Many of you have filled out the forms are ready. If you dont have a pencil or pin to write with pulled up your hands and our people will come around. I have some prepared questions obviously but i know i cant cover everything and we will see we can do. Toward the end of the program we will get into our q a session. Lets get acquainted first. We like to do that with these programs. Raise your hand and remember the kennedy assassination weekend. Raise your hand if you are here in dallas at the time. Fascinating. I wanted to make one point. We are here because of a very sad event but we dont want to make this a sad occasion. I would like to pass on a story that came to me while i was halfway through the book. It did not occur to me until i read a passage in the book. Let me take you back to Denver Colorado where jerry and clans worked in the office 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. He came over wednesday and told my dad and i president kennedy is coming to town that we are going to service his limousine. He is going to come right by here really just lived a block away from the major eastwest street. I know when they are coming by and if you go out there and sixth avenue you will be up to see him and waved to him. So i went out there and there was no one else there because the route he was taking from the air force base to downtown denver was not publish so im the only one out there. I saw the flashing lights and here comes the big limousine. I waved and waved. We never saw him. He had his head down and he was reading something. It occurred to me reading this book that there were secret Service Agents in the car wondering how did that guy know . [laughter] and who else knows . There is probably something in the files. One of the stories that has been talked about a lot is the moment that you jerry almost gunned down the brandnew president of the United StatesLyndon Johnson. You were at the white house. Take it from there. What happened . It wasnt 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. President kennedy if he came outside he would notify the security command post and we would 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 hadnt slept in about 40 hours and i was hallucinating. When i relayed the 4 00 to 12 00 agent he was still emotionally distraught from dallas. He brought in a thompson machine gun. We place them all their not knowing whether or as a conspiracy or not and pretty much on edge. I heard a noise coming from around the house and all of a sudden i had the weapon to mice shoulder and my finger on the trigger. I didnt notice it but you can recognize Lyndon Johnsons profile so fortunately i notified or noticed that right away. But it was closed. I had nightmares over that for a long time after that. Those of you who have been here before and know where we are and of course the cspan viewers might not know. We are actually on the seventh floor of what used to be the texas building. The museum has exhibits on the sixth floor and the 74 are in a separate area. Its a saturday afternoon. In two days it will have been 47 year since president kennedy was killed right outside of these windows. Jerry and lisa where was this where has this been and why is it taking so long for the stories 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 a conspiracy, the drivers turning around and shooting president kennedy. Although if you look closely you would have had had to have shot mrs. Kennedy in the back of the head in order for you to get to the president at that time. Just stories that were defaming the people. So i read a story where i conduct did in advance and i went back and looked at my records and i said its time to set the record straight. There are not many of us left. Where are all grayhaired and we wont be a lot around very long so we wanted to leave a record. To find somebody, i must to read probably about seven books to tell the story but to find somebody that could put the heart and soul to the book. Lisa mccubbin who wasnt even born at the time of the assassination but choice 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 will let her discuss her feelings as she put this together with me. You want me to talk about that a little bit . First of all its 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. It was the right time and we came together to work on this project. It has been just fascinating for me because i was born in january of 1964 and 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 world war ii and its me and things are winding down. I had never studied the kennedy assassination. Of course i knew of its, but i didnt know much about it. What i knew was that when i used to go to the blaines house they are his had a great Christmas Eve party. They had these great photographs of jerry with Lyndon Johnson and kennedy. I was always fascinated by that. Being 12 years old at the time or 16 years old i didnt feel comfortable asking him about it so working on this book i feel like i ive got a rare window into history like no one else has. It is your first book . I know you have been a journalist for much of your professional life. This is my First Published book. Yes i read through the book i could tell where you were leading me and sometimes when you read books like that its kind of annoying but with your book i was enjoying getting there. I knew what you were leading to and an emotional moment. 