June 6, 1961 letter to Timothy Leary.) In 1966, LSD was prohibited by the Drug Abuse Control Amendment from being used in experiments, causing the FDA to raid Janiger’s office in Beverly Hills, and to confiscate all his drugs, and records of clinical research. “When the panic subsided, only five government-approved scientists were allowed to continue LSD research…,” Todd Brendan Fahey wrote in the Las Vegas Weekly, the leading one being West. Until then, Janiger had gotten LSD from people like the CIA’s Captain Al Hubbard for his experiments on those who wanted to improve their performance, especially among Hollywood’s actors, notably Cary Grant. Albert Hofmann - The Father of LSD Now Janiger would get it from West, and, in return, he would be given access to his most promising subjects. This came in most handy in 1977 when The Washington Post reported that the scientific assistant to Carter’s Navy Secretary,Dr. Sam Koslov, had ended the program that West was running out of Stanford’s Research Institute at Fort Meade to create Manchurian Candidates by electronic means (“The Constantine Report No1,”). This apparently left only the old means of deprivation, drugs, psychic driving, and hypnosis for making people with multiple personalities into their Neo-Assassins. West’s greatest asset was that he was now interested in cults, the ideal cover for anyone who wanted to continue practicing “brain-washing” by CIA’s more traditional methods. In the wake of Charles Manson’s murders, Patty Hearst’s kidnapping and brain-washing by the Symbionese Liberation Army, and the massacre/suicide of 913 cultists at Jonestown, Guyana in 1978, the public was prepared to believe that such brain-washing was only the result of thought reform which the CIA had apparently helped sponsor with drugs in order to make sure that student radicalism spun out of control in utter confusion. To legitimize the idea of coercive persuasion, West’s associateDr. Margaret Singer wrote a ground-breaking paper the following year on the new phenomenon (“Dr. Margaret Singer’s 6 Conditions for Thought Reform,” csj.org/studyindex), and she and Yale’s Dr. Robert Jay Lifton started propagating the claims as advisory board psychologists to the new American Family Foundation. Dr. Margaret Singer Singer and Lifton had studied the brain-washing techniques on Amercian POWs by the North Koreans for Washington back in the ‘fifties, ruling out wrongly their drug, and hypnosis-based techniques – what West used heavy doses of LSD-25, and hypnotism to replicate. (Jeffrey Steinberg, “Who Are the American Family Foundation Mind-Controllers Targeting LaRouche?,” Executive Intelligence Review, April 19, 2002, and larouche pub.com/other/2002) During August 1980, Reagan’s campaign managers, especially pollster Richard Werthlin, Georgetown professor Richard Allen, and former CIA agent Richard Beal, organized a special operations group to counter any Carter “October Surprise” – the only thing they thought would secure his re-election. At the same time, John Hinckley, Jr. was programmed to assassinate President Carter just in case he was able to secure the release of the hostages by negotiation – what these people, along with Marine Captain Oliver North and Colonel Robert MacFarlane – had been able to prevent by force. The operation’s attraction lay in the fact that despite the publication of John Marks’s book on Manchurian Candidates the previous year, only Milton Kline, onetime President of the American Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, and sometime CIA consultant in actual operations, believed that patsies and assassins could be, and had been created on occasion. (p. 199ff., esp. 204, note.) Hinckley, one of the Beat Generation, was the offspring of an upward-mobile, disassociated family, growing up in Dallas during the years before the JFK assassination and during its aftermath. While his older brother Scott was following in his father’s footsteps at the Agency-connected Vanderbilt Energy Corporation, John was having trouble even getting started, spending seven years, on and off, at Texas Tech but without success. Hinckley - Playing His Version of Taxi Driver About the only thing he picked up was how to play the guitar, and an inclination for acting. During a trip to Hollywood in 1976, he came across Dr. Janiger, it seems, and was soon taking LSD again, and watching incessantly Martin Scorsese’s film Taxi Driver, based on the life of George Wallace assassin Arthur Bremer, in the hope of becoming a successful actor. Before