simply type the title of the author's name at the top left of the screen and click search. .. [applause] >> as jill mentioned, we're just thrilled to have these folks here. jerry blaine, the author of "the kennedy detail," clint hill, one of the special agents who was here at that time, and lisa mccubbin. welcome to dallas, and welcome to the sixth floor museum. >> thank you.

>> i need to remind folks, we need you to turn your cell phones off, not just put 'em on silent, but turn them off. there's a lot of radio interference in the area, and we want to make sure the recorderrings come out well. there are two cameras here, those are from c-span. the program is being recorded for c-span, and they'll broad this sometime probably within the next week or two. and our associate curator is recording, also, for our oral history program which now totals over 800 people. while we're chatting, the biographies of our guests will appear on the screens behind us, also some photographs. ones of the kennedys come from the national archives and white house photographers, and the photographs of the kennedys that you'll see in dallas come from the sixth floor museum's collections. let's see here. we'll also have a q&a session. many of you have filled out the forms already. you don't have a pencil or pen to write with, hold up your

hand, and people will come around and give you a pencil to write with. i have some prepared questions, obviously, but i know i can't cover everything, and we'll see what we can do. toward the end of the program, we'll get into our q&a session. let's get acquainted first. raise your hand if you remember the kennedy assassination weekend. raise your hand if you were here in dallas at the time. fascinating, fascinating. all right. let's see. okay, now, i wanted to make one point. we're here payoff a very sad event -- because of a very sad event, but we don't want to make this a sad occasion. i want to pass on to you a story that came to me when i was about halfway through the book. let me take you back to denver, colorado, and both jerry and clint worked in the denver office at the secret service, but not at this time. in 1963, i think it was, i saw

president kennedy. and at the time we lived next door to one of the top executives at the local lincoln mercury dealer, and he told my dad and i, president kennedy's coming to town. he's going to come right by here. we just lived a block away from a major east/west street. if you go out on sixth avenue, you'll be able to see him and wave to him. so i went out there. you know, there's no one else there that the route he was taking from the air force base to downtown denver was not published. so i'm the only one out there. i saw the flashing lights, i wave and wave and wave, and he went right by be. he never saw me, he was reading something. it o occurred to me reading this book that there were secret service agents in that car wondering, hey, how did that guy know? [laughter] and who else knows?

there's probably something in the file somewhere that says find out about that kid. [laughter] your book, "the kennedy detail," is getting an awful lot of attention. and one of the stories that's been talked about a lot is the moment when you, jerry, almost gunned down the brand new president of the united states, lyndon johnson. you were at the white house, take it from there. what happened? >> well, i wasn't at the white house. this was about 2:15 in the morning after the assassination, and we were all kennedy detail agents that were standing watch. and president kennedy, if he came outside, he would notify the security command post, and we'd get the word around that the president was out moving. the vice president before he became president usually only had about two agents with him.

one would be inside and maybe the other one out. so he had no idea of the protocol. i hadn't slept in this about 40 hours -- in about 40 hours, and i was hallucinating. when i relieved the 12 shift agent, he was still emotionally rocked from dallas, so he pointed at the machine gun we had on post. so not knowing whether it was a conspiracy or not, we were pretty much on edge. when i heard a noise coming from around the house and all of a sudden i had my, the weapon to my shoulder, my finger on the trigger. and be i don't know if you notice it, but you can recognize lyndon johnson's profile. so, fortunately, i noticed that

right away. but it was close. i had nightmares over that for a long time afterwards. >> those of you who have been here know where we are, but, of course, the c-span viewers might not know. we're actually on the seventh floor of what used to be the texas school book depository building. the museum has exhibits on the sixth and seventh floors, and we're in a separate area. it's a saturday afternoon. in two days it will will have b7 years since president kennedy was killed right outside of these windows. jerry and lisa, where has this book been, and why has it taken so long for the story from you guys to come out? >> let me start with the motivation first. when i retired, i started looking on the internet and started reading stories about agents that we had served with

that were accused of being a part of a conspiracy. the driver turning around and shooting president kennedy, although the you look closely -- if you look closely, he would have had to have shot mrs. kennedy in the back of the head in order to get to the president at that time. and just stories that were defaming the people. so i read a story that involved tampa where i conducted an event, and i went back and be looked at my records, and i said it's time to set the record straight. there are not many of us left, and we're all x-ray haired, and we won't -- gray haired, and we won't be around very long, so we wanted to leave a record. to find somebody, i must have written probably about seven books to tell the stories, but to find somebody that could put the heart and soul to the book.

