Who could have leaked this to the Houston Post?

by **SwineForkbeard** » Sun Jul 30, 2006 3:30 am

HINCKLEYS REPORTEDLY KNOW BUSHES Author(s): Associated Press Date: March 31, 1981 The family of the man charged with trying to assassinate President Ronald Reagan is acquainted with the family of Vice President George Bush and had made large contributions to his political campaign, the Houston Post reported today. The newspaper said Scott Hinckley, brother of John W. Hinckley Jr., who allegedly shot Reagan, was to have dined tonight in Denver at the home of Neil Bush, one of the Vice President's sons. The newspaper said it was unable to reach Scott Hinckley, vice president of his father's Denver-based firm, Vanderbilt Energy Corp., for comment. Neil Bush lives in Denver, and works for Standard Oil Co. of Indiana. In 1978, Neil Bush served as campaign manager for his brother, George W. Bush, the Vice President's oldest son, who made an unsuccessful bid for Congress. Neil lived in Lubbock throughout much of 1978, where John Hinckley lived from 1974 through 1980. Yesterday Neil Bush said he did not know if he had ever met 25-year-old John Hinckley. "I have no idea," he said. "I don't recognize any pictures of him. I just wish I could see a better picture of him. Sharon Bush, Neil's wife, said Scott Hinckley was coming to their house as a date of a girl friend of hers. "I don't even know the brother. From what I know and I've heard, they (the Hinckleys) are a very nice family and have given a lot of money to the Bush campaign. I understand he was just the renegade brother in the family. They must feel awful, she said. The dinner was canceled, she added. George W. Bush said he was unsure whether he had met John W. Hinckley. "It's certainly conceivable that I met him or might have been introduced to him," he said. "I don't recognize his face from the brief, kind of distorted thing they had on TV and the name doesn't ring any bells. "I know he wasn't on our staff. I could check our volunteer rolls." Peter Teeley, the Vice President's news secretary, said he knew of no Hinckley-Bush family connection. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=swineforkbeard>SwineForkbeard</A> at: 7/30/06 1:32 am

by **gotnoscript** » Sun Jul 30, 2006 9:57 am

Copyright 1981 The New York Times Company The New York Times April 1, 1981, Wednesday, Late City Final Edition SECTION: Section A; Page 19, Column 1; National Desk LENGTH: 2692 words HEADLINE: A LIFE THAT STARTED OUT WITH MUCH PROMISE TOOK RECLUSIVE AND HOSTILE PATH BYLINE: By JOSEPH B. TREASTER BODY: For John Warnock Hinckley Jr., the youngest of the three children of a prosperous oilman, life had begun full of promise. He had grown up in a luxurious home and attended perhaps the most elite public high school in Dallas. He was a quiet boy, many friends recall, not particularly memorable, perhaps, but certainly not unfriendly or hostile. As he moved through his late teens and into early manhood, however, Mr. Hinckley's passive shyness began to shift, by the accounts of many people interviewed around the country since Mr. Hinckley was arrested Monday, to increasingly reclusive and aggressive behavior. By 1978 he had joined the American Nazi Party as a ''storm trooper.'' In the fall of 1980 he was arrested in Nashville for illegal possession of three handguns on a day when President Carter was to make a political appearance there. From time to time, he received psychiatric care. Last Oct. 13, four days after the Nashville authorities confiscated his guns, Mr. Hinckley bought a pair of .22-caliber revolvers in a Dallas pawn shop for $47 each. On Monday, Federal authorities charge, he used one of the pistols to shoot President Reagan. Today Federal investigators were sifting through the recent years of the suspect's life to determine how he might have come to attack the President and whether he might have attempted to harm any other political leaders. 'Aimlessly Wandering' for Months In recent months, Mr. Hinckley's parents reportedly told the investigators, the 25-year-old man had been ''aimlessly wandering'' the country. They had provided psychiatric care, they said in a statement, but medical evaluations had ''alerted no one to the seriousness of his condition.'' Mr. Hinckley's life apparently began to disintegrate about the time he graduated from Highland Park High School in 1973. He enrolled that fall at Texas Tech University in the West Texas panhandle town of Lubbock, studying business administration. For the next seven years, Mr. Hinckley studied off and on in the red-tile-roofed Spanish Renaissance-style buildings of the Lubbock campus, last attending classes in the spring semester of 1980 as a senior majoring in English. Mark Swafford, a former manager of the Westernaire Apartments in Lubbock, where Mr. Hinckley lived in a $175-a-month apartment from January to May 1979, said the young man had kept to himself and seemed to subsist on fast food. 