it was over, he imagined that he had become Robert Di Niro’s alter ego. (“John W. Hinckley, Jr.: A Biography,” law.unkc.edu/faculty/proje…) Movie Image Imprinting - Part of Mind Control Hinckley was so convinced that he was a carbon copy of the alienated, drugged cabbie that he even fantasized, it seems, that he too had a girl friend, like Betsy in the film, working in a campaign for a politician he ultimately plotted to kill in order to impress her, calling her Lynn Collins. The only trouble with this propensity was that there was no need for it now in Agency operations as critics like Senator Frank Church were finished off early by the electorate, among other things, because of their attacks on America’s covert government. Hardly had the unknown Carter gotten established in the White House than Hinckley was back in Hollywood a year later for more. The trouble with Hinckley’s potential was that the new President was proving much more supportive of the plans by secret government than any one had imagined (See, e. g., Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew, Blind Man’s Bluff, p. 294ff.), and making Walter Mondale, the most experienced politician in keeping the intelligence community in check, President would only compound problems with its critics. Consequently, Hinckley’s handler, and it seems to have been either Dr. Singer or one of her female associates, directed him towards more beneficial activity, leading apparently to his gaining a role in a play, and becoming romantically attached to an actress, a daughter of the mother of all conspiracy theorists, Mae Brussell, of all people. Mae Brussell “Brussell,” Vankin and Whelan have written, thought that this well-heeled individual without any visible means of support “…might be an ‘agent provocateur’ directed against her by the FBI via her daughter.” (p. 66) Then, as when Jules Ricco Kimble aka Raoul thought that Harvey was pursuing him in New Orleans in 1967, and called the Domestic Contact agent to protest, she called the Bureau’s Monterey Resident Agent to complain, making herself likewise a possible suspect in future developments. Ms. Brussell, thanks to financial support from the John Lennons, and publication support from The Realist’s Paul Krassner, was becoming increasingly convinced that Governor Reagan was to be the beneficiary of all the ongoing ‘dirty tricks’. (Paul Krassner, Confessions of a raving, unconformed nut, pp. 213-5) Once the summer season was over, Hinckley returned to Texas Tech with a new lease on life for the stage, changing his major from business administration to English to suit his new career goals, only to see his relationship with Mae’s daughter ended, apparently because the mother opposed it, possibly resulting in the daughter’s death in an automobile accident. In a tailspin, Hinckley helped young George W. Bush in his unsuccessful 1978 run, directed by brother Neil, for the House seat in Lubbock, a campaign which Hinckley’s parents contributed money to. When it too proved unsuccessful, Hinckley went completely off the rails. He played Russian roulette with a .38 pistol he bought in August 1979, as he began to experience all kinds of aliments, requiring him to seek professional help, and to take both anti-depressants and tranquilizers, talltail signs of a manic depressive in a stretched out state. Hinckley even anticipated his role as Carter’s assassin in March 1980, before his handlers had even decided upon it, by stalking him on his own during his early campaigning. Young Jodie Foster as the Taxi Driver Hooker Once the Reagan campaign against Carter moved into gear, and his assassination was now a distinct possibility, Hinckley spent three weeks during September enrolled at Yale, stalking actress Jodi Foster who played the teenage prostitute, Iris, in the movie. It was a classic case of negative psychic driving where the candidate would have experiences, and emotional reactions which would spur him on to more threatening actions. James Earl Ray experienced this after he attended dancing classes, graduated from bartending school, underwent a nose job, joined a Swinger’s Club, and advertized his sexual prowess in the Los Angeles Free Press but to no avail. (Gerald Posner, Killing the Dream, p. 208ff., though n.b. that he did not see hypnosis by Dr. Xavier von Koss as the cause.) As Hinckley wrote Foster, perhaps a bit too self-consciously, just before he set off on his final mission to shoot Reagan: “And by hanging around your dormitory, I’ve come to realize that I’m the topic