lisa mccubbin, who wasn't even born at the time of the assassination but joyce, my wife and i, were friends with her parents. she graduated with my son from high school. so lisa in the course of this became an agent, and i think i'll let her discuss her feelings as she put this together with me. >> you want me to talk about that a little bitsome. >> sure. >> first of all, it's been an honor and a privilege to have been involved in this project. i feel extremely lucky that somehow the stars aligned and jerry and i have known each other for all these years, and it was the right time, and we came together to work on this project. and be it has been just fascinating for me because i was born in january of 1964, and, you know, in history class it

seems like when you take u.s. history in your junior year of high school, you get to about world war ii, and it's may, and things are winding down. and i had never studied the kennedy assassination. you know, of course, i knew of it but with didn't know much about it. what i knew was that when i used to go through the blaine house for be christmas eve, down in the their basement they had these great photographs of jerry with lyndon johnson and eisenhower and kennedy, and i was always fascinated by that. but being 12 years old at the time or 16 years old, i didn't ever really feel comfortable asking him about it. so working on this book i feel like i got a rare window into history like to one else has. >> was this your first book? i know you've billion a journalist for -- been a journalist for most of your professional life. >> yes, this was my first published book. >> i could tell where you were

leading me, and sometimes when you read books like that, you don't -- it's kind of annoying. but with your book i was enjoying getting there. i knew what you were leading to, an emotional moment, and it was enjoyable to follow along with how that trail wound around. how did you decide to write the book in the way you did? well, as jerry said, he had spent many years putting stories together, and he had contacted a lot of the agents already, so i had a lot of material to work with in terms of all of their various stories. and we came up with the idea together of how to put the story together, and to me what was really fascinating and was important in this book was to show these men as human beings. not just nameless, faceless men in dark sunglasses. to me secret service agents were always very mysterious creatures and, you know, as i've gotten to know them, i realize they, i

mean, they're human beings. and the stories that i read from the various agents and as i started interviewing the agents were just so poignant that to me it was really important to make the reader understand who these men were and to love them and to understand the close relationship they had with the kennedys so that you know what's going to happen in the book. everybody knows what's going to happen. but you kind of want to know where, you know, now you start caring about jerry blaine, and you want to know, well, where is he going to be when this happens? i wanted to build that drama into it. >> clint, you were somewhat reluctant to get involved. how did you tibet involved in this book -- get involved in this book, and how did jerry talk you into it? >> i've known him since 1959. he ri placed me -- replaced me

in denver when i got transferred to the white house. he called me and asked me if i'd be willing to contribute to a book he was writing. i was not enthusiastic at all. i was very apprehensive about it because i'd been offered many chances to write books, contribute to books, appear on television and various things, and i just can't want to do -- didn't want to do it. so then he told me this book was going to be factual, no gossip, that the information would be coming from the agents that were involved and material that they had. and then he said that i could check it for fact. once he said that, then i agreed to contribute as long as i could check it before it was published, which i did, and i've read the book six times, and i know what's in it. it's factual, not fiction. >> you mentioned salacious material, and some of the kennedy legacy is the talk about his personal life. there's not a whole lot of that

in your book. why is that? >> well, we in the secret service give the president and his family as much privacy as we can. when they get to the second floor of the white house, where they live. we stay out of there unless we have to go there or are requested to go there. what happens on the second floor, that's their business. not ours. same thing goes when they're in residence away from the white house. we provide them with an environment in which they can function safely, but they live their lives as they want to live them. we don't interfere, and we don't talk about it. >> for several months following the assassination, you continued with your assignment which was jackie kennedy. at some point did people come up to you, like after that life magazine came out with frames where they could see you running up to the car, do they come up to you and say are you that guy?

