Summary

November 1, 1950 -- an unseasonably hot afternoon in sleepy Washington, D.C. At 2:00 P.M. at his temporary residence in Blair House, President Harry Truman takes a nap. At 2:20 P.M., two Puerto Rican natives approach from different directions. Oscar Collazo, a respected metal polisher and family man, and Griselio Torresola, an unemployed salesman, don't look dangerous, not in their new suits and hats, not in their calm, purposeful demeanor, not in their slow, unexcited approach. What the three White House policemen and one Secret Service agent guarding the president cannot guess is that under each man's coat is a 9mm German automatic pistol and in each head, a dream of assassin's glory.

Author Biography

Stephen Hunter has written over twenty novels. The retired chief film critic for The Washington Post, where he won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism, he has also published two collections of film criticism and a nonfiction work, American Gunfight. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

John Bainbridge, Jr., is a freelance journalist. A former reporter for The Baltimore Sun and legal affairs editor for The Daily Record (Baltimore), he is also a lawyer and former Maryland assistant attorney general. He lives near Butler, Maryland.

Authors' Note	p. 1
Introduction	p. 3
A Drive Around Washington	p. 5
Griselio Agonistes	p. 12
Revolution	p. 18
The Odd Couple	p. 36
Mr. Gonzales and Mr. De Silva Go to Washington	p. 40
Early Morning	p. 50
Baby Starches the Shirts	p. 54
Toad	p. 62
The New Guy	p. 74
The Buick Guy	p. 83
The Guns	p. 86
The Ceremony	p. 100
Indian Summer	p. 104
The Big Walk	p. 109
Oscar	p. 113
"It Did Not Go Off"	p. 128
Pappy	p. 133
The Next Ten Seconds	p. 138
Resurrection Man	p. 141
So Loud, So Fast	p. 152
Upstairs at Blair	p. 156
Downstairs at Blair	p. 161
Borinquen	p. 167
Oscar Alone	p. 181
The End's Run	p. 184
Good Hands	p. 186
The Colossus Rhoads	p. 194
Oscar Goes Down	p. 200
The Second Assault	p. 203
Pimienta	p. 206
Point-Blank	p. 223
The Man Who Loved Guns	p. 228
The Dark Visitors	p. 236
Mortal Danger	p. 240
The Neighbor	p. 243
American Gunfight	p. 244
The Good Samaritan	p. 252
The Policemen's Wives	p. 258
The Scene	p. 260
Inside the Soccer Shoe	p. 267
Who Shot Oscar?	p. 273
The Roundup	p. 278
Taps	p. 286
Oscar on Trial	p. 289
Deep Conspiracy	p. 298
Cressie Does Her Duty	p. 308
Oscar Speaks	p. 310
- R - I -	p. 317
Epilogue: Destinies	p. 323
Source Notes	p. 327
Bibliography	p. 339
Acknowledgments	p. 349
Index	p. 355
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Excerpts

Introduction

November 1, 1950, two Puerto Rican Nationalists named Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola pulled German automatic pistols and attempted to storm Blair House, at 1651 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C., where the president of the United States, Harry S. Truman, was at that moment -- 2:20 P.M. on an abnormally hot Wednesday -- taking a nap in his underwear. They were opposed by a Secret Service security detail led by Special Agent Floyd M. Boring, consisting of Special Agents Vincent P. Mroz and Stewart G. Stout, Jr., and White House police officers Leslie W. Coffelt, Joseph O. Davidson, Joseph H. Downs, and Donald T. Birdzell. In the brief exchange -- under forty seconds -- between twenty-nine and thirty-one shots were fired in an area about ninety feet by twenty feet, though the exchange broke into two actions at either end of the property, where the ranges were much shorter. When it was over one man was dead, another was dying, and two more were seriously injured.

The story was of course gigantic news -- for about a week. What's remarkable about it is not how big a story it was but how quickly it went away. Today, few Americans even remember it, or if they do, they have it mixed up with a later event. In 1954, four Puerto Rican Nationalists pulled guns and shot up Congress. Soon enough the two stories melded in the U.S. folk imagination under the rubric of stereotype: hot-tempered Latin revolutionaries, undisciplined, crazy even, pursuing a dream that made no sense at all, Puerto Rican independence.

Even those few North Americans who could distinguish between the two events couldn't prevent the actual thing itself from eroding, losing its detail and meaning and settling sooner rather than later into a kind of comforting folk narrative. For Americans, it always encompassed the following points:

The grievances Oscar and Griselio were expressing were fundamentally absurd: Puerto Rico had been given the gift of United States culture and political traditions and was rapidly becoming Americanized, as it should be. What was wrong with these two that they didn't understand how benevolently they had been treated?

Americans believed they were a little crazy. The evidence is clear: the assault was thrown together on the run by these two men of no consequence and no meaningful cause. One of them didn't even have a gun, so the other had to go out the day before and buy him one. They were upset by newspaper reports of what was going on in Puerto Rico, where an equally silly group of men were attempting a coup, like they do down there all the time, something equally stupid and futile.

In Washington, the two gunmen further expressed their deep state of mental disorganization by acting in strange ways.

On the morning of the attempt, for example, they went sightseeing. It turned out they thought Truman lived in the White House, and a cabdriver told them the president had moved across the street while the White House was being remodeled. Then, back in the hotel room, one had to teach the other how to work the gun.

One of them even went up to the hotel clerk on the day of the attempt as he was leaving and inquired about an extended checkout time.

And that was the smart one!

The dumb one was an unemployed salesman, a ladies' man, an abject failure in life. Nothing at all is known about this fellow, but why should it be, since he is so predictable: like so many disgruntled would-be assassins, this was his chance to count in a world that had denied his existence. They had no plan and no understanding of tactics.

In the actual fight itself, the Secret Service and the White House policemen essentially brushed them aside.

The two never came close to getting into Blair House. And even if they had, it would have made no difference, as an agent with a tommy gun was waiting just inside the door.

Harry Truman was never in any mortal danger.

In the end, many Americans concluded, it was more a joke, a farce, an opera buffa, than anything else.

There is only one trouble with assigning these meanings to the 38.5 desperate, violent seconds of November 1, 1950.

Every single one of them is wrong.

Excerpted from American Gunfight: The Plot to Kill President Truman--and the Shoot-Out That Stopped It by Stephen Hunter, John Bainbridge
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.