People know now who Arthur Herman Bremer is. It wasn't always so, even on the streets of his own fading, middle-class neighborhood on Milwaukee's West Side. To most he passed unnoticed with his peculiar shuffling gait, head down, feet pointed outward. To those whose lives he did touch, he was an enigma, often to be somehow pitied, more frequently to be shunned.

Then, shortly after 4 P.M. last Monday Gov. George C. Wallace of Alabama was felled at a campaign rally at a nearby Laurel, Md., shopping center by a burst of shots fired at point-blank range from a snub-nosed Charter Arms.38-caliber revolver.

Stunned policemen guarding the Governor pounced on a short man with close cropped blond hair who had worked his way close to the hand-shaking candidate.

The man, who has been charged with the shooting, was Arthur Herman Bremer, the morose 21-year-old unemployed and largely unnoticed bus boy and janitor from Milwaukee...

He had in recent weeks been giving some attention to tales of assassination. In the car were copies of R.F.K. Must Die by Robert Kaiser and Sirhan by Aziz Shabab. Both books about Sirhart Bishara Sirhan, the convicted killer of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, were checked out of the Milwaukee Public Library on May 5...

The picture painstakingly pieced together in the week since Governor Wallace and three other persons were wounded by five revolver shots is often murky. Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who are also retracing that puzzling path, have told many potential sources not to talk with newsmen...

The only friend of Arthur Bremer's that neighbors could recall was Thomas Neuman, who shot and killed himself in front of his sister on May 22, 1971, while playing Russian roulette...

Although he is described as frugal by his brother Roger and some who worked with him, on Sept. 14 he paid $795 in cash for the blue Rambler...

Probably no one but he knows when or why he developed an interest in Governor Wallace. He was not political, according to those who knew him. His father, who favors Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota, has said that in the past he thought his son had been a Humphrey supporter, it anything.

Nevertheless, earlier this year he pasted Wallace stickers on his car and on the door of his apartment. There were also references to Governor Wallace in his writings, such as: "Happiness is hearing George Wallace sing the National Anthem, or having him arrested for a hit-and-run accident."

While some persons have read that as ambivalent, others have noted that it could be consistent for an admirer of the Governor, who in past campaigns has indicated that he would run over demonstrators who lay down in front of his car.

A Milwaukee Sentinel reporter has said that he thinks he remembers having seen Arthur Bremer at a meeting of Wallace supporters on March. 1. Some members of the Wallace campaign staff who were in Wisconsin for the April 4 Democratic Presidential primary have also said that they thought they recalled a man of his description at a Milwaukee rally.

Still, no one could be found who seemed to know for sure what Arthur Bremer was doing in March. Although his neighbors said that they had never known him to make long trips, he did take some in April.

On April 7 and 8, he stayed at the expensive Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. The F.B.I. has seized the hotel records and told employees not to discuss the matter, so how much his bill was or how he paid it was not available. Senator Humphrey was scheduled to be at the Waldorf April 7, but the trip was canceled.

Earl S. Nunnery, trainmaster for the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway's rail-auto ferry, confirmed today an Associated Press report that records of names and license plates, which must be given for reservations, show the suspect took his automobile from Milwaukee to Ludington, Mich., on April 9 and May 9. The news agency also said that he made a return trip from Ludington on April 28.

The records show that Mr. Bremer was alone in his car for the 8:15 P.M. departure on April 9. The time of his departure led to speculation that he must have flown to and from New York if he stayed in the Waldorf the night of AprIl 8.

Mr. Nunnery said that Mr. Bremer, in an earlier visit to try to make reservations, had been accompanied to the ferry's ticket window by a well-dressed man about 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighing 225 pounds, with heavily sprayed curly hair that hung down over his ears.

He said that the man had talked excitedly in what he took to be a New York accent about moving a political campaign from Wisconsin to Michigan.

Mr. Nunnery said that the visit would have been a day or two after, the April 4 Wisconsin primary, but that neither the other man nor Mr. Bremer, whom he identified from photographs, had mentioned the name of the candidate they seemed to be working for.

He said that he had been curious enough to look at their car as they left to see if it had a political bumper sticker, but it had none. He added that he had seen a third person with long hair, who could have been man or a woman. He said that the car was not the one registered to Mr. Bremer, which he apparently took on the ferry trips to Michigan.

The next concrete evidence of Mr. Bremer's whereabouts that The New York Times was able to uncover came when on April 15 he received a speeding ticket for driving 75 miles an hour in a 65-mile an hour zone as he headed south at 6:40 P.M. on Route 81 about 15 miles from Binghamton, N. Y.

During that period, Governor Wallace was doing most of his campaigning in Indiana, Louisiana and Texas, far from any place that Route 81, which runs from Canada to Tennessee, would logically have taken Arthur Bremer...

In the latter part of April, neighbors recalled having seen Mr. Bremer in Milwaukee. And sometime during the first week of that month he joined the Milwaukee chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, paying $10 for a basic membership. When he was arrested, he asked for an A.C.L.U. lawyer, but after investigating, the. Baltimore chapter decided there were no indications of violations of constitutional rights on which to represent him.

Jerry Stone, an attendant at Aldo's Standard Service, a filling station near Arthur Bremer's apartment where Mr. Bremer used to buy gasoline and occasionally fuss with his car, recalled that late in April or early in May he had seen the suspect.

Then on May 5, Mr. Bremer checked out the two books on the Robert F. Kennedy assassination from the public library.

Except for one neighbor who thinks she may have seen him May 8 or 9, most people do not recall his having been in Milwaukee after May 5.

If he did leave the city then, he apparently spent most of the next 10 days driving his old Rambler Rebel, which he had fitted out with blankets, pillows and most of his belongings, over the highways between Michigan and Maryland.

In the days since the shooting, a number of persons have said they thought they saw Arthur Bremer at Wallace rallies in Maryland or Michigan during that period.

While most of the sightings have not been confirmed, he was in Kalamazoo, Mich., for the rally there May 13...

How did the former bus boy and janitor, who earned $3,016 last year, according to a Federal income tax form found in his apartment, support himself during his unemployment and manage to buy the guns, tape recorder, portable radio with police band, binoculars and other equipment he was carrying, as well as finance his travels?

His father has told the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a source said, that his thrifty son, who had a savings account at the Mitchell Street State Bank in Milwaukee, had withdrawn substantial sums in recent months and had been living off the money. Bank officials declined to discuss the account.

Police immediately arrested a blond young man identified as Arthur Herman Bremer, a 21-year-old busboy and janitor from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was charged by state authorities with four counts of assault with intent to murder and was arraigned in Baltimore on two federal charges. One of the federal charges was interfering with the civil rights of a candidate for federal office, a provision of the 1968 Civil Rights Act. The Wallace second charge was for assaulting a federal officer; one of the four people shot at the rally was a Secret Service officer.

In Washington, federal sources said that Bremer had been positively placed in Ottawa during the President's visit, but they said that there was no evidence that Bremer was "stalking" Nixon.... Overall security for Nixon's visit was generally considered to be the tightest in Canadian history.... In addition, federal sources said that some of the notes later found in Bremer's car indicated that he had recently been in Canada.... A reliable federal source close to the investigation termed "incredible" the picture of Bremer's travels being assembled by federal investigators.

Arthur Herman Bremer, the Milwaukee resident accused of shooting Gov. George C. Wallace of Alabama, made no effort to be inconspicuous during the 10 weeks in which he frequented political rallies last winter and this spring.

Most times, he was colorfully dressed. "He looked like a flag," said a man who watched him at a Michigan Wallace rally.

Usually, the 21-year-old former bus boy wore a red, white and blue shirt and red, white and blue socks, a dark blue suit with vest, and silvered sunglasses, and his red, white and blue tie was knotted around his neck, inside the open collar of his shirt.

In his more than two months of traveling from political rally to political rally, Mr. Bremer used his correct name when staying at hotels or motels.

At the rallies at which he has definitely been placed, he invariably was at the front of the crowd.

He drew so much attention to himself that on at least three occasions he was noticed by policemen.

In trying to assess Mr. Bremer's motives, Federal investigators have assumed the following:

That after some personal rebuffs in Milwaukee last winter, he decided on a political assassination as a means of drawing attention to himself.

Or, that he was part of conspiracy to assassinate one of the major Presidential candidates for some reason as yet unknown.

Thus far, newsmen have been unable to find any evidence of a conspiracy. Mr. Bremer does not appear to have traveled with a companion, although at several places he was seen with someone else. He appears to have spent no more than $700 to $800 from Feb. 15, when he quit his job, until he was arrested on May 15. He had only $2 when taken into custody in Laurel where Governor Wallace was shot.

