The Kennedy Detail: JFK’s Secret Service Agents Break Their Silence
by Gerald Blaine with Lisa McCubbin
Gallery Books (Simon & Schuster)
2010
Hardcover: 427 pages
ISBN 978-1-4391-9296-2
Available on Amazon.com

Nobody can say what they would or wouldn’t do when a sudden catastrophic event occurs. Your instincts and adrenaline take over completely. Much of our training as Secret Service agents was practicing just such an event so that our actions would be as automatic as possible. But as combat soldiers and critical response teams know, no matter how much training you’ve had, nothing prepares you for the emotions and nightmares that follow the horror of seeing a human being alive one instant, their head blown open the next. — Former Agent Clint Hill

Today marks the 47th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas in 1963. Most of us either weren’t alive then or not old enough to understand what had happened. (JFK himself had occasion to remark about how many people could well remember what they were doing when they first heard of Franklin Roosevelt’s death. I was in the 8th grade, and had signed out of school at lunch time to do some extra family work; when we stopped at a service station to refuel, the attendant came out and volunteered, “Say, did you hear? Kennedy’s been shot.”)

Former Secret Service agent Gerald “Jerry” Blaine wants the world to know that his organization did everything possible to protect JFK and that they, in no wise, participated in his assassination, as so many armchair conspiricists allege.

Blaine wasn’t in Dallas that day, but he has been able to solicit as much material as he could from former Secret Service agents, their families, and survivors.

The story of Clint Hill is the pivot on which the entire account turns. Hill may have been the agent closest to the actual shooting; he believes he came within half a second of being hit by the third bullet that fatally wounded Kennedy. Hill’s primary job was to protect the First Lady (code name “Lace”) but also the President (code name “Lancer”) when necessary. You may recall from reading or films that he was the first agent to respond to the shots, jumping on the back of the limousine just in time to keep Jackie Kennedy from diving out in an impulsive effort to retrieve the shattered skull and brain matter that had been flung from the car by the bullet’s impact.

The Dallas shooting is the book’s centerpiece, but it also covers the Secret Service’s grueling and sometimes futile efforts to protect JFK and other presidents from adoring crowds—and the lone wacko with a weapon—on other occasions. A few of the senior agents had even been around in 1950 when an attempt was made on Harry Truman by a radical group.

The anger, frustration, and guilt the agents felt following JFK’s assassination has haunted them the rest of their lives, even though they had taken every precaution to protect Lancer. Kennedy believed in “pressing the flesh” of the people, and he knew full well how risky that can be. There’s always a tradeoff between security and politics, and JFK paid the price. It has always been understood that the president does not have to follow all Secret Service security recommendations if he doesn’t want to.

As for conspiracy theories, author Blaine has no patience with people who argue the Secret Service—or for that matter any other branch of government—was instrumental in setting up the shooting. For him, the Warren Commission Report is definitive, laying responsibility solely on the individual who perfectly fit the profile of a would-be presidential assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. While the FBI had a considerable file on Oswald, since he had never publicly indicated a desire to kill JFK or any other president, he wasn’t even on the Service’s threat list.

“Lancer” and “Lace” in Dallas motorcade, 22 November 1963