did that happen? >> rarely, because i tried to make sure nobody knew who i was. [laughter] i stayed with mrs. kennedy and the children for a full year until november of 1964, and then i was returned to the white house detail. >> did that make it easier or harder to deal with what had happened, that personal relationship with jackie? >> it made it more difficult because i had to go through the grieving process with the family, with she and the children. christmas of '64 was an absolute horror because here you are with these two young children who just lost their father and a widow who'd just lost her husband, and you try to make it as merry a christmas as you can, but it's just impossible. >> did you, did you two stay in touch after ha? >> when i left in 1964, they threw a going away party for me in new york where she was living at the time. she had moved to new york, and i live inside a hotel room in new york. and they wished me well, they thought i was being trapped to

wyoming. [laughter] because they thought for sure they'd never let me back on the white house detail having been with the kennedys. i saw her in 1968 when, for the funeral of senator robert kennedy, and i talked to her a few times on the telephone because of interest she had in activities surrounding her children, and that was the extent of it. >> all three of you, i assume, spoke with many of the current and former agents at the time about this project. how did those conversations go, and what kind of responses did you get especially from those who would not speak or participate many this projectsome. >> well, there were, there were -- i started off, really, by calling jerry baines' wife. and jerry had passed on, and he was our agent in charge. and i talked with her and told her that i was thinking of doing that. the second person i touched base with was floyd foreking.

surprising, probably, to many of you but we never discussed the assassination with each other. after the assassination occurred, there was no trauma counseling, there was just an awful lot of work to do. so we were left to do the work, and our working life was 60 hours a month overtime on average. there are i think i calculated it out, we made about $1.3 -- $1.80 an hour. the only way you could relax is take an hour or two after you got off and spend time drowning down with the agents you were working with. so we just somehow kind of swallowed our emotions. we got wrapped up in the new

president, and we had no idea what impact it was going to have on us the rest of our life. but there were two with agents that i talked to, but they told me they didn't want to participate. and one was jack ready. he was on the president's side of the automobile, and when he heard the first retort, he turned around and looked up from where the shot came from, and clint explained later as his eyes scanned over, he noticed the's hands go to his -- the president's hands go to his throat. so clint took off immediately, and jack then turned around and, you know, for all of his might he wanted to jump off the car, but the follow-up car driver had

pulled over and jack even attempted to make it. he'd have been run over by the car. but then there was a movie, and hollywood has played a big impact on all of us. "in the line of fire," they had clint east wood's figure print inside where with jack was on the follow-up car. and the theme of the movie was that he failed miserably at his job. and that was the theme of the movie. i, you know, i'm speculating, but i think that's probably what impacted jack, and he just said emotionally he couldn't participate. a second agent, don lawton, who was assigned to do the departure here in dallas, we were so stripped down of agents on this trip -- that'll probably be another question -- but don was

a senior agent, and you needed a senior agent to handle a departure. so he was left behind. you may have seen movies that some of the theorists say he was being told to stand down. don was just getting his turn to run by the car, and he knew he was going to have to stay there. but not being able to be with the president in dallas that day really impacted him. >> one of the things that comes out very clearly in the book is the day-to-day routine of the agents. endless hours day many and day out -- day in and day out of just standing and watching. how do you do a job like that? >> sometimes you're looking off into black water out there somewhere saying, jeez, what'd i waste four years going to college for. [laughter] but the rest of the time we

didn't -- you know, our agents were pretechnology. we used hand signals with each other. we had no radio communication. we had 3x5 cards with photographs of people who had threatened the president, and on the back of the 3x5 card we had their biography and so forth. and we would memorize those pictures. and then people would always ask us why we wore sunglasses. because behind the sunglasses your eyes can lack right and -- can look right and left. so if you see one of the individuals, then you bang on the side of the car, the other agents did that, and you'd do a quick turn over that way. they've got their eye on him. and if you feel a threat, then you notify the driver to move on. but that was our technology. >> is it okay for the general public to know that now?

[laughter] >> we had a budget, i think, in 1963 of 4.5 million. i don't think we had that much, but we had probably 330 agents. there were 34 of us on the white house detail, there were two agents on the first lady and three agents on the children. and today they have a budget, i'll go conservative, is.4 billion -- 1.4 billion, and they have somewhere in the neighborhood of 7,000 employees as an organization. so it's an altogether different game today. but the weaponry is much better too. when you get sniper rifles that can do head shots at a mile away and some of the other technologies and be larger

groups that use suicide as a weapon, then you've still got a serious problem. but i'm positive the agents today have the same heart and soul we do. >> the business is so much more complicated now. that makes me wonder, did you have to show the manuscript to the secret service before it went to the publisher? >> why don't you take one. >> no, they didn't have to receive approval for this at all from the secret service. however, we didn't -- jerry allowed me to take a book and talk to the directer, mark sullivan, about it. and he read the book, and he called me up, and he was very enthusiastic about the book. and he invited us to come to his office and have a luncheon with him last monday. which everybody did. and he indicated that he thought the contents of the book should be read by every new agent in

