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The Rules of Public Figure Attack

The analogy of team sports and protection weakens when it comes to rules. In sports, the rules are agreed upon and then honored equally by all competitors. Not so in attacks on protected persons. Favorably, however, and perhaps surprisingly, it is protectors and not attackers who have the most influence on the rules of public figure attack.

Just as in sports, there's a court or field, a definable space that will be the setting for the protector/attacker contest. Ideally, protectors will determine the line from which an attacker must start. This is done by modifying environments with cordons, rope-lines, barricades, tables, and through manned enforcement of these boundaries. Protectors can usually decide where people will be located within these boundaries, where they will wait, line up, sit, and stand -- and these decisions become the rules. Those who deviate from these rules call attention to themselves. We want that call for attention to occur at the earliest possible moment, which usually means from the farthest possible distance.

As we've seen in earlier chapters, nearly everything in protection is indivisibly linked to the always-present factor of time. Space too derives most of its significance from the time it takes to traverse it. But space is also relevant to our mission in several important ways that are independent of time:

1. Accuracy.
   The amount of space between attacker and target -- the distance -- profoundly influences attacker accuracy. The Compendium cases show that
   attackers who fired handguns at targets within 25 feet usually hit their targets. Attackers who fired handguns at targets farther away than 25 feet almost never hit their targets.
   (We say
   almost
   never as a concession to the possibility that there might have been a successful handgun attack on a protected person from greater than 25 feet that did not turn up in our research.) The likelihood of a successful handgun assassination at greater than 25 feet is vanishingly low. It's not that a good shot can't be made at that distance; it's just that no assassin we're aware of has made that shot. Not only handgun attacks are influenced by distance; all types of attack are more difficult from farther away than they are from closer.
   
2. Method of Attack.
   Distance helps to limit the attack methods available. Close in, an attacker might successfully use a knife, handgun, long gun, sword, injection device, hammer, axe, explosive, poison, or fist -- but if he is farther away than 25 feet, the list of attack options narrows profoundly.
   
3. Access Control.
   Strategic use of space allows protectors to compel people to be far from the protectee (e.g., access control backstage at an event, limiting access at the front of the stage, access control at the protectee's work location or home, enforcing manned boundaries around the protectee while moving in public). Strategic use of space allows protectors to allow access only to those who are authorized to be present, and, in the best situations, those who have been screened for weapons. Many of the successful attacks in the Compendium would have failed had access to the attacker's staging point been allowed only to people who were screened and authorized (
   Oswald #5
   ,
   RFK #10
   ,
   Wallace #13
   ,
   Reagan #25
   ,
   Sadat #106
   ,
   Seles #213
   ,
   Rabin #251
   , for example).
   
4. Vantage.
   Vantage is the commanding perspective and comprehensive view that can provide advantage. When assessing vantage, ask yourself: Who has the higher elevation? What obstacles are between attacker and target that might benefit one or the other? Who is helped by the relative illumination (for example, is the target illuminated and the attacker in the dark)?
   
5. Concealment.
   Situations and settings that allow an attacker to be hidden or to hide intent afford the opportunity to attack without sending much of a signal. Perhaps the most chilling example is that of the Parliamentary page who leaned in close to South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd as he sat in Parliament. Appearing to deliver a message, this assassin was actually stabbing the Prime Minister to death. Though the protectee knew he was being attacked, the assassination was complete before protectors knew anything was wrong (
   Compendium #72
   ).
   

Unlike time, which is an unchangeable constant, each of these factors above can be influenced by protectors. During advance arrangements protectors can select (or at least influence the selection of) holding rooms, foot-routes, temporary accommodations, and, most important of all, vehicle staging and public arrival areas. These critical arrival/departure situations (when the target is in or around the car) carry the greatest likelihood of attack -- and the greatest likelihood of attacker success. Part of mitigating the risk inherent in being in transit is minimizing public exposure along the distances to and from the car and the next relatively safe space (such as a holding room).

Almost every space can be modified or improved in advance of the protectee's arrival, but the most significant influence protectors can have over a space is to change it completely, i.e., choose an entirely different setting. Aside from the outright veto of a setting, you might enter a hotel through the underground garage rather than the lobby; an open-air rally might be staged at the edge of a park rather than the center; a public appearance might occur on a stage that's in front of a level floor (say, a school gymnasium, allowing protectors the advantage of looking downward onto audience members) rather than in an amphitheater, where the stage is lower than the audience, unfavorably requiring protectors to look upward.

• Accuracy
  
• Method of Attack
  
• Access Control
  
• Vantage
  
• Concealment
  

Standing in any environment, ask yourself how you can influence these five factors to your advantage: How can you impede an attacker's accuracy, reduce his options, limit his access, maintain vantage, and make it difficult for him to conceal his actions?

The knife attack on the brilliant young tennis player,
Monica Seles (#213)
, is a telling example of a failure to successfully modify space. Seles' assailant launched his attack from the stands. Though the Women's Tennis Council subsequently publicized that they enhanced security in response to the attack, to date they have not required promoters to take the two most obvious steps: Using metal detectors to screen spectators, and installing clear plastic audience barriers between the spectators and the playing area, as in hockey games.

Even though clear plastic barriers would profoundly enhance player safety and could be made a standard requirement for professional tennis matches, sports promoters defensively claimed that because tournaments occur all over the world, security precautions could not be standardized. Really? Everywhere in the world they require that each tennis ball must bounce 135 to 147 centimeters when dropped from 2.5 meters. Everywhere in the world the courts are required to be exactly 23.8 meters long and exactly 8.2 meters wide, with service courts that extend exactly 6.4 meters from the net to the service line. This sounds like standardization to us, and yet promoters resisted the most meaningful improvements.

