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
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