THE KENNEDY DETAIL

I just spent a week on the beach in Puerto Rico!  One of the things I enjoyed doing the most (besides helping Grandsons Daniel and Jake play important games in the sand and surf) was to read Jerry Blaine’s new book, The Kennedy Detail. I read it very carefully and with tremendous interest as well as emotion because I lived through that time. I, like you, got nearly all of my “facts” over the past fifty years from the media.

Incidentally, for all you conspiracy theorists out there, Jerry will be interviewed on December 2 on the Discovery Channel. I believe it is in the evening at 7 PM. I also understand that the Channel will discuss some of those conspiracy theories before that time, although I can’t seem to find out when. Here’s a suggestion (an obvious one, at that)  from one (me) who is always intrigued by conspiracy but who long ago determined that such avenues in regard to the Kennedy assassination were simply not true ones, but were part of our culture’s need to make sense out of the insensible. So, don’t draw any conclusions about conspiracies until you hear Jerry’s interview or read the book. He pretty well disposes of them all.

Jerry was one of the special agents serving in the United States Secret Service and was assigned to the Kennedy Detail. In other words, he was there. After nearly fifty years, he decided it should now be okay to share; time to tell the story,  factually and from an insider’s notes and personal recollection. Actually, I need to pluralize that. Jerry got the notes and  personal recollections of all the special agents on that Detail. It took him years to put it all together.

This posting is not to be a book report. Already there have been short interviews of Jerry and Clint Hill (another “he was there” special agent) on Fox, on CNN and CNBC that I know of.  Shortly I expect most of America will have read the book for themselves and I urge you to be one of the readers if you have any interest in what happened to the President, why it happened, if there is fault to be found and what happened to the hearts of the agents who were there and were charged with protecting the President but who, through no fault of their own, failed. What became of each of them afterward, and what it was like to have that sort of  job.  If you want more inside detail, vidoes and a list of interviews Jerry has given and will be giving, go to his website, www.kennedydetail.com.

President Kennedy became a personal friend to most of the agents who served him. What do you suppose it was like to lose him suddenly and in the way that it happened, yet be given absolutely no time to grieve because your job required you to immediately throw your shoulders back and assume the same role in protecting the new president and to make it be seamless.

I do have a couple of thoughts that I want to share. The first has to do with President Kennedy’s legacy to you and  to me. Since his death,   I’ve seen the media and lots of authors deliberating and communicating opinion as to Kennedy’s worth as a president. What I saw them doing  is to chronicle the good accomplishments, chronicle the less than good ones, total them up with a resulting score card that says he was either  a “great,” or “good,” or “mediocre,”  or “not-so-good” president. That’s okay. That’s the way our society grades people. What did they achieve?  And were the positives heavier than the negatives? To me, as one interested in real legacy, it’s all irrelevant!

I prefer what I read by looking between the lines of Jerry’s work: when John  F. Kennedy came to office, he offered us all hope. That’s not to imply we particularly needed it after our previous president-- but just a sense of beautiful hope nonetheless. That is, after all, a core need of human beings and Kennedy offered that to all of us.

When he left us three years later, notwithstanding the grief and outrage we all felt, he left us with that same hope. His life, his presidency, brought you and me blossoming hope.  He loved us and we believed him. That’s his legacy to his people. And what greater one could there be?

Another observation I drew has to do with the integrity of the guys (and gals) who serve in the Secret Service. You know they’ve got a code of silence. They can’t talk about things. It’s just how it is. Yet our media folk need someone to blame when tragedy happens. Maybe it’s not just the media; maybe it’s all of us. When our beloved is taken away or when national tragedy happens, we need to find out who messed up, whose fault is this anyway.   And so it was with this one.  I remember the press and the television pointing fingers at the Secret Service and saying that since it was their job to prevent this, the occurrence had to mean the Service is at fault. A little simple investigating would have nipped that conclusion in the bud.  Yet not until now has the Secret Service been able to speak up.

I think it’s the media’s prioritizing it’s desire to sell product over the need  for honesty—to check facts.  But that’s just me.