of more than a little conversation, however full of ridicule it may be.” (evidence in U.S. v. John W. Hinckley, Jr.) “In a three-day period, Hinckley visited three cities where Carter rallies were held: Washington, D. C., Columbus, and Dayton.” (Doug Linders, “The Trial of John W. Hinckley, Jr.”) Though he once got within 20 feet of the President, he wasn’t able to draw his pistol, and shoot, claiming cryptically that he wasn’t in the proper frame of mind. Actually, the President hadn’t made a surprise announcement about the hostages which would have triggered the shooting, like what RFK’s announcement caused after he won the California primary. Not the Dream Team We Thought Then trips by Hinckley to Lincoln, Nashville, Dallas, Washington, and Denver proved no more efficacious, thanks to the apparent failure of a leading Nazi to stiffen his nerve, to a tip off to airport authorities about a pistol in his luggage, and the like. Hinckley’s defense, if he had been pushed to shoot Carter, would have been that he was such a rabid supporter of the Reagan-Bush ticket, thanks particularly to all his connections with the Vice President’s family, that he could not restrain himself when the President stole the election by completely underhanded means because of Mae Brussell’s hatred of Reagan and his supporters. Just when all Hinckley’s stalking had apparently proven unnecessary – Reagan’s campaign officials concluded that Tehran’s consultations with Carter’s Iranian Core Group had ended in failure. Bush received a report from former Texas Governor John Connally, now Reagan’s campaign finance director who had helped box, with Shackley’s help, the President into the White House’s Rose Garden during the crisis, that Carter had worked out an “October Surprise” with Tehran after all. This caused him to activate Allen. Robert Parry has explained in “The Consortium: Bush & a CIA Power Play”: ‘George Bush,’ Allen’s notes began, ‘JBC (Connally) – already made deal. Israelis delivered last wk. spare pts. via Amsterdam. Hostages out this wk. Moderate Arabs upset. French have given spares to Iraq and know of J. C. (Carter) deal w/Iran. JBC (Connally) unsure what to do. RVA (Allen) to act if true or not.’ (consortiumnews.com) In another column, Parry added about Bush’s role: “Whenever Allen knew more, he was to relay information to ‘Shackley (sic) via Jennifer’ (Fitzgerald, Bush’s infamous secretary).” (“Clouds over George Bush,” Dec. 29, 1998, ibid.) When Allen’s queries failed to resolve the confusion, he activated Shackley. Frank Nugan - of Nugan Hand Bank The Agency’s former DDO was just the man to activate a programmed assassination at the drop of a hat, as former DCI Richard Helms had noted earlier – what the emergency required as there was no time to indoctrinate another Candidate. Recently, he had mysteriously gotten rid of Frank Nugan of the Nugan Hand Bank in Australia when it became bankrupt – what risked exposing the Secret Team’s dirty tricks in the illegal drugs trade with America if he was not silenced. Shackley’s successor, John McMahon, supervised the work of the Stanford Research Institute which was still developing “remote viewing” – the projection of words and images right into patient’s brains by machines and psychics – despite Koslov’s attempts to kill it off. In 1995, McMahon admitted that the Agency had spent $20,000,000 on remote viewing research. “McMahon has, according to Philip Agee, the whistle-blowing exile, an affinity for ‘technological exotics’ for CIA covert operations,” Alex Constantine wrote in Virtual Government. Most of the program’s “empaths” – victims – came from Ron Hubbard’s Church of Scientology, and Dr. West provided medical oversight for the psi experiments. West conducted his own on the “phenomenology of disassociate states” – the creation of people with multiple personalities. Thanks to research by Yale’s Jose Delgado, California’s Dr. Ross Adey, Walter Reed Hospital’s Joseph Sharp, and DOD-funded J. F. Scapita, Dr. Elizabeth Rauscher, of San Leandro’s Technic Research Laboratory in the Bay area, was prepared to produce any kind of human behavior by directing extremely low frequency (ELF), electromagnetic waves of words and images into victim’s brains. This technique permitted handlers to quickly create robot killers, provided they had willing victims, and were able to move them around at will. Ideally, they would want to find someone who had a love-hate relationship with the proposed target. One just had to find a candidate who could be easily persuaded