Born in Ohio, he was arrested by the United States Secret Service after being found carrying a starter pistol with blank rounds, ten minutes before President Jimmy Carter was to give a speech at the Civic Center Mall in Los Angeles on May 5, 1979.
Harvey claimed that he was part of a four-man operation to assassinate the president, after having been approached by three Latino men staying at the Alan Hotel who gave him a starter pistol, and asked him to shoot it into the ground to create a diversion, so they could then shoot the president from their hotel room during the distraction.
[1] According to Harvey, he fired seven blank rounds from the starter pistol on the hotel roof on the night of May 4, to test how much noise it would make.
He then spent the night in a room taken by one of the men, whom he knew as "Julio", but who was later identified as a 21-year-old illegal Mexican alien who gave the name Osvaldo Espinoza Ortiz.
[3] Although he had a history of mental illness,[2] and his claims were originally dismissed as "a tale spun by an intoxicated man,"[4] Harvey's claims were investigated by police, who found a room in the Alan Hotel, containing a shotgun case and three unspent rounds of ammunition, and booked for the night under the name "Umberto Camacho," the name of an alleged conspirator given by Ortiz.