Study Finds that Attacks Against Public Figures are Not Politically Motivated

A week ago, I linked to a blogpost by Michael Medved in which he claimed that historically, political assassinations have not been motivated by those with political differences (Lincoln and MLK being arguable exceptions), let alone “harsh political rhetoric”:

past periods of nasty debate produced no assassinations—the McCarthy era resounded with charges of treason but no major shootings of public figures. Killings often occur in placid political climates of consensus – as with the assassinations of popular, young centrist presidents, Garfield and Kennedy, following elections in 1880 and 1960 when major candidates largely agreed on issues. Fierce rhetoric doesn’t cause shootings, any more than consensus politics guarantees safety for our public figures.

There’s actually a study completed in 1999 by the Secret Service that backs up Medved’s claim. The Exceptional Case Study Project was undertaken by psychologist Robert Fein and Secret Service agent Bryan Vossekuil. Their study covers all 83 assassins/would-be assassins who killed or attempted to kill a public figure in the United States from 1949 to 1996.

Fein interviewed 20 surviving attackers with the following sales pitch:

“We’d 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, Fein recalls.

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.

Based upon their findings, political motive rarely played a role in attacks against public figures:

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 to Fein and Vossekuil, assassinations of political figures were almost never for political reasons.

“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,” Fein says.

What emerges from the study is that rather than being politically motivated, many of the assassins and would-be assassins simply felt invisible. 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,’ ” Fein says.

They chose political targets, then, because political targets were a sure way to transform this situation: They would be known.

Incidentally, the claim that President Obama receives a 300% jump in death threats compared to President Bush (actually, Ronald Kessler’s claim is more like 400% in his book, In the President’s Secret Service, pg 225) is disputed by the Director of the Secret Service:

“The threats right now … is the same level as it has been for the previous two presidents at this point in their administrations,” Sullivan said.

It’s quite possible Kessler’s figure was accurate at the time (mentioned in wake of President Obama’s election) but has since tapered off to “normal” levels (note that most of these threats that are figured into the tally are not of a credible nature).

Shortly after the shootings, Dr. Torrey in the WSJ wrote:

Some have speculated on the possible relationship of our acrimonious political climate to the incident. It is, however, unlikely that there is any such relationship, since similar tragedies occur in politically harmonious times as well.

The motivation for such killings is usually based on psychotic thinking, not political thinking. Dennis Sweeney killed Allard Lowenstein [former congressman] because he believed that Lowenstein had implanted a transmitter in his teeth that was sending messages to him. Russell Weston stormed the Capitol because he believed the government had hidden a machine there that could reverse time.

The Exceptional Case Study Project itself, while admitting to some cases of mental illness playing a role, also points out that the way they acted out their issues weren’t entirely irrational.