An interloper is shot The man walking along the sidewalk next to the 8-foot-high fence that
separates the South Lawn from tourists and placard wavers seemed
suspicious. When the Secret Service officers approached him, he
allegedly reached into his coat and turned on them with a loaded
12-gauge sawed-off shotgun. One agent quickly drew his service revolver
and fired, wounding the would-be gunman in the right arm. The interloper, David A. Mahonski, 25, an unemployed electrician from
Williamsport, Pa., was no stranger to White House guards, who had
observed him on the grounds and questioned him earlier that week. In
court, Mahonski burst out that he had “been down to the White
House to ask the President to order the FBI to take that bug out of my
ear.” U.S.
intelligence agencies, he rambled on, had planted a “bug in my ear
that transmits everything I think across the country.”
The President, Mahonski concluded, “had certain elements of this
society fill me full of dangerous drugs . . . that take my judgment like
the Communists would, and ruined my life.” Mahonski was charged
with assault on a federal officer and sent to St. Elizabeths Hospital
for a 30-day psychiatric evaluation.
