Congressman Pete King, the Republican chairman of the House
Committee on Homeland Security, calls the
scandal involving prostitutes in Colombia “the worst moment in the
history of the Secret Service.”
He’s wrong about that. The worst moment in the history of the Secret Service was November 22, 1963, the day John F. Kennedy was shot and killed. It was the first and only time since the Secret Service was put fully in charge of protecting the president in 1902 that a president was assassinated.
Not that there aren’t certainly unfortunate similarities between the current situation and the events of 1963. William Manchester, in his 1967 book about the Kennedy assassination, The Death of the President, reports that nine agents of the White House Secret Service detail were out after midnight on November 22, starting with “beer and mixed drinks.” One agent was out until 5 a.m. Manchester wrote, “Fellow drinkers during those early morning hours included four agents who were to ride in the president’s follow-up care in Dallas, and whose alertness was vital to his safety.”
Clint Hill, the Secret Service agent in charge of Jacqueline Kennedy, writes in his well-timed new book that in the early morning of November 22, “the clock read almost 1:00 a.m., which meant by my body clock it was almost 2 a.m. East Coast time…We all walked over to the Press Club only to find the food was all gone. They had some peanuts, so I had a scotch and soda and some nuts.”
Read more: http://reason.com/archives/2012/04/30/the-biggest-secret-service-failure-of-al
He’s wrong about that. The worst moment in the history of the Secret Service was November 22, 1963, the day John F. Kennedy was shot and killed. It was the first and only time since the Secret Service was put fully in charge of protecting the president in 1902 that a president was assassinated.
Not that there aren’t certainly unfortunate similarities between the current situation and the events of 1963. William Manchester, in his 1967 book about the Kennedy assassination, The Death of the President, reports that nine agents of the White House Secret Service detail were out after midnight on November 22, starting with “beer and mixed drinks.” One agent was out until 5 a.m. Manchester wrote, “Fellow drinkers during those early morning hours included four agents who were to ride in the president’s follow-up care in Dallas, and whose alertness was vital to his safety.”
Clint Hill, the Secret Service agent in charge of Jacqueline Kennedy, writes in his well-timed new book that in the early morning of November 22, “the clock read almost 1:00 a.m., which meant by my body clock it was almost 2 a.m. East Coast time…We all walked over to the Press Club only to find the food was all gone. They had some peanuts, so I had a scotch and soda and some nuts.”
Read more: http://reason.com/archives/2012/04/30/the-biggest-secret-service-failure-of-al
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