 engaged with him, but then he pointed the gun at the cop, and the cop backed down, and he managed to squeeze off some shots. This is what they trained for, but a former agent told me this is the first time that a Secret Service sniper, or technician as they are called, has killed a would-be assassin. It is a split-second decision, as we've said, but as the agent noted to me, it is obvious that despite the history-making move and the difficulty of that split-second decision, the shot came too late.