Abraham Lincoln Quotes
No vigilance could keep them out….A conspiracy to assassinate, if there were such, could easily obtain a pass to see me for any one or more of its instruments.
Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1865, 16th President of the United States (Republican, IL), Observation on Presidential Security
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
See Banjamin Disraeli for an earlier expression of this idea.
The reference was to Iraq president Sadaam Hussein. The CIA had determined his location and to implement the George W. Bush administration’s policy of regime change, the Air Force had been ordered to send two Stealth Bombers with “bunker buster” bombs to assassinate Sadaam. The mission was completed flawlessly and both planes hit the target destroying it completely. However, it turned out that the CIA intelligence was inaccurate, and Sadaam was not at the location. This quotation is often used to illustrate the problem of believing early action reports and the fallibility of CIA intelligence at the time.
The motivations and willingness to die of the suicide bomber is not unique to Islamic terrorists. On occasion our CIA has used the technique. Official CIA instructions on “lost assassination” were distributed within the agency and sometimes to our “allies” who we were training.
The President was attending the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo and planned to hold a reception after his speech. His staff urged him to cancel the reception because he might be exposed to danger:. McKinley was assassinated at the reception.
There was no formal Secret Service protection for the president in 1864. The Marshall of the District of Columbia was an old friend of President Lincoln's and he assumed some responsibility for his security. When he heard that the president was planning on attending the theater accompanied only by Senator Charles Sumner and the elderly Prussian minister, the Marshall was disparaging of their defensive abilities.
Pinkerton worked out a plan to spirit Lincoln through Baltimore where he had to change trains.
Abraham Lincoln was an American politician and lawyer who served as the 16th President of the United States from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Lincoln led the United States through its Civil War—its bloodiest war and its greatest moral, constitutional, and political crisis. In doing so, he preserved the Union, abolished slavery, strengthened the federal government, and modernized the economy.