While Seles was still recovering from the knife wound, tennis promoters set out to promote the false idea that such attacks cannot be prevented. After the attack, one tennis promoter told CNN that screening for weapons with metal detectors would never work in tennis: "When you are working in an enclosed facility where you've got walls and a ceiling and a roof, yeah, all those things are possible. But a metal detector is not going to deter anyone who is determined to go in that direction."

Aside from the major fact he ignored, namely that metal detectors
have
frequently deterred would-be attackers, the promoter's statement that weapons screening can't work for tennis because some facilities lack walls and ceilings makes no sense at all. Weapons screening is a component of space management that is good enough for courthouses, airports, TV studios, city halls, concerts, high schools, and even the Superbowl (no ceiling!), but somehow, this businessman claimed, it can't work for tennis. Though he called the thought of screening for weapons "ludicrous," he has throughout his career managed to screen every single spectator for something far smaller than a weapon: a tiny piece of paper, the ticket he sold them.

Sports promoters' response (or non-response) to the Seles attack is another reminder for protectors to improve every space they can; nobody else is going to do it for you.

Protector Positioning

Protectors can't always persuade protectees to take the positions that are safest-but protectors usually do have substantial influence over their own positioning. How they position themselves within a field, and how they reposition when elements change -- these are critical decisions made by each protector, perhaps hundreds of times in a day.

In our favor, we know from TAD and from the Compendium cases that when protectors are positioned close to an attacker (ideally within arm's reach), in effect starting the race at the same place as the attacker, the protector's task is actually easier than the attacker's. The attacker has to perform a precision feat using fine motor skills under the worst possible conditions. The protector, on the other hand, has to perform a fairly imprecise feat (disrupting aim), using gross motor skills.

TAD protectors know in advance that what looks like an attack is an attack, so there's no need to spend time assessing anything. Thus, it comes down to a race, mostly a physical race, between the attacker, who must draw, aim, and fire with some accuracy -- and the protector, who must interfere with the attacker just enough to disrupt aim, which destroys accuracy.

Disrupting Aim Is Easy

When we were designing the TAD exercises, there was discussion of how far the protector should carry through when colliding with the attacker. By way of comparison, in our Defense Tactics training, in which students engage people they'll be taking custody of, we require students to complete the process right down to handcuffing, every single time. We want students to develop the muscle memory and habit of carrying through each action toward the goal of gaining safe custody. So in TAD, we wondered if we should do the same thing, and we tried this for a while. What we learned is that taking custody in the traditional sense (handcuffing, etc) is absolutely irrelevant to preventing assassination, irrelevant, in effect, to protecting our clients. There are likely a hundred people present who could be part of holding the assailant after the intervention -- but there might be only one person present who is in position and has the readiness to disrupt aim, and that might be you. So we don't want you thinking about any choreography or next steps. You have just one step: Disrupt aim.

We are not saying here that there is no duty to disarm the attacker, gain control of him, handcuff him, and manage him in a way that's safe for you, him, and others present. Rather, we're saying that all that is secondary -- and we want our protectors focused first on the primary mission: Disrupting aim.

Once you have reached the shooter, and you've connected with his arm, how far do you have to move it such that aim is disrupted? Almost no distance at all. If a capable shooter is aiming accurately at a target 25 feet away, and you change the angle of the gun by just one inch, the bullet will strike more than six feet off target. Even a quarter-inch of movement can make the decisive difference.

People might assume that it's best to charge an attacker with all the momentum possible, with enough force to knock him to the ground or completely disable him. In fact, moving the attacker's arm just slightly will almost always destroy accuracy, and
after
accuracy is destroyed, then protectors can work on disabling/disarming, controlling, gaining custody. The first and most pressing mission is simply to disrupt aim. Knowing that this is the primary mission makes it easier to attain.

By way of analogy, we put food in our mouths, chew it, swallow it -- and it's then that the real work (digestion) begins. Digestion occurs without conscious effort on our part. One might describe the whole process as eating, however all steps rely upon the first and thus foundational step of putting the food in our mouths. In protection, fully resolving the attack situation has many important steps, but disruption of aim is the foundational step, the fundamental action on which success rests, and thus it's the main thing for protectors to consider as they select their positions.

Broken down into its elements, the mission of the protector who is acting projectively (positioned to interfere with possible attackers) looks like this:

1. Disrupt aim (thus instantly meeting your primary goal)
   
2. Disable/disarm (preventing continued danger)
   
3. Control the attacker
   
4. Gain custody
   

Ideally, these steps occur fluidly, one after the next without a clear line between them. But you will have already succeeded if you accomplish the first assignment first: Disrupt aim.
So go in knowing it's a goal you can reach.

While the race between attacker and protector might be won by either side, the race between protector and bullet cannot ever be won by the protector. Accordingly, our best opportunity to favorably influence outcome occurs when we are close enough to connect with the arm, hand, gun, or body --
before
the bullet exits the barrel.

Once the gun is presented and aimed, the assassin needs to move just one finger whereas a protector who is beyond arm's reach must move all his mass -- and that takes time. In some of the attacks we studied, successful intervention was accomplished by members of the public who were closer to the attacker than protectors were (Compendium cases
Delanoe #374
,
Ford #439
,
Clinton #450
,
Chirac #575
,
Karzai #577
,
FDR #1396
, for example). We point out the fact that some assassinations were made unsuccessful by untrained members of the public in order to stress again how easy it can be to disrupt aim, and how important positioning is.