Assassinations and Attempted Assassinations

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      Iran’s Options for Retaliation Risk Escalating Middle East Crisis

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      The killing of Hamas’s political leader in Tehran was a humiliating security failure for the Iranian government.Most new Iranian presidents have months to settle into the decades-old cadence of gradual nuclear escalation, attacks against adversaries and, episodically, secret talks with the West to relieve sanctions.President Masoud Pezeshkian had 10 hours.That was the elapsed time between his swearing-in and the explosion inside an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps guesthouse, at 2 a.m. in Tehran, that killed Ismail Haniyeh, the longtime political leader of Hamas. Mr. Haniyeh had not only attended the swearing-in, but had also been embraced by the new president and met that day with the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, making the assassination a particularly brazen act.Now Mr. Pezeshkian — along with Ayatollah Khamenei and top military generals — will be immersed in critical choices that may determine whether war breaks out between two of the Mideast’s most potent militaries. He spent his first day in office in national security meetings. The final decision on how to retaliate rests with Mr. Khamenei and on Wednesday he where ordered Iranian forces to strike Israel directly for what appeared to be its role in killing Mr. Haniyeh.But how that retaliation unfolds makes a difference. If Iran launches direct missile attacks, as it attempted for the first time in 45 years in April, the cycle of strike and counterstrike could easily escalate. If Hezbollah, its closest ally in the region, steps up attacks on Israel’s north or the Houthis expand their attacks in the Red Sea, the war could expand to Lebanon, or involve the need for American naval forces to keep the sea lanes open.Mourners for Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s longtime political leader, in Tehran on Wednesday.Arash Khamooshi for The New York TimesBehind all of those options is perhaps the riskiest choice of all: whether Iran decides to take the final step toward building an actual nuclear weapon. For decades it has walked right up to the line, producing nuclear fuel and in recent years enriching it to near bomb-grade levels. But American intelligence assessments say the country has always stopped short of an actual weapon, a decision Iranian leaders have publicly been reconsidering in recent months.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Agrees to Be Interviewed by F.B.I. in Its Investigation Into Gunman

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      The F.B.I. also provided the most comprehensive portrait to date of the shooter, revealing that he carefully concealed more than two dozen online purchases of weapons and explosives using aliases.Former President Donald J. Trump has agreed to be interviewed by the F.B.I. as part of its investigation into the motives of the 20-year-old man who tried to assassinate him during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on July 13, bureau officials said on Monday.“We want to get his perspective on what he observed, like any other witness,” Kevin Rojek, the head of the bureau’s Pittsburgh field office, said on a call with reporters. “It is a standard victim interview, like we would do.”Mr. Trump’s supporters had sharply criticized Christopher A. Wray, the bureau’s director, for telling a House committee last week that investigators had not definitively determined the cause of the minor injury to the former president’s ear. By week’s end, the F.B.I. offered its most definitive explanation yet, saying it was a bullet or a fragment of one, a statement it reiterated on Monday.The F.B.I. also provided the most comprehensive portrait to date of the gunman, Thomas Crooks, revealing that he carefully concealed more than two dozen online purchases of weapons and explosives using aliases, and that he gathered information on other assassination attempts, including the shooting of Robert Fico, the prime minister of Slovakia, in May.Mr. Rojek also provided information about a critical — and lost — opportunity to stop Mr. Crooks. He said that a local law enforcement officer who was boosted onto the warehouse roof where Mr. Crooks had positioned himself just before the shooting “dropped down” to the ground after the shooter aimed at the officer.About 25 to 30 seconds later, Mr. Crooks fired eight rounds — hitting Mr. Trump’s ear, killing a bystander and injuring two other people.F.B.I. officials said they were taking the unusual step of providing investigative details, even though their efforts were continuing, to combat conspiracy theories and misinformation.They also said that their investigation was not geared toward identifying or analyzing security failures by the Secret Service and local enforcement that allowed Mr. Crooks to get within a few hundred yards of Mr. Trump to discharge a deadly volley with a clear line of sight.The investigation, they said, has been entirely focused on determining whether he was motivated by political animus — they have found no evidence to suggest that so far — and to find out if he was part of a larger conspiracy. They have not ruled that possibility out, but thus far, the bureau has found that Mr. Crooks had few contacts outside of his immediate family, and did not even seem to interact much with co-workers or fellow participants on gaming platforms.“We do still believe that he was a loner,” Mr. Rojek said. More