The first report of a companion traveling with Mr. Bremer came from Milwaukee. On April 9, a curly-haired man with bushy moustache was reported to be with Mr. Bremer when he inquired at Milwaukee about taking his blue 1967 Rambler automobile across Lake Michigan by ferry. The man was talking about politics.

The manager of the ferry operation, Earl S. Nunnery, positively recalled the April scene about 10 days ago.

After it became known that Mr. Bremer had apparently been registered at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City on the nights of April 7 and April 8, a second check was made with Mr. Nunnery, but he refused to answer questions, slamming the door in a reporter's face.

If Mr. Bremer did cross Lake Michigan on April 9 or April 10, he may have been headed for Ottawa, the Canadian capital, where President Nixon was to visit from April 13 to April 15. It was about 850 miles from Milwaukee to Ottawa, including the six-hour ferry trip across Lake Michigan.

The shortest and easiest highway route from Milwaukee to Ottawa is through Detroit, entering Canada at Windsor, Ontario.

Canadian officials said late last week that Mr. Bremer spent the nights of April 13 and 14 at the Lord Elgin Hotel in Ottawa, which sits in faded elegance about a quarter of a mile from the Canadian Parliament building. A single room at the hotel costs $15 to $18 a night.

Donald Blakslee, the hotel manager, said the hotel policy barred comment on any guest and thus he could not say if the suspect had stayed at the hotel. However, two bellhops said that Mr. Bremer did stay there, as did 44 members of President Nixon's staff, apparently Secret Service agents and communications personnel.

On Friday, April 14, the day after President Nixon's arrival, the President addressed the Canadian Parliament and a crowd of spectators, which included Mr. Bremer, pushed onto the Parliament grounds. Photographs taken at the front of the crowd show Mr. Bremer with his sunglasses on. He was wearing a light-colored raincoat. A member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was standing near him.

A police sergeant was reported to have noticed Mr. Bremer. He was among a group, that had got to the front of the crowd waiting to see President Nixon, and the police had to push the crowd back.

Security on President Nixon's Canadian visit was very tight, by Canadian standards, because of the attack on Soviet Premier Aleksei N. Kosygin on Oct. 18, 1971, on his visit to Ottawa.

After Mr. Bremer left Ottawa in the early afternoon of April 15, he drove down through New York and was arrested for speeding at 6:40 P.M. near the Pennsylvania border on the Interstate Route 81, which leads to Scranton and Harrisburg, Pa., and Hagerstown, Md.

Senator Humphrey was scheduled to spend the week beginning April 16 in Pennsylvania. In that week, he made 26 appearances in the state.

Federal sources reported that after Mr. Bremer was given a speeding ticket near Binghamton, N. Y., on April 15, he drove across Pennsylvania to New Carrollton, Md., near Washington, where he stayed until April 18.

Governor Wallace was campaigning in Indiana on April 18 and 19 and was in Washington on April 20.

The Governor was scheduled to be at rallies in Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Williamsport and Altoona, Pa., on April 22, but the weather was so bad that his plane was grounded and the rallies were canceled.

Arthur H. Bremer was found guilty and sentenced to 63 years in prison today for the shooting of Gov. George C. Wallace of Alabama and three other persons at a political rally Laurel, Md., May 15.

The jury of six men and six women took only 90 minutes to decide that Bremer was sane when he fired the bullets that paralyzed Governor Wallace and forced him to end his campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination.

The defense had raised the question of Bremer's sanity, and that was the main issue of this speedy five-day state trial.

Bremer, a 21-year-old bus boy and odd-job worker from Milwaukee who had stalked President Nixon before making Mr. Wallace his prime target, heard without emotion the jury's verdict and - 30 minutes later - the sentence imposed by Judge Ralph W. Powers.

His father, William Bremer, a truck driver Oho lost an eye at the age of 9, was standing against the wall in the rear of the courtroom. He had been coldly ignored by his son, but he flushed with anger over the verdict.

"The boy was sick," he said, and he added bitterly, "Probably if he was a black, or some Communist agitator, he'd be free."

Judge Powers gave Bremer the maximum sentence of 33 years on three counts in the shooting of Governor Wallace - 15 years for assault with intent to murder; 15 years for use of handgun in a crime of violence, and three years for illegally carrying a handgun.

He also gave him 10 years each for assault with intent to murder the three other victims: Nicholas Zarvos, a Secret Service man; Mrs. Dora Thompson, a Wallace campaign worker, and Capt. Eldred Cole Dothard of the Alabama State police, Wallace's bodyguard. That gave a total of 63 years.

In addition, the judge sentenced Bremer to 10 years each for the use of a handgun on Mr. Zarvos, Captain Dothard and Mrs. Thompson, but he said that these sentences would run concurrently with the 10-year sentence for assault with intent to murder those victims.

State's Attorney Marshall said at a news conference that Bremer could apply for parole after serving one-fourth of his sentence - 15 years and nine months.

Mr. Marshall discounted the possibility that Bremer had conspirators in his stalking of Mr. Nixon during the President's three-day state visit to Ottawa in April.

In his diary, Bremer lamented hat the President's motorcade had passed him six times, and that he had never got to fire the 38-caliber revolver in his pocket. Nowhere in the diary was there any hint of an accomplice.

"l'm convinced that no one acted with him," the State's Attorney said.

The reading of Bremer's diary by the defense counsel, Mr. Lipsitz, may have insured the guilty verdict. Some of the jurors, instead of finding Bremer's account of his assassination plans bizarre and irrational thought that the document was coherent and not a bit insane.

"The diary was one of the factors that swayed me toward the opinion that Bremer was sane," said the jury foreman, Vincent M. Telli, a civilian employed at the Washington Navy Yard. "If he can write some thing like that, he must be coherent."

Another juror, Jack Goldinher, a maintenance man at the Library of Congress, was similarly impressed.

"A lot of guilt ran through that diary," Mr. Goldinher said. "He couldn't get Nixon, so he picked Wallace. I don't think it made much difference to him as long as it was somebody famous. As for sanity - he might have been a little withdrawn, but he wasn't insane or crazy."

Mr. Telli, the jury foreman, said that he polled the jurors at lunch (the jury received the case at 12:42 P.M.) and found instant unanimity...

The defense counsel, Mr. Lipsitz, besides arguing that Bremer was insane at the time of the shooting had also tried to raise doubts in the jurors' minds as to whether his client had actually shot Governor Wallace.

He stressed that the ballistic tests had been unable to prove that the bullets had come from Bremer's gun. Bremer's finger prints were not on the gun, and a paraffin test of Bremer's hands disclosed no gunpowder residue.

But the jury had been shown a television film of the shooting, and there was Bremer pointing a gun and Governor Wallace falling to the pavement of the Laurel shopping center. The jurors had the film in the jury room, but they did not ask for a rerun.

And, finally, there was crushing evidence of guilt in Bremer's own written narrative. His vivid account of his failure to kill President Nixon in Ottawa and of his decision to stalk Governor Wallace apparently removed any lingering doubts about his guilt in the minds of the jurors.

Both sides had called psychiatrists to testify to the sanity or insanity of Bremer, but the testimony seemed to carry little weight with the jurors.

"Canadians make the lousiest apple pie, so dry, you ever tasted," Arthur Herman Bremer told his frequently misspelled diary as he drove to Ottawa last April with the intention of shooting President Nixon.

But "vandalism and graffiti do not exist there" he noted approvingly of an Ottawa art gallery he toured in search of relaxation after missing his chance to terminate with a bullet the President's state visit to Canada.

It was the sprinkling of these mundane and touristy observations - "had a big Manhattan, straight & an $11 meal at the Chauteu (Chateau Laurier hotel) that night. One dollar for pea soup alone" - in an otherwise bizarre narrative of stalking Mr. Nixon, that may have persuaded the jury that Arthur Bremer was no more insane than Holden Caulfield or any other mixed-up, rejected adolescent.

In any event, the diary was the clincher as jurors briefly pondered the issue of Bremer's sanity in coming to their verdict last Friday that he was sane and guilty when he shot his secondary target, Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace, and three other persons in a shopping mall at Laurel, Maryland, on May 15.

"If he can write something like this he must be coherent," said the jury foreman, Vincent M. Telli. The jury was out only 90 minutes, including lunch break. The jurors were unanimous on the first poll, Mr. Telli said. Bremer was tried on charges of assault with intent to murder, of using a handgun in a crime of violence, and illegally carrying a handgun. County Judge Ralph W. Powers sentenced him to 43 years in the penitentiary: 33 years for the attack on Mr. Wallace and 10 years each for shooting the other victims: Alabama State Trooper Capt. Fred Dothard, Secret Service Agent Nick Zarvos and Mrs. Dora Thompson, a Wallace campaign worker. Mr. Wallace probably will be paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life, the jury was told, but the other victims were able to take the witness stand...

