Oscar Collazo

Oscar Collazo was one of two Puerto Rican nationalists who attempted to kill Harry S. Truman at Blair House, hoping to draw attention to their cause. The failed attack left Collazo in custody and ultimately brought him a death sentence, later commuted by Truman to life imprisonment.

Background and Approach

Collazo, thirty-six, came from New York and shared with his younger accomplice, Griselio Torresola, a militant commitment to Puerto Rican nationalism. The two decided that killing the President would publicize their cause. The book emphasizes the contrast between this purpose and their unobtrusive appearance: dressed in dark suits and hats, they had been mistaken for divinity students by a hotel clerk the night before. They carried a German Walther P-38 and a German Luger, with sixty-nine rounds of ammunition between them; Collazo had never fired a pistol before.

At 2:19, the men approached Blair House from opposite directions. Torresola stopped at Private Leslie Coffelt’s guard booth and spoke loudly, apparently drawing attention toward himself while Collazo passed another police booth and moved toward the entrance. Donald Birdzell, looking toward Torresola, heard a metallic click, turned, and saw Collazo aiming the P-38 at him. Collazo tried to fire, but the pistol did not discharge. As gunfire broke out, officers Floyd Boring and Davidson fired at Collazo. Boring’s second shot brought him down beside the front step, ending his part in the attack.

Political Meaning and Legal Aftermath

Collazo later explained the attack as directed not at Truman personally but at the political system he represented. That distinction framed the shooting as an attempt to publicize Puerto Rican nationalism through violence against a presidential symbol. It also sharpened the irony of the target: Truman had supported Puerto Ricans’ right to determine their political relationship with the United States, appointed the island’s first native-born governor, and extended Social Security to its people. The book places Collazo’s stated rationale beside those measures, without suggesting that they changed his decision to attack.

Collazo was convicted on four counts, including the murder of Leslie Coffelt, and sentenced to death in the electric chair. In 1952, Truman commuted the sentence to life imprisonment as a gesture to the people of Puerto Rico. The decision altered Collazo’s fate while leaving the conviction and punishment in place: the attempted assassination had ended in a fatality, imprisonment, and a presidential act explicitly connected to the island whose cause Collazo had sought to advance.

After twenty-nine years in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary, Collazo was pardoned by President Jimmy Carter in 1979. His documented trajectory therefore ran from a failed attempt to use an attack on the President to call attention to Puerto Rico, through a death sentence and its commutation, to eventual release by pardon. The political purpose he had assigned to the attack remained distinct from its consequences for Coffelt, the other wounded officers, and Collazo himself.

Aftermath and the Limits of the Attack

The attack’s consequences extended beyond Collazo’s arrest. Donald Birdzell and Joseph Downs recovered from their wounds and returned to their jobs, while Truman resumed his routine the next morning, setting out for his usual walk. The appearance of normality was carefully guarded: at least a dozen additional Secret Service men watched over him, beyond the four immediately accompanying him, with others positioned ahead, across the street, or in a following car.

At his press conference that afternoon, Truman maintained that he had never been in danger. Yet in a note to Dean Acheson he called the attack unnecessary and praised the men who had been hurt; he also recognized how differently it might have ended. The plan for his appearance at Arlington had been printed in the morning paper, and the attackers could have waited another twenty minutes for him to leave Blair House. That near miss gave Collazo’s attempt a consequence beyond its immediate failure: it exposed the vulnerability of the presidential routine the attack had sought to reach.

Narrative Role and Limits of the Record

The account presents Collazo through a sharp contrast between the political meaning he assigned to the attack and the sparse personal detail available about him. It identifies his age, New York origins, Puerto Rican nationalism, and role in the approach to Blair House, then follows the failed attempt through conviction, commutation, and pardon. His stated distinction between attacking a President and attacking a system gives the action a political rationale, but the record does not develop that rationale into a fuller personal history or explain how Collazo understood the later consequences. The resulting portrait remains defined by the gap between the cause he sought to publicize and the irreversible harm and imprisonment that followed.