PROTECTING THE PRESIDENT

Once again, all too unbelievably soon, the anguished national soul-searching. Is U.S. society too violence-prone, gun loving, trigger-happy to let its leaders mingle openly with its people? Is it so sick that it spawns and encourages the lethal fantasies of its alienated mental misfits? Once again, the indignant demands. Presidents must stop proving their manhood by barging into crowds of strangers or strolling within gunshot range of waiting spectators. The press must cease providing crazies with a podium for instant notoriety. Better ways must be found to protect the President. Somebody, if not all Americans, must bear the blame.

The U.S. has plunged into such recriminations before. John Kennedy. Martin Luther King. Robert Kennedy. George Wallace. But the nation could only be jolted anew by last week's latest grim reminder that assassination is an ever present menace to the rational conduct of politics in the world's most open democracy.

In the scant period of just 17 days, two self-pitying women had called dramatic attention to themselves and their unhinged values by pointing pistols at President Gerald Ford. The events took place a mere 80 miles apart in California; in the interim Patty Hearst was also found there, and the Hearsts turned out to have been a part of the second assailant's recent life. It seemed slightly surreal, an overlap of sensations in too narrow a space and time.

The bungled shooting attempt, from only 2 ft. away, by Lynette ("Squeaky") Fromme on Sept. 5 in Sacramento, and last week's shot in San Francisco by Sara Jane ("Sally") Moore, who missed Ford by only 5 ft., were only the eighth and ninth attempts to kill a U.S. President. Four succeeded.

But the rapidity with which the second attack on Ford followed the first raised the specter of a contagious spread of the assassin's disease. These attempts were particularly irrational, since they were aimed at one of the nation's least provocative and most amiable Presidents. Indeed, beyond the usual run of crank letters and threatening calls against any President, more serious attempts did seem to be proliferating.

A man carrying a .45-cal. pistol was sighted on a catwalk in St. Louis' Kiel Auditorium just an hour before President Ford was to speak there on Sept. 12. He eluded police. About four hours before Moore raised her gun outside San Francisco's St. Francis Hotel, Benedict Silcio, a 27-year-old stevedore, was arrested in that city's Union Square park for threatening Ford. He had handed a note to a cashier in the St. Francis that proclaimed, "The mission: To gun down President Ford. Need to have a room for three people." Then he fled into the park. In Florida, John Clayton Massey, an unemployed service station attendant, was charged with conspiracy to assassinate the President. He had walked into an FBI office in Ocala, Fla., claiming he was part of a plan to kill Ford and Senator Edward Kennedy. However unrealistic such voluntarily revealed plots may have been, the climate of violence could not be ignored.

Yet it was the actual firing at Ford by Moore--at 45 a garrulous, clearly unstable woman who almost literally cried out for someone to stop her from fulfilling her plan--that touched off a wave of national debate, examination and calls for action. These included:

P: An investigation of the Secret Service (see story page 15). Democratic Senator Joseph Montoya, whose Senate subcommittee oversees the elite protective agency, has summoned Secret Service Director H. Stuart Knight to public hearings this week. Montoya wants to know why Moore was not at least followed after being interviewed by Secret Service agents on the night before she shot at Ford. A San Francisco police officer, Inspector Jack O'Shea, had repeatedly warned the Secret Service that Moore "could be another Squeaky" and had ordered one gun taken from her. She promptly bought another. Montoya will also ask why neither Fromme nor Moore was on the service's list of 38,000 people considered potentially dangerous to the President.

P: Demands that Ford restrict his public movements. Almost no one was insisting that Ford stay rooted to his desk or expose himself only to television cameras. But members of Congress, experts on violence and editorial writers almost universally urged him to cool his ardor for personal contact with the masses, at least until the frenzy, like the abated flurry of skyjackings, passes. "Mr. Ford is in effect baring his chest, sticking out his chin and daring every kook in the country to take another shot at him," Columnist Joseph Kraft protested. Even Betty Ford has told friends she hopes her husband will stay out of crowds and move faster when exposed. "The country needs him. The children need him. I need him," she told an intimate.

P: A new push for strict federal gun controls (see story page 16). Michigan Democratic Congressman John Conyers introduced a bill that would virtually ban all handguns. More realistically, New York Democratic Congressman John Murphy pushed for registration of all gun owners and their weapons. On the Senate floor, Edward Kennedy led the new onslaught on guns. "The overriding lessons of these nearly tragic events," he said, "is that if America cares about the safety of its leaders, it can no longer ignore the shocking absence of responsible gun control."