Bremer's strangely chilling grin (psychiatrists testified it was part of his defense mechanism) vanished when he heard the verdict. The 21-year-old Milwaukee busboy had clowned occasion ally during the testimony, turning in his chair to stick out his tongue at the spectators. Now he was subdued.

The available portion of young Bremer's diary ran to 129 pages and took him from April 4 through May 13, two days before the Wallace shooting... In recounting the frustrations of his Canadian trip - the Nixon motorcade sped past him six times before he could draw his .38-caliber revolver from his pocket - Bremer tells of his first glimpse of Mr. Nixon.

The man who attempted to assassinate Governor George Wallace has been sentenced to 63 years in jail by a court in Maryland, USA.

Arthur Bremer, 21, from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, shot White House hopeful Mr Wallace at a political rally in Laurel, Maryland on 15 May.

Mr Wallace, the governor of Alabama who gained notoriety in the 1960s for his segregational politics, was paralysed by the shots and three other people were injured in the incident.

A jury of six men and six women took just over an hour and a half to reach their verdict at the end of a five-day trial in Upper Marlboro, Maryland.

The defence had argued that Bremer was legally insane at the time of the shooting and that he had "no emotional capacity to understand anything".

But the court rejected this argument after the prosecution argued that he was perfectly sane.

Arthur Marshall, for the prosecution, told the court that Bremer had been seeking glory and was still sorry that Mr Wallace had not died.

Mr Marshall said: "He knew he would be arrested...he knew he would be on trial."

After the trial, Bremer's father, William Bremer, said: "I never saw anything like this.

"If this is Maryland justice, I cannot understand it.

"If 12 people heard all that testimony and cannot make up their minds that they were dealing with a sick boy, I just can't see it."

Bremer was taken from the court in a reinforced police van, and guarded by 15 officers, to begin his sentence.

It is not yet known whether Governor Wallace will be well enough to continue his bid for presidency.

Representative William O. Mills of Maryland, a Republican whose 1971 special election was aided by an unreported cash transfer of $25,000 from the Nixon campaign committee, was found shot to death this morning, and the authorities called his death an apparent suicide.

Mr. Mills, a 48-year-old former telephone company executive on Maryland's Eastern. Shore, was found near his home in Easton, Md., at 7:05 A.M. dead of a single 12-guage shot. gun wound in the left side of his chest. The automatic gun and a single spent shell were at his side and Talbot County State's Attorney William S. Horne said, "It appears that the cause of death was a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the chest."

State authorities reported that Mr. Mills had left at least seven notes, including one found on his body in an Easton barn where he stabled his horses. One official said that in the notes, Mr. Mills said "he had done nothing wrong but said he couldn't prove it, and so there was no other way out."

Mr. Mills was reported to have had no serious domestic or personal problems. But one former associate said that he had been "depressed" since the death in an automobile accident in 1972 of three of his Congressional aides, including his former campaign treasurer, Col. James L. Webster.

Within hours of the Wallace assassination attempt, a White House official was asked by the Washington Post about the identity of the governor's attacker. During a subsequent conversation that evening, the official raised the possibility of Bremer's connection to leftist causes and the campaign of Sen. George McGovern, through literature found in his apartment....

One White House source said that when President Nixon was informed of the shooting, he became deeply upset and voiced concern that the attempt on Gov. Wallace's life might have been made by someone with ties to the Republican Party or the Nixon campaign.

If such a tie existed, the source said, the President indicated it could cost him the election, which was then less than six months away.

"The President was agitated and wanted the political background on Bremer," the source said.

H. R. Haldeman gave the approval for $400,000 to "defeat" George Wallace. Supposedly it went to a Democratic candidate for Governor, but Haldeman didn't know his name. Couldn't it also go to part of an assassination team? He only allocated the cash from a special, secret White House safe but didn't inquire the use when it was handed over? Hardly possible! Only an intelligence operation, working on a need-to-know basis, behaves in such a manner...

Mrs. Dorothy Hunt, at the time of her death on the sabotaged flight to Chicago on December 8, 1972, had the name of two neurosurgeons with her. An accomplished CIA agent on her own, would these persons perform for the accused a service that would save paying blackmail money the rest of their lives?

Dennis Salvatore Cassini - Contact man from CIA with Arthur Bremer. Could have provided the money, like Mrs. Hunt, be the cut-off.

The full story remains to be told. But during 1972-Z3, our research group, the Citizens Research and Investigation Committee CRIC), receive several bits of unconfirmed information which are worthy of note:

(1) On July 13, 1973 Roger Gordon, fifty-three, a member of the right-wing Secret Army Organization (SAO) fled from a hiding place in Australia to beg asylum in Suva, Fiji. According to the Associated Press, Gordon "had secret information concerning Watergate" and feared for his life. His information: that the heavy-set man with the "Joisey brogue" seen giving orders to Bremer on an Ohio ferry was Anthony Ulasewicz, a White House operative.

(2) Secret Army Organization (SAO) and FBI sources in the San Diego area reported that White House agent Donald Segretti gave money to Bremer.

(3) During 1970 Tom Huston, a Nixon aide, prepared a series of memoranda which attempted to tighten White House control of the FBI, CIA, etc., and intensify the use of electronic surveillance, "penetration agents," and illegal break-ins. According to a staff member of the Ervin Committee, White House files contain a still undivulged memo in which Huston justifies selective assassination.

(4) On May 18, 1972, three days after the Wallace shooting, Charles Colson staged a "Victory in Vietnam" march and rally in Washington, under the auspices of the right-wing preacher Carl McIntire. Mr. and Mrs. Calvin Fox of the Secret Army Organization drove from San Diego to attend, passing en route near the site of the Wallace shooting. Sources in San Diego reported that while the Foxes were away, FBI Special Agent Steve Christianson entered Mr. Fox's office files and planted documents which could implicate him in the assassination attempt. A group of Washington-based former intelligence agents have since confirmed this.

On May 15, 1972, hours after George Wallace was shot in a Laurel, Maryland, shopping center just sixteen miles from the center of the District of Columbia, we at the Post still had not learned the name of the man who shot the Alabama governor. Woodward mentioned to me that he had "a friend" who might be able to help. It was the first time I remember hearing Woodward speak of his "friend" (this friend was "Deep Throat").

I suspect that whoever planned the murder must have been astonished at the reaction of the American establishment. The most vengeful of all the Kennedys made no move to discover who really killed his brother. In this, Bobby was a true American; close ranks, pretend there was no conspiracy, do not rock the boat – particularly when both Moscow and Havana seemed close to nervous breakdowns at the thought that they might be implicated in the death of the Great Prince. The Warren Report than answered the nation that the lone killer who haunts the American psyche had struck again. The fact that Bobby Kennedy accepted the Warren Report was proof to most people (myself among them) that Oswald acted alone. It was not until several years later that I learned from a member of the family that although Bobby was head of the Department of Justice at the time, he refused to look at any of the FBI reports or even speculate on what might have happened at Dallas.

May 15, 1972, Arthur H. Bremer shot George Wallace, governor of Alabama, at Laural, Maryland, and was easily identified as the gunman and taken into custody. Nearby in a rented car, the police found Bremer's diary… According to the diary, Bremer had tried to kill Nixon in Canada but failed to get close enough. He then decided to kill George Wallace. The absence of any logical motive is now familiar to most Americans, who are quite at home with the batty killer who acts alone in order to be on television, to be forever entwined with the golden legend of the hero he has gunned down. In a nation that worships psychopaths, the Oswald-Bremer-Sirhan-Ray figure is to the general illness what Robin Hood was to a greener, saner world.

Bremer's diary is a fascinating work of art. From what we know of the twenty-two-year-old author he did not have a literary turn of mind (among his effects were comic books, some porno). He was a television baby and a dull one. Politics had no interest for him. Yet suddenly – for reasons he never gives us – he decides to kill the President and starts to keep a diary on April 4, 1972…

For someone who is supposed to be nearly illiterate there are startling literary references and flourishes in the Bremer diary. The second entry contains: "You heard of One Day in the Life of Ivan Dyntsovich.  Yesterday was my day." The misspelling of Denisovich is not bad at all. Considering the fact that the name is a hard one for English-speaking people to get straight, it is something of a miracle that Bremer could sound the four syllables of the name correctly in his head. Perhaps he had the book in front of him but if he had, he would not have got the one letter wrong.

The same entry produces more mysteries. "Wallace got his big votes from Republicans who didn't have any choice of candidates on their own ballot. Had only about $1,055 when I left." This is the first and only mention of politics until page 45 when he describes his square clothes and haircut as "just a disguise to get close to Nixon."

