2.0 out of 5
stars Disappointed, April 13,
2014
This
review is from: Five
Days in November (Hardcover)
I used to have a lot of respect for Clint Hill. He was the
Secret Service agent who jumped on the back of the limo during the shooting. His
"60 Minutes" interview with Mike Wallace in the early 1970's is emotional and
heartbreaking as he cries his way through the interview, still willing to give
his life for the President's. This new book is his narrative of JFK's fatal trip
to Texas. But he omits entirely the episode of the Secret Service agents who
went out drinking the night before Dallas. Clint himself admitted in a report he
had a scotch and water. Agents were then (and now) prohibited from drinking
while on travel status, as they obviously were. Hill describes, again, JFK's
head wound, the wound he saw in the limo and the missing part of the head (skull
and brain). It's at the back of the head, completely at odds with the official
version and indicative (but not proof) of an exit wound. Hill can't seem to
reconcile this fact. He still blames "one shooter." Clint is at his worst in the
epilogue. His version is three shots: one through JFK's neck, the second through
Connally, the third hitting JFK in the head. Again, he says three shots, "one
shooter." But you can't have separate shots to JFK and Connally without a
separate shooter. And, under his version, a bullet would have to completely
disappear (the one through JFK's neck), and there is no missed bullet to hit or
ricochet or fragment to hit James Tague in the cheek as he stood at the
underpass. Clint also publishes the James Altgens photo, cropped, and writes,
"Look at the motorcycle officer positioned immediately to the right of the
presidential limousine, on the left-hand side of the photo. He is looking back
to the origination of that first shot." No, he's not. That officer is James
Chaney. Never called to testify, he was interviewed that day on local radio and
saw JFK hit "in the face." He wasn't looking to the source of the shot. He was
looking right at JFK. A witness to the assassination, Clint Hill still can't
understand that what he saw and his version of the shooting are not compatible
with a lone shooter. I still respect Clint Hill. Just not as much. At least the
book has a lot of pictures because the text is unreliable.