Despite such pressure, there was little likelihood of any quick tightening of gun laws. Minutes before he was shot at by Moore, Ford had expressed his opposition to the registration of handguns; his press secretary reconfirmed that view afterward. Although gun controls could help prevent many spur of the moment murders, few experts thought such laws would have any short-term impact on the danger of assassinations; the gains would be long run. For now, those most likely to use guns against a President would be least likely to register or surrender the ones they have.

There was every indication, however, that Congress would give the Secret Service any new funds it wants to step up its intelligence gathering in advance of presidential trips, to spot potential killers and watch them. A five-man congressional committee, empowered to designate which presidential candidates have qualified for protection, last week ordered the Secret Service to begin guarding on Oct. 1 Henry Jackson, Lloyd Bentsen, Morris Udall and George Wallace.

The candidates shrugged off the urgency of such protection. "I don't need it," said Jackson. "Not at this stage," observed Bentsen. "Perhaps later, in the heat of a campaign, I might accept them [the agents]." On the other hand, Udall's wife Ella said she certainly wanted her husband guarded.

Publicly, Ford at first remained adamant against curtailing his freewheeling travel and politicking. His voice husky after his scare in San Francisco, Ford declared on returning to the White House that he did not intend "to cower in the face of a limited number of people --out of 214 million Americans--who want to take the law into their own hands. We're going to stand tall and strong in this confrontation with people who don't represent all of us."

While the words exemplified Ford's courage, a quality no one has doubted Ford possesses, prudent White House aides predicted privately Ford will in fact curtail some of his travel plans and will move more circumspectly when he ventures out of Washington. The White House announced, however, that he will keep his speaking engagements this week in Chicago and Omaha.

Nothing could have demonstrated the President's need for current caution in public appearances more clearly than the astonishing ease with which Sally Moore--apparently reluctant but almost suicidally driven--maneuvered into a position from which she came so close to killing Ford. Tragedy was averted largely because another somewhat disturbed individual, but one impelled toward protection rather than destruction, casually drifted into the same crowd and wound up pressed beside Moore for nearly two hours. The street-side convergence of three people--the potential assassin, disabled Marine Veteran Oliver Sipple and Ford--showed how thin are the strands of chance upon which a President's life can hang (see box page 20).

The two assassination attempts also demonstrated how quickly the Secret Service can tumble from being lavishly praised to facing stern criticism. No margin of error is allowed in its duties. After Squeaky's loaded gun failed to fire because she had not pulled the slide to force a cartridge into the chamber, Agent Larry Buendorf keenly spotted the gun's glint and wrestled the weapon away from her before she could try again. He became a hero. The still unnamed agents who decided last week that Moore was no risk were shown, of course, to have been painfully wrong, and in a sense have become overnight bums.

As the debate continued over what should be done to reduce the dangers to the President and candidates, a few basic precautions seemed obvious:

P: For the nation's welfare, as well as his own, Ford must be more careful, at least until the recent unavoidable attention to the attempts on his life fades. Although Sally Moore insisted that she did not get her idea to ambush Ford from Squeaky Fromme ("Squeaky is insane," Moore scoffed), the faddish emulation of sensational acts can be a real danger. Ford can cut the odds by traveling less frequently. When he does yield to his yearning for a "dialogue with the people," he should do so at less publicly scheduled times. He can more safely mingle with people if they are totally unaware that he might do so.

P: More mechanically, Ford must confine himself to briskly traveling motorcades when moving within a city. At least for a time, the slow ride in an open car, as in his recent campaigning in New Hampshire, should be avoided. The protective vest for outdoor appearances, which he wore there, is a good idea, however uncomfortable it might be. For indoor appearances, a public now accustomed to metal detectors and inspection of handbags would not object to making such practices routine before entering a hall in which Ford is present.

P: The Secret Service may already have as much money and as many agents as it can practically use. Generally, its protection of a President once he is on the move has been superb. But if it needs more money and manpower to check out security risks ahead of a visit and follow suspected dangerous people during a Ford appearance, it should be given such resources. Inevitably, delicate judgments would still have to be made. There is no way to tail or detain every marginally threatening person.

There seems no practical way for a free country to go about deliberately reducing the chances of producing lonely, disoriented individuals who lash out at a President to fulfill some antisocial personal need. The nation's recent political traumas, especially the Viet Nam War and Watergate, may have heightened passions about its leaders and dissatisfaction with its systems. Political rhetoric may have been inflated enough at times to be inflammatory. Certainly, any such excesses need to be curbed. But Gerald Ford in particular has clearly lowered the level of intensity in his public speeches; if anything, he threatens to lull his listeners to sleep rather than incite them to hostility.