to do the evil deed with the appropriate psychic driving without any calculation or reservation. Then it was just a question of getting the controlled killer into position for killing the target on cue – what could be managed nearby with the proper electronic equipment. It was like having a home-deliverty assassination service. CIA's Ted Shackley - All of of Them! The same day, October 27th, that Shackley was alerted to take action, Mark David Chapman, a Hinckley lookalike – who had quit his job when Hinckley’s mission had ended, and signed out in Lennon’s name as if he were the target, only to cross it out before adding his own – started preparing to assassinate the famous Beatle, buying a .38-caliber Charter Arms Special in a Honolulu gun shop. (Fred McGunagle, Mark David Chapman, Chapter Six – “To the Brink and Back,” p. 2) Hinckley was no longer available to go after anyone, being back in Denver under the care his parents had arranged with psychologist Dr. John Hopper after he had taken an overdose of antidepressants. Chapman, who long had been of two minds about the former Beatle, had been ready for a similar assignment for a month, having been put through the psychological wringer the previous two months. Chapman, the same age as Hinckley, and born in nearby Fort Worth, was another product of a dysfunctional family, though it took longer for him to descend to Hinckley’s state. Then, just when he had miraculously gotten married, and worked himself out of debt, Chapman fell into a similar mental frenzy, believing increasingly that he was becoming Holden Caulfield in J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, even writing Hawaii’s Attorney General about the necessary procedure for changing his name. (McGunagle, p. 1) At the time, Chapman was working as a maintenance man at the Castle Memorial Hospital, under the supervision of psychologist Leilani Siegfried, after its therapists had nursed him back to health from a suicide attempt. While Chapman, a Hinckley copycat, could have been positioned to shoot Carter too, it would have been extremely difficult, and the shooting of Lennon would still be efficacious at the polls. Chapman indicated that he had a few other high profile targets, one added as recently as October 1980 when Carter captured the public’s fancy, on his assassination list when he went before the NY State parole board after 20 years incarceration, the names of whom were so sensitive that it redacted them from the published report. Famous Last Photo - Lennon with Chapman Lennon’s murder, it was assumed, would send liberal elements and the beat generation in the American electorate into a tailspin, and any violence, like burning down Harlem, would rally conservative American voters flocking to the voting booth for Reagan, as had happened for Nixon after the MLK and RFK shootings. Lennon had drawn the ire and interest of MI5, and the FBI because of his songs of peace, and support of radical causes, especially the IRA’s, while taking drugs since the Nixon years (Fenton Bressler, Who Killed John Lennon?, excerpts, Part 2, pp. 2-3, www. shout.net/-bigred/lennon). John and Yoko unwisely considered themselves like comedians Laurel and Hardy when it came to serious political business until it was far too late. Lennon discounted the idea that CIA could have gotten rid of artists like Jimmi Hendrix, and James Morrison to quell radical ardor until his last days, only to concede to Krassner: “Listen, if anything happens to Yoko and me, it was not an accident. (Krassner, p. 215, emphasis Lennon’s) The Agency had far more reason for wanting to fix the unexpected permanent residents in America for underestimating the consequences of taking drugs, especially LSD, and of MK-ULTRA operations than the British and American security services, and few would suspect it having done so. Making the taking of such drugs much less criminal, and mainline would also undercut the illicit drug business that Shackley had been leading for years. Loser Artie Bremer Grabs His Moment in History While the surprisingly well-heeled Chapman, whose source has never been adequately identified, set off for New York, like Holden Caulfield in the Salinger novel, on October 30th, splurging like Arthur Bremer at the Waldorf while stalking Nixon and Wallace, he allegedly failed to procure ammunition for his revolver when he bought it, requiring a trip to Atlanta to make up for the deficiency. Actually, it would have been most easy for anyone to purchase ammunition in New York. In the