One reference to Wallace at the beginning, then another one to Nixon a dozen pages later. Also, where did the &1,055 come from? Finally, a minor psychological point Bremer refers to some weeds as "taller than me 5' 6". I doubt if a neurotic twenty-two-year-old would want to remind himself on the page that he is only 5' 6" tall. When people talk to themselves they seldom say anything so obvious. On the other hand, authors like that sort of detail…

Bremer goes to a massage parlor in New York (he has told the diary that he is a virgin – would he? Perhaps). Where he is given an unsatisfying hand-job. The scene is nicely done and the author writes correctly and lucidly until, suddenly, a block occurs and he can't spell anything right – as if the author suddenly remembers that he is meant to be illiterate…

On this page, as though to emphasizing Bremer's illiteracy, we get "spair" for "spare," "enphasis" for "emphasis," and "remember". Yet on the same page the diarist has no trouble spelling "anticipation," "response," "advances"...

The author of the diary gives us a good many random little facts – seat numbers of airplanes, prices of meals. He does not like "hairy hippies". A dislike he "shares" with HH (Howard Hunt). He also strikes oddly jarring literary notes. On his arrival in New York, he tells us that he forgot his guns which the captain then turned over to him, causing the diarist to remark "irony abounds". A phrase one doubts that the actual Arthur Bremer would have used. As word and quality, irony is not part of America's demotic speech or style. Later crossing the Great Lakes he declares "Call me Ismal". Had he read Moby Dick? Unlikely. Had he seen the movie on the Late Show?  Possibly. But I doubt that the phrase on the sound track would have been in his head… No matter who wrote the diary we are dealing with a true author.  One who writes, "Like a novelist who knows not how his book will end – and I have written this journal – what a shocking surprise that my inner character shall steal the climax and destroy the author and save the anti-hero from assassination!" Only one misspelling in that purple patch is not irony that abounds as much in these pages as literature…

He (Bremer) did not die. He is now at a prison in Baltimore, awaiting a second trial. If he lives to be re-examined, one wonders if he will tell us what company he kept during the spring of 1972, and whether or not a nice man helped him to write his diary, as a document for the ages like the scrolls in the caves. (Although H.H. is a self-admitted forger of state papers I do not think that he actually had an hand in writing Bremer's diary on the ground that the journal is a brilliant if flawed job of work, and beyond H.H's known literary competences...

I suspect that whoever planned the murder of John F. Kennedy must have been astonished at the reaction of the American establishment. The most vengeful of all the Kennedys made no move to discover who really killed his brother. In this, Bobby was a true American; close ranks, pretend there was no conspiracy, do not rock the boat – particularly when both Moscow and Havana seemed close to nervous breakdowns at the thought that they might be implicated in the death of the Great Prince. The Warren Report than answered the nation that the lone killer who haunts the American psyche had struck again. The fact that Bobby Kennedy accepted the Warren Report was proof to most people (myself among them) that Oswald acted alone. It was not until several years later that I learned from a member of the family that although Bobby was head of the Department of Justice at the time, he refused to look at any of the FBI reports or even speculate on what might have happened at Dallas.

I was also involved in a fiasco of my own that winter, one that related to two of our major political preoccupations-winning California, and the electoral threat posed by George Wallace. The Alabama governor was a constant concern to us. If he ran in 1972, would the third-party split help us or hurt us? The equation was a complex one, but the consensus was that he would hurt us, and there were constant discussions and plans on how to keep him out of the race, ranging from preempting him with go-slow school integration policies to our putting several hundred thousand dollars into the campaign of the man who ran against Wallace for governor in 1970. The ongoing White House concern about Wallace was reflected in a constant stream of memos from Haldeman asking us for up-to-the-minute reports on how many state primaries Wallace would be able to enter.

Henry Bremer was described time and again as a "loner." Despite that description by certain of his acquaintances and by Life magazine, Bremer was constantly in the company of several individuals just prior to the assassination attempt.

One of these individuals has been identified as Mr. Dennis Cassini. Before any officials could question Cassini after the murder attempt on Wallace, he was found dead of a heroin overdose, his body locked in the trunk of his automobile. The Milwaukee officials reported this incident to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. No attempt was made by the Federal authorities, then under the direction of L. Patrick Gray, to investigate this matter further.

Bremer was also seen with an older, heavyset gentleman in the waiting room of the Chesapeake and Ohio Ferry in Ludington, Mich. He was described by the attendant as having a "New Joisey brogue." Mr. Roger Gordon, a former member of the Secret Army Organization (SAO), a government intelligence agency, identified Bremer's ferry contact as a Mr. Anthony Ulasewicz, a White House operative who would become well-known in the Watergate hearings. Gordon has since left this country.

It has been reported that Charles W. Colson ordered E. Howard Hunt (both also of Watergate fame) to break into Bremer's apartment within an hour of the shooting, and plant Black Panther party newspapers and Angela Davis literature there. A small news service employee carried out the Colson assignment.

In 1972 the Power Control Group was faced with another set of problems. Again the objective was to insure Nixon's election at all costs and to continue the cover-ups. Nixon might have made it on his own. We'll never know because the Group guaranteed his election by eliminating two strong candidates and completely swamping another with tainted leftist images and a psychiatric case for the vice presidential nominee. The impression that Nixon had in early 1972 was that he stood a good chance of losing. He imagined enemies everywhere and a press he was sure was out to get him.

The Power Control Group realized this too. They began laying out a strategy that would encourage the real nuts in the Nixon administration like E. Howard Hunt, G. Gordon Liddy and Donald Segretti to eliminate any serious opposition. The dirty tricks campaign worked perfectly against the strongest early Democratic candidate, Edmund Muskie. He withdrew in tears, later to discover he had been sabotaged by Nixon, Liddy and company.

George Wallace was another matter. At the time he was shot, he was drawing 18% of the vote according to the polls, and most of that was in Nixon territory. The conservative states such as Indiana were going for Wallace. He was eating into Nixon's southern strength. In April the polls showed McGovern pulling a 41%, Nixon 41% and Wallace 18%. It was going to be too close for comfort, and it might be thrown into the House - in which case Nixon would surely lose. There was the option available of eliminating George McGovern, but then the Democrats might come up with Hubert Humphrey or someone else even more dangerous than McGovern. Nixon's best chance was a head-on contest with McGovern. Wallace had to go. Once the group made that decision, the Liddy team seemed to be the obvious group to carry it out. But how could it be done this time and still fool the people? Another patsy this time? O.K., but how about having him actually kill the Governor? The answer to that was an even deeper programming job than that done on Sirhan. This time they selected a man with a lower I.Q. level who could be hypnotized to really shoot someone, realize it later, and not know that he had been programmed. He would have to be a little wacky, unlike Oswald, Ruby or Ray.

Arthur Bremer was selected. The first contacts were made by people who knew both Bremer and Segretti in Milwaukee. They were members of a leftist organization planted there as provocateurs by the intelligence forces within the Power Control Group. One of them was a man named Dennis Cassini.

Bremer was programmed over a period of months. He was first set to track Nixon and then Wallace. When his hand held the gun in Laurel, Maryland, it might just as well have been in the hand of Donald Segretti, E. Howard Hunt, G. Gordon Liddy, Richard Helms, or Richard Nixon.

With Wallace's elimination from the race and McGovern's increasing popularity in the primaries, the only question remaining for the Power Control Group was whether McGovern had any real chance of winning. The polls all showed Wallace's vote going to Nixon and a resultant landslide victory. That, of course, is exactly what happened. It was never close enough to worry the Group very much. McGovern, on the other hand, was worried. By the time of the California primary he and his staff had learned enough about the conspiracies in the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King that they asked for increased Secret Service protection in Los Angeles.

If the Power Control Group had decided to kill Mr. McGovern the Secret Service would not have been able to stop it. However, they did not, because the election was a sure thing. They did try one more dirty trick. They revealed Thomas Eagleton's psychiatric problems, which reduced McGovern's odds considerably.

What evidence is there that Bremer's attempt on Wallace was a directed attempt by a conspiratorial group? Bremer himself has told his brother that others were involved and that he was paid by them. Researcher William Turner has turned up evidence in Milwaukee and surrounding towns in Wisconsin that Bremer received money from a group associated with Dennis Cassini, Donald Segretti and J. Timothy Gratz. Several other young "leftists" were seen with Bremer on several occasions in Milwaukee and on the ferry crossing at Lake Michigan.

The evidence shows that Bremer had a hidden source of income. He spent several times more than he earned or saved in the year before he shot at Wallace. Bremer's appearance on TV, in court and before witnesses resembled those of a man under hypnosis.

