Samuel Byck wasn’t a mastermind. He was a frustrated tire salesman from South Philadelphia who lived in a trailer and felt the world had collectively decided to ruin his life. By 1974, he was convinced that the "Assassination of Richard Nixon" was the only way to save the American people from what he viewed as a corrupt administration. It’s a weird, dark corner of American history that usually gets overshadowed by Watergate, but the details of what actually went down on February 22, 1974, are terrifyingly visceral.
He didn't have a sniper rifle or a deep-state conspiracy behind him. He had a .22 caliber revolver, a homemade gasoline bomb, and a plan so chaotic it almost seems like fiction.
Most people don't realize how close this came to being a much bigger tragedy. Byck's plan wasn't just to shoot the President; he wanted to hijack a commercial airliner and fly it directly into the White House. This was decades before 9/11 made that kind of threat a national obsession. Back then, airport security was basically a joke—a metal detector if you were lucky and a quick glance at your carry-on.
The Man Behind the Failed Assassination of Richard Nixon
Byck was spiraling. Long before he headed to the Baltimore/Washington International Airport, he had been institutionalized for depression. He blamed the Small Business Administration for denying him a loan. He blamed Nixon for the state of the economy. Honestly, he blamed everyone. He even sent tapes to famous people like Leonard Bernstein and Jonas Salk, rambling about his "Operation Pandora’s Box." He thought he was a revolutionary. Most people just thought he was a nuisance.
The Secret Service actually knew about him. They’d investigated him previously for making threats, but he was deemed "harmless." That’s a mistake that haunts the agency’s history. It’s easy to look back now and see the red flags, but in the early 70s, the "lone wolf" profile wasn't as well-defined as it is today.
He was a guy who dressed up in a Santa Claus suit to protest in front of the White House. You’ve probably seen the photos—a disheveled man in red velvet holding a sign that nobody was reading. It’s kind of pathetic until you realize how much rage was simmering under the beard.
February 22: The Chaos at BWI
Byck didn’t have a ticket. He didn’t have a plan for how to get past the gate. He just showed up.
He walked into the airport carrying a suitcase that contained a massive "bomb" made of two gallons of gasoline and a detonator. He didn't wait in line. He didn't try to sneak. He pulled out his .22 and shot 24-year-old Maryland Aviation Administration Police Officer George Neal Ramsburg in the back. Ramsburg died almost instantly.
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If you’ve ever been to BWI, imagine that lobby. It’s a busy, echoing space. Suddenly, there’s a guy with a gun running toward Delta Flight 523.
He stormed the plane, a DC-9 bound for Atlanta. He ran into the cockpit and told the pilots, Reese (Doug) Loftin and James Gould, to take off. They told him they couldn't—the wheels were still choked, and the engines weren't even started. Byck didn't care about the physics of aviation. He shot them both. He screamed at a passenger to "help" the pilots fly the plane.
It was a nightmare.
Why the Plan to Assassinate Richard Nixon Fell Apart
The thing about Byck was that he had zero technical knowledge of how planes worked. He thought he could just point a gun and make a jet move. While he was busy terrorizing the cockpit, a police officer named Charles Troyer, who had been alerted by the shots in the terminal, fired through the window of the plane’s door.
Troyer used a .357 Magnum. The bullets went through the reinforced glass of the cockpit door and hit Byck.
Byck realized it was over. Before the police could storm the plane, he turned his own gun on himself.
It was a bloody, senseless end to a plan that was doomed from the start. But here is the chilling part: if Byck had managed to get that plane off the ground, there was absolutely nothing in 1974 that could have stopped him from hitting the White House. The Secret Service didn't have surface-to-air missiles on the roof back then. Nixon was actually in the White House that morning.
The Aftermath and the "Erasure" of Samuel Byck
You might wonder why this isn't as famous as the Kennedy assassination or even the attempt on Reagan.
Part of it was Watergate. The country was already exhausted by Richard Nixon. The news cycle was dominated by the impeachment hearings and the tapes. A "crazy guy" at an airport seemed like just another symptom of a country falling apart.
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Also, the media at the time was wary of "copycat" killers. There was a conscious effort not to turn Samuel Byck into a folk hero for the disenfranchised. He was buried in a pauper’s grave. His tapes were archived, and for a long time, the story just... faded.
It wasn't until the film The Assassination of Richard Nixon came out in 2004, starring Sean Penn, that the general public really started looking back at this event. The movie gets a lot of the atmosphere right—that feeling of 1970s grime and desperation. But the real Sam Byck was arguably even more unstable than the movie version.
Key Facts About the 1974 Incident
- Date: February 22, 1974.
- Location: Baltimore/Washington International Airport (BWI).
- Casualties: Officer George Neal Ramsburg and Pilot James Gould. Copilot Doug Loftin survived his injuries.
- Weaponry: A .22 caliber revolver and a gasoline-based incendiary device.
- The Target: The White House.
It’s worth noting that Nixon himself barely mentioned the event in his memoirs. He was a man obsessed with his enemies, but Byck was too small, too "unimportant" to occupy space in Nixon’s grand narrative of political warfare.
But the "Assassination of Richard Nixon" attempt changed aviation security forever. It was one of the primary catalysts for the implementation of the stricter screening processes we saw in the late 70s. We often think of airport security as a post-2001 phenomenon, but the seeds were sown in the blood on the floor of that DC-9.
Lessons from the Samuel Byck Case
What can we actually learn from this?
First, the "lone actor" is often someone who has been screaming for help—or screaming threats—for a long time. Byck wasn't a ghost; he was a guy with a file at the Secret Service. The failure to bridge the gap between "mental health case" and "active threat" is a recurring theme in American security failures.
Second, the psychological state of the country matters. 1974 was a year of immense cynicism. When a population loses faith in its institutions, individuals like Byck start to see themselves as "correctors" of history.
If you’re interested in diving deeper into this specific era of Secret Service history, you should look into the work of Ronald Kessler, who has written extensively about the agency's evolution. Or, check out the declassified FBI files on Byck—they are chillingly dry accounts of a man who had completely lost his grip on reality.
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Next Steps for History Buffs:
Check the National Archives for the "Samuel Byck Tapes." Hearing his voice—calmly explaining his plan to a world-famous composer—provides a level of insight into the mind of an assassin that a textbook just can't match. Also, if you ever fly through BWI, take a moment to realize that the security lines we complain about today started because of one man with a suitcase full of gasoline and a grudge against the President.