the service because it would help them understand exactly what had happened in the past and and they could use that information with what they're doing today. >> and i might add to that. we, clint did notify directer sullivan while we were writing the book. he wanted to let him know that it was being done. and at first he was, what did he say? >> he said, oh, no, not another book. [laughter] >> and, but then he said, he found out that crypt was involved -- clint was involved, and he said, if clint hill's involved, we don't have a problem with it. we know it's going to be worthy of trust and confidence. >> can't get much better than that. jerry, after you left the service, you did mostly security work, but you lived for a while here in the dallas area. were you here when word first got out that there was going to be a museum about the kennedy assassination here many town? >> no.

i worked for ibm for 27 years. i started -- i left in july of 1964, and i ended up working on law enforcement and intelligence systems and helped design the fbi national crime information center. the walnut system for the cia and mobile terminals, fingerprint scanners. my frustration and i think one of the reasons i left was it almost seemed like a futile job unless we had the type of equipment needed. so i worked quite a while on that. and so i made a call on the secret service because the fbi's system could check for wanted people. and we had no way of keeping track of where these potential threat cases were. and so i, they had a new data

processing manager at the secret service, and so i said, well, why don't you jutte tie into -- just tie into the national crime information center and run the inquiries through x if you get a hit, at least you'll know where they are. and he said, wow, gee, that would be an invasion of privacy. and after going through the assassination, i just couldn't take that. so i went into the security side of ibm. and here in dallas i worked for arco international. and you already had the museum up and running pretty well then. >> and, clint, you stayed with the service for a while. but then you retired and dealt with your personal situation. >> correct. >> what's kept you busy since then? >> well, i tried a number of businesses, none of them worked. i was a failure at all of them. [laughter]

so i just kept busy with my family. that's about the only thing i've been able to do recently. but i did stay with the service. i was returned to the white house detail in 1964. and i was assigned to then-president johnson. first thing that happened was president johnson went to his ranch in stonewall, texas, and i was down there, and one day i was walking between the house and the security room, and president johnson saw me. he recognized me as having been on the kennedy detail. i had met him personally in new york. he had come to visit mrs. kennedy one day at the carlisle hotel, so he knew who i was. as soon as he saw me, he called and talked to the agent in charge and said that he wanted me removed immediately. he didn't want me to be assigned to that detail with him because i'd been with the kennedyss, and he thought for sure i was a kennedy loyalist. so mr. youngblood went in and

talked to him and after about 30 minutes he convinced him i should stay. so i stayed, and eventually within three years i became the agent in charge of his protection. and when he left office, he asked me if i'd be willing to come down to his ranch and run his protective detail, and i told him i didn't think my career ladder should end at the river. [laughter] he accepted my denial going down there to take that job, and i went on to be the agent in charge of vice president -- [inaudible] and then eventually voted me assistant directer for all protection. and then i was retired in 1975. >> in 1975 that was the, that was the interview on one of the earliest episodes or earliest

'60 minutes" programs, and i know this is in detail in the book. this was a moment when you first talked on camera about the kennedy assassination, and people have remembered it ever since. of course o, now it's on youtube everywhere. do people ask you a lot about that appearance, and what do you tell them about that moment? >> well, they do ask me about it because it was one of those situations where i completely broke emotionally. "60 minutes" actually did the taping twice. first time they taped it, everything went fine. when they got back to new york, apparently, the man who ran "60 minutes" didn't like the way they did it because they didn't get into my emotions enough. so mike wallace called me up and said, hey, we had some technical problems with that, we're going to have to shoot it again. so i met him for lunch at a

hotel in washington, and this time the questions were quite different than they were the first time, and he got right into my emotional baggage, and i broke on camera. many times people have canned me about -- have asked me about that, if i've recovered and, yes, i can say i have. actually i was cathartic that that happened. i'm glad it happened the way it did because that was the first time i let loose of any of that emotional baggage i had stored inside me. >> and you had another moment when you and your wife came back to deally plaza. >> in 1990 the agents have an organization called the association of former agents of the u.s. accelerate service. held a conference in san antonio, and my wife and i decided to go to that. and i decided that since we were in the dallas area, i didn't tell anybody this, but that we were going to go to dallas and san antonio, and i was coming to

