Lone Wolf Terrorism (21 page)

LEON CZOLGOSZ AND THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT WILLIAM McKINLEY (1901)

At the dawn of the twentieth century, the United States was in the midst of building a powerful empire overseas while dealing with continuing labor strife at home. The United States had acquired the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico, and had become the protectorate of Cuba, following a three-month war with Spain in 1898, and it had also sent troops to China in 1900 to put down the Boxer Rebellion.
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But the foreign policy of the United States was not the major concern for a young man who was the son of working-class immigrants from Prussia. Leon Czolgosz was concerned most with what was happening inside America, and he didn't like it.

Czolgosz was born in Michigan in 1873 and spent most of his young life working in factories and mills. It was a time of escalating conflicts between labor and management in the United States, including the 1886 Haymarket Square bombing in Chicago that killed eleven people, with seven policemen among the casualties. Several anarchists were arrested, tried, and convicted. Four anarchists were hanged, and one committed suicide in his cell, even though there was no evidence linking any of them to the bombing. This angered many in the labor movement, including those who were just working in the factories, such as the teenaged Czolgosz.
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He became further radicalized as time went on and additional violent incidents occurred between labor and industry. Losing his job at a steel mill due to a strike and being blacklisted afterward left an indelible
mark on the young Czolgosz. He saw former coworkers in the same situation forced to leave town in the hopes of finding work, while those who stayed would hang around street corners hoping to hear about potential jobs. His brother would recall that it made Czolgosz “quiet and not so happy” and that he began to question his prospects for a good life.
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He ultimately came to believe “that the oppressive American corporate structure could only be changed through revolution.”
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Czolgosz was drawn to the writings and speeches of the anarchists and ultimately considered himself to be one of them. Anarchists called for the rejection of authority and the elimination of existing political, economic, and religious institutions. While some anarchists practiced the “propaganda by deed” credo, most anarchists in the United States were opposed to bombings, assassinations, and other violent acts. They believed that violence would only turn the public against their movement and that it would also be at odds with the utopian ideals of anarchism.
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Czolgosz, however, came to believe that violence was justified. He attended a speech by the famed anarchist Emma Goldman in Cleveland in May 1901. Although Goldman told the crowd that anarchists were opposed to violence to achieve their ends, she understood why some anarchists rejected that approach. She said that some people were so consumed with passion that they could not sit back and do nothing as they watch injustices being committed. The speech “overwhelmed Czolgosz” and gave him the “inspiration” he needed to become one of those who would not sit idly by. “He hadn't worked [it] out exactly, and probably only vaguely understood what it meant,” writes author Scott Miller, “but Czolgosz seemed from this night on to have resolved to pursue the life of a radical social revolutionary.”
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The anarchists, however, wanted no part of Czolgosz. He was viewed suspiciously by those he met, with some believing he was a government infiltrator. He asked too many questions, wanted to be introduced to other anarchists around the country, and was advocating violence that not all the anarchists prescribed to. The editor of a major
anarchist newspaper,
Free Society
, felt compelled to warn others about Czolgosz on September 1, 1901. After giving a physical description of Czolgosz and claiming he was a government spy, the editor wrote, “His demeanor is of the usual sort, pretending to be greatly interested in the cause, asking for names or soliciting aid for acts of contemplated violence. If this same individual makes his appearance elsewhere, the comrades are warned in advance and can act accordingly.”
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Having been rebuffed by those he admired and wanted to join, Czolgosz took matters into his own hands. There was speculation that the assassination of President McKinley may have been motivated, in part, by the
Free Society
warning about Czolgosz, who likely read it and then wanted to prove himself to be a loyal anarchist. He stated after his arrest that “something I read in
Free Society
suggested the idea.” However, he never indicated that it was the warning about him that made him take action against the president. As political scientist Clarke notes: “The overall pattern of his behavior suggests that he had the assassination in mind long before the notice [about him] appeared.”
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On September 6, 1901, Czolgosz was among the first standing in a reception line that was being allowed to greet McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. He had intended to kill McKinley the day before when the president gave a speech at the exposition, but he was too far back in the crowd to attempt a shot. He even followed McKinley when the president and his party took a short sightseeing trip to Niagara Falls on the day of the assassination, but again, Czolgosz couldn't get near the president to carry out his nefarious plot.
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When McKinley returned to the exposition to shake peoples' hands, however, Czolgosz was ready. He hid his .32-caliber pistol in his right hand, which was wrapped in a handkerchief. He approached McKinley as if to shake his hand but instead shot the president twice, in the chest and abdomen. Czolgosz was wrestled to the ground as an angry crowd shouted its desire to lynch him.
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The nation was spared the ordeal of seeing another president suffer a slow and agonizing death, as was the case with President Garfield. Nevertheless, it still took eight days for McKinley to die.

