Blaine makes no mention of the death (on 10/14/63) of Secret Service agent Tom Shipman. Blaine and the detail were preparing for JFK’s trip to Boston, one of the last trips before Texas (Boston, MD, two NY trips, FL then TX).
Gerald Blaine’s handwritten notes (undated):
“Frank Yeager and myself have the advance in Tampa, Fla. Everything goes well and I feel real good. Never a thought of the tragedy that is due to occur on the 22nd. Kennedy makes the first of fateful steps that seem to lead toward the tragedy. He states that he wants no agents riding on the rear of his car as we did in Europe. If one was there the assassination might not have occurred. An agent’s life is a frustrating one. You can set all of the security in the world, but its only as good as the President lets it be. The day will come when the only way the public will be able to see the president is by television. The country seems to be loaded with eccentrics and potentials.”
“I don’t think I have ever been filled so low emotionally by anything like the president’s assassination. There wasn’t a thing anyone could have done to stop it and the Secret Service did everything it could do. My shift worked midnight in Ft. Worth on the 22nd. We took them to the airport – They flew to Dallas, went to Austin to sleep for the next nights duty. I had been asleep about ten minutes in the Commodore Perry Hotel. Art Godfrey came in the room and almost broke the door down. ‘The boss was hit in Dallas.’ I was groggy but the sickening truth seemed to sink through and I couldn’t do anything but swing my legs over the bed and when the shock hit me I couldn’t find the strength to stand and I was hit with a sudden wave of chills. Then I tried to fight off the despair and asked Art if he was sure. He said he knew that Kennedy was shot, but didn’t know if it was fatal. We turned on the radio and finally got through on the security phone to hear the horrible truth. We just withdrew in our own thoughts.”
“We flew back in a SAC Bomber, myself, Art Godfrey, Bob Faison, Jerry O’Rourke, Paul Burns and John Bailey (National Democratic Chairman). We arrived back after Kennedy’s body and set up security at the Johnson residence. (What a disgusting settlement – Kennedy replaced by Johnson – like a pro-ball player going from the Yankees to the bottom of the league.)”
“They say that not many single things have an influence on history, but I am sure this one will.”
“Even though we could have done nothing to prevent it, nor was there anything anyone could have done except use a bulletproof automobile, we are all suffering from guilt and failure in our one task. The ordeal we were to all go through for the next few months was a sad one, but we all came out with a feeling of hope far greater than we had ever had before. We shall all be stronger for the experience in the years to come. President Kennedy left us a little of his courage and we lost not only a fine president but a friend we will never forget and always admire.”
“The ordeal we were to all go through for the next few months…”
“The ordeal we were to all go through for the next few months…”
“The ordeal we were to all go through for the next few months…”
!!!!! OOPS–I thought these notes were supposed to be contemporaneous “proof” of something?! A SOURCE AT THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES WHO WAS ADAMANT ABOUT NOT BEING QUOTED SAID IT WAS HIS/HER BELIEF THAT THE HANDWRITTEN “SCRAWL” IN “BALL POINT PEN” WAS ADDED YEARS LATER…I say decades (say, around late 2012), but you get the point.
The Tampa report Blaine included as he was too dumb to realize that this was ALREADY RELEASED IN 1999. Nevertheless, the irony is rich: rooftops were guarded (as I also confirmed via the Tampa police). This was Kennedy’s LONGEST domestic motorcade (28 miles long!) and second only to Berlin for longest period; far longer than Dallas where building rooftops were NOT guarded
Blaine claims he didn’t drink at either the Fort Worth Press Club or the Cellar. This may or may not be true, but we know NINE agents did, including four agents on the follow-up car (including Clint Hill)!
“Blaine said he had two boxes of records and only turns over 28 pages?!”- Researcher William Kelly. The meager 28 pages was submitted to the National Archives in December 2012, 2 years after Blaine’s book was published AND exactly during the time he found out my book was coming out the next year (2013) for the 50th anniversary! The Gerald Blaine documents consist of 28 pages – mostly duty assignments and travel vouchers, but there are two survey reports – one for Tampa and the one for a post assassination State Department reception between foreign dignitaries and LBJ. There is also a brief statement, a denial of having consumed any alcoholic beverages at the Press Club or the Cellar in Ft. Worth.
Obscure Secret Service agent Gerald Blaine, who served 5 years, came out of nowhere in 2010 with the book THE KENNEDY DETAIL, a New York Times best seller from the biggest publishing house in the world. It is full of propaganda and outright lies. Blaine came out with his book (starting the writing of it in 2005) because of my 22-page letter to Clint Hill, his dear friend for 50+ years. Subsequently, Hill went on to write three more books with the same co-author, his girlfriend Lisa McCubbin.