deally plaza. i had not been here since the asassation in 1963. so we came to the plaza, and i spent some time walking houston to elm observing all the angles, looking at the trees, how much they'd grown, what was different between 1963 and be 1990. looking at the situation, the way the school book depository was situated in relation to the streets. you had just opened the sixth floor as a museum, looked out the window to see what the view was and realized how close it was. it was very easy shot. and i came away realizing that i did what i could that day. i couldn't have done any more and it was such a relief to me to know that i'd done everything i could have done. >> you heard three shots. >> three shots. all came from the same location. >> be evenly spaced or

different? >> no, first -- i didn't hear the second shot. all i heard were two shots. first shot came from my right rear. and i was looking to the left to the grassy area on the left-hand side of elm street. when i heard the shot, my vision took me to the right toward that shot and so doing my eyes went across the back of the president's car. i saw him grabbing his throat, and he started to lurch to his left. didn't move too far, but he started going to his left. i knew something was wrong, so i jumped off the car and started to run for the presidential car to get up on top to coffer. what we try to do is cover and evacuate. i was trying to get there to cover up so nobody could do any further damage to the president or mrs. kennedy. about the time i got to the car, just before i got there, the third shot i heard and i felt because it hit the president in the head just above the right ear right up in the here and blood and brain matter was spewing all over the place, including on mement about that

time mrs. kennedy came out of her seat onto the trunk of the rear of the car. she was trying to retrieve something that had come off the president's head and went to the right rear. i slipped at first trying to get onto the car because the driver accelerated the car. getting my footing again, got up in the car, helped her get back into her seat. when i did that, the president fell over to his left into her lap, and i could see the upper portion of his head. looked like somebody had taken a scoop and removed brain matter and spread it around the car. there was blood and brain matter all over the car. his eyes were fixed, i was quite sure it was a fatal wound. i gave the follow-up car a thumbs down to let them know it was a dire situation. the driver accelerated the car. we were going towards the freeway. we got up alongside and just passed the lead car which was being driven by chief curry. chief of the dallas police.

the advance agent was in the car with him, and we were screaming at him to get us to a hospital, and he did that. he got in front of the car and led us to the nearest hospital which turned out to be parkland. >> from the book and from some of the interviews that i've seen, you're convinced that there were three shots. one hit the president, one hit governor connolly, and the third shot hit and killed president kennedy. >> that's correct. >> now, you know that is contradicted by the warren commission. they concluded that that first be shot hit kennedy and connolly, second shot missed, truck near a bystander, and the third shot killed him. >> i recognize that. but two of us believe that the second shot hit governor connolly. the other person who believes that was nelly connolly who was sitting right with the him when -- right beside him when he was hit. so i think i'm in pretty good company. >> i believe there were two

mistakes that the warren commission made that they did not call sam kinny who was the driver of the follow-up car or emery roberts, the shift leader. because sam kinny had to keep his eye constantly on the presidential limousine. and sam saw all three shots find their mark. and emery saw all three shots find their mark. unfortunately, they weren't asked to testify. >> lisa, it must have been amazingly difficult keeping up with facts like these and trying to separate facts from some of the silly stories that are out there. how did you do it? >> a lot of long days. jerry and i talked about this a lot because i'd read something or read reports, and i'd say, jerry, this contradicts what

you're telling me or what clint is telling me. and i came to realize that these were the guys that were there, and their memories are so vivid and so clear, and as i would talk to other agents, they would corroborate the stories. and i realized that this is the truth. and the other people that are writing these other reports and all these researchers that have studied this endlessly, they weren't there. you know, there's -- so you can take some of what is written, but what i believe is what these men are told me to be true. >> i promised that we'd do a q&a. i've got a bunch of the questions already. if you still need to fill out one of the cards, please, do so. if you need something to write with, hold up your hand, and our people will come by. now, here's an interesting one. this is a tough one.

