John Hinckley: Another Lone Nut?

Some allege that John Warncock Hinckley,Jr., who attempted to kill Ronald Reagan in front of the Washington Hilton—now called the “Hinkley Hilton”-- on March 30, 1981, was a victim of mind control. The evidence of mind control is thin. One of the policemen who nabbed Hinckley thought he was hypnotized or in some sort of induced state.

Several weeks before the incident, the papers were printing rumors that someone took a shot at Vice President George W. Bush in the wee hours of the morning. The rumor was traced to a policeman and an official with access to good information. The shooting took place near the town house of the vice president’s long-term mistress, Jennifer Fitzgerald. The Vice President was furious and the Washington Post killed the story. This sort of scare usually heightene concerns about security, but Reagan’s guards at the Hilton advised that he did need to wear his security vest.

When George H.W. Bush made it back to Washington, he immediately ruled out any investigation that the shooting was a result of a conspiracy. Al Haig, in his memoirs, wondered if a conspiracy was involved, but he did not questions Bush’s decision at the time. This is an historical matter that will never be resolved. Orthodox historians have no choice but to accept the official story.

Hinckley was a member of World Vision, a fundamentalist group that sometimes fronts for the C.I.A.. He was also a former member of the National Part of America—Nazis. The weapon he was supposed to have used was a short barrel 22 revolver, an RG-14, using Devastator long bullets. Four people were wounded by the six bullets he fired. There is film of Hinckley firing the first two shots; they hit no one. The sixth shot is said to have hit the side of the limo, ricocheting down the side of the car and hitting the president. Reagan was hit just under the left arm pit, and the bullet supposedly flattened to the size of a dime.

There is confusion about the kind of gun used. Agent Tim McCarthy was hit in the groin and was sure it was stronger than a 22. Hinckley bought a 38 in Dallas, near where JFK was killed. There are photographs of a 38 on the ground and a policeman in a yellow coat picking it up was a handkerchief. There was also a 22 at his feet later. Another hit a DC police officer, and the sixth missed Reagan but is said to have ricoched to strike the Chief Executive.

Before it was fired, Agent Jerry Parr grabbed Reagan and held onto him and pushed him into the limo before the fifth shot was fired. Then he was on top of Reagan. It is hard to imagine Reagan being hit in the chest with Parr on top of him. The last shot was fired when an agent was pushing Hinckley’s gun hand down. If it was fired then, it would have had to climb some way or other. Perhaps another ricochet.

Some think the agent somehow fired that shot, but this writer cannot construct such a scenario and must simply suggest that there are often inexplicable coincidences in such matters. There is the problem that Reagan had to have been hit after there was an armored car door between him and the shooter. They also point to Reagan’s comment that he felt a paralyzing pain just as the agents got him into the car. That sharp pain came after he was out of the line of fire.

Critics of the official story believe that Reagan was only in a position to be hit when Hinckley’s first shot was fired. Indeed, he would have had to been able to shoot through the car door. We know that the bullet had ricocheted, so it must have hit a stone wall and then headed toward Reagan. But a short 22 cannot give a bullet that kind of velocity. A rifle could do that.

Maybe James Brady was hit by something other than a Devastator. The physicians removed a shell with explosive intact from his brain. The Devastator aluminum shell begins to explode on impact. It would be like finding a piece of exploded dynamite with its wrapping intact. The physicians should only have found fragments. There should have been a big area of impact; Brady’s was the size of a pencil eraser

Amateur ballistics experimenters say that the Devastator bullets could not have come out of Hinckley’s 22. Until real experts address this, we can render no judgment


An ambulance bearing a wounded Press Secretary James Brady got to George Washington University Hospital fifteen minutes before the presidential limo, which left five minutes before the Brady ambulance. The Reagan limo got there 15 to 20 minutes after the vehicle carrying press secretary arrived.

The agents claimed they got lost. No motorcycle retinue accompanied them. The story was that they started out for the White House—that was a standing procedure and order. When Parr detected a bit of blood and, he decided to go to George Washington University Hospital. In changing directions, they lost time and for some unknown reason once went three blocks out of their way rather than following a diagonal street. At the hospital, Reagan was mistakenly given a cold blood transfusion. Some think that accounts for the early onset of Alzheimer’s Disease.


While the agents were losing time, there was a sharp battle going on in the situation room of the White House between Reagan loyalists and Bush people. Just six days before, Secretary of State Alexander Haig had been replaced by Bush as head of emergency preparedness planning. Haig made a public comment about his being in control until Bush returned. It was made in the context of controlling emergency planning and not in reference to the presidential sucession. The press never got it right and even showed the clip when Haig passed away. Someone told Haig about the connections between the Bushes and Hinkleys, and he immediately ordered a lock down of the White House.

Reagan began to walk into the George Washington Emergency Room even though his lung was collapsing. At first they could not find where he was hit, and then someone found blood coming out of a small cut below his left armpit. It was a single would with a razon rhin line. What they removed was “thin as s dime” and “razor edged.” Whatever it was, it bounced off a rib and slightly cut his aorta before bouncing off a rib again and then missing the aorta by a quarter of an inch and then went into the lung.

Lt. Colonel Bo Gritz, a veteran of many intelligence operations, suggests that Reagan was struck by a thin planchet rather than a bullet. But he would have no way of knowing for sure. Aerodynamic disks were used in intelligence work and were fired by tubes or guns. Sometimes they bear poison, but this did not.


