Misinformation versus Truth.....

Like a lot of folks, I listen to National Public Radio each day on my way to and from work on the car radio. I'll admit that I feel their news is by far the most complete, non-biased and lacking of any political agenda out there on all the mostly bullshit airwaves. I do know in the mostly extremist world, they would adamantly disagree with my analysis but tough shit!

Sooooooooooooo, this morning they had this report I personally found extremely interesting and informative. Like most news right now, the subject was how much responsibility do the various extremist idiots on both sides of our political system need to take for this present assassination attempt and all the others in the past.

I have to admit right here and now that my very last blog tried to deal with this issue also. As you can see if you read that one, I too got caught up in considering blaming the extremist news idiots for influencing these crazies to shoot politicians.

It's well known that in March 1981, John Hinckley attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan. What is not well known is that several years later, the life of President Reagan and the life of his vice president, George H.W. Bush, were threatened again in fact, not just once. In the space of 18 months, four situations came to the attention of the Secret Service.

In two of these incidents, people with weapons and an intent to kill appeared at public events. In the two other incidents, the would-be assassins were intercepted before the events. Ultimately, all four cases were prosecuted. Two were convicted, and two were sent to psychiatric facilities, though the government didn't exactly advertise it.

These were not stories that hit the news, but they were situations that caused great concern for protectors. At that point in time the Secret Service decided they would like to know more about the behaviors of these people. So they undertook the most extensive study of assassins and would-be assassins ever done.

In the Secret Service Exception Case Study Project, they identified 83 people who had completed assassinations or made assassination attempts since 1949 — some cases known to the public, some not — and collected every document they could find. They also went to visit many of these people in jail.

They went with a very particular pitch: They would say, "We're here because we're in the business of trying to protect people and prevent these kinds of attacks. You are one of the few experts because you've engaged in this behavior. We would like to talk to you to understand your perspectives, your life". Most said they'd be very glad to talk.

The researchers asked prisoners how they chose targets, how they prepared. They inquired about their motives, every intimate detail of their process. After they asked these questions, they combined the answers with other sources and analyzed the information. In 1999, they published their results in The Journal of Forensic Sciences.

Nonpolitical Killers
The insights of this study are interesting to review in light of the Arizona shooting, though obviously we still don't know that much about Jared Loughner, the suspect in the attack, or his motives. Perhaps the most interesting finding is that according this study, assassinations of political figures were almost never for political reasons.

Ok, now here is where it gets super interesting I think. It was very, very rare for the primary motive to be political, though there were a number of attackers who appeared to clothe their motives with some political rhetoric. What emerges from the study is that rather than being politically motivated, many of the assassins and would-be assassins simply felt invisible and worthless. In the year before their attacks, most struggled with acute reversals and disappointment in their lives, which the paper argues, was the true motive. They didn't want to see themselves as nonentities. They experienced failure after failure after failure, and decided that rather than being a "nobody", they wanted to be a "somebody".

So these murderers or potential murderers chose their victims almost exclusively for the fame they thought they would get out of the deal, not for any particular political agenda at all. For example, there was one guy who was fixated on his governor until he heard that the vice president was coming to his area. He said he had read enough to know that there hadn't been anybody who had attempted to assassinate a sitting vice president. He reasoned that he would become far more famous killing a Vice President than his Governor.

Another assumption people make about assassins is that they're insane — people completely divorced from reality. But this study — to a degree — rejects that idea as too simplistic. The way these people sought to address what they saw as their main problems — anonymity and failure — wasn't inherently crazy at all. They had their share of mental problems for sure but don't we all?

So at a Safeway in Tuscon, U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords became the latest public servant caught in the cross hairs of an attacker's gun. This study suggests the attempt may have been driven by very powerful and personal motives.

Crazy huh? Just when everyone thinks they have it all figured out, along comes a very extensive and well thought out long term professional study to throw a heavy dose of water and reality on our completely misguided explanations.




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