The day Truman was shot (at)

Annals of Assassination

Harry Truman never lost the habits he acquired as a boy in rural Missouri. He awoke early, worked hard all morning, had his midday meal, and retired for an afternoon nap. Travel and other disruptions sometimes compelled a change in routine, but Truman got back on schedule as soon as he could.

The biggest disruption of his life occurred when Franklin Roosevelt suddenly died in April 1945, making Vice President Truman America’s chief executive. He adjusted to his new role and his new home, the White House, only to be turned out in 1948 when major renovations of the deteriorating executive mansion began. His new digs were Blair House, across Pennsylvania Avenue and slightly to the west.

Blair House posed a problem for the Secret Service, in that it lacked the setback from the street the White House enjoyed. Pedestrians could stroll directly beneath the president’s second floor bedroom, and anyone across the street could see into the window where Truman would stand and look out.

On November 1, 1950, Truman had just settled in for his afternoon nap when two men approached the front of Blair House. Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola were members of a radical Puerto Rican nationalist movement determined to win independence for the island.

The nationalists had a serious political problem: their movement was very unpopular in Puerto Rico, where a large majority of residents favored continued attachment to the United States. And so they resorted to that standard device of unpopular radicals: terrorism. Collazo and Torresola hoped to assassinate Truman or die trying, thereby provoking an overreaction by U.S. authorities which would alienate Puerto Ricans and create sympathy for the cause of independence.

The two split up. Torresola approached the front of Blair House from the west, while Collazo came from the east. Collazo wasn’t familiar with the pistol he carried; Torresola had to instruct him in its use. Collazo walked toward a Capitol police officer, Donald Birdzell, who was standing on the front steps of the house and facing the other direction at that moment; Collazo pulled his gun and squeezed the trigger. But he had failed to ensure that there was a round in the chamber of the gun, and it didn’t fire. Birdzell turned when he heard the sound, by which time Collazo had corrected his error. He managed to get off a shot that struck Birdzell in the knee.

The shooting distracted a second policeman, Leslie Coffelt, allowing Torresola to get close enough to fire four shots from a few feet away. Coffelt was badly wounded but not quite incapacitated. Torresola continued firing, hitting another police officer in the hip, neck and back.

The noise of the shots drew several Secret Service officers from their stations inside the house. The most intense gun battle in the history of the Secret Service ensued, with as many as thirty shots being fired in less than a minute. Torresola was killed by a bullet to the head from Coffelt, who fired the shot before passing out from loss of blood. Coffelt died in the hospital a few hours later.

Collazo was wounded but not fatally. He was charged with murder and attempted murder, and was convicted and sentenced to execution.

Truman handled the whole affair with aplomb. He responded to the initial gun shots by going to the window and looking out—that is, by doing exactly the wrong thing. But once warned of the danger in which he had put himself, he immediately retreated. He continued with his daily schedule. He remarked that he had been shot at during World War I, and that the danger of assassination was part of the job of the presidency. Indeed he had already survived one attempt on his life, when letter bombs sent by the Jewish terrorist Stern gang were intercepted and disarmed.

And when the trial of Collazo had concluded and the sentence been pronounced, he commuted it to life in prison. He felt no compassion for the terrorist, but he didn't want to make a martyr out of him.

Truman proceeded to call for a plebiscite in Puerto Rico, to let the people there express their views. More than 80 percent favored the existing relationship with the United States.

Collazo himself declared that there had been nothing personal in the attempt on Truman's life. The president, he said, was simply a symbol of the system. "You don't attack the man; you attack the system."

The man survived: Truman completed his second term and retired. The system survived: Puerto Rico today remains much as it was then. In the most recent referendum on independence, in 2017, the independence vote totaled less than 2 percent. In fact, a growing number of Puerto Ricans want a closer association with the United States, namely statehood.

And Collazo survived his prison sentence. Jimmy Carter ordered his release in 1979.