Clint Hill
Författare till Mrs. Kennedy and Me
Om författaren
Clint Hill is a retired United States Secret Service agent who served five presidents-Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, and Gerald Ford. He is known for his courageous actions in the presidential motorcade during the John F. Kennedy assassination. Assigned visa mer to protect Jacqueline Kennedy, he remained with her and the children for one year after the tragedy. Hill retired in 1975 as the Assistant Director of the United States Secret Service, responsible for all protective forces. He is the author of Mrs. Kennedy, Me and Five Days in November and the New York Times betseller. Five Presidents:My Extraordinary Journey with Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford. (Bowker Author Biography) visa färre
Foto taget av: Former Secret Service agent and author Clint Hill at the 2016 Texas Book Festival. By Larry D. Moore, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53123220
Verk av Clint Hill
Associerade verk
The Kennedy Detail: JFK's Secret Service Agents Break Their Silence (2010) — Förord, vissa utgåvor — 281 exemplar
Secret Service Dogs: The Heroes Who Protect the President of the United States (2016) — Förord, vissa utgåvor — 79 exemplar
Taggad
Allmänna fakta
- Vedertaget namn
- Hill, Clint
- Namn enligt folkbokföringen
- Hill, Clinton J.
- Födelsedag
- 1932-01-04
- Kön
- male
- Nationalitet
- USA
- Födelseort
- Larimore, Grand Forks, North Dakota, USA
- Utbildning
- Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota, USA
- Yrken
- Secret Service Agent
- Organisationer
- United States Secret Service
- Priser och utmärkelser
- U.S. Treasury Dept. Award for Bravery
Medlemmar
Recensioner
Listor
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Associerade författare
Statistik
- Verk
- 5
- Även av
- 3
- Medlemmar
- 1,227
- Popularitet
- #20,922
- Betyg
- 4.0
- Recensioner
- 51
- ISBN
- 39
Hill gives a chilling and thought-provoking reason for her almost-instinctive reaction in those first awful seconds. It’s just one of the many insightful details provided by a dedicated professional security man, who had been assigned to the First Family since President Kennedy’s election. In clear and straightforward narrative, Hill lists each step in the President and First Lady’s campaign and fence-mending trip to Texas, revealing the depth of detail and coordination these tours involve, and providing a glimpse into the behind-the-scenes organization and preparation for which the Secret Service is responsible.
There’s no foreshadowing here, no second-guessing, though most readers will know exactly where the narrative is going as the Dallas motorcade wends its way toward the end of its route. Hill shows no more than the usual paranoia – part of his job – as his charges ride, exposed, through massive crowds. And his narrative of what happens after that first shot is fired remains, at this remove, collected and unemotional, even as he undergoes the full range of shock, understanding that the President’s wounds are not survivable, anger at his own inability to have foreseen and prevented the attack, heartbreak at the personal loss, and awareness that his assignment is not over. He comprehends that his duty is still to protect Mrs. Kennedy, to preserve evidence for the inevitable investigation, and to do what he can to ensure a rational and appropriate transfer of power.
As the book’s title indicates, Hill follows the events through the chaotic and sorrowful days between the attack and the formal state funeral, supported by the detailed notes he habitually made about his on-duty activities. Less scholarly than journalistic, the book is copiously illustrated with photographs (including frames from the Zapruder film) in ways that reinforce the immediacy of the narrative. It is, at times, an emotionally difficult piece to get through.
But it is the Epilogue and the new Afterword of this 2023 reprint of the book (originally released at the time of the 50-year commemoration of the event) that makes it particularly valuable, not only as a unique first-person view, but as one man’s attempt to comprehend the longer-lasting heritage of those five days in November.
He writes that “I fear that once all of us who were witnesses to history are gone, the truth will be buried along with us,” and is particularly incensed about Oliver Stone’s 1991 movie JFK, and its companion work, 2021’s JFK Revisited, which presents itself as a documentary even though, according to Hill, it consists solely of “more wild, unproven conspiracy theories featuring researchers, authors, and ‘experts’, none of who were in Dealey Plaza” when the shots were fired.
Hill says “…the persuasiveness of this particular film has convinced an entire generation that Oliver Stone’s fantasy is what actually happened,” and notes that Stone never once contacted any of the Secret Service agents on duty during that period.
If Hill makes any missteps in his evaluation of post-JFK America, it’s buying into the Camelot myth, calling “…the assassination of President Kennedy … the end of the age of innocence in America.” People, he writes, “… no longer believed they were being told the truth by politicians or the news media,” managing of course to ignore the reality that the politicians and the news media had in fact been massaging the truth for as long as either institution had existed.
Perhaps more accurately, he recalls that “it felt as if America were coming apart at the seams” after Kennedy’s death, opening up a decade that included escalation of the war in Vietnam, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, and the resignation of President Richard Nixon.
As an attempt to understand why the controversies and conspiracy theories about Kennedy’s assassination continue to proliferate, it is less than comprehensive. But as an accurate, firsthand depiction of a seminal moment in American history, Hill’s book is an important contribution.… (mer)