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      Bullet or Fragment of One Struck Trump’s Ear, F.B.I. Says

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      The explanation was the most definitive to date after the bureau’s director had earlier suggested the former president might have been hit by shrapnel, igniting a political storm.The F.B.I. said on Friday that Donald J. Trump had been struck by a “bullet, whether whole or fragmented into smaller pieces,” providing the most definitive explanation to date about what injured the former president’s ear during an assassination attempt this month.Ambiguity about Mr. Trump’s injury turned into a political firestorm as the former president and his political allies attacked the F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, for comments he made on Wednesday before Congress.“With respect to former President Trump, there’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear,” Mr. Wray told the House Judiciary Committee.Mr. Wray’s comments incensed Mr. Trump because they seemed to cast doubt on the former president’s version of what happened at a July 13 campaign rally in Butler, Pa., when a gunman opened fire, killing one and injuring two others. The shooter, Thomas Crooks, 20, was killed by a Secret Service sniper.Mr. Trump has maintained that he narrowly escaped death or serious injury after a bullet bloodied his ear, and that divine intervention spared his life. Mr. Wray’s suggestion that it might have been shrapnel angered him.After Speaker Mike Johnson questioned Mr. Wray’s comments on Thursday, the F.B.I. said in a statement that it was examining bullet fragments, and law enforcement officials said the bureau was trying to determine whether it was a bullet or a piece of one.Mr. Trump, who has been deeply critical of the F.B.I. for years, responded with a blistering post on social media: “No, it was, unfortunately, a bullet that hit my ear, and hit it hard. There was no glass, there was no shrapnel.”He added, “No wonder the once storied FBI has lost the confidence of America!”Mr. Wray has never disputed that the former president was in grave danger. He has repeatedly said the assassination attempt was an attack on democracy, and his agency said on Friday that there was no doubt that Mr. Crooks tried to kill the former president.“What struck former President Trump in the ear was a bullet, whether whole or fragmented into smaller pieces, fired from the deceased subject’s rifle,” the F.B.I. said in a statement.Mr. Crooks fired eight bullets from an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle. Gun experts say the ammunition that Mr. Crooks used can easily fragment after hitting a solid object, sending deadly debris through the air. In certain circumstances, shrapnel and bullet fragments can be lethal.On Friday, The New York Times published an analysis that strongly suggested Mr. Trump was grazed by the first of the eight bullets fired by the gunman. More

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      Assessing Cause of Trump Wound, F.B.I. Examines Bullet Fragments From Rally

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      The bureau is assessing what caused the former president’s wound during an assassination attempt. The question has turned political.The F.B.I. is examining numerous metal fragments found near the stage at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., to determine whether an assassin’s bullet — or potential debris — grazed former President Donald J. Trump’s head, bloodying his ear, according to the F.B.I. and a federal law enforcement official.The bureau has asked to interview Mr. Trump as part of its broader investigation, hoping to provide insights into the shooting and possibly a more complete record of his injury, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the continuing inquiry.Unanswered questions about the object that struck the Republican nominee for president have lingered since the shooting on July 13, with Mr. Trump claiming that he was struck by a bullet — and casting his survival as an act of divine intervention.F.B.I. officials have been more circumspect, citing the need to analyze the evidence before determining what struck Mr. Trump — a bullet, metal shard or something else.The bureau’s shooting reconstruction team “continues to examine evidence from the scene, including bullet fragments, and the investigation remains ongoing,” the F.B.I. said in a statement on Thursday. In addition to injuring Mr. Trump, the gunman, Thomas Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pa., shot three rally attendees, one fatally.Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman, did not answer whether the bureau had asked to review the former president’s medical records after the incident, but Mr. Trump has not released them publicly.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      John Hinckley Jr. and the Madness of American Political Violence