And yet, two attempts to snuff out his life within three weeks. Moore and Fromme added to the modern chain of Bremer, Ray, Sirhan, Oswald--all tormented Americans driven to try to kill a public figure. It is a chain with links in U.S. life that reach all the way back to Richard Lawrence, who tried to kill Andrew Jackson, and John Wilkes Booth, who did kill Abraham Lincoln, the first President to be assassinated. Inevitably, the question arises: Is there something wrong with American society? Why does America seem to have so many kooks willing to kill to exorcise some private demon?

By now the answers have become almost as familiar as the questions; none are wholly satisfactory. One reason surely is the nature of the U.S. presidency, which makes one man an irresistible target for many of society's misfits. The President is not only the Chief Executive, Commander in Chief of the armed forces and leader of his party. He is also the symbol of the nation, the living repository of its power and integrity. Few other democracies invest such temporal and quasispiritual authority in one life. Most split them between a President or monarch and his Prime Minister.

Until the twin attempts on Ford, some analysts argued that only certain kinds of Presidents attracted assassins, unlocking the combination of mental imbalances that turns a misfit into a maniac. Leaders who were charismatic and activist like the Kennedy brothers, the Roosevelts, Jackson and Lincoln. And it is notable--and paradoxical--that there were no attempts on the lives of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, who were not well-liked as Presidents and came to arouse venomous passions in large parts of the population. Chicago Psychiatrist David Rothstein thinks that perhaps likable Presidents may be more vulnerable to attack, since they stir up the greatest hopes and thus the greatest potential for disillusionment in the minds of the deranged.

Such speculations inevitably lead into the minds of real or potential assassins, who have been studied and even profiled, just as skyjackers were, for use by law-enforcement agencies as an aid in spotting killers in advance. The type is fairly well defined. "He has been neglected, abused or rejected by one or both parents," says Dr. Marvin Wolfgang, a University of Pennsylvania sociologist. He is frustrated, both in his work and in his personal life, and probably has some kind of sexual problems. Feeling rejected by his parents, he will likely seek reassurance in some larger paternalistic group, like the military. Both Moore and Fromme fit the otherwise male pattern. Moore was a WAC, and Fromme was a slave in Charles Manson's regimented family. Even in that larger group, however, the potential assassin will almost inevitably find or feel rejection.

At the same time, he or she is a loner. Speaking of four assassins he studied, University of Chicago Psychiatrist Lawrence Freedman notes that "their life-styles without exception were chaotic. They led wandering lives without roots and with constantly shifting goals. Neither in their work nor in love were they able to escape their sense of failure." All the experts agree that an assault on the President gives such a person the feeling of identity he has lacked and a sense of importance akin to that of the man he kills. The one who pulls down the Colossus of Rhodes will always go down in history, John Wilkes Booth is said to have told a friend. And today, he or she can achieve instant recognition. Says University of New Hampshire Professor Stuart Palmer: "You can become a TV star or an assassin," adding that for some people, "becoming an assassin, known to everyone by the media, is certainly pretty good second-best."

Sociologist Palmer believes that the competitive, increasingly computerized and mechanized nature of U.S. society is creating more and more lost and purposeless people. To a degree, those conditions exist in most industrialized nations. But in the U.S. they are especially intense and combined with particularly American elements that have almost become cliches: the loosening of many moral and social restraints on all kinds of behavior in an increasingly lax society; the decline of tradition and the breakdown of the family; the mobility of American life that so often turns into rootlessness; the U.S. frontier culture of violence and its still lingering love affair with guns--the litany can go on and on. But finally the problem of why the U.S. has so many kooks, and the lack of any final answer, may come down to a dilemma inherent in freedom. The Bill of Rights and the U.S. promise of "liberty for all," habeas corpus and the presumption of innocence until proven guilty, all mean freedom for the sick as well as the hale, until a criminal fantasy is acted upon or a mental illness unmistakably manifest.

The ultimately puzzling problem is that there are perhaps untold numbers of alienated Americans who have lost the race for prestige and success, who have had unhappy childhoods, who are uprooted geographically and morally--and who would not think of shooting the President or anyone else. When does the malcontent turn dangerous? When does the harmless kook become harmful? No one can know for sure. One of the costs of democracy is the fact that the dangerous social oddball can lurk anywhere at any time, waiting to act out his or her delusions.

The same conclusion, reached after every post-assassination national self-analysis, is as valid--and unsatisfying--as ever; there is no way to be certain that some frustrated eccentric, determined enough or lucky enough, cannot succeed in his intent to kill. But the acts of Squeaky Fromme and Sally Moore serve as a painful reminder that reasonable steps should be taken to reduce the danger.

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