There is some evidence that more than one gun may have been fired with the second gun being located in the direction opposite to Bremer. Eleven wounds in the four victims that day exceeds the number that could have been caused by the five bullets Bremer fired. There is a problem in identifying all of the bullets found as having been fired from Bremer's gun. The trajectories of the wounds seem to be from two opposite directions. All of this - the hypnotic-like trance, the possibility of two guns being fired from in front and from behind, and the immediate conclusion that Bremer acted alone - sounds very much like the arrangement made for the Robert Kennedy assassination.

Another part of the evidence sounds like the King case. A lone blue Cadillac was seen speeding away from the scene of the shooting immediately afterward. It was reported on the police band radio and the police unsuccessfully chased it. The car had two men in it. The police and the FBI immediately shut off all accounts of that incident.

E. Howard Hunt testified before the Ervin Committee that Charles Colson had asked him to go to Bremer's apartment in Milwaukee as soon as the news about Bremer was available at the White House. Hunt never did say why he was supposed to go. Colson then said that he didn't tell Hunt to go, but that Hunt told him he was going. Colson's theory is that Hunt was part of a CIA conspiracy to get rid of Nixon and to do other dirty tricks.

Could Hunt and the Power Control Group have had in mind placing something in Bremer's apartment rather than taking something out? The "something" could have been Bremer's diary, which was later found in his car parked near the Laurel, Maryland parking lot. Hunt did not go to Milwaukee, because the FBI already had agents at the apartment. Perhaps Hunt or someone else went instead to Maryland and planted the diary in Bremer's car. One thing seems certain after a careful analysis of Bremer's diary in comparison to his grammar, spelling, etc., in his high school performances in English. Bremer didn't write the diary. Someone forged it, trying to make it sound like they thought Bremer would sound given his low IQ

One last item would clinch the conspiracy case if it were true. A rumor spread among researchers and the media that CBS-TV had discovered Bremer and G. Gordon Liddy together on two separate occasions in TV footage of Wallace rallies. In one TV sequence they were said to be walking together toward a camera in the background. CBS completely closed the lid on the subject.

The best source is obviously Bremer himself. However, no private citizen can get anywhere near him. Even if they could he might not talk if he had been programmed. Unless an expert deprogrammed him, his secret could be locked away in his brain, just like Sirhan's secret is locked within his mind.

Arthur H. Bremer sporting a twisted grin gunned down Alabama Governor George Wallace, wounding him severely enough to take him out of the presidential race. Wallace was posing a serious threat to the "Southern Strategy" that had been credited with Nixon's narrow win in 1968. The polls showed that if Wallace were to run as a third-party candidate in November, he would siphon off enough votes from Nixon to create a virtual deadlock between the President and either Hubert Humphrey or George McGovern, who were then running neck and neck for the Democratic nomination.

Charles Colson instructed Hunt to fly at once to Milwaukee, Bremer's hometown, and plant evidence in his apartment that he was associated with the left. Hunt balked on the ground that the FBI would already have sealed off the apartment. When this intriguing bit of information surfaced after Watergate, Colson claimed that he told Hunt to clean up evidence, not to plant any. Colson said when Nixon heard of the shooting, he became agitated and "voiced immediate concern that the assassin (sic) might have ties to the Republican Party, or even worse, the President's re-election committee."

The explanation is fascinating not for what it settles but what it raises about Nixon's qualms about his Gemstone operatives going too far. The all-encompassing "Bay of Pigs thing" was to haunt him. It might not have been a false fear. Bremer's older sister, Gail Aiken, and brother, William, lived in Miami. (As mentioned earlier, in 1968 Aiken, then living in Los Angeles, was exceedingly close to Oliver Owen, a fundamentalist preacher. Owen had had an association with Sirhan Sirhan prior to the RFK assassination, which had the effect of clearing Nixon's path to the White House.) Two months before the Wallace shooting William Bremer was indicted in a $36,000 swindle (he was subsequently convicted) that had all the earmarks of an organized crime caper. (William Bremer was represented by Ellis Rubin, a respectable, if offbeat, attorney, who later represented the Miami Four in the Watergate break-in.)

The son of former Gov. George C. Wallace of Alabama, citing new claims that the 1972 assassination attempt on his father was discussed in the Nixon White House, wants the F.B.I. to reinvestigate the shooting.

George Wallace Jr. said Saturday that he had asked President-elect Bill Clinton to reopen the investigation. He also wants a Congressional inquiry.

A Clinton spokesman said there would be no comment on the request until it had been received.

Mr. Wallace and his father had also sent letters to Alabama's Congressional delegation and to the Federal Bureau of Investigation requesting a copy of the report on the assassination attempt. Based on New Yorker Article

Governor Wallace was seeking the Democratic Presidential nomination when he was shot on May 15, 1972, during a campaign stop in Laurel, Md. The shooting left his legs paralyzed.

The call for a new investigation was prompted by an article in The New Yorker magazine reporting that former President Richard M. Nixon and an aide discussed planting the campaign literature of Mr. Nixon's Democratic opponent, George McGovern, in the apartment of Mr. Wallace's attacker, Arthur Bremer.

The plan had to be dropped because the F.B.I. quickly sealed the apartment, according to the article.

"We seek the release of any additional tapes which could possibly shed any light on the actions of Arthur Bremer in relation to his assassination attempt on my father," the younger Mr. Wallace said in a statement.

"Since 1972, we have heard on different occasions that Bremer was seen on a ferry in the state of Michigan, where he did stalk my father at one time, with someone who worked directly for President Nixon," the younger Mr. Wallace said. He said that until now the family had dismissed that report as an unsubstantiated rumor. Who Had Prior Knowledge?

"I do know that Bremer stalked my father for several weeks, staying in some of the finest hotels in the country," he said. "I have always wondered how a 21-year-old man with no visible means of support could enjoy such a comfortable life style."

Mr. Bremer is serving a 53-year sentence for the shooting.

The younger Mr. Wallace said he does not believe Mr. Nixon had any knowledge of Mr. Bremer's intentions before the assassination attempt.

"My question is: did anyone else involved in Nixon's campaign have prior knowledge?" he said.

The former Governor, who is recuperating at home from a near fatal bout with septic shock in the fall, has made no public comment on the magazine article.

But his former chief aide, Elvin Stanton, said last week that Mr. Wallace, 73, believed that top Government officials were involved in a conspiracy in 1972 to eliminate him from the Presidential race.

The son of former Gov. George C. Wallace of Alabama, citing new claims that the 1972 assassination attempt on his father was discussed in the Nixon White House, wants the F.B.I. to reinvestigate the shooting.

George Wallace Jr. said Saturday that he had asked President-elect Bill Clinton to reopen the investigation. He also wants a Congressional inquiry.

A Clinton spokesman said there would be no comment on the request until it had been received.

Mr. Wallace and his father had also sent letters to Alabama's Congressional delegation and to the Federal Bureau of Investigation requesting a copy of the report on the assassination attempt.

Governor Wallace was seeking the Democratic Presidential nomination when he was shot on May 15, 1972, during a campaign stop in Laurel, Md. The shooting left his legs paralyzed.

The call for a new investigation was prompted by an article in The New Yorker magazine reporting that former President Richard M. Nixon and an aide discussed planting the campaign literature of Mr. Nixon's Democratic opponent, George McGovern, in the apartment of Mr. Wallace's attacker, Arthur Bremer.

The plan had to be dropped because the F.B.I. quickly sealed the apartment, according to the article.

"We seek the release of any additional tapes which could possibly shed any light on the actions of Arthur Bremer in relation to his assassination attempt on my father," the younger Mr. Wallace said in a statement.

"Since 1972, we have heard on different occasions that Bremer was seen on a ferry in the state of Michigan, where he did stalk my father at one time, with someone who worked directly for President Nixon," the younger Mr. Wallace said. He said that until now the family had dismissed that report as an unsubstantiated rumor.

"I do know that Bremer stalked my father for several weeks, staying in some of the finest hotels in the country," he said. "I have always wondered how a 21-year-old man with no visible means of support could enjoy such a comfortable life style."

Mr. Bremer is serving a 53-year sentence for the shooting.

The younger Mr. Wallace said he does not believe Mr. Nixon had any knowledge of Mr. Bremer's intentions before the assassination attempt.

"My question is: did anyone else involved in Nixon's campaign have prior knowledge?" he said.

The former Governor, who is recuperating at home from a near fatal bout with septic shock in the fall, has made no public comment on the magazine article.

But his former chief aide, Elvin Stanton, said last week that Mr. Wallace, 73, believed that top Government officials were involved in a conspiracy in 1972 to eliminate him from the Presidential race.

Sherman Skolnick: At the time Wallace was shot - so to speak into a wheelchair and not into the cemetery - he was running for President and pulling about 21 percent of the vote.

