Ronald Reagan and his bodyguards did not realise he had been shot during his assassination attempt, according to a new audiotape, released 30 years after the incident.


The audio, from March, 1981, details the chaotic immediate aftermath of the shooting, when one of his bodyguards reassures others that "Rawhide is okay".

It was only after more minute that Special Agent Jerry Parr's initial message that another announced: "We want to go to the emergency room of George Washington."

When "Rawhide" - Reagan's code name - arrived at the hospital minutes later, doctors discovered that he had a bullet lodged in his lung, which had ricocheted off his car. He lost half his blood and required emergency surgery.

Neither the president nor his agents realised that he had been shot, and it appears that an agent's snap decision to take him to a hospital when he noticed that the US president was bleeding from the mouth, might have saved his life.

Mr Parr is heard shouting "let's hustle" as Mr Reagan's limousine suddenly changed course.

The tape captures the urgent, confused yet methodical radio communications among agents on the scene and the Secret Service command post, starting when the president and his entourage walked out of the Washington Hilton hotel while John Hinckley Jr stood waiting with a pistol.

Hinckley opened fire, wounding press secretary James Brady in the head, police officer Thomas Delahanty in the back and Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy in the abdomen before his last bullet indirectly struck the president.