Former President Jimmy Carter, a leader of humanitarian efforts in the three decades since leaving office, has received more death threats than any other former commander-in-chief, a new book by University of Virginia political science guru Larry Sabato claims.
"I have had two or three threats to my life after I came home from the White House," Carter says in the forthcoming book, "The Kennedy Half Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy," according to an excerpt obtained by the Washington Examiner. "When I go on an overseas trip almost invariably, I get a report from the Secret Service that where I'm going is very dangerous."
Carter has lived longer since his presidential term than any other U.S. president. The Examiner story contains no details about the number of threats he has received compared with other former presidents.
Since his one term as president, which ended in 1981, Carter has led the Carter Center, an Atlanta-based institution with "a fundamental commitment to human rights and the alleviation of human suffering."
Carter has led public health initiatives in Eritrea, Liberia, Sudan, Bosnia, Herzegovina and Haiti. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
Carter told Sabato that dangerous political situations in some countries have prompted his Secret Service detail to recommend he cancel visits. He hasn't take their advice.
"[My detail] and I both just laugh about it," Carter said, according to the book. "So I have been more concerned about my safety in doing the Carter Center's business overseas than I ever was in the White House."
No former U.S. president has ever been successfully assassinated. Theodore Roosevelt, during his return to presidential politics in 1912, survived an attempt on his life in Milwaukee when a bullet struck a thick draft of a speech contained his breast pocket. In 1933, police at Stanford University arrested a would-be assassin before he entered the home of former president Herbert Hoover.
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