Aguay Banar: Which comes to 26 million popular votes.

Sherman Skolnick: But because of the different states that it was into, he could have had the whole thing thrown into the House of Representatives, where it would have been a turmoil. Recently we did a show with spokespersons for some third-party candidates, including those for Perot. And I raised the same question. (Perot had 19 percent in the 1992 election.) And when I raised this question, they said, "Oh, so if Perot had 21 percent, like Wallace, they'd have to shoot him?" I said, "In my opinion, yes." Why is that? I mean, some of us believe that the ultra-rich believe in the bullet, not the ballot. Is that the bottom line?

Aguay Banar: The bottom line is money, the almighty dollar: who can best serve the interests of the Northeastern Atlantic elite and the Southwestern Pacific elite.

Sherman Skolnick: Just prior to Wallace being shot, he had made a statement. He said, "There's not a dimes worth of difference between the Democrat and Republican Parties." (He was a third-party candidate, very populist.) He said, "If I'm elected, one of the first things I'm going to do is tax the Rockefeller Foundation." When I heard that, I said, "Wallace, you haven't got enough life insurance." So you weren't able to get Wallace on video, but you still got pictures.

Aguay Banar: One of the questions that I asked the Governor in writing was, "Was there a conspiracy behind the shooting of your person?" He said, "Yes. Definitely a conspiracy." And then he looked up, on the page, to where a previous question had been asked regarding Richard Nixon. And with the stub of his cigar he poked at the name of Richard Nixon. He said, "Conspiracy! Conspiracy!" And he jabbed at the name of Nixon on the page.

Sherman Skolnick: What else leads you to believe that there was a conspiracy?

Aguay Banar: There was no way that Richard Nixon was ever going to be re-elected with Wallace in the campaign. To get back into the Oval Office, you had to do away with Wallace so that most of those 26 million votes -- which were center, or right of center - would come over to the side of Nixon.

Sherman Skolnick: What do you make of the fact that 6 weeks after they took Wallace out of the campaign by almost killing him, the Watergate break-in occurred?

Aguay Banar: The Watergate break-in was nothing more than a contrivance: a poorly executed mission that had, at its very bottom, a very sharp hatchet. And the hatchet was aimed at Nixon's head. The Watergate break-in was designed to be found, and to point the blame at Nixon and bring him down.

Sherman Skolnick: E. Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis, and others, were involved in the break-in at the Watergate. And there's reason to believe that the White House sent E. Howard Hunt to Arthur Bremer's apartment in Milwaukee...

Aguay Banar: ...on orders from Charles Colson.

Sherman Skolnick: Bremer's apartment, after the shooting of Wallace, was not sealed off; stuff could have been planted there, such as fake diaries. In other words, Arthur Bremer's diary showed up.

Aguay Banar: Yes, but the diary showed up in the car. But when Bremer shot Wallace, the first people that went physically into the apartment were from a bogus news organization known as "TIPS" - Transcontinental International Press Services. Now they are a creature of the Guardians, which are the militant wing of the Church of Scientology. And I'm talking about the branch in Los Angeles.

Sherman Skolnick: The Secret Service allowed Bremer to penetrate Nixon's security. In other words, if you create a vacuum where a would-be assassin can penetrate Secret Service security, then it becomes easy to kill somebody. Like they did with Dr. King: withdraw the security.

Aguay Banar: Bremer was in the city of Ottawa, Capital of Canada, when Nixon was visiting Pierre Trudeau, the Canadian Prime Minister at the time. Bremer and Frank Sturgis stayed at the Lord Elgin Hotel, in Ottawa. They stayed in the same section of the Hotel. Frank Sturgis was the control officer of Arthur Bremer on the road. It was he who was passing on money and information to Bremer. Sturgis and Bremer stayed in the same section of the Lord Elgin Hotel that the Secret Service detail of Richard Nixon was staying in.

Sherman Skolnick: Could Bremer, at one point, have targeted Nixon for assassination?

Aguay Banar: You will recall that the same mythology was created in the assassination of John Kennedy: that Oswald was after Nixon and then, because security was so tight, he instead trained the crosshairs of his weapon on Jack Kennedy. The same thing here: they want you to believe that Bremer was after Nixon and because security was so tight, again, the "lone assassin" trained his gun on someone else - Wallace.

After a five-day state trial Bremer was convicted and, in 1973, sentenced to 53 years in prison. A year later federal charges were dropped after Maryland appeals courts upheld Bremer's state conviction.

End of story? Not yet. During a months-long review, Insight obtained Bremer's parole records and the once highly secret 5,413-page FBI report known as the WalShot Files - a 26-volume package spanning eight years from the day of the shooting to 1980. Here too, for the first time, is not only a comprehensive review straight from the FBI archives but details from exclusive interviews with the lead prosecutor and defense attorney who, after 26 years, break their silence about the shooting of Wallace.

"I still have reservations about the case, and I'm not one for conspiracy theories," says former Prince George's County State's Attorney Arthur "Bud" Marshall, who prosecuted Bremer. "But it's worth taking a look at."

It is indeed. What follows is the story of how the FBI, led by Acting Director L. Patrick Gray, dug relentlessly into Bremer's background. And how Gray, who later admitted destroying Watergate records, prevented the Bremer case from being explored during the Watergate hearings. The most feasible rationale for this might be protection of the president from further wild rumor-mongering, but it also might be what Silent Coup author Len Colodny calls "Nixon's second operation."

"You know, of all the people who wanted Wallace dead, Nixon was on top of the list," says Colodny, who is working on a book about the Wallace/Nixon relationship. "But we have not found the smoking gun to support it. We're still looking."

What is known is that Nixon stepped in to control the Bremer investigation shortly after the shots were fired, according to Femia. At the hospital, an FBI agent hung up a hospital phone, turned to Femia and barked, "That was the president. We're taking over. The president says, `We're not going to have another Dallas here.'" Femia, who already had prepared an indictment, objected fiercely, but the agents pushed him aside and grabbed Bremer in the gurney.

Femia threatened to file assault charges against the FBI, but cooler heads prevailed. Bremer went to Baltimore with the FBI.

While the story of Nixon's crude seizure of the case remained buried for a quarter-century, it exemplifies his obsession with the Wallace shooting. Historian Dan T. Carter in The Politics of Rage traces this obsession to 1968 when Wallace captured 10 million votes on the American Party ticket. Pollsters Richard Scammon and Ben Wattenberg noted that four of five Wallace voters in the South would have voted for Nixon if Wallace had bowed out.

Using the Nixon papers, Carter showed how the president tried to forestall another Wallace presidential bid by pumping $400,000 from a secret slush fund into then Alabama Gov. Albert Brewer's unsuccessful attempt to defeat Wallace in 1970. Nixon's efforts continued with the "Alabama Project" which, according to Carter, consisted of more than 75 IRS officers digging "over the past tax returns of Wallace, his brothers and virtually every financial supporter who had done business with the state." The IRS probe found nothing, but the private war continued...

Angered by the prosecution's portrayal of him as an unemployed busboy living in his car, Bremer snapped at his arraignment, "Why would I be living in my car when I stayed at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel? The press is going to - up this case." He was right about the press. In what the Chicago Tribune called a "circus atmosphere," reporters stampeded Bremer's apartment after the FBI inexplicably failed to seal it. Bullets and a personal notebook were removed by journalists and curiosity seekers.

And Bremer's silence after his court appearance bothered prosecutor Marshall. "We had concern that someone else was involved," Marshall says. "The question I always had is how the Secret Service found out who he was as quick as they did. They were in his apartment within an hour."

Forty-five minutes after the shooting, the WalShot Files show, a Baltimore FBI agent called the Milwaukee FBI office identifying Bremer as the shooter based on personal identification found on Bremer. The Secret Service identified Bremer's address at 5:35 p.m., it claims, after tracing his .38-caliber handgun. But 25 minutes earlier, at 5:10 p.m., when two FBI agents entered Bremer's apartment, a Secret Service agent already was there. How the Secret Service managed that remains a mystery, inspiring conspiracy aficionados to speculate that the White House knew about Bremer before the shots were fired. The Secret Service agent told the FBI he was on an "intelligence-gathering mission."

All three agents left the apartment, but returned with another Secret Service agent after reports that the press had managed to get inside. At this point the Secret Service removed items from the apartment, setting off a turf war between the agencies that ignited when the Secret Service refused to turn over to the FBI the original of Bremer's "diary" manuscript, found in his car, until Nixon ordered them to do so...

In 1974 Wallace told United Press International that "he hoped the Watergate investigation would turn up the man who paid the money to have him shot." Wallace later said he mis-spoke but privately told reporters he believed the White House plumbers unit might have been involved.

