delanceyplace.com 2/20/08 - assassinating truman

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In today's excerpt - the 1950 assassination attempt on President Truman by the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico, which followed two days after its unsuccessful suicide attack on the Puerto Rican governor in San Juan. Many Puerto Ricans felt the U.S. had unlawfully gained possession of Puerto Rico in the Spanish-American War, and Puerto Rico was poor—forty-four percent of Puerto Ricans made less than $55 per year at that time. The Nationalist Party, feeding on both the resentment toward the US and this grinding poverty, was mounting an unsuccessful fight for independence:

"On 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. [He had moved across the street while the White House was being remodeled.] They were opposed by a Secret Service security detail, led by special agent Floyd M. Boring ... . 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. ... 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. ...

"The obligations of duty soon imposed themselves upon the chaos. [Immediately after the gunfight], Truman's press secretary arrived ... and had to know if the president still intended to go to Arlington National Cemetery for the [previously-scheduled] dedication of the statue to Sir John Dill.

"Harry Truman was not a man for shirking duty. And so, shaken or not, he agreed, overruling the Secret Service chief. ... The president gave his speech as planned, and it's fair to say he did what he had to do, did it well, got through the day. ... 'Hell', he's reputed to have said, 'if they'd made it up the steps, I'd have made them eat those guns', and much of America cheered at the toughness of the little guy. ... But a picture taken just after Truman's speech at Arlington belies that official bravado. What we see is a man profoundly shaken: his eyes have that haunted, thousand-yard stare of the Iwo Jima survivor, his body is tense, there's not a relaxed line in his face or a happy one. ...

"Some even believe that he chose not to run in 1952 because of his pain over the incident. Drew Pearson reported in his April 13, 1952 column in the Post, that 'An unreported factor behind President Truman's decision to retire was the anguish and strain that the Truman family feels over the attempted assassination of the President on November 1, 1950.' "