There would not be a lengthy trial, as there had been in the case of Charles Guiteau, the assassin of Garfield. Czolgosz was tried and convicted in a two-day trial that began on September 23, 1901. He was sentenced to death and executed by electric chair just a month later. The assassin hardly spoke during his short trial. He frustrated his lawyers, two former New York State Supreme Court judges who didn't really want the case but were nevertheless appointed by the trial judge. Addressing the jury, one of the lawyers, Loran Lewis, lamented, “Now, gentlemen, we have not been able to present any evidence upon our part. The defendant has even refused on almost every occasion to even talk with his counsel [and] he has not aided us.”
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Lewis also wanted everyone to know how much he despised being Czolgosz's lawyer. “I wish to say that I am accepting this assignment against my will,” he said earlier at Czolgosz's arraignment, “and while it is more repugnant to me than my poor words can tell, I promise to present whatever defense the accused may have.”
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That defense would be insanity. Lewis tried in vain to convince the jury that his client should be acquitted because he was not sane:

All that I can say, to aid you, is that every human being…has a strong desire to live. Death is a spectre that we all dislike to meet, and here this defendant, without having any animosity against our President, without any motive, so far as we can see, personal motive, we find him going into this building, in the presence of these hundreds of people, and committing an act which, if he was sane, must cause his death. How, could a man, with some mind, perform such an act? Of course, the rabble in the street would say, “No matter whether he is insane or sane, he deserves to be killed at once,” but the law says, no; the law says, consider all the circumstances and see whether the man was in his right mind or not.
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Lewis's precedent for making his argument was the M'Naghten Rule, which the courts generally followed as the test of criminal insanity. It basically stated that a defendant is insane if, at the time of the incident, he did not know what he was doing and did not know that
it was wrong.
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Czolgosz, though, gave every indication in statements he made to police and doctors before the trial that he knew the difference between right and wrong, and contrary to his lawyer's claim that he did not have any animosity toward McKinley, it was clear that he harbored deep resentment against the president.
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He had informed the police that he believed it was his “duty” to shoot McKinley. He was upset with what he described as the president's indifference and hostility toward the working people of this country. “I didn't believe,” he said, “[that] one man should have so much and another should have none.”
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Czolgosz told doctors who examined him that “McKinley was going around the country shouting prosperity when there was no prosperity for the poor man. I am not afraid to die. We all have to die sometime.”
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He also told the doctors that “I don't believe in the Republican form of government and I don't believe we should have any rulers. It is right to kill them.”
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Finally, he gave the prosecution all that it needed for a conviction when he said before the trial began: “I fully understood what I was doing when I shot the President. I realized I was sacrificing my life. I am willing to take the consequences.”
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The consequences of his act of violence were enormous for many parties. For Czolgosz, of course, it meant death. For the anarchists, it led to a government crackdown on the movement that could best be described as the equivalent of contemporary society's “war on terrorism.” This time, though, it was a war on anarchism, with the new president, Theodore Roosevelt, denouncing anarchism in his first State of the Union Address in December 1901 as “a crime against the whole human race.” He added that “all mankind should band against the anarchist.” Roosevelt said that an anarchist

is not the victim of social or political injustice. There are no wrongs to remedy in his case. The cause of his criminality is to be found in his own evil passions and in the evil conduct of those who urge him on, not in any failure by others or by the state to do justice to him or his. He is a malefactor and nothing else. He is in no sense, in no shape or way, a product of social conditions…. Anarchist speeches, writings, and meetings are essentially seditious and treasonable.
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Congress responded to Roosevelt's address by passing an immigration law in March 1903 that excluded from American shores “anarchists, or persons who believe in or advocate the overthrow by force or violence of the Government of the United States, or of all government, or of all forms of law, or the assassination of public officials.”
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The assassination of McKinley also led to a new era of social reform in America. “If any assassination can be said to have changed history,” writes historian Lindsey Porter, “McKinley's at least brought to public attention the social conditions of America's immigrant poor and paved the way for the policies of his successor, Theodore Roosevelt, and the Progressive Era.”
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Those policies included increased government regulation of business, such as the breaking up of monopolies and the protection of workers and consumers, and conservation polices, such as the establishment of several national forests and national parks. In foreign affairs, Roosevelt was more aggressive than McKinley, who was reluctant to go to war with Spain in 1898. Roosevelt's “walk softly and carry a big stick” policy sought to expand American power throughout the world, and he took every occasion possible to demonstrate to other nations the growing influence of the United States. For example, he once sent several warships to Morocco to demand the release of what was thought to be an American hostage, but it turned out to be an individual who had actually given up his US citizenship years before. Meanwhile, one of the crowning achievements of the Roosevelt presidency was the building of the Panama Canal.

One can only speculate on how much America was changed by the single terrorist act of a lone wolf assassin. It appears, though, that McKinley would most likely not have initiated the domestic reforms and tougher stance against big business that Roosevelt did and would not have been as assertive overseas as the new president. It also seems reasonable to argue that any hopes the anarchist movement had for increasing its ranks and getting its message across to the American people were dashed with the assassination and the wave of antianarchist sentiment that swept across the nation afterward.

LEE HARVEY OSWALD AND THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY (1963)

No assassination in American history has spurred more interest and more conspiracy theories than the killing of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. Gerald Posner, author of the bestselling book
Case Closed
, observed in 1993 that more than two thousand books had been written about that tragic day in Dallas, with most of them attacking the government-appointed Warren Commission's finding that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin.
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There have probably been hundreds more written in the ensuing decades. And in today's computer age, conspiracy theorists can find outlets for their views on the assassination by posting blogs, articles, and other material on the Internet.

The fascination with the Kennedy assassination can be attributed to its special place in American history. Despite the fact that there had been an assassination attempt on President Harry S. Truman in 1950 by Puerto Rican separatists, most Americans by the early 1960s were not thinking about their leaders being the target of assassinations or other acts of political violence. In one respect, the public's mind-set was similar to that of the American people in the early 1990s, when it was thought that the US homeland was insulated from the terrorism that was rampant around the world. It took the truck bombing at the World Trade Center in 1993 to shatter that illusion, just as the JFK assassination shattered the illusion that the United States would not experience the political assassinations and other acts of terrorism that were common in other countries.