21 December 2003

Blair House

There was a late night phone call. It was the President of the People's Republic of China, Mr. Hu Jintao. He wanted to chat about Taiwanese independence. I'm glad he didn't call me at that hour. I doubt if I could have fumbled for the briefing book and mouthed the words "Well, Hu, I reckon there is one China with three different systems, right?"

"Taiwan's independence is unacceptable" the Chinese President probably said, just to make sure George understood.

I imagine that Mr. Bush said something like "That's what I said, wasn't it?"

You will recall Hu was in town a couple weeks ago. For some reason I remember a sign, or some PRC flags on the light-poles down on Pennsylvania Avenue. I assume the Chinese entourage stayed at Blair House across the street. It is a neat compound. It still looks like several sedate row houses, but it is all one common building behind the facade.

Of course that is true about a lot of Washington buildings, take it for what you will.

Blair House has been home to a lot of American history. Col. Robert E. Lee was offered command of the Union Army there. He didn't take it, but think for a moment how different things would have been. He might have wrapped up the insurgency so quickly that the slavery question would not have been resolved. Puerto Rican terrorists (remember those?) also stormed Blair House to try to murder President Truman.

It was 1950, and the White House was literally falling down. FDR had done a lot of construction during his four terms in office and the weight of the porches and new private residence upstairs were threatening to bring the place down, literally. It was also a year of turmoil. The Koreans came south, and President Truman, that calm haberdasher from Hannibal, Missouri, who had authorized the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan wasn't about to let them get away with it. It had also been a summer of turmoil in the American Caribbean. Congress finally agreed that the President's Mansion should be reconstructed, and so Mr. Truman moved across the street.

In Puerto Rico, Blanca Canales and her militant little group had proclaimed the Republic in Jayuya as part of an island-wide uprising. Nationalists had attacked the American-appointed governor's residence in San Juan. Angered and frustrated by the United States domination over their homeland, two young men determined to assassinate the President. Oscar Collazo and his friend, Grisello Torresola, bought one-way tickets to Washington, with intent of killing the President of the United States.

In those days Pennsylvania Avenue did not have hydraulic barriers sealing it off in front of the White House. Deranged people still had permanent demonstrations in Lafayette Park, permitted on the grounds of free speech. The city bus regularly stopped in front of the residence at Pennsylvania Avenue across from the Old Executive Building, and it was a heavy transfer spot. The president was upstairs in Blair House, having a nap before going to Arlington Cemetery to lay a wreath. Guards were on the steps, enjoying the fine fall afternoon. Washington can be luminous in the Fall.

Collazo and Torresola stepped down from a bus and ran towards the iron fence in front of the steps leading to the door. They produced pistols and began to fire, or at least Torresola did. He sprayed the steps with bullets and Officer Leslie W. Coffelt killed him on the spot. But he had in turn taken a bullet from Torresola's gun and went down. Collazo had forgotten to pull the little tab on the top of his Luger, so it was not cocked. He pointed and pulled the trigger but nothing happened. He was brought down by a hail of gunfire from the other direction. The assault was over in twenty seconds.

Mr. Truman was never in any real danger. He was going to leave for the ceremony by the back door, anyway, and they got him up and dressed and on his way an hour later.

On the ground were the two Puerto Ricans and two other guards, Donald T. Birdzell and Joseph H. Downs. They recovered, but Coffelt died that night on the table at Emergency Hospital (now demolished) a few blocks away.

Collazo, the survivor, stood trial for first-degree murder and was given the death penalty. Later Truman commuted the sentence to life imprisonment. Can you imagine George W. doing the same?

He was sent to Leavenworth for the long course, and he spent the next twenty-nine years reading, studying French and Portuguese and learning to play the guitar. He was disappointed when the prison library was replaced by television, and he was permitted communication only with close family members and lawyers.

Four years after the Blair House attack, four Puerto Ricans named Lolita Lebron, Cancel Miranda, Figueroa Cordero, and Flores Rodríguez entered the Capitol as tourists and proceeded to the Visitor's Gallery of the House. After they were seated, leader Lebron, mother of a gravely ill son, rose and shouted "Que Viva Puerto Rico Libre!" and the four opened fire on the session of Congress.

No one was killed down on the floor, but five Congressmen were wounded. It was pandemonium that day. The extraordinary security that is observed in the Gallery stems from that time, the first response to terror here in town. I was surprised to find the last time I took in a session of Congress that I couldn't even have the little beeper for the locks on my car on the car keys. The guards were very courteous but quite insistent.

In 1979, President Jimmy Carter gave the four unconditional amnesty and threw in a release for wanna-be Presidential murderer Collazo for good measure. Collazo was asked if he believed that the twenty-nine years in prison had softened him. He had lost nothing of his intensity in three decades. He said "they didn't take me to prison to soften me but to rot me."

I have heard no such quotations from the latest attempted assassin John Hinkley, who shot Mr. Reagan. He has been in St. Elizabeth's for about the same amount of time as Collazo was locked up at Leavenworth. The attorney's say that he is on good medication and able to function in society. Hinkley's Mom and Dad want to take him home for overnight unsupervised visits. I thought when you got well enough you were supposed to stand trial for what you did, but I'm glad I am not an officer of the court.

Mr. Carter would probably approve. He certainly was a good Christian, tis the season, and I marvel that he didn't seriously screw up more international things than he did. Thankfully he only had four years to do it. I still wonder about some of the things he did. His greatest accomplishment was to give the Panama Canal to tinpot dictator Omar Trujillo as well, and must have had a certain penchant for atonement in Latin America that year.

The would-be Puerto Rican assassins had feared that their quest would be forgotten in the quarter century they were in the can. Their bitterness only got better with age, and there was no repentance. Upon release from Leavenworth, an defiant Cancel Miranda said that he was ready to do it again, but this time with grenades instead of bullets.

The Washington Five should not have been concerned. When they touched down at San Juan International, they were met my an adoring multitude waving flags and posters. In the basement of Blair House, the plain day room of the Secret Service Uniformed Division is named for Officer Leslie W. Coffelt, killed in the line of duty November 1, 1950, saving the life of the President.

I sometimes wish that the Nobel Prize had a popular vote, or that Jimmy Carter would stand for elected office again. I regret I only got to vote against him once.