The WalShot Files say Wallace had received a letter from Bernard Barker, one of the men caught in the Watergate break-in. The alleged letter is said to have claimed Bremer was paid by G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt for shooting Wallace. All deny the allegation. According to the WalShot Files, the FBI and Barker claim the letter is a fraud, and agents charged the ailing Wallace was after sympathy to support a third run at the presidency.

In 1975, Wallace's wife, Cornelia, told McCall's magazine that the FBI urged Wallace not to press the issue. The FBI briefed Wallace on Aug. 20, 1974, for the second time after denying his request to see the WalShot Files. But Cornelia says agents "didn't review any new developments. All they wanted to do was assure my husband that Bremer was not involved in a conspiracy."

When the New York Times reported Watergate hush-money operative Hunt testified in a Senate Watergate hearing that White House aide Charles Colson, upon hearing the news of the shooting, immediately ordered him to "bribe the janitor" or pick Bremer's lock to find out what type of literature Bremer read, the FBI faced public pressure to reopen the case. The G-men created a memo citing Hunt's story as unlikely because Colson called the Hunt statement "utterly preposterous." The FBI records state: "The allegation that the plumbers might be involved with Bremer appears to be far-fetched in that both Bremer's diary and our investigation indicate Bremer was actively stalking President Nixon up to a short time prior to his decision to shoot Governor Wallace."

In the midst of this a CBS News crew provided the FBI with a film clip depicting a man resembling Liddy whom CBS alleged "led Wallace into Bremer's line of fire." Could this mystery man be the same person who chased down a photographer and paid $10,000 for pictures unseen and undeveloped that were strictly of the crowd? FBI records show those pictures were never pursued because they weren't considered important.

Regardless, the FBI told CBS in 1973 that the mystery man was not Liddy. Although they admitted they had no idea who it was, they claimed the mystery man was just shaking Wallace's hand.

The file shows the FBI hauled both Hunt and Colson in for secret questioning in 1974. Both acknowledge that a conversation about Bremer's apartment took place but deny Liddy or the White House had any role in the assassination attempt. Hunt also told the FBI he never spoke to Liddy about Bremer -- although Hunt says in his Watergate book that he did talk to Liddy about it.

In 1974, the FBI concluded Colson's "explanation is directly opposite" Hunt's but recommended no further probe. The FBI chose not to interview Bremer about the story as "it would not appear logical to expose Bremer to such a weak theory." Likewise they did not try to interview Liddy, who tells Insight, "You got to remember, I wasn't talking to anyone at that time." Asked if he had any role in the Wallace assassination attempt, Liddy replies, "No." Told there were pages about the claim in the FBI's WalShot Files, he is dumfounded. "It sounds to me like these are wild allegations," he says.

Asked where he was when Wallace was shot, Liddy replies, "I don't remember. What's it say in my book?" His book, Will, says only that Liddy was reading the Miami Herald the next day. Two decades later Colson's story changes. He publicly has admitted to ordering the Bremer break-in but told Seymour Hersch in 1993 that he called it off.

Even as Nixon was publicly describing the shooting as "senseless and tragic," he was privately encouraging a Bremer break-in. "Is he a left-winger, right-winger?" Nixon asks about five hours after the shooting, according to a recently released Nixon "abuse of power" tape reviewed by Insight. Colson responds: "Well, he's going to be a left-winger by the time we get through, I think." Nixon laughs and says, "Good. Keep at that, keep at that"

"Yeah, I just wish that, God, that I'd thought sooner about planting a little literature out there. It may be a little late, although I've got one source that maybe ...," Colson says on the tape. "Good," Nixon responds. And Colson replies, "You could think about that. I mean, if they found it near his apartment. That would be helpful."

All of this may refer to just another third-rate burglary that never materialized. Or did it? A Black Panther publication was found in Bremer's apartment, according to the WalShot inventory record. But when in 1974 the Los Angeles Times asked if the FBI found a Black Panther publication, the FBI lied and said it had not.

Nixon might have laughed at that. But Wallace got the last laugh. The Watergate tapes show that on July 23, 1974, after learning he would lose all three Dixiecrats on the Judiciary Committee, Nixon asked Wallace to exert political pressure on his behalf. When Wallace refused, Nixon turned to White House Chief of Staff Alexander Haig and said, "Well, Al, there goes the presidency."

1972 is most famous, however, for the Watergate break-in, which ultimately led to Nixon’s self-removal from office. The CIA played a heavy and interesting role in both the break-in and the subsequent revelations that led to Nixon’s removal. As Probe has written about in past issues, it appears the CIA operatives deliberately got themselves caught in the Watergate hotel so as not to blow other operations. Then, when Helms was removed, removing Nixon was seen as payback. Those who most contributed to exposing Nixon’s activities, such as Alexander Butterfield, James McCord, and Howard Hunt, all had relationships with the CIA. If the cumulative weight of the evidence is to be believed, it appears that the CIA ran the country’s election process in 1972, deciding which candidates would survive or fail, and participating in acts of sabotage.

Is it too far fetched to suggest they may have had an interest in controlling the political fortunes of others that year, even by such drastic means as assassination? From what we know of their presence in the assassinations of John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, such as suggestion can hardly be called far-fetched. Therefore, we must ask that most ugly of questions: is there evidence of CIA involvement in the Wallace shooting?

According to newspaperwoman Sybil Leek and lawyer-turned-investigative-reporter Bert Sugar, the answer is yes. According to Leek and Sugar, while Bremer was at the Lord Elgin hotel in Ottawa, he met with a Dennis Cassini. Famed conspiracy researcher Mae Brussell and Alan Stang identified Cassini as a CIA operative. Cassini was found dead from a massive heroin overdose in July, 1972, just two months after the Wallace shooting. Cassini had no history of drug use.

Cassini’s address book contained the phone number of a John J. McCleary. McCleary lived in Sacramento, California, and was employed by V & T International, an import-export firm. McCleary drowned in the Pacific ocean in the fall of 1972. His father, amazingly, drowned around the same time in Reno, Nevada.

If the CIA was somehow involved, that could explain both E. Howard Hunt’s immediate interest in the case, as well as the role of CBS in filming Bremer in the act of shooting. CBS and the CIA shared a particularly close relationship. CIA involvement might go far in explaining the following connections as well.

Bremer’s brother, William Bremer, was arrested shortly after the Wallace shooting for having bilked over 2,000 Miami matrons out of over $80,000 by signing them up for non-existant weight-loss sessions. Curiously, Bremer’s lawyer was none other than Ellis Rubin, the man who had defended many anti-Castro activists and who defended the CIA men who participated in the Watergate break-in.

Even more curious is Bremer’s half-sister Gail’s relationship with the Reverend Jerry Owen (ne Oliver Brindley Owen), who figures prominently in the RFK case. Owen’s bible-thumping show was cancelled from KCOP in Los Angeles when evidence surfaced showing he had a possibly sinister relationship with Sirhan Sirhan just prior to the assassination of Robert Kennedy. After the assassination, Owen had gone to the police with a strange tale of having picked Sirhan up as a hitchhiker. But other witnesses claimed Owen had given Sirhan cash, and had more of a relationship with Sirhan that he had admitted.

He suffered a searing humiliation in October 1971. Bremer worked as a busboy at the Milwaukee Athletic Club. (Hinckley would also work busing tables.) As Bremer wheeled his tray around, taking up dirty dishes and cups along with soiled napkins, he often mumbled to himself. Patrons complained of the distraction and he was demoted from that humble job to kitchen help. Bremer filed a discrimination complaint. The investigator called it unjustified and suggested psychiatric help for the complainant. An outraged Bremer refused such assistance.

In November 1971, Bremer was a janitor in an elementary school where he met, and was attracted to, a 15-year-old hall monitor. She was freckled and pretty. Like Bremer, she was also blonde and wore glasses. The two of them flirted until he was finally able to make himself ask her out. Flattered that an older man was paying attention to her, she agreed. Bremer’s spirits soared. Now that he was 21 and finally dating, he moved out of his family home and got his own apartment. His desire to leave the family nest may also have been triggered by a fierce argument with William Bremer that had ended with the son hitting his father.

Bremer’s mother visited him at his new place regularly, often calling at night to see if he was there. Her son thought she was continually checking up on him. It was as if she feared the possibility that her son might have a sexual relationship and wanted to make sure there was no "other woman" in his life. Bremer desperately wanted there to be an "other woman." He was sick of being a mama’s boy....

Repulsed by his crudity, the 15-year-old broke off the relationship after their third date. The janitor was devastated. He repeatedly phoned her, begging her to see him again but the girl flatly refused. He wracked his brain for a way to communicate the depth of his pain at her rejection. Then he shaved his head "to show her that inside I felt as empty as my shaved head." Catching up with her, he pulled off his knit cap and showed her his bald pate. She walked away from him without speaking.