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 . As jerry said he had spent many years putting stories together and he had contacted a lot of the agents already. I had a lot of material to work with in terms of all of the various stories. We came up with the ideas together on how to put the story together. To me what was really fascinating and was important in this book was to show these men as human beings, not just these nameless faceless man in dark sunglasses. To me the secret Service Agents were really mysterious creatures. As i have gotten to know them i realized they are human beings and the stories that i read from the various agents and eyes i started interviewing the agents were just so poignant. 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 whats going to happen in the book. Everybody knows whats going to happen but you kind of want to know now you start caring about jerry blaine and you want to know where is he when this happens . Wanted to kind of build that drum into it. Length you were somewhat reluctant to get involved. You have appeared very few times over the years, more so than the other ages but how did you get involved in this book and how did jerry taught you intuit . [inaudible] he called me one day and asked me if i would be willing to contribute to a book he was writing. He told me what was going to be about and i was not enthusiastic at all. I was very apprehensive about it because i had been offered many chances to write looks and contribute to books and appear on television and various things and i just did not want to do it. So then he told me that this book was going to be factual. No salacious information of gossip and the information will be coming from the agents that were involved in the material that they had. And then he said that i could check it for facts. Once he said that, that then i agree to contributors long as i could check it which i did and i have read the book six times. I know what is in it and its factual enough sense. You mention salacious material and some of the kennedy legacy is the talk about his personal life. There theres not a whole lot of that in your book. Why is that . Well, we in the secret service gave the president and his family as much privacy as we can. When they got to the second for the white house that is where they lived. You stay out of there in less you have to go there or a request to go there. What happens on the second floor is their business, not ours. And the same with their business out of the white house. We provide them with an environment. They live their lives as they want to live it and we dont interview interfere and we dont talk about it. You for several months following the assassination you continued with your assignment which was jackie kennedy. At some point do people come up to you like after the life magazine came out with the zapruder film did they come up to you and say are you that guy . Did that happen . Rarely because i try to make sure nobody knew who i was. I stayed with mrs. Kennedy and the children for a full year after the assassination until november of 1964 and then i would return to the white house. You did that make it easier or harder to deal with what happened in a erstwhile 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 in 64 was an absolute horror. You did you to stay in touch after that . 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 was in a hotel room in new york. They wished me well and i thought i would be transferred to wyoming. I thought for sure i would never look back on the white house detail. I saw her in 1968 at the funeral of senator Robert Kennedy and i talked to her on the telephone because the van chest and she had in protecting the children and that was the incentive. 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 her sponsors did you get especially from those who would not speak or participate in this project . Well, i started off by calling jerry baines wife. Jerry had passed on and he was the agent in charge. I talked with her and told her that i was thinking of doing that. The second person i touched base with was floyd boric. 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. Our working life was 60 hours a month overtime on average. I think i calculated it out. We made about 1. 80 an hour. We were constantly working and we would work in the only way you can relax is to take an hour to and spend time relaxing with the agent you are 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 for the rest of our lives. There were two agents that i talked to but they told me they didnt want to participate. One was jack reidy and i have a great deal of empathy for jack reidy because he was on the president s side of the automobile. When he heard the first retort he turned around and looked up from where the shot came from. Clint explained later as his eyes scanned over he noticed the president s hands go to his throat. So clint took off immediately and jack then turned around and for all of his life he wanted to jump off of the carpet the followup car driver had pulled over and jack attempted to make it he had been run over by a car. Hollywood played a big impact. In the line of fire they had Clint Eastwoods figure pasted and where jack reidy was on the followup car. The theme of the movie was that he failed miserably at his job. That was the theme of the movie. I am speculating but i think that is probably what impacted jack. He just said emotionally he couldnt participate. A second agent don lawton, who was assigned to do the departure events here in dallas and we were so stripped down of agents on this trip. That will probably be another question but don was the senior agent and we needed a senior agent to handle the depart sure. He was left behind in you may have seen movies and some of the theorists say he was being told to stand down. Don was just giving his turn to run by the car and he knew he was going to have to stay there. Not being able to be with the president in dallas that day really