this is for jerry. you're spending so much time promoting the week, so how's your golf game with coming? [laughter] >> about the same as it was before i started promoting. [laughter] it's not that good. >> if you folks are 99% certain that there was no conspiracy, what might that 1% be? >> well, no, i'd say 100 %. i think any good investigators investigators -- investigate realizes that a conspiracy where one or more people or two or more people participate in a crime, it lasts 60 day at most. it's been 47 years, and there has been no evidence whatsoever of a conspiracy that has been proven, no proven facts. there is a lot of speculation,

but then they just ignore the facts. i've gone through all the volumes of the warren commission and read through, and i have not found anything. i felt a real injustice was made when the house select committee on assassination studied and investigated a number of conspiracies, and they finally said, well, we can find no evidence of a conspiracy. however, we feel there was a conspiracy. now, if that isn't a befuddling solution to a conference, i don't know what is. >> here's a question that we get here at the museum a lot. why wasn't the building, meaning the book depository, why wasn't it secured? and which buildings posed a bigger threat? but that really goes to the heart of how you guys did your

job and the public perception, right? >> well, the agent that did the advance here, win lawson, i think everybody on the detail agrees there would have been no better agent than win. he was very specific. we go back to 34 agents. and we had 11 experienced agents leave in the two months prior to the assassination. and so we had to take all of our experienced agents and put them off in advance in case toby had to go to secret service school and walt coglin was in miami, and then he went to san antonio. so we had all of our resources out. usually, there were only about five agents with the president at any time other than if there were another function we were going to. and then one of the agents, say

the4-12 shift agent would cover for the day shift agent. o you'd probably have ten there. but with five agents, our job wasn't to go after an assassin. our job was to cover the president and evacuate him from the area. and i've got to comment on clint's ability that day. the vehicle was going 11 miles an hour. there were 85 feet for clint to catch up with. he ran, basically, about 15 miles an hour to reach the presidential car, and he got there after the third shot hit. there was to way anybody could have done anything to save john that day. >> this question was just handed to me. it's part of one that's troubled me. as one who has questions about

some of the events of that day. the question is written, where were secret service people positioned in deally plaza? he's not talking about the motorcade, where were they in the plaza? >> we had no, we had no agents in the plaza whatsoever. everybody said this was the ideal place because of this isolated building, but you look at the county jail and the courthouse across the way, the other buildings, there was nothing unusual about this area. and, you know, there wasn't always air-conditioning at that time. so all of the windows were open and people were hanging out of it. we didn't have the resources. win had -- he did most of the advance himself, and then dave grant came in to help him finish the last three days. finish so you have to -- so you have to rely on local law enforcement, and local law enforcement did not have the

resources. i mean, we all knew that the moving platform which, by the way, the president rode with the top off by preference everywhere he went. it was only if be it rained -- if it rained or if wind was blowing and mrs. kennedy was accompanying without a hat. and that was the only time the bubble top went on. so we knew that we had ha isolation -- that isolation, ha problem of exposure. and even the night before president kennedy talked with kenny o'donnell, and mrs. kennedy, and she'd asked questions about protection. and he said, you know, it'd be very easy to, you know, to kill the president just by taking a shot out of a window. but this is a democracy. we didn't have the resources. the resources, in fact, were the same that they had after the

blair house shooting, and we had no threats whatsoever or attempts against president eisenhower. >> so that's one of the things that changed as a result of dallas. >> absolutely. >> presidents don't ride in open cars. >> yes, that's right. i had an opportunity at our luncheon to take a look at president obama's car. i hardly had the energy to open the door. [laughter] >> it's not obama's car, it's a secret service car prepared for the president of the united states who happens to be, at the present, obama. [laughter] >> clint, you were going to add something. >> well, you mentioned this particular building, why wasn't this building secured, were the windows open or closed? we came down main street, all the windows were open on every building down main street. people were hanging out the windows, people were on

balconies, rooftops, which building should we have secured on main street or at the corner of houston and elm? if you're only going to have a building secure, how about the rest of them? so you just couldn't do it. >> isn't it true, though, that the public perception you guys check all windows, but in reality you don't. there's no way. >> at that time we were unable to. today it's different. there are ways that they do major checks on various areas -- of course o, they don't ride in open car either. >> right. let's see. excellent question. how well or not well did all the agencies work together and share information at that time? [laughter] that's probably the answer right there. >> we had pretty good cooperation with all the government agents, including the fbi. i won't say anything bad about the bureau. they, they did the best job that they could.

there was a lack of exchange of information sometimes, but for the most part there was good cooperation between the secret service, the fbi, the cia, whatever you want -- nsa, all of 'em. we, we all were in this together, and we all helped each other. >> the problem in this case, as best i understand, is that oswald was not really on anybody's list. he had no history of violence. >> right. >> and just because he didn't like some of kennedy's policies which he freely espoused doesn't put anyone on a list. >> he was, you know, the fbi talked with him because of his defection. but he really didn't have the kind of record that would cause them to notify the secret service that he might be a threat. >> one of the questions that comes up a lot is, was the -- go ahead -- was the limousine driving too slow?