'He Hit Me as Kind of Strange' ''I only saw him with another human being one time,'' Mr. Swafford said, ''He and another guy were going up to his apartment. They weren't saying anything. I'd say something to him, but he'd never say anything back. He always hit me as kind of strange.'' Once, Mr. Swafford said, he went into Mr. Hinckley's apartment to clear a clogged drain. ''Everywhere, there were bags from hamburger joints and cartons of ice cream,'' he said, ''Dozens of cartons of ice cream and junk food bags. The place was a real trash heap.'' Mr. Hinckley did not speak to him, he said. ''He just sat there the whole time, staring at the TV,'' Mr. Swafford recalled, ''That TV and a guitar were the only personal things he had.'' Interest in Writing Reported In Denver, a friend of Mr. Hinckley's father, John W. Hinckley, who is the president and chairman of the Vanderbilt Energy Corporation, an oil and gas prospecting company with annual revenues of more than $4 million, said the young man had shown an early interest in writing and music. Last fall, he applied to The Denver Post and The Rocky Mountain News for ''any writing job,'' executives of the newspapers said. The newspaper reported that Mr. Hinckley's application said he had worked previously as a salesman at a photography business in Hollywood, Calif., as an assistant in a Dallas book publishing company and as a bartender at a supper club in Lakewood, a small town just outside Denver. The Denver Post said that it had been unable to confirm any of the professed employment record. 'A Follower, Not a Leader' In his high school years in Dallas, Gregg Kalina, now an unemployed writer, had been a friend of Mr. Hinckley. ''He was a follower, not a leader, and he was basically fairly lazy,'' Mr. Kalina said. ''He didn't have too many opinions at that time in life. He was really just a bland personality, not peculiar in any way. He just wasn't a great personality, a jock or intellectual or anything that distinguishing.'' Early in 1978 Mr. Hinckley went to the Chicago headquarters of the National Socialist Party of America, often referred to as the Nazi Party of America, and was accepted as a member, according to Michael C. Allen, the president-elect of the organization. The following year, however, the organization refused to renew Mr. Hinckley's membership, Mr. Allen said, because of his ''violent nature.'' 'Talking About Shooting People' ''He kept talking about going out and shooting people and blowing things up,'' Mr. Allen said. ''When a guy comes to us advocating that, we make the assumption that he is either a nut or a Federal agent trying to entrap us. Either way, we don't want them.'' Mr. Hinckley returned to Texas, from Chicago, Mr. Allen said. But on March 12, 1978, he traveled to St. Louis to participate in a march to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the birth of George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the American Nazi Party. He was assigned as a ''storm trooper,'' Mr. Allen said, with responsibility for helping protect the Nazi speakers. The marchers were attacked with snowballs, rocks and bottles, Mr. Allen said, and Mr. Hinckley became ''flustered.'' The response, he felt, should be violence, Mr. Allen said. ''It seemed clear that if we were ever going to let him participate in other protests, we'd have to keep him in safer demonstrations or cut him loose,'' Mr. Allen said. A Book Report on 'Mein Kampf' Finally, Mr. Allen said, the party decided ''he was just uncontrollable,'' adding, ''He had an unstable attitude.'' The Dallas Times Herald reported yesterday that at one point as a student at Texas Tech, Mr. Hinckley had done an extra-credit book report on Adolf Hitler's ''Mein Kampf'' for a class in the history of modern Germany. The only arrest that has so far emerged in Mr. Hinckley's record came on Oct. 9, 1980, at the Metropolitan Airport in Nashville. As he was preparing to board an American Airlines flight for New York, security agents, using a standard luggage