There is a silly meme making the rounds ox X, suggesting that there were no assassination attempts against US presidents like Bill Clinton.
The reality is of course different:
- January 21, 1994: Ronald Gene Barbour, a retired military officer and freelance writer, plotted to kill Clinton while the president was jogging. Barbour returned to Florida a week later without having fired the shots at the president, who was on a state visit to Russia. Barbour was sentenced to five years in prison and was released in 1998.
- October 29, 1994: Francisco Martin Duran fired at least 29 shots with a 7.62×39mm Type 56 semi-automatic rifle at the White House from a fence overlooking the North Lawn, thinking that Clinton was among the men in dark suits standing there (Clinton was inside). Three tourists, Harry Rakosky, Ken Davis and Robert Haines, tackled Duran before he could injure anyone. Found to have a suicide note in his pocket, Duran was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
- November 1994: Osama bin Laden recruited Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, to attempt to assassinate Clinton. However, Yousef decided that security would be too effective and decided to target Pope John Paul II instead.
- November 24, 1996: During his visit to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Manila, Clinton’s motorcade was rerouted before it was to drive over a bridge. Secret Service officers had intercepted a message suggesting that an attack was imminent, and Lewis Merletti, the director of the Secret Service, ordered the motorcade to be re-routed. An intelligence team later discovered a bomb under the bridge. Subsequent U.S. investigation “revealed that [the plot] was masterminded by a Saudi terrorist living in Afghanistan named Osama bin Laden”.
- October 2018: A package containing a pipe bomb addressed to his wife Hillary Clinton and sent to their home in Chappaqua, New York, was intercepted by the Secret Service. It was one of several mailed to other Democratic leaders in the same week, including former president Barack Obama. Bill Clinton was at the Chappaqua home when the package was intercepted, while Hillary was in Florida campaigning for Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections. Fingerprint DNA revealed that the package was sent by Florida resident Cesar Sayoc, who was captured two days after the package was intercepted. Prosecutors sought a life sentence for Sayoc, but the judge instead sentenced him to 20 years.