meantime, Carter’s last-minute effort to free the hostages through negotiation had been trumped by Bush and Allen bribing the Iranian Hostage Policy Committee’s Mohammad Behesti - thanks to a tipoff by Donald Gregg in the Carter National Security Council – who accompanied them, about the state of the President’s efforts. This was apparently the cause of the delay, and by the time Chapman returned, shooting Lennon had become meaningless with Reagan’s election, his handler persuading him to return to his wife Gloria in Hawaii in the hope of regaining a normal life. There were the strongest operational reasons, though, for this not being allowed to continue. A cured Chapman, his CIA handlers in the “remote viewing” program soon feared, might well recall how he had been maneuvered to kill Lennon, eager to tell all about the regime the Agency had put him through. More sinister elements in the program rued the loss of an actual operation which would determine if a patient could really be driven directly to shoot a target wherever it appeared. As typical scientists, they were obsessed with seeing if their push button approach to assassination really worked. Most important, Reagan’s people wanted a diversion to direct the people’s attention away from his “October Surprise,” the return of all the hostages being postponed until after his inauguration to prevent further speculation. The Irony of All Three Becoming Entwined No sooner, though, did Reagan hint that he might have pulled off an “October Surprise” of his own than Chapman’s Castle Memorial therapist started winding him up again. This resulted in his having such a shouting match with supervisor Siegfried that he was obliged to resign, resulting in threatening phone calls, and bomb threats to various parties – reminiscent of when Kaczyinski went off the rails. The apparent loner “… spent his days harassing a group of Hare Krishnas who daily appeared in downtown Honolulu.” (McGunagle, “Is That All You Want?,” p. 1) Arriving back in New York on December 6th, Chapman planned to kill Lennon the next day, the anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, a fitting reminder to Yoko Ono of the betrayals. After a spate of psychic driving Chapman acted as if he were a close associate of Lennon’s while living as if he were a nobody without a friend in the world. He bought a poster intended to screw up his courage, spotted a photograph of the former Beatle on a newsstand advertising an interview with the Lennons to focus his attention. Lennon's Legend Lives On - Chapman's Does Not Next he purchased a copy of Lennon’s latest albumn to remind himself of his words, and finally bought a new copy of The Catcher in the Rye to renew his hatred of the world’s biggest phony – the image, sound, and words which were to trigger the shooting by impulses into his brain when he was in position. In doing this programming, though, Chapman was so engrossed that he missed a few opportunities to kill Lennon. When Lennon finally came into the picture, Chapman couldn’t bring himself to shoot him because he was so friendly, open, and generous. Instead of allowing Chapman to go back to Hawaii with the signed Lennon album, and possibly a photograph of the friendly Beatle handing over the prized possession to this apparent nobody, his handler so bombarded him with negative impulses during the night at the Sheraton that he was back the next night at the Lennons’ Dakota residence to finish the job. There was no way that Chapman could escape now, as any remission from what he had been through would be more dangerous than ever, given the ever increasing conspiratorial activities by Reagan’s people. The negative driving finally won, as Chapman later explained: “He walked past me, and then a voice in my head said, ‘Do it, do it, do.’ over and over again, saying ‘Do it, do it, do it, do,’ like that.” (McGunagle, ch. 8, p. 1) And Chapman, after getting Lennon to turn, and show his face, did it, and then, after preparing himself for the arrival of the police, resumed reading Salinger’s novel. While Lennon’s assassination had the expected belated effect upon the American people, it served no useful purpose. In fact, it brought Hinckley out of his drug-related fantasies with a vengeance. He was so upset by Lennon’s assassination – the Beatle being the one person he truly loved – that he went to New York, and attended a service in Central Park to honor his contributions to music and art. As the debate about who was behind it, and the release of the prisoners in Iran