X-ray machine, discovered three handguns and some loose ammunition in his carry-on bag. Guns Confiscated in Nashville The guns were confiscated and Mr. Hinckley was taken to the Nashville-Davidson County jail. He was booked at 3:13 P.M., the records show, and was released at 3:47 P.M. after paying a fine of $50 plus $12.50 in court costs. Law-enforcement officials said the arrest was not reported to the Secret Service until Monday when Rubin G. Utley, the chief of security at the Nashville airport, recognized Mr. Hinckley as the accused assailant of the President and telephoned Washington. Mr. Hinckley reportedly bought one of the guns confiscated in Nashville at a pawn shop in Lubbock, Tex., in September 1980. On Oct. 13, four days after his weapons had been taken away in Nashville, he bought the weapon allegedly used to shoot the President and another .22 at Rocky's Pawn shop in Dallas. No Recollection of Suspect Federal records indicated that Mr. Hinckley had bought the guns at Rocky's. But neither Isaac Goldstein, the owner of the pawn shop, nor his son, David, who actually sold the weapons to Mr. Hinckley, could recall the young man, they said yesterday. The pawn shop, which is about a mile from the spot where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated 18 years ago, has a sign over the front door that reads, ''Guns don't cause crime any more than flies cause garbage.'' According to the Federal document that Mr. Hinckley filled out when he bought the guns in Dallas, he indicated that he did not use narcotics and that he had not been convicted of a felony. He also indicated that he had never been committed to a mental institution. Affluent, Extroverted Family Mr. Hinckley, blond and blue-eyed, grew up in an affluent, extroverted family, active in its church and its community. His parents are devout Christians who attend weekly Bible reading class and prayer meetings in the exclusive Rocky Mountain suburb of Evergreen, Colorado, said friends. Their rambling, $250,000 cedar and stone home with a three-car garage sits on a pine-covered knoll overlooking the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, a short distance from the Hiwan Country Club where both Mr. Hinckley's father, who is known as Jack, and his mother, Joanne, play golf. They have lived in Evergreen for seven years. ''Whatever happened,'' said Richard Alexander, a friend of Mr. Hinckley's parents, ''was 180 degrees from what Jack stood for.'' Jack Hinckley had been a petroleum engineer in Ardsmore, Okla., when his son, John Jr., was born on May 29, 1955. When the boy was an infant, the family moved to Dallas. The elder Mr. Hinckley worked for two small oil companies there before starting his own company in 1970, with $120,000 that he had borrowed from friends. He called his company Hinckley Oil and later changed the name to the Vanderbilt Energy Corporation. Father's Volunteer Work The elder Mr. Hinckley, a conservative Republican and a long-time supporter for President Reagan, served for a time as a volunteer in Africa for World Vision, a California-based Christian relief service group.  The eldest Hinckley child, Scott, 30, is the vice president of the his father's company and a friend of Neil Bush, the son of Vice President Bush. Scott Hinckley and a date had been invited to dinner at the young Bushes' home last night, but the dinner was canceled after the shooting. Mr. Hinckley's sister, Diane, 28, is a former cheerleader now married to Stephen Sims, a Dallas insurance underwriter.  In Dallas, the Hinckleys first lived in a home that had formerly been the parsonage of a Methodist Church in a middle-class residential community within the city, known as University Park. When Mr. Hinckley was 11, the family moved again, but this time just a few blocks south to an exclusive enclave in Dallas, Highland Park. There they lived in a large, two-story stone house with a circular drive and a swimming pool on the community's most exclusive street. Huge oak and magnolia trees and stunning pink and white azalea bushes line the roads. The Shadow of His Siblings In Highland Park, Mr. Hinckley is remembered as a quiet child who lived in the shadow of his older brother and sister. He played the guitar, and developed, as did so many of his contemporaries, an interest in rock-and roll. Friends from Mr. Hinckley's early years remember a youth who was, until adolescence, outgoing and an active participant in sports, clubs, and various activities in elementary