By MICHAEL GORMLEY and CAROLYN THOMPSON
Associated Press

ALBANY - A U.S. Justice Department study of the 83 people known to have attacked or tried to attack public figures from 1949 to 1996 provides a more complex, surprising and vexing profile than the suave hit men or edgy nut jobs portrayed in TV dramas.

"In reality, there are no accurate descriptive or demographic profiles of American assassins, attackers, and near-lethal approachers," according to the Justice Department's guide for state and local enforcement officials, "Protective Intelligence & Threat Assessment Investigations."

Ages range from 16 to 73, half attended college, few had histories of violence or attempted attacked on public figures before, few had formal training with weapons, many had radical ideas but few belonged to militant groups, few had mental illness, most seek a way to solve a problem but it's often not a clear political agenda.

These and many more sometimes contradictory factors dogged FBI agents from Cleveland to Albany after a group state and federal officials received threats in 1985 that included a promise to "shoot your brains out." No one died and no one appears to have been arrested in the complex case, which began in Buffalo and was ignited by a gun shot into a U.S. Supreme Court justice's home days later.

The targets:

• Harry Blackmun: A U.S. Supreme Court justice from 1970 to 1994 who wrote the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that found that abortion was protected under the U.S. Constitution. He died in 1994 at the age of 85.

• Lewis Powell: A U.S. Supreme Court justice appointed in 1972 by President Nixon. In 1985, the native Virginian was on the high court, where he was known as a consensus builder. He served on the court until 1987 and died in 1998, at the age of 90.

• Alfonse D'Amato: Founder of Park Strategies, a consulting firm, the 72-year-old Republican was a U.S. senator for 18 years and leader of the Republican Party in New York. In 1985, he was beginning his critical and first re-election bid. He was a powerful Republican figure in New York who supported the death penalty and opposed federal funding of abortions, while famously defending Bernard Goetz, the vigilante who shot four young men who asked him for money on a New York subway on Dec. 22, 1984, two months before the threats were mailed. He declined to talk about the threat.

• James Griffin: Buffalo's longest-serving mayor, who died in 2008. As a state senator in the 1970s, he tried unsuccessfully to have New York's abortion-rights laws repealed. When he became Buffalo mayor, he hung an "Abortion kills children" placard in his City Hall office and answered yes when asked whether Operation Rescue demonstrators would be welcome in Buffalo.

• Dennis Gorski: The former assemblyman and Erie County executive, a Democrat, opposed abortions except in cases of rape, incest and to save a woman's life. The ex-Marine, who served in Vietnam, however, said threats are a part of public life and they didn't inhibit anything he did in office. He didn't even recall this one.

• Mario Cuomo: Democratic governor and national liberal icon considered a future presidential candidate following his 1984 speech at the Democratic National Convention. His landmark speech at Notre Dame University five months before the threats presented a road map for politicians still followed today, particularly for Catholics like himself, to accommodate abortion rights as part of an "American-Catholic tradition of political realism."

• Edward "Ned" Regan: Now a college professor, in 1985 the Republican was the New York state comptroller. He walked to work and took the subway alone and said he doesn't recall the threat or ever wanting security. "I preferred it," he said. "It wasn't necessary. There is something called a self-fulfilling prophecy."

• Richard Wesley, 60, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals Second Circuit, appointed by President George H.W. Bush, and a former associate judge on New York's Court of Appeals. In 1985 he was a state assemblyman representing Livingston, Allegany and Ontario counties. When the death penalty was overturned in 1984, he called death-row killers like Lemuel Smith "animals ... who have no respect for human dignity."

• Robert Abrams: He is a partner in a law firm. In 1985, he was the state attorney general, and in the early stages of using the courts to ensure access to abortion clinics despite protests. He was attorney general from 1979 to 1993.