"Puerto Rico Is Not Free"

To W. Swem Elgin, the doorkeeper, the three people at the door -two dark young men and an attractive woman -were just three more visitors to be admitted to the half-filled spectators' gallery of the U.S. House of Representatives. Timidly, they asked if they might go into the Ladies' Gallery and watch the Congressmen at work. "You got any cameras?" asked Elgin. The three said they had not. He motioned them through the swinging doors.

The chamber was quiet: 243 members had just answered a quorum call, and Speaker Joe Martin was counting the ayes on a standing vote on a rule to provide two hours of debate on a bill regarding Mexican immigrants. In the gallery, the woman and her companions took back-row seats, observed the proceedings for a minute or two. Then all three whipped out German automatic pistols. The woman opened fire first, walking down the aisle to the front of the gallery, holding her pistol with both hands. "Puerto Rico is not free!" she screamed. The men opened fire a moment later, spraying bullets all over the chamber, pausing only to reload.

In a matter of seconds it was all over. The woman in the gallery, jabbering in Spanish, waved a Puerto Rican flag, bolted for the door after her fleeing companions. The House was in an uproar, and five members were writhing and bleeding from bullet wounds.

"My God, This Is Real!" At the first sound of gunfire, most Congressmen thought that it was a prank -a string of firecrackers or a cap pistol. The shots pinged everywhere. Two hit the ceiling, nicking off fist-sized chunks of plaster. Another bored a one-inch hole in the Republican legislative table, stinging the face of Republican Whip Leslie Arends with splinters, showering bits of wood on three California Congressmen who were piled up underneath the table. Other members dropped to the floor. Shouted Representative Benjamin James of Pennsylvania: "My God, this is real!"

New Jersey's Charles A, Wolverton remained standing. Said he: "I didn't fall. I just stood there. There was no place to go because the floor was full of Congressmen." Added Representative George Long, brother of the assassinated Huey: "Someone behind me yelled, 'Those are just in play.' I said, 'The hell they are. Those are bullets.' So I got behind the Speaker's desk." When the woman directed her fire toward him, Speaker Martin pressed back behind a column.

Big Ben Jensen of Iowa was standing directly under the Ladies' Gallery when the shooting began. He staggered, hit by a bullet that was intended for Martin. Jensen gasped, "They got me," and tottered through a door into the Speaker's Lobby. There he fell on his back in a widening pool of blood. Michigan's Alvin Bentley was standing by his seat in the third row when a bullet ripped into his chest. He slumped to his seat, then toppled over unconscious in the well of the House.

Cliff Davis of Tennessee was hit by a bullet that passed through his leg. Another slug landed in the hip of Maryland's George Fallon. A third pierced the thigh of Alabama's Kenneth Roberts.

"My Life I Give." Tennessee's Percy Priest rushed to Roberts' side and fashioned a tourniquet from his necktie and fountain pen. Representatives Walter Judd and Arthur Miller, physicians, gave first aid to Bentley, before the Capitol's medical staff reached the scene.

On the gallery floor, Foreign Affairs Committee Clerk Boyd Crawford heard the shots crack out, raced into the corridor just in time to see the first gunman emerge from the gallery, gun in hand. Crawford, an amateur marksman, lunged for the pistol, jammed his finger into the trigger guard, and with the aid of a bystander, knocked the man to the tiled floor. A page boy and three Congressmen, assisted by a crowd of outraged spectators, subdued and disarmed the other two.

The three hustled off to jail were Lolita Lebron, Rafael Cancel Miranda and Andres Figueroa Cordero -all members of the terrorist Nationalist party of Puerto Rico, the same group that made the attempt to storm Blair House and assassinate Harry Truman in 1950. A fourth member of the gang was picked up at a bus terminal. The four had left New York that morning, buying one-way railroad tickets in the expectation that they would lose their lives. In the woman's handbag, police found a penciled suicide note. "Before God, and the world," it said, "my blood claims for the independence of Puerto Rico. My life I give for the freedom of my country. This is a cry for victory in our strugle for independence . . ." On the back of the note was scrawled: "I take responsible for all."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.