Secret Service Study Probes Psyche of U.S.

Assassins
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 A U T H O R: D O U G L A S F OX D O U G L A S F OX
 SCIENCE
 0 1 . 1 3. 11
 02:44 PM

SECRET SERVICE
STUDY PROBES
PSYCHE OF U.S.
ASSASSINS
With public speculation mounting about what motivated a 22-year-
old man to attempt to kill a congresswoman, a little-known study by
the Secret Service suggests the truth may be frighteningly
mundane.
The study of U.S. assassinations over the last 60 years debunks
some key myths about the miscreants behind the attacks.
The Exceptional Case Study Project, completed in 1999, covers all
83 people who killed or attempted to kill a public figure in the United
States from 1949 to 1996.
"We approached a number of people, many in prison," says forensic
psychologist Robert Fein, who co-directed the study with Bryan
Vossekuil of the Secret Service. "We said you're an expert on this
rare kind of behavior. We're trying to aid prevention of this kind of
attack. We'd welcome your perspectives."
Fein interviewed 20 of the attackers who were still living and sifted
old evidence from cases. His goal was to understand the sequence
of thoughts, plans and motivations that transformed a downtrodden,
but unremarkable person into an aspiring killer over a period of
months or years.

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Contrary to popular assumptions about public killings, the attackers

didn't conform to any particular demographic profile. But when Fein
reconstructed their patterns of thinking, he was able to distill them
into a handful of recurring motives for killing a public person –
motives that seemed consistent regardless of whether a given
individual was delusional or not (and three quarters of those who
pulled the trigger were not).
Some hoped to achieve notoriety by killing a well-known person.
Others wanted to end their pain by being killed by Secret Service.
Still others hoped to avenge a perceived, idiosyncratic grievance
unrelated to mainstream politics. Some hoped, unrealistically, to
save the country or call attention to a cause. And some hoped to
achieve a special relationship with the person they were killing.
Beyond these findings, the study overturns the image of the political
or celebrity killer as a menacing stalker. It's true that politicians and
celebrities receive hundreds of threats each year – but those threats
come from people other than the itchy-fingered trigger-pullers.
Unlike terrorists, who sow panic with public threats, just 4 percent of
assailants in the study warned their targets by sending threats. That
silence underlined their desire to fly under the radar, says J. Reid
Meloy, a forensic psychologist at the University of California in San
Diego who studies public figure killings.
The aspiring assailants often chose between several possible
victims. And once they chose, they spent weeks, even sometimes
years, planning and mulling their attacks.
Sirhan Sirhan, the man who assassinated Senator Robert Kennedy in
1968, practiced for months at a shooting range. He was seen
practicing just eight hours before the killing. And in the investigation
that followed, reviews of film footage revealed that Kennedy had
been approached by his killer several times in what may have been
dry runs in the weeks before his death.
All of this bears on the case of Jared Loughner, the 22-year-old
accused of shooting U.S. representative Gabrielle Giffords on Jan. 8.
"As it has unfolded," says Meloy, "it's very consistent with what we
know about public-figure attackers."
Loughner apparently met Giffords at a rally in 2007, where her
answer to a question he asked is said to have disappointed him. "If
he felt angry and perhaps humiliated," says Meloy, "that could have
been the beginning of the grievance" that eventually made her a
target.
Or, if Loughner was driven by another motive – say, notoriety,
suicide, or calling attention to a cause – then bumping into Giffords
might simply have brought to his attention a local, accessible target,
in much the same way that female TV news anchors – locally grown
and available for nightly viewing – are also targeted by stalkers.
One thing is certain: In the months leading up to his attack,
Loughner slid into decline. Outbursts in class led to meetings with
school administrators, which led to his withdrawal from community
college. On Nov. 30 he bought a gun.
These meltdowns are common in the year preceding an attack.
Nearly half of the assailants in the Secret Service study lost their
marriage, job, health or a loved one. That disintegration set them
onto another path: The unthinkable gradually became thinkable. The
assailant-in-the-making developed tunnel vision around a single
obsession – and other opportunities in life seemed to recede from
their view.
"Think of people circling the drain," says Fein. "Before they went
down the drain they came to see that violence was acceptable as a
way to solve their problem."
One of the cases in the study was a man named H.J. who during the
Reagan and Bush-senior years of the 1980s was troubled by voices
that he believed emanated from illegal government satellites. He
spent several years buying weapons and making threats to the
voices, in hopes that threats alone would quiet them.
Several times the voices became so intolerable that H.J. began
driving to Washington with the intent of killing someone. But each
time as he drove they faded, prompting him to abandon a bloody
errand that no longer seemed necessary.
This hesitance to spill blood isn't unique. "Many people," says Fein,
"are quite ambivalent about bad things they're thinking about
doing."
031209-D-9880W-166
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld tells reporters about some of the
logistical complexity of the upcoming U.S. troop rotations into and out of
Afghanistan and Iraq during a Pentagon press briefing on Dec. 9, 2003. Rumsfeld
and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard B. Myers, U.S. Air Force,
updated reporters on the progress of the Iraqi security forces training and the
coalitions' efforts in Iraq. DoD photo by R. D. Ward. (Released)

H.J. eventually arrived in Washington, intent on killing a member of

the president's cabinet, spurring a Watergate-style investigation,
and ending the satellite program he had imagined. He was arrested
before he got off a shot.
But the Secret Service prefers to spot people like H.J. earlier on, and
if possible, guide them to a different path without resorting to
handcuffs.
A suspicious letter to a prominent official is likely to generate a
knock on the door from two well-dressed agents, says Fein.
Those agents, after sitting down in the living room, are likely to
afford the letter writer the kind of polite listening that normally costs
$150 an hour in a therapist's office, as they assess whether he or
she represents a threat.
"Far more people are investigated, examined and spoken with than
actually end up being hospitalized," says Robert T.M. Phillips, a
Maryland-based forensic psychiatrist who worked with the Secret
Service for 15 years to assess people who threatened the president.
Sometimes the Person of Concern is referred for mental health
services. Other times the Secret Service agents themselves continue
to engage the person with frequent visits and calls.
Fein tells of one letter he read, written by a Person of Concern to the
Secret Service agent charged with preventing him from harming a
government figure. The letter was addressed: "To Agent Smith, my
only friend in the whole world."
Efforts to turn problem people away from doing unfortunate things
don't always succeed. A woman, called Ms. Doe, cited in a separate
study by Phillips, showed up at the White House with flowers for Bill
Clinton. Another time she traveled to D.C. hoping to jog with him.
She gave no indication of posing a threat, and so was released after
each incident.
But after years of frequenting presidential events and sending gifts
and love letters, Ms. Doe crossed a line both figurative and real: She
breached the security zone around Clinton's limousine while carrying
a cellphone, an item easily mistaken for a handgun.
In light of the danger she posed to herself – and fears that her
affection for Clinton, if rejected, might give way to rage – Ms. Doe
was committed to a mental ward.
Jared Lee Loughner, unlike the others, was never detected by the
system meant to intercept him. His true thoughts leading up to the
massacre, if they are ever revealed, will take time to emerge. But
history provides some hints.
"The reality of American assassination is much more mundane, more
banal, than assassinations depicted [in movies]," concludes Fein in
his report on the Secret Service study. These people aren't
especially interesting, he adds: They are "neither monsters nor
martyrs."
*Top image: Satan tempting Booth to the murder of the president.
/Library of Congress. *
See Also:
  Nov. 22, 1963: Zapruder Films JFK Assassination
 The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories
 March 13, 1964: No One Helps as Kitty Is Slain
 # P S YC H O LO GY

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