Blink

potential assailant. The more white space there is, the more
time the bodyguard has to react. And the more time the
bodyguard has, the better his ability to read the mind of any
potential assailant. But in the Hinckley shooting, there was no
white space. Hinckley was in a knot of reporters who were
standing within a few feet of the President. The Secret Service
agents became aware of him only when he starting firing. From
the first instance when Reagan’s bodyguards realized that an
attack was under way — what is known in the security business
as the moment of recognition — to the point when no further
harm was done was 1.8 seconds. “The Reagan attack involves
heroic reactions by several people,” de Becker says.
“Nonetheless, every round was still discharged by Hinckley. In
other words, those reactions didn’t make one single difference,
because he was too close. In the videotape you see one
bodyguard. He gets a machine gun out of his briefcase and
stands there. Another has his gun out, too. What are they going
to shoot at? It’s over.” In those 1.8 seconds, all the bodyguards
could do was fall back on their most primitive, automatic (and,
in this case, useless) impulse — to draw their weapons. They
had no chance at all to understand or anticipate what was
happening. “When you remove time,” de Becker says, “you are