impacted him. You one of the things that comes out very clearly in the book is the daytoday routine of the agents. You sometimes you are looking up in the blackwater out there somewhere saying why did i waste four years going to college . But the rest of the time our agents were pretechnology. We used hand signals with each other. We had no radio communication. We had 3x5 cards with photographs of people and we would memorize those pictures. People would always ask why we wore sunglasses. Behind the sunglasses your eyes can look right and left and so if you see one of the individuals then you bang on the side of the car. Other agents do that and you do a quick turnover that way. They have got their eye on him and if you feel a threat you notify the driver to move on. That was the technology. Is it okay for the general public to know that now . We have it legit i think in 1963 of 4. 5 million. I dont think we have that much but we have probably 330 agents. There were 34 of us on white house detail. There were two agents on the first lady and three agents on the children. Today they have the budget although conservative 1. 4 million they have somewhere in the neighborhood of about 3500 agents and 7000 employees as an organization. Its an altogether different game today. But the weaponry is much better too. When you get the sniper rifles that can do head shots a mile away and some of the other technologies and larger groups that use suicide as a weapon you have still got a serious problem. The agents today still have the same hardened soul that we do. The business is so much more complicated now. It makes me wonder did you have to show the manuscript of the secret service before went to the public . They do not have to seek approval at all. We allowed to take a book and talk to the director about it and he read the book and he called up and was very enthusiastic about the book. He invited us to have lunch with them last monday. He thought the book should be read by every new agent in the service to help them understand exactly what happened in the past. I might add to that. Clint did notify dreck are sold and while writing the book to let him know it was being done and at first what did he say . He said oh no, not another book. [laughter] but then he found out that clint was involved and he said clint hillis and bald, we dont have a problem with it. You cant 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 hear one word first got out that there was going to be a a about the kennedy assassination here in town . I worked for ibm for 27 years. I left in july of 1964. I ended up working on Law EnforcementIntelligence Systems and how to did find a National Broadcast center. The cia and mobile terminals and fingerprint scanners. My frustration and i think one of the reasons i left was it almost seems like a futile job. Unless we have the type of equipment needed so i worked for quite a while on that. I made a call to the secret service exist the of ei system system we had no way of keeping track of where these potential threat cases were. They had a Data Processing manager with the secret service and so i said well why dont you just tie into the National Information center and run the inquiries through and if you get a hit at least you will know where they are. And he said that would he and invasion of privacy. After going through the assassination i just couldnt take that. So i went into the security site and here in dallas i aint worked for international. Cleansed you stayed with the service for a while. You retired and dealt with the personal situation. What have you been doing since then . I have been with my family and thats about the only thing i ive been able to do recently. I was assigned to thenpresident johnson. The first thing that happened was president johnson went to his ranch in texas. One day i was walking between the house and the security room and president johnson saw me. He recognized me as having been on kennedy detail. I had met them personally in new york and visited kennedy in the carlisle hotel. He knew who i was innocent as he called saw me he called youngblood and said he wanted me removed immediately and didnt want me to be assigned to detail because i had been with the kennedys and he was sure i was a kennedy loyalist. After 30 minutes he convinced them that i should stay. Eventually the agent charged with his protection when he left office he asked me if i would be willing to come down to his ranch and run his protective detail. I told him i didnt think my career ladder extended to [laughter] he accepted my denial going down there to take that job. I moved to headquarters and eventually was the assistant director for protection and then i was retired in 1975. In 1975 that was the interview on one of the earliest episodes 60 minutes programs. You got a phonecall at one point and i know this is a detail in the book. This was a moment when you first talked on camera about the kennedy assassination and people had remembered it ever since. Of course now its on youtube everywhere. Do people ask you a lot about that appearance and what do you tell them about that . They do ask me about it. Its one of those situations where i completely 60 minutes matt did the taping twice. Apparently don hewitt who is running 60 minutes matt didnt like the way they did it. He said they didnt get into my emotions enough. They said hey we have technical problems and we are going to have to shoot it again. I met them for lunch at a hotel in washington and they shot it again and this time the questions were quite different than they were the first time. He got right into my emotional baggage and i broke right on camera. Many times i was asked about that and if