JFK told the Secret Service to keep its distance on assassination day

On Nov. 18, 1963, in the midst of a whirlwind campaign trip, President John F. Kennedy told Secret Service supervisor Floyd Boring that agents riding on special boards installed near the trunk of his car should drop back and tail him from a follow-up vehicle instead. 

"It’s excessive, Floyd. And it’s giving the wrong impression to people," said Kennedy. "We’ve got an election coming up. The whole point is for me to be accessible to the people." 

Kennedy’s bristling at the proximity of the agents was not uncommon for those being protected by the Secret Service, especially US presidents. But after his assassination four days later, some agents wondered if that extra car-length prevented them from saving JFK’s life. 

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"Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service," by Washington Post reporter Carol Leonnig (Random House, out May 18), recounts presidential history from the service’s point of view, documenting how inadequate budgets, resistant protectees, political infighting and a macho, frat-boy culture have often left the agents ill-prepared for their vital, lifesaving missions. 

In the case of JFK, his personal charisma — most effective when he could interact directly with the public — and his frequent dalliances with young women made him a special challenge. 

"In private, Kennedy’s Secret Service agents saw a man courting danger," Leonnig writes. 

"Kennedy was extremely reckless with his own personal safety. His actions made some of his protectors uneasy and a few quite angry. Professionally, he was their toughest assignment yet." 

Kennedy, capitalizing on his telegenic appeal, broke all records for presidential trips outside the White House immediately upon taking office in 1961. 

At the time, the White House’s Secret Service detail had only 34 agents, working in six-man teams in rotating eight-hour shifts. 

In order to cover the president’s blazing schedule, the agents worked double-shifts and on their days off, often forgoing a night’s sleep. 

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But oftentimes, the problem was not lack of manpower, but Kennedy himself, as he would ditch his guards at any opportunity, believing them ultimately ineffective. 

"If anyone is crazy enough to want to kill a president of the United States, he can do it," Kennedy told his spokesperson. "All he must be prepared to do is give his life for the president’s." 

It was in this spirit, then, that Kennedy would slip into "an unmarked car with his brother or a friend. . . trying to feed a seemingly insatiable appetite for sexual conquest" even as "members of his detail feared that within a sea of random women he met for trysts, one would try to blackmail, poison or kill him." 

And while the Secret Service routinely conducted background checks on anyone who met privately with the president, this was forbidden for the president’s mistresses. 

Agent Tim McIntyre joined JFK’s detail in 1963 and tried to make light of the president’s affairs, joking with other agents, "What happens if one bites him?" 

McIntyre, writes Leonnig, "stood witness to a steady parade of secretaries, starlets, and even prostitutes escorted to the president’s bedroom — in hotels and in his private residence. The Secret Service agents weren’t allowed to ask the women’s names." 

When Kennedy embarked on a week-long tour of Florida and Texas in November 1963, the service was depleted after months of intense travel, relying on skeleton crews and often sending just one agent to plan a trip’s advance security instead of the usual two. 

Then, in the middle of the trip, Kennedy ordered his agents to step one car back. 

On Nov. 21, Kennedy’s agents spent almost 24 hours straight on duty, walking or running more than 10 miles in the process. 

That night, instead of heading to sleep, nine of the agents — four of whom were scheduled to report for duty first thing in the morning — wound up at a "legendary and scandalous nightclub" called The Cellar after 1 a.m. Over the course of the night, three more agents joined them at the Fort Worth establishment. 

Drinking liquor on the road was forbidden, since agents "could be called for duty at any time when the president was traveling," but this rule was widely ignored. 

The Cellar had no liquor license, but the owners served a free concoction of fruit juice and grain alcohol that they kept behind the bar. 

The agents returned to their hotel between 2:45 a.m. and 5 a.m. The day shift began at 8 a.m. 

As they drove through Dallas several hours later, agents who would normally be riding by the president’s side were a car-length behind him instead. 

Clint Hill, head of the first lady’s detail, was riding in the follow car instead of in his usual spot next to her. He appeared to be the only agent who heard the first shot and immediately realized what had happened, seeing the president "raise his hands to either side of his throat." 

"I knew I should have been on the back of that car!" Hill thought. His body could have kept the assassin from getting a clear shot," Leonnig writes, noting that the other agents heard the shot, but were initially confused about the source and the target. 

Bill Greer, the driver, thought a motorcycle had backfired and reflexively slowed the car down, inadvertently giving Lee Harvey Oswald an easier target for his next two shots. The third shot connected with the right side of the president’s head. 

In the ensuing chaos, a shocked Jackie Kennedy "stretched her torso and right arm out over the car’s trunk. She reached out to retrieve something on the shiny black metal of the trunk’s lid — a small chunk of her husband’s brain and skull." The first lady would keep that in her hand until she could give it to the surgeon. 

Hill immediately "pressed the first lady back into her seat and spread his body across the back of the wide convertible to shield the couple." 

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In the split but agonizing seconds during and immediately after the shooting, numerous agents performed valiantly, scurrying toward their protectees and selflessly sprawling their bodies across them in an effort to prevent, deflect or even absorb the violence intended for the president. 

But in the years that followed, several of them were tortured by guilt that they weren’t able to do more. 

"Hill would eventually be considered a hero by generations of agents after him for his leap onto a moving car," writes Leonnig. 

But on the plane ride home from that nightmarish trip, he was "racked by unremitting pangs of guilt that would trouble him for most of the rest of his life: "If I’d only been on the rear steps of the car, I would have been close enough to get to him before the third shot," he thought. If only I’d been faster."