grew, Hinckley increasingly sided with, of all people, Mae Brussell who explained Lennon’s assassination thus: “It was a conspiracy. Reagan had just won the election. They knew what kind of president he was going to be. There was only one man who could bring out a million people on demonstration in protest at his policies — and that was Lennon.” (Bresler, p. 1) Under the circumstances, questions about Hinckley’s stability, and allegiances started growing in official circles. On January 13, 1981, Mae Brussell noticed a white sedan, with a man and woman sitting inside, parked across the street from her house. Reagan Waves - Just Before Hinckley Begins Shooting The conspiracy theorist, as she explained in a 14-page letter to FBI Director Clarence Kelly, thought that the pair were conducting a surveillance on her, and she characteristically confronted them about it. While the woman in the car explained that they weren’t, the man hardly said anything. “When Reagan was shot, Mae recognized photographs of the accused assailant as the same quiet young man she had seen parked in front of her home.” (Vankin and Whalen, p. 64) After the Bureau checked out this claim, and others by the noted conspiracy theorist, it concluded conveniently in a memo that she was “mentally unstable”, whose theories were not to be taken seriously. Of course, the FBI might have concluded differently if it had realized that the person, probably his former handler, in the while sedan with Hinckley was trying to rekindle his hatred of Brussell for having stopped his romance with her daughter a few years before rather than conducting a surveillance on her. Obviously, it didn’t work as Hinckley increasingly had the President or the Vice President in his sights. Reagan Takes a Hit From the Fluke Ricocheted Bullet off the Door. Then there were stories in the Washington press that someone was stalking the Vice President, causing the city’s police and the Secret Service all kinds of concerns which Bush was denying as quietly but as angrily as he could. Then there was the dinner date that his son Neil had scheduled with Hinckley’s older brother Scott on the night after John’s assassination attempt on Reagan. (ibid., pp. 332-3) People in the know about John’s state of mind and intentions were obviously concerned about what he was up to. Despite further attempts by John’s handler to prevent him from doing anything drastic, though she did not report the risk to law-enforcement officials for fear of disclosing the whole covert operation, he was among the small group awaiting Reagan’s exit from Washington’s Hilton early on the afternoon of March 30, 1981. He started firing his .22 caliber pistol, armed with “devastator” bullets, at the rather loosely protected President, the last of which ricocheted off the limousine’s door, and deeply penetrated the President’s thorax, narrowly missing his aorta. As All Secret Service People Know - It Happens Very Quickly The Secret Service had apparently not followed its usual formation in protecting Reagan, apparently not to highlight its increased concerns about his safety in apparently such a risk-free area, and was slow to react to his wound, thinking it still impossible for any assassin to actually have hit him. YouTube - Veterans Today - – Reagan Shooting Hinckley's Devastator Bullets Did a Lot of Damage These miscalculations almost cost Reagan his life, and a new batch of data for conspiracy theorists to work with. The Agency, though, did not need any new revelations to mend its ways somewhat. Its trials and tribulations with Hinckley taught it to avoid the use of any kind of Manchurian Candidate in future. But it was willing to use other means to silence its enemies and to lend out its expertise to allied services, particularly Israel’s Mossad, if necessary, as we shall see. Trowbridge Ford Trowbridge Ford, now 81 …Military family, Army Counter Intelligence during the Korean War, reporter, Columbia Phd,  and assassination survivor,  now living in Sweden under the protection of their security services. These are the kinds of writers that VT is laboring to bring our readers, people who have put not only their labors but lives on the line to bring stories to our readers that have been hidden for all the various reasons. While this longer, magazine format of presentation is generally not viewed as suitable to short attention span internet readers, the VT board will continue developing this format as the older big stories require more space to frame them properly. John Hinckley's Four Shots