There were three odd situations that day. Army Colonel Rodreguez, carrying the “football” or case with nuclear arming codes took off running, and he was gone for several hours and ended up with the Secret Service. At George Washington University Hospital, the F.B.I. got the coded card our of Reagan’s wallet which could be used to open the suitcase. The F.B.I. would not give Rodriguez the card. On that odd day, SAC bombers flew with no code books. Hinckley ws not turned over to civilian authorities; he was whisked off to Quantico Military Base. Then he went to Fort Butler in South Carolina for psychiatric evaluation.

At the time, Judy Woodruff, now a CNN anchor, insisted the shot came from an overhang above Reagan’s automobile. Later, she said a Secret Service agent up there fired the shot.

Young Hinckey was obsessed with women, particularly actress Jodie Foster and allegedly shot Reagan to impress her. John Chancellor reported "the bizarre coincidence" that Scott Hinckley, an older brother, was scheduled to dine with Neil Bush and his wife on March 31, 1981. RCA then owned NBC and it made sure Chancellor was prevented from investigating the coincidental connection.


At the time of the shooting, Scott, vice-president of C.I.A.-connected Vanderbilt Energy was meeting with Energy Departmentofficials trying to answer claims of overcharges from 1977 through 1980. Incensed because the media did not trace any of the odd aspects of the shooting, Journalism Professor and former Rhodes Scholar Nathaniel Blumberg wrote a novel The Afternoon of March 30 on what might have been going on.


The Hinkley family started in Texas where his father was an oil man and friend of George H.W. Bush and they moved to Evergreen, Colorado. In the 1960 s, the Hinckley’s Vanderbilt Oil was in trouble, getting little out of its six wells. The Bush family bailed them out, and the company changed its name to Vanderbilt Energy. Somehow, several millions trinkled in every year. . Oilman John Hinckley, Sr. was a reputed C.I.A. man and a leader of World Vision, a right-wing Christian evangelical organization. It became important in the 1950s. It was fiercely anti-Communist and worked with refugees from Communist nations. It often used missionaries to recruit people for intelligence work, following the long-established Rockefeller pattern of working through missionaries in Latin America.

World Vision people did espionage work for the C.I.A. in Southeast Asia and ran recruiting camps for the Contras in Hondouras During the Vietnam War, World Vision had military equipment and USAID money, some of which was a poss through or pass over for its C.I.A. sponsor. Later, its money came from the National Endowment for Democracy. In Lebanon, it permitted its camps to be used by the fascist Phalange to kill Palestinians. In the United States it had refugee camps for Cubans and Thai, where a steady diet of anti-communism was offered. In the camps for Cubans, Alpha 66 and Omega 7, anti-Castro militants, worked openly and recruited. John Hinckley Jr. worked in the Arkansas camps for the Thai as did Mark David Champan, who eventually killed John Lennon.

World Vision became involved in Jonestown after the massacre, developing a plan to repopulate it with C.I.A. mercenaries from Laos. In 1977, the American Council of Churches and other religious bodies forced the C.I.A. to outlaw the use of mssionaries on intelleigence work, except under exceptional circumstances. The Southern Baptists and Worle Vision, both of which had been coopative said they forbad missionaries from doing intelligence work. Critics in 2009 claim that World Vision in Nicosea, Cyprus is a C.I.A. front and is involved in sponsoring terrorist activities. Indian critics note that World Vision is funded by the US government but that it continues to proselatize. The organizationsofficials seem to use a revolving door that takes them in and out of US government positions.

Like the organizations that Sarah Palin’s religious organizations are tied to, these people think they are engaged in’spiritual warfare” with the forces of evil. Hinckley stalked Jimmy Carter in 1980, hoping to shoot him. He was detained in Nashville for 5 hours in October, 1980 because he had guns in his possession. Carter was expected in that city then.

The story gets stranger. Some make the case that Hinckley was shadowed by an evil twin or Doppelganger. His name was Edward Richardson, a follower of Carl McIntyre’s International Council of Christian Churches, looked just like Hinckley and also wrote sick love letters to Jodi Foster. He wrote threatening letters to Reagan and Foster, and was arrested a week after Hinckley by the New York Port Authority Police. Why had he followed Hinckley from Connecticut to Colorado?

Another person who looked somewhat like Hinckley and was the same age was Mark David Chapman, who shot John Lennon about a month before the attack on Reagan. A policeman who apprehended ihim thought he was under mind control; he was clutching a copy of The Catcher and The Rye. He said a voice in his hea commanded him to kill Lennon. Chapman was in therapy at the time and had been with World Vision. Some insist he had been involved in a remote viewing program, but this writer cannot nail that down. Money was no problem for him. He was a world traveler, staying in the best hotels, and he and his wife collected art ane even owned a $7500 Norman Rockwell lithograph. Their monthly ren was $400. When he was nabbed, he had over $2000 in cash and credit cards. New York columnist Jimmy Breslin concluded Chapman was under mind control. He was eventually able to prove that Lennon was under constant F.B.I. surveillance, but that is quite different from killing someone. John Lennon, who had become a powerful spiritual force, had made the mistake of asking fans to join revolutionary movements for human rights.

We know that the C.I.A. had its own remote viewing program for 25 years and that it was conducted in cooperation with the Church of Scientology. The military also had a RV program.The first publif information on remote viewing appeared in a Jack Anderson column on 23 April 1984. Years later Ted Koppel did a rather dismissive report on RV.

In the 1980s, the Army’s RV program was called “Grill Frame.” The DIA’s program was “Sun Streak,” which was renamed “Star Gate” in 1991. After 1995, it was transferred to the C.I.A.. We do not know for certain, which /RV program, if any, was involved with Chapman. The Carter Administration tried and failed to kill off the C.I.A.’s RV program, but it continued, using many people supplied by the Church of Scientology. In 1995, John Mc Cahon, who ran it for a time, said more than $20 million had been spent on it.