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      In September 2016, three and a half decades after he shot President Ronald Reagan in a deranged bid to impress the actress Jodie Foster — a crime for which he was found not guilty by reason of insanity — John W. Hinckley Jr. was released from St. Elizabeths psychiatric hospital in Washington, D.C. From there, he moved to Williamsburg, Va., where he lived for some years with his elderly mother, Jo Ann, in a large house overlooking the 13th hole of a golf course. The federal court that granted his release did so on certain conditions. One of these was that he must not speak to the media. Another was that Hinckley, who was a songwriter for some years before the failed assassination attempt, and who continued to play music as part of his psychiatric treatment, must not release for public consumption, even anonymously, any of his work, without the specific approval of the treatment team entrusted with his care.After his arrest, Hinckley was diagnosed with, among other conditions, atypical psychosis and severe narcissistic personality disorder; his extravagantly strange and violent actions had been bound up in a toxic fascination with celebrity and an egomaniacal glee at the fame those actions brought him. Although Hinckley’s treatment was successful, and the judge was satisfied that he presented a very low risk of reoffending, the restrictions were intended to ensure that he neither courted nor was courted by the media and that his mental stability would not be threatened in the immediate aftermath of his release by widespread attention.In 2022, not long after his mother died, the last of those restrictions were lifted. More than four decades after shooting Ronald Reagan — along with a Secret Service agent named Timothy McCarthy, a police officer named Thomas Delahanty and Reagan’s press secretary, James Brady, who was left permanently disabled — he was, at 67 years of age, truly free. Hinckley had by then opened a Twitter account and amassed thousands of followers. On June 15, 2022, the day the restrictions were lifted, he posted the following: “After 41 years 2 months and 15 days, FREEDOM AT LAST!!!” His following grew, and he quickly began to use his platform to release music and promote upcoming gigs. He announced a total of a dozen performances. Unsurprisingly, these shows got a lot of attention and began to sell out. But every single one of them was canceled before he could play, as a result of backlash, including anonymous threatening emails, received by the venues.This made Hinckley a figure of prurient interest on social media. When he posted about his excitement for an upcoming show, for instance, along with a selfie in which he stared directly at the camera with a glazed and entirely affectless expression, the replies were a chorus of ironic quips and jokes. Someone replied with a GIF of Travis Bickle clapping — a reference to Hinckley’s infamous inspiration for his crime, an obsession with “Taxi Driver” and with Jodie Foster, who played the teenage prostitute Iris in the film. “Haven’t heard his new stuff but I like his earlier work,” read another. (Jokes about Hinckley’s “early work” follow him everywhere online.) For a majority of people who encountered his internet presence, Hinckley was an absurd and quintessentially American aberration: a guy who shot, and very nearly killed, the president and was somehow still alive to sing his songs about peace and love and redemption.Hinckley at his office in Williamsburg, Va., in June.Stefan Ruiz for The New York TimesThen, 43 years after that near assassination, in Butler, Pa., a 20-year-old loner named Thomas Matthew Crooks took several shots at Donald Trump with a semiautomatic rifle, wounding the former president’s right ear and plunging an already dark and chaotic world even deeper into darkness and chaos. Hinckley now became the focus of a different kind of interest. After the shooting, he posted the following message on the platform now known as X: “Violence is not the way to go. Give peace a chance.” He was quoting his old hero John Lennon, who was himself murdered by a strange and sick and lonely young man with a gun. The tweet provoked a by-now predictable response. There were GIFs of Jodie Foster looking haunted (“Hope she sees this bro”) and of Travis Bickle talking to himself in the mirror. There was an article in The Guardian headlined “Man Who Tried to Assassinate Reagan Says ‘Violence Is Not the Way to Go.’ ” Mostly, people seemed to be able to respond to the message only as evidence of the further derangement of things.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      FBI Director Testifying Before Congress Over Trump Rally Shooting