was there a minimum speed that you had to stay above? was there some regulation that says you can't make a tight turn like the ones off of houston onto elm street? are those in the manual, in the guidebook? >> no, no. there are no guidelines like that. that's been one of the misconceptions. that is a difficult turn that they made out here, and i've heard comments of witnesses that say the car stopped. i think one of the big mistakes if you watch the zack film going at actual speed, you'll see how fast it happened. the first sound which sounded different to bill greer and roy kellerman in the front seat, bill wondered if he'd had a blowout, so he tapped the pedal real quick to see if there was stability in the car.

but if you watch the zack pruder film, you don't even see a slowing down of the car. you can -- >> it was difficult making the turn because it's great or than a 90-degree turn. when you go out here, you'll notice houston turning onto elm is a pretty sharp turn. and that's a pretty good-sized car. doesn't have a great turning radius. and so he had to slow down considerably. so much so that the motorcycle outriders had a difficult time keeping their bikes upright as they made the turn. and then when we got going, he was trying to get up to 11 to 12 miles an hour which is what we were running when we came down main street unless the crowds were too close to the car, but that was generally what we were running. >> and kennedy's drive, bill greer, had not driven the route before, but he knew to follow chief curry in the car in this front because curry, obviously, would know the route.

>> that was his instructions. >> can okay. lisa, is this your first time to deally plaza, and what did you think the first time you did get here? >> no. the first time i came was in january of 2009. is that right? or was it this year? this year, 2010. we were, we were in the middle of writing the book, and i said to jerry, you know, i've never been to dallas, and i think i probably need to go. so jerry and his wife joyce and i came here, and it was, it was really invaluable, and i'm sure my comments were the same as everybody else who gets here. you say, wow, it's a lot smaller than i ever imagined it was. and then to go up to the museum on the sixth floor and just see, like clint said, the shot and how easy it was and how close everything was. now the trees are taller, quite

a bit taller and more mature than they were in 1963. it just gave me a great perspective on, on just how to describe the situation. and i tried to give the reader a feel of what it was like for those people who hadn't been here as i would guess most readers haven't so that they feel like they are seeing everything as the agents saw it. because as has been mentioned, this was their first time on this route, and can, you know, they didn't know what buildings were around the corner. only the advance agent had been here and knew the lay of the land. >> okay. i've got a question here, it refers in a way to something that's bothered me. and if i could, if i could ask you gentlemen to speculate. one of the really interesting stories is that within a minute after the shooting a dallas police officer, joe marshall

smith, ran toward the parking lot, toward the grassy knoll and stock aid fence area, and he encountered a man -- and smith had his gun drawn. he encountered a man who identified himself and flashed some credentials that he was secret service, and yet there were no secret servicemen on the ground. who might -- any idea what, who that person could have been? clearly, he had some identification that looked official to the officer. any idea what that could have been? >> i don't know. >> i have no idea. >> i don't know. >> going to have to keep digging, aren't i? >> it wasn't a secret service agent. >> no, that you can be sure of. there were no agents in the area other than on the motorcade. >> there's a story out, somebody passed a story that somebody had lost their identification, and so the secret service of

reissued in '64 new commission books. that is absolutely false. >> president kennedy's car was stripped down to the frame and rebuilt and was, i guess, i assume bulletproof or at least bullet resistant. and it was used by president johnson. did he ever comment about having to ride in that car? >> not to me. i rode in the front seat when he was in the back, so he never said anything about that to me. >> how did you feel in that car? >> it was a little bit emotional to know that this was the car in which the event, assassination had occurred. line you say, they had stripped it down, and it was now armored. >> uh-huh. >> i can't recall exactly what, how, what the strength of the armor was, but it was sufficient. that was the first armored car that the secret service owned. after the assassination where the secret service tried to

locate an armored car for use by the president, and the only one they could find was the one being used by j. edgar hoover -- [laughter] >> who happened to belong to al capone. >> yeah. which happened to be a car that had been used by al capone. [laughter] we got that car, we called it a 150-t. it was very lightly armored, it could barely top a handgun, but at least it had some resistance. >> as you prepared book and be searched through your mind to come up with the information and the stories, has it been helpful? was it painful to go through all this? >> well, painful from the aspect of i operated mainly on the internet, and i found out i really wasn't touching on the items i wanted to. so i started using the

telephone, and, you know, five minutes or one question would go to an hour and 15 minute telephone conversation. and all of a sudden i started detecting the emotions and the difficult thing was bringing the emotions out to people who carried that burden all the years. it was buried very deep inside, and i found out without the trauma counseling, everybody handled this differently, but it truly had an impact on their lives. >> what do you hope people take from this book? >> what i want is a balance to history. lisa ran into a article in "usa today" that said that the young between the ages of 18 and 29, 29,82% believe it was a conspiracy.

