On Crowd-Pumping and Bravery

As President Ford planned to go parading in West Virginia, four former presidential candidates appeared before a Senate subcommittee last week to belittle the political impact of such showboating and crowd-pumping. "I shook 5,000 hands in one day and got the hell beat out of me," Republican Senator Barry Goldwater bluntly told the group, which was holding public hearings on how to reduce the risk of assassination attempts. He added: "I question whether any candidate, especially an incumbent, really has to get out and shake hands."

So why do candidates and Presidents do it? "Most of it is done to accommodate the photographers," Democrat Hubert Humphrey frankly told the committee. "We want the pictures showing all those hands reaching out." But, he said, "it is not necessary." Democratic Senator George McGovern saw three reasons why such touring is so popular:

"1) It is symbolic of getting close to the people; 2) it raises the candidate's own spirits--there is no greater tonic than to go out and shake hands with a lot of smiling people who are potential voters; 3) and now, to prove you're brave."

Insisted the soundly defeated 1972 candidate: "None are very good reasons.

None have much to do with the national interest."

What should be done to reduce the risk? McGovern suggested that a dialogue between President and people could better be accomplished by give-and-take discussions with community groups in more easily protected auditoriums. He urged more television debates and press conferences. Goldwater said simply: "I want my President to stay in the White House."

Goldwater favored stiffer punishments. Anyone found carrying even an unloaded gun near a President should be given a mandatory ten-year term on top of any other judicial sentence, he said. Democratic Senator Edmund Muskie objected to electronic screening and suggested that the best practical measure is to get the candidates to "limit themselves much more than they do."

Humphrey urged that any people who give "any indication that they might commit an act of personal injury" to a President should be followed "like a shadow--like a private eye."

Futile Attempts. That is often impossible, but it certainly was not attempted by the Secret Service in the case of Sara Jane Moore. Subcommittee Chairman Joseph Montoya demanded to know why. Although Secret Service agents interviewed her for 90 minutes the night before she shot at Ford, Moore "exhibited no mental aberrations that would give us reason" to follow her, according to the testimony of James T.

Burke, the agency's assistant director for intelligence. Special Agent Gary S. Yauger, who led the questioning of Moore, said she showed "no animosity to the President or the Ford Administration" and no "sign of mental instability." He added: "With the facts I had at the time of Sara Jane's interview, I definitely don't think I was wrong, and I'd make the same decision [again]."

Nevertheless, in retrospect, the agents were guilty of "erroneous human judgment," as Montoya termed it. Moore's futile last-minute attempts in three telephone calls to reach the agents again on the morning of the shooting make the agency appear to have been lax. Yet Moore on each call apparently expressed no urgency. In one call at 8 a.m. she reached only an answering service, and on the other two calls she reached low-level clerks who were wholly unaware of who she was or what she wanted.

The hearing failed to resolve the conflict between the Secret Service and San Francisco Police Inspector Jack O'Shea. The inspector said he had warned both the FBI and the Secret Service that "she might be another Squeaky Fromme." O'Shea testified that he had a photograph of Moore enlarged and six prints made for the Secret Service, but that they were not picked up by the agents. In what appears to have been a misunderstanding, the agents thought O'Shea was unconcerned about any danger from Moore. "Do we need anything else, do we have a problem?" Yauger recalled asking O'Shea, who replied "No." O'Shea explained that he thought he was replying "No" to the question "Is there anything else?"

One step apparently will be taken: President Ford last week asked Congress for an extra $11 million for the agency, mainly to hire 150 new agents and, beginning immediately, help it guard all Democratic presidential candidates who wish such protection. Congress is certain to approve the request soon.

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