April 22, 2007
Mind Of The Assassin
Scott Pelley On How The Secret Service Studies The Minds Of Assassins
-
Play CBS Video
Video
Protecting The President
Secret Service agents gave "60 Minutes" an inside look at how they train to protect the President of the United States from would-be assassins. Scott Pelley reports.
-
Video
Reading The Mind Of A Killer
What goes on inside the head of a killer? Studies by the Secret Service suggest that school shooters often hint to people what they plan to do. Scott Pelley has the story.
-
Photo
(CBS/AP)
-
Photo Essay
Virginia Tech Massacre
Gunman opens fire in dorm and classroom, killing at least 32 before killing himself.
-
Interactive
Crime Beat
Statistics and specifics on crime in America.
For years, the U.S. Secret Service has sent psychologists into prisons and mental hospitals to interview those bent on assassination.
As Scott Pelley reports, their interviews bring extraordinary insight into the mind of an assassin; what has been discovered in the process is that many of the same characteristics found in assassins can also be found in school shooters.
In recent years, 60 Minutes has had unprecedented access to the Secret Service Intelligence Division.
When it comes to protecting the presidential motorcade, the Secret Service training center outside Washington D.C. is without a doubt the most hostile "town" in America. You won’t find its streets on any map; the center was built after the Kennedy assassination to drill the agents of the presidential protection detail. There's even an airport with one half of an Air Force One plane, where agents take turns playing the commander-in-chief and the gunman in the crowd.
This is practice for last ditch defense, but as one agent told 60 Minutes, "If the guns come out, we've already failed."
It’s up to the Secret Service Intelligence Division to stop the assassin before he picks up a gun. They open new cases every month, investigating people who may want to harm those under Secret Service protection. The trouble is how to sort out those who just make a threat from those who actually pose a threat.
"Many of those who committed attacks did not threaten prior to their attack of violence," explains former Special Agent Brian Vossekuil.
In 1999, Vossekuil and psychologist Dr. Robert Fein were the primary authors of a groundbreaking Secret Service study of stalkers and assassins. They called it the "Exceptional Case Study."
They analyzed 83 attacks, and interviewed gunmen including Arthur Bremmer, who gunned down presidential candidate George Wallace, and Mark Chapman, who murdered John Lennon.
"What was it that struck you about these 83 cases you researched in the exceptional case study?" Pelley asks Dr. Fein.
"There was no, 'quote' profile of an assassin or a near assassin. People came from a range of backgrounds. Some had criminal records, most did not, some had histories of violence, most did not," Fein explains.
"The behavior in the acts generally included, things like communication to others, planning, target selection," Vossekuil explains.
"These were not impulsive, out of the blue, attacks. They were part of a process," Fein says.
"And we found, as Robert just said, acts that were in engaged in that was identifiable, understandable and consistent with someone on might be on a pathway toward mounting an attack," Vossekuil adds.
In one of their interviews, in a psychiatric ward, Vossekuil and Fein talked to a man called "J.D."
"I was looking for a location where I could test fire the gun," J.D. told the researchers.
In the late 1980’s, J.D. stalked two presidents across the country, robbing banks to pay for the travel. What was his motivation?
"J.D. was a person who had dropped out of graduate school, who had served in the military, who became convinced that he had a choice to make, that aliens were ordering him either to kill innocent schoolchildren or to kill the president," Fein explains.
"He sounds too crazy to be a threat," Pelley remarks.
"Because he was quite organized, because he believed that he had this horrible choice. And the organization that he had to look normal, to explore security, to get weapons, to travel around the country that was quite chilling. Though if you talked with him, he was – he did not come across as a hostile, angry – fitting any stereotype of quote an assassin," Fein says.
Produced By Henry Schuster, Bill Owens and Rebecca Peterson
© MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Recent Segments
Scroll Left
Scroll Right
- 1
- 2
- next
See all 56 Comments* depressed
* a loner
* psychotic
* an autistic (Asperger's Syndrome)
* bullied as a kid
and/or
* not eating the right foods
Is going to be branded as a potential mass killer.