and, you know, i realize that people don't like to think that a president could die at the whim of one individual, but there were some circumstances that came through. i think one of them slow eking the zack bruder fill be m down because -- film down because everybody created a history. this is what i call a blame society because people come up with a theory, and then they blame that lousy right wing or that loud si left wig, or it was the blacks or the hispanics or cuba or russia or organized crime. it's a, it's a sad tribute, you know? when you look at something like in chile where the miners were trapped, they didn't ask to hang the mine owner or bring a government agency in, they said, let's get these people out of there. that's the way we used to operate.

and i think when president kennedy was assassinated, it was the end of the age of innocence. so -- >> you asked the question, what do we want to do with this book. first and foremost, what jerry just said was the most important point. but for me i just felt it was a heartbreaking and heart warming story of people. they were a band of brothers, and they've all said to me that all of these guys, there was a very small group of men, and they spent more time with each other and with the kennedy family than they did with their own families. they ate together, slept together, played together, worked together, and they were a band of brothers. and to me that was a very important point to get in the book. >> another question here, some folks are wondering if book is going to be turned into a film,

but actually there's a tv special. >> yes. the discovery channel has filmed a documentary based on the book, and we actually fill be med it here in dallas in june of this year, and there's a reunion of seven of the agents on the kennedy detail. and two of which are in the audience, toby chandler and walt coglin. and it was, it was the first time these agents had ever come together and talked about this incident. so it's a very compelling film, and i hope you'll all watch it. it's airing december 2nd, 9 p.m. eastern. >> it was originally scheduled for this monday night, but it's been moved. >> it's been moved to december 2nd. i would like for there to be a film. i think the book cries out for a film, so if there are any film producers in the audience, come talk to us. [laughter] >> in this note here may sum

things up quite well. this is from diana who writes: i am glad you are here, thank you, you did all you could. thank you very much. [applause] jerry and clint and lisa will be here for a book signing. you're welcome to stop by. let's see, i have a note here, what else am i supposed to say? discovery channel show, we mentioned that. we're good. thank you so much for coming to the sixth floor museum and enjoying the program. >> for more information about the book, visit kennedy kennedydetail.com. >> we're here at the national press club talking with maureen beasley about her new book "eleanor roosevelt: transformative first lady." tell me what aspects of her life

you concentrated on. >> yes. well, this book concentrates on the way eleanor roosevelt wrote the script for first ladies. now, every first lady since eleanor has either followed the script or hasn't followed the script, but at least they had to read the script. they've had to know about it. there are lots of books on eleanor roosevelt, but what this book does is tell what she did in the white house to make the job of first lady more than just that of a he's or somebody -- hostess or somebody that was interested, perhaps, in a cause or two. she really made the first lady ship a potent part of the american presidency. >> so was the script that she wrote giving the first lady a role to play in policy? >> the script showed what a first lady could do. the script showed that the first lady could make the job of the president's wife into one in

which she could promote the administration, she could show the public that the presidency was interested in individuals. she was the public face of her husband's political program, the new deal. but because she traveled so much and because she really had an innate love of people, she personalized the presidency. and she made it a lot more than just passing laws. she made it a way of connecting with people. >> did you come upon any facts that you hadn't previously known about her in your research? in this doing the research for the book, i was struck by the way her personal life impacted on the way that she developed the role of the first lady. for example, when she first became first lady, she had some reservations about this because

she said, i just don't want to sit in the white house and pour tea. at that time she had an intimate friend, a newspaper reporter lorena hicock, and it was lorena who introduced eleanor to the plight of miners in west virginia who were living in horrible circumstances. so one of eleanor's first projects as first be lady was to try to do something about these miners and set up a model community called arthurdale which she probably wouldn't have gotten interested in this had it not been for lorena. similarly, before the second world war eleanor had a very warm, personal relationship with a young man named joel who was a socialist and a leader of the