school. Later, they said, he seemed more detached. ''As he got up to junior high school, he didn't get into any activities,'' recalled Bill Griffith, a boyhood friend. By the time he reached high school, he had slipped into the background of student life. Remembered as 'Middle-of-the-Roader' Mr. Hinckley is not remembered as an introvert or a recluse in high school, just as a ''middle-of-the-roader,'' in the words of another former classmate, David Wildman. Mr. Hinckley's family has refused to talk with reporters, but in a formal statement shortly after his arrest they said, ''We love our son John and we will of course stand by him.'' Clarence M. Netherland, a director of Jack Hinckley's company, recalled that about three years ago, the young Mr. Hinckley had dropped out of sight for some months and his father ''was greatly concerned and visibly upset that he had lost contact with John.'' He said Mr. Hinckley had worried that ''John would not surface, that he had gone somewhere with his guitar to make his mark in the music world.'' About three months ago, he said, Mr. Hinckley's father seemed encouraged that his son was back in Denver, working part-time. ''Something happened to that boy in the last six to eight years time to break him from the family tradition and the family lifestyle,'' Mr. Netherland said. Mr. Hinckley turned up about a month ago at the Golden Hours Motel in Lakewood, Colo., on the outskirts of Denver. He stayed in the motel in a $74.20-a-week room from March 8 to March 23, leaving just a week before the attempt to assassinate President Reagan. Owed Money at Hotel He occupied Room No. 30, a single room with a color television and telephone, and paid the weekly room rental in cash. When he left a week ago Monday, he owed a balance of $55.40 and did not check out, according to Johnny Lee, the motel owner and manager. Ginger Aucourt, maid and supervisor at the motel, described Mr. Hinckley as a ''very neat, very quiet'' guest - ''nice looking, clean cut, clean shaven - just what you'd consider your all-American boy.'' He drove a late-model Plymouth Volare, which bore black-and white Texas licence plates, and he gave his home as Lubbock, Tex. He had, said Mrs. Aucourt, few possessions other than blue jeans, casual shirts, a taped music player and a dozen or so tapes. He was never hostile or withdrawn, she said, always ''pleasant.'' ''We talked to him every day,'' she said. ''We talked about music, we talked about the weather, we talked about Texas - he said he was from Dallas, and I'm from San Antonio. He never talked about hisself , his family, politics or religion.'' Comings and Goings at Motel Mr. Hinckley told her he was working part time at a record shop in a nearby shopping center. He came and went at strange hours, which she attributed to the requirements of his job. But she later learned that although Mr. Hinckley had applied for that job, he had never been hired. She said he always got his food from a McDonald's across the street, and always ate alone. ''He didn't strike you as the type of kid who'd shoot anything, anybody,'' she added. On March 11, Mr.Hinckley appeared at a Denver pawn shop called G.I. Joe's discount music center, and pawned his guitar and an almost-new typewriter for $50. Steve Wright, manager of the pawn shop, said yesterday that ''he seemed strange. He was quiet, not friendly, not rude.'' But he did not seem to know anything about guitars. ''It struck me a little funny,'' Mr. Wright said, who was worried that the guitar might have been stolen. He checked with the Denver police, though, said Mr. Wright, and found no indication that the instrument had been stolen. So after haggling a bit, he bought both the guitar and the typewriter for half of the $100 that Mr. Hinckley first demanded. Mr. Wright remembers that he asked ''a couple of questions, I don't remember them, including where the bus station was.'' Federal authorities said Mr. Hinckley told them he arrived in Washington by bus on Sunday. He checked into the Park Central Hotel, directly across the street from the headquarters of the Secret Service and about two blocks from the White House. Then on Monday afternoon, he made his way to Washington Hilton Hotel and joined a crowd of reporters waiting outside for the President. GRAPHIC: Illustrations: Photo of John Hinckley Photo of pawn shop in Dallas Document 1 of 1. Terms and Conditions | Privacy Copyright © 2006 LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All Rights Reserved.