Silly, isn't it?
Here's a poem fer yaz: "The less I talk the more people believe me. The more I say I told yaz so, the more I'm a doofus." Doesn't rhyme but, who says ya gotta rhyme to sound good?
Just shut de ********** up. De lott of yaz..
The excuses given for their rampage are merely cover of the insanity.
No group in America has been as disrespected as the African people; yet we don't see these mass murders in retaliation by African Americans.
If merely being disrespected/neglected was reason to go on a rampage, African Americans should be on a rampage EVERY SECOND in America! LOL
Posted by tucanofulano at 09:36 PM : Apr 22, 2007"
Very good point!
The violent and destructive examples of the government assassins are GREATLY responsible for ordinary citizens see no reason to not play assassins themselves. The violent killers in the government are the 'teachers' the ordinary/borderline insane citizens emulate.
The biggest assassins ARE the Government employees: JFK, MLK, BFK, Malcolm X, John Lennon, Timothy McVeigh, Ruby Ridge, Waco, V Tech (you better believe The Government did V Tech), ect.
Our Country has changed already. We're headed for Civil War. The days of Lone Assassins being the few unbrainwashed people living outside the Mainstream Corporate TV/Radio/Magazine Brainwashing Culture are done.
AMERICA HAS AWOKEN.
---
Some readers will be tempted to ask, "Huh?" after reading your post. I suggest you find somebody who understands, and really can help. Don't put it off. You CAN choose how all this turns out.
Forever a Hokie and proud former resident of Blacksburg.
Posted by lawandorder6 at 09:29 PM : Apr 22, 2007
Didn't the Germans take the guns from the Jews in Nazi Germany? Native Americans didn't have or use guns when they should have to keep us Europeans from stealing their lands and killling off their buffalo. No gun only makes one more helpless when another with a gun comes after the unarmed one.
Posted by LNorigby at 11:26 PM : Apr 22, 2007
Read your history. The Jews did not have any guns because they believed that Germany was a civilized and enlightened country and that nothing bad would happen to them. They had no use for guns nor would guns have saved any of them. The Nazis were very good at disguising their intentions to the Jews and the rest of the world for a long time.
Here%u2019s a novel idea. Make purchase and possession of bullets illegal. That will satisfy the intent of the 2nd Amendment and make it more difficult to kill people with guns.
Well I'm no psychologist but my guess would be for the same reason Condi read the security briefing about the 9/11 possibility and couldn't anticipate the magnitude of the destruction - human beings are social creatures and it's not in our nature to think up horrific scenarios that have never occurred before in our area of the world. The US had never been attacked before 9/11. Kids don't think shootings are going to happen in their school by kids that they know.
It's the same kind of thought process that allows one to live on an earthquake fault line and think that the big one's not going to happen in one's lifetime - sometimes you lie to yourself because if you allow every possible threat no matter how horrific to reach the level of plausibility you'd have problems functioning.
Also, I think hindsight can be deceptive - like how many false positives would result from taking action on this profile of a bullied loner who talks about wanting to kill himself, or who owns a gun if you live in the South. And what's the plan for these kids if the majority of them would have course corrected on their own but now instead end up tagged as would-be shooters and under the watch of authorities . . .
And yet I lived on a major fault line for years - how dumb was that? lol ;)
Meh, I guess we're all just doing the best we can . . . all you kids at VT it wasn't your fault - take care of yourselves and good luck. We are all thinking of you and wishing you the best! :)
Posted by karenburns2
It turns out this idea caused suicide rates to skyrocket after doctors stopped perscribing anti-depressants to at-risk teens. Perhaps that's why nobody's wanted to touch on this angle . . .
You teach whoever pays tuition, sister!"
Posted by booyaw_77
Well this is like the chicken/egg debate (like what came first, the chicken or the egg). I guess one could speculate that if he really hated this prof as opposed to people in general then wouldn't he have targeted her instead.