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      The F.B.I. director disclosed that the gunman flew a drone for about 11 minutes, just two hours before the former president was shot during a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee.Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, disclosed on Wednesday that the gunman who tried to assassinate former President Donald J. Trump appeared to have used a drone to survey the site of the shooting for about 11 minutes in the hours before Mr. Trump took the stage.“It appears that around 3:50 p.m., 4:00, on the day of the shooting, that the shooter was flying the drone around the area,” Mr. Wray said during his testimony, noting that it was “not over the stage, but about 200 yards, give or take, away from that.”The gunfire on July 13 at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., left Mr. Trump’s ear bloodied, killed a rallygoer who had been sitting in the stands and seriously injured two others.Mr. Wray said the would-be assassin operated the drone about two hours before Mr. Trump spoke at the rally.Secret Service snipers killed the gunman, Thomas Crooks, 20, after locating him on a nearby roof. Mr. Crooks was armed with an AR-15-style rifle and had magazines for the rifle and a bulletproof vest in his car. Mr. Wray confirmed that the F.B.I. recovered eight bullet cartridges from the roof where the gunman opened fire.So far, Mr. Wray said, the F.B.I. has not found a motive for the shooting even as the investigation evolves. But the bureau continues to examine the gunman’s electronic devices for additional clues about Mr. Crooks’s mind-set and movements beforehand.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Renuncia la directora del Servicio Secreto después del atentado contra Trump

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      Kimberly Cheatle renunció este martes a su cargo tras los fallos de seguridad que permitieron que un hombre armado disparara contra el expresidente Donald Trump en un mitin al aire libre.[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]La directora del Servicio Secreto, Kimberly Cheatle, renunció el martes, después de las fallas de seguridad relacionadas con el intento de asesinato contra el expresidente Donald Trump y los llamados por parte de legisladores de ambos partidos para que renunciara al cargo.En un correo electrónico enviado al personal del Servicio Secreto el martes, Cheatle dijo que uno de los principales deberes de la agencia es proteger a los líderes de la nación y que “no cumplió con esa misión” al no proteger de la manera adecuada un mitin de campaña de un hombre armado el 13 de julio.“No quiero que las solicitudes de mi renuncia sean una distracción del gran trabajo que todos y cada uno de ustedes hacen en favor de nuestra misión vital”, dijo Cheatle en el correo electrónico, que fue revisado por The New York Times.Cheatle decía que estaba profundamente comprometida con la agencia, pero añadía: “A la luz de los acontecimientos recientes, he tomado con gran pesar la difícil decisión de renunciar como directora de ustedes”.En un comunicado divulgado el martes, el presidente Joe Biden le agradeció a Cheatle que respondiera a su llamado para dirigir la agencia. “Como líder, se necesita honor, valentía y una integridad increíble para asumir la plena responsabilidad de una organización encargada de uno de los trabajos más difíciles en el servicio público”.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Secret Service Director Resigns After Trump Assassination Attempt

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      Kimberly A. Cheatle gave up her post Tuesday after security failures that allowed a gunman to shoot at former President Donald J. Trump at an open-air rally.The director of the Secret Service, Kimberly A. Cheatle, resigned on Tuesday, after security failures surrounding the attempted assassination of former President Donald J. Trump and calls for her to step down from prominent Republican lawmakers.In an email to Secret Service agents on Tuesday, Ms. Cheatle said that one of the Secret Service’s foremost duties is to protect the nation’s leaders and that the agency “fell short of that mission” in failing to secure a campaign rally from a gunman on July 13.“I do not want my calls for resignation to be a distraction from the great work each and every one of you do towards our vital mission,” Ms. Cheatle said in the email, which was reviewed by The New York Times.She said she was deeply committed to the agency but added that, “in light of recent events, it is with a heavy heart that I have made the difficult decision to step down as your director.”President Biden, in a statement Tuesday, thanked Ms. Cheatle for answering his call to lead the agency. “As a leader, it takes honor, courage and incredible integrity to take full responsibility for an organization tasked with one of the most challenging jobs in public service.”Mr. Biden said he would appoint a new director soon.The resignation is a rapid fall for the agency veteran who protected Dick Cheney and Mr. Biden in their vice-presidential tenures and was publicly supported by Biden administration officials after the gunman shot at Mr. Trump. The glaring security mistakes before the shooting, however, and the heated criticism that Ms. Cheatle faced in the days since had left her position increasingly in doubt.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More