A few years back, I had dinner with my best friends' relatives from Maryland, including his cousin and her husband. Over random discussion, I discovered that the husband worked at the State hospital where Bremer was kept, and that Bremer had been considered sane for years and had been elevated to the position of trustee, whereby he was basically an un-paid orderly. He told me that Bremer was only kept locked up for political purposes. Since Bremer didn't actually kill anyone, this seemed a bit strange. The thought occurred: was Bremer kept locked up to keep him away from the U.S. public, or to keep the US public away from what Bremer might have to say? I'm still wondering more of a relationship with Sirhan that he had admitted.

On May 15, less than two weeks after Hoover's death, a lone gunman shot Alabama Governor George C Wallace, then campaigning for president, at a shopping centre. The wounds were serious, but Wallace survived. Wallace had a strong following in the deep South, an increasing source of Nixon's support. Wallace's spoiler candidacy four years earlier in 1968 could have cost Nixon the election that year, and Nixon monitored Wallace's every move closely as the 1972 presidential contest continued.

That evening, Nixon called Felt - not Gray, who was out of town - at home for an update. It was the first time Felt had spoken directly with Nixon. Felt reported that Arthur H Bremer, the would-be assassin, was in custody but in the hospital because he had been roughed up and given a few bruises by those who subdued and captured him after he shot Wallace.

"Well, it's too bad they didn't really rough up the son of a bitch!" Nixon told Felt.

Felt was offended that the president would make such a remark. Nixon was so agitated, attaching such urgency to the shooting, that he said he wanted full updates every 30 minutes from Felt on any new information that was being discovered in the investigation of Bremer.

In the following days I called Felt several times and he very carefully gave me leads as we tried to find out more about Bremer. It turned out that he had stalked some of the other candidates, and I went to New York to pick up the trail. This led to several front-page stories about Bremer's travels, completing a portrait of a madman not singling out Wallace but rather looking for any presidential candidate to shoot. On May 18, I did a page-one article that said, "High federal officials who have reviewed investigative reports on the Wallace shooting said yesterday that there is no evidence whatsoever to indicate that Bremer was a hired killer."

It was rather brazen of me. Though I was technically protecting my source and talked to others besides Felt, I did not do a good job of concealing where the information was coming from. Felt chastised me mildly. But the story that Bremer acted alone was a story that both the White House and the FBI wanted out.

After 35 years in prison, the man who shot and paralyzed Alabama Gov. George Wallace during his racially charged 1972 presidential campaign is scheduled to be released Friday into a society more diverse and more restrictive on guns.

The state's automated victim-notification system sent e-mails announcing the impending release of Arthur H. Bremer, 57.

Wallace, a fiery segregationist during the 1960s, was wounded on May 15, 1972, during a campaign stop in Laurel, Md. He abandoned his bid for the Democratic nomination, spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair and died in 1998.

Bremer, a former Milwaukee busboy and janitor, was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to 53 years. He has been held at the medium-security Maryland Correctional Institution near Hagerstown, about 70 miles from Baltimore, since 1979, earning his mandatory release through good behavior and by working in prison.

Bremer's diary, found in a landfill in 1980, made it clear he was motivated by a desire for attention, not a political agenda. He had also stalked President Nixon.

A prison system spokesman declined to say where Bremer would go once he got out. The head of the state's parole commission has said there will be restrictions on Bremer's activities, including a requirement to avoid political candidates and events.

"My father forgave him and my family has forgiven him. That's consistent with God's law," George Wallace Jr. said in Montgomery, Ala. But he added: "Then there is man's law. I doubt the punishment has fit the crime."

Peggy Wallace Kennedy, the governor's daughter, said of Bremer: "I think he's getting out 17 1/2 years too early."

The Alabama governor made his famous "stand in the schoolhouse door" in 1963, decrying the enrollment of two black students at the all-white University of Alabama in a standoff against the Justice Department and the National Guard.

By 1972, he had tempered his racist rhetoric and adopted a more subtle approach, denouncing federal courts over the forced busing of children to integrate schools orders and pledging to restore "law and order," a phase sometimes regarded as a coded appeal to white racists.

But Wallace recanted his segregationist stand later in his career and won his final term with the help of black votes. The kind of fiery racial rhetoric he employed is history. And a black man is one of the leading candidates for the presidential nomination in 2008.

In another measure of how things have changed, the 1993 Brady Bill, named for the White House press secretary wounded in a 1981 assassination attempt on President Reagan, requires background checks to prevent felons and mentally ill people from buying guns.

Four months before the attempt on Wallace's life, Bremer was arrested and underwent a psychiatric evaluation after firing bullets into a ceiling at a shooting range, and was fined for disorderly conduct.

Had the Brady Bill been in place, "it might have been something to stop him from buying a gun," said Paul Helmke, president of the Washington-based Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

Helmke said that the law has stopped 1.4 million people from buying guns, but that the national database is missing 90 percent of the mental health records and 20 percent of the felony records because states are not required to supply them.

Bremer was partly the inspiration for the deranged Travis Bickle character in the 1976 film "Taxi Driver." The movie, in turn, fascinated John Hinckley, who tried to kill Reagan in a twisted attempt to impress the film's co-star, Jodie Foster.

New information on the man convicted of shooting and paralyzing former Governor George Wallace. Arthur Bremer is now living in Cumberland, Maryland.

Officials say Bremer has been living in an apartment on the city's east side since he was released from prison last week.

Bremer walked away from the Maryland Correctional Institution after serving 35 years behind bars.

He is currently under the supervision of the Maryland Division of Parole and Probation until his sentence ends in 2025.

Local officials have been assured that Bremer is not a threat.

It doesn't matter who you are, or were, when you reach Restoration of the Heart. All that matters is you want to change and become part of a community.

For Arthur Bremer, the nonprofit agency with housing at Footer Place off Frederick Street may just be the place he needs.

Bremer, 57, served 35 years for the attempted murder of Alabama Gov. George Wallace on May 15, 1972. Wallace was at a presidential campaign stop at a Laurel shopping center when he and three others were shot. Bremer was 21 at the time.

Released Friday from the Maryland Correctional Institution near Hagerstown, Bremer's condition of release includes electronic monitoring and staying away from elected officials and candidates. He must undergo a mental health evaluation and receive treatment if the state deems necessary. Bremer may not leave the state without written permission from the Maryland Division of Parole and Probation, the agency that will supervise him until his probation ends in 2025.

Bremer has reportedly declined media interviews, including some that included offers of monetary payment.

While Restoration's director, Frances Jones, wouldn't mention Bremer by name or give much information about him, when asked specific questions Wednesday she said she'd been in contact with him prior to his release.

Her goal is to get "him back out there in the world, the same as everyone else," she said. A bicycle and a toaster were two items requested.

"It's just a joy to see the person's face in being able to be free, to be normal and to be alone," Jones said. "My heart is overwhelmed, it's overjoyed at how this child is coming out to a new world. He's nothing like what he's been made out to be."

Wade Clark, an advocate with The Leadership Group International, has been right alongside Jones since August. His role, he said, is to help Jones build "capacity," which is to set up such things as a Web site and accounting system and to help define the mission.

At Restoration, it's like a family between the all-volunteer group and those who are seeking help.

Jones' "family" is referred to her from a number of agencies, including the Department of Social Services, Allegany County Health Department and the Maryland Department of Parole and Probation. With room only for three, her homes often are full but she tries to help even if she doesn't have housing.

"The people respond to love and those who show them God's love," Clark said. "Some confuse kindness with weakness and try to take advantage of us. We give them all a chance."

That's the same with Bremer, whose gratitude and appreciation are evident to Jones.

"The one I have is working perfectly," she said.

Residents stay an average six months but sometimes a little longer. Jones said people are ready to move on when they have kept a job long enough that they're stable.

People are free to leave any time, Clark said. Those who show up at the door often don't have any support system at all and have fallen through the cracks for some reason.

Jones said she didn't start out helping people recently released from prison but "that seems like God is sort of leading me" in that direction.

"I love doing what I'm doing and I love people," she said. "I know through God and us we can help change a lot of things right here in the community as well as those coming out of the prisons and jails."

She said she's also "thankful for who I have" and grateful that God chose Restoration to bring such a person.

"There is a gratefulness, there is a change (in him) that started way before now," she said.

Restoration of the Heart, a ministry named because all hearts go through a healing and restoration, provides short-term transitional housing. It also puts people who arrive without any money get in touch with the resources they need, from jobs to medical care to schooling.

Established April 4, 2004, Restoration relies solely on individual and church donations and fundraisers. The office is open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, call (301) 722-1881.