Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

APPENDIX VII

Appendix VII presents a historical survey of prior assassination attempts on U.S. Presidents and the evolution of the protective apparatus. The appendix draws on a wide range of secondary historical sources, including works by Nathan Schachner on Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Flagg Bemis on John Quincy Adams, Marquis James on Andrew Jackson, Margaret Smith, Constance McLaughlin Green on Washington, Benjamin P. Thomas and George S. Bryan on Abraham Lincoln, Lloyd Lewis on Lincoln mythology, and William B. Hesseltine on Ulysses S. Grant. The assassination of Abraham Lincoln is treated at length, drawing on the Pitman trial record, the 1865 House report, and the Tugwell study. Accounts of the attacks on James A. Garfield cite the contemporaneous biography by Ogilvie, the Caldwell biography, and R. J. Donovan’s “The Assassins,” as well as the New York Tribune of July 3, 1881. The development of the protective function is traced through statutory milestones: the original 1860 legislation (13 Stat. 351), subsequent appropriations acts (20 Stat. 384; 22 Stat. 313), the establishment of the White House Police force, and the 1901-1902 statutes and appropriations (34 Stat. 708; 35 Stat. 328, 986; 36 Stat. 748; 38 Stat. 23; 39 Stat. 919, codified at 18 U.S.C. § 871; 40 Stat. 120; 42 Stat. 841; 46 Stat. 328; 76 Stat. 95). The narrative covers the attempts on William McKinley, citing the New York Evening Post, the Leech and Dawes accounts, and Donovan; the era of Theodore Roosevelt, drawing on the Bishop biography, the Starling memoir, the “Selections From the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge,” and the Donovan account; the attempted attack on Franklin D. Roosevelt in Miami in 1933, citing Donovan and Starling; and the 1947 attempt on President Truman, drawing on Donovan, Baughman’s “Secret Service Chief,” Bowen and Neal, and Commission exhibits CE 2549-2553. The appendix documents the establishment and development of the Protective Research Section (CE 1029; CE 2550, 2551), the codification of the Secret Service’s authority in 18 U.S.C. § 3056, the expansion of coverage under 76 Stat. 956 and S. Rept. No. 836, 87th Cong. 1st sess. (1961), and the relevant reports of the Hoover Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government (1949), including the “Task Force Report on Fiscal, Budgeting, and Accounting Activities” and the “Treasury Department” report. Congressional appropriations hearings, including those of 1964, are cited for the Secret Service’s protective mission.