He paid his tuition and did not break any laws. You can't jail or expel someone because they are creepy. Lots of students come to class and don't participate. The only punishment for that is a bad grade.
At the end of the day, the only thing that can stop or minimize such horrendous crimes is to carefully follow security procedures, like locking doors after class begins or having armed security guards.
We are an open society with over 350 million people. It would impossible to stop.
We can start by doing little things like starting in grammar schools, teachers, along with parents, put a stop to the bullies who terrorize
others. So many times, the teachers do nothing to stop it. If you start with this, it may help prevent these horrific crimes. This is where the trouble starts. It may not be the answer, but it can help.
The suicide angle is very interesting and hasn't been focused on very much in the psychiatric literature as regards to homocide. We certainly see it in terrorist situations.
In Texas we are consumed by the TAKS test but we are a time bomb waiting to happen. Until we address the emotional needs of our children, we will never get them up to speed with learning. Wheather we like it our not, educators will need to be stand in parents with many.
Maybe, maybe not. The guys a loner. Possibly schizophrenic. Goes for help, and they release him. Now they got his records. His deepest, darkest, eccentric secrets. "Why is she treating me like this?"
How much of paranoia is real? How much of what a schizophrenic is afraid of is real? Not being accepted? Getting bad grades? Teachers who talk about him behind his back? Students? "They're stuck up." He said.
Could you give your only hearfelt confession and then the next day find out that everybody knows about it? And they're laughing at you?
"I'm not worthless. I'm not a loser."
If I were you, I wouldn't brag too much about the "I knew everything" if I were you.
BOOM!!
a-human-right.com
You know what might be a good start for anybody feeling alone and angry who might be reading this is to go pick up a copy of William Pollock's 'Real Boys' (the guy in the 60 Minutes piece) and read it cover to cover . . . he really understands . . . I hope this helps :)
I think sometimes people let their fear drive their actions instead of their heart and their head because even though others may look like they have it all together stress and confidence issues plague us all in a society where a socialite like Paris Hilton becomes a celebrity for making a ***-tape while the vast majority of us have to work hard and deal with lots of different people who have different agendas from ours to earn a living.
I think we all have tremendous gifts to offer society and sometimes we just have to believe in ourselves because sometimes others who look like they have it together have confidence problems too. Maybe the message from this piece is that we're never alone - the gunman was not alone even though he felt alone. Perhaps if he was schizophrenic and had managed to connect with other schizoprenics he would have seen that ultimately it wasn't anybody's fault and that the solution wasn't with guns but with medication from knowledgeable professionals.
I think sometimes people let their fear drive their actions instead of their heart and their head because even though others may look like they have it all together stress and confidence issues plague us all in a society where a socialite like Paris Hilton becomes a celebrity for making a ***-tape while the vast majority of us have to work hard and deal with lots of different people who have different agendas from ours to earn a living.
I think we all have tremendous gifts to offer society and sometimes we just have to believe in ourselves because sometimes others who look like they have it together have confidence problems too. Maybe the message from this piece is that we're never alone - the gunman was not alone even though he felt alone. Perhaps if he was schizophrenic and had managed to connect with other schizoprenics he would have seen that ultimately it wasn't anybody's fault and that the solution wasn't with guns but with medication from knowledgeable professionals.
Well, getting the right cocktail for a schizophrenic is no easy task. In fact, its very difficult. No two people are the same. And it requires months and years to find out which medication works best for them. Seroquel and Zyprexa, and a heep of other medications, that are not only mysterious in their effect, but very very expensive. And none of them rid them of their hallucinations.
In any event, it seemed that there was a lot of time needed for attention that wasn't there. And in a whole bunch of areas, besides diagnosis. Maybe humor. Maybe Cho couldn't laugh at himself. Not in a university setting, and not with nobody to talk to. He took himself too seriously.
- 1
- 2
- next
See all 56 Comments