Jake Gyllenhaal's Father

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A PUBLICIST ASSESSES THE KENNEDY DETAIL “TEAM” GYLLENHAAL'S BIOGRAPHER REBUTS INTERVIEW

WHAT THEY KNEW OF THAT DAY: BOOK REVIEW

A PUBLICIST ASSESSES THE KENNEDY DETAIL “TEAM” An acquaintance in Hollywood, a publicist, told me: “I took a look at that picture taken at La Dolce Vita like you asked. What strikes me is that it shows a group of old, tired men grabbing at their last hurrah with a vague feeling they don't deserve it... “Tell your friend in Pittsburgh Vince Palamara that he shouldn't have trouble debating any of them,

as long as he knows his stuff inside and out and can speak and write persuasively. I doubt it will come to a public debate. Maybe debating through blogs or comments on the internet. Not on Achity's blog—does your friend blog on Huffington? Perhaps he should contact bloggers with large audiences. My take on the subject is that he already has the advantage in this fight and he ought to make the most of it.

“Ken Achity, incidentally, is what my father would call a 'shlockmeister' and his reputation is only so-so. AEI's credits are not impressive. The company for some reason seems to be better known around writing schools. The Kennedy Detail is pretty much their speed. It will see some return, but sink like a stone after it airs. I wish your friend the best and look forward to seeing him 'duke it out' online.”

GYLLENHAAL'S BIOGRAPHER REBUTS INTERVIEW Dear Mr Cain-Jackson, I read your interview with Stephen Gyllenhaal regarding his new project and realize you may not be aware of the controversy raging around The Kennedy Detail book and film. In order to fully comprehend this controversy, I think you ought to know about a book written by US

Secret Service expert Vince Palamara entitled Survivor's Guilt: The Secret Service and the Failure to Protect the President, which contains a very different view of the Secret Service's role in the death of President Kennedy. A meticulously researched book, it has been praised by historians, journalists, and even several key agents in the USSS. Furthermore, its publication in 2006 also led retired agent Gerald Blaine to write his own version

of events, The Kennedy Detail, which has been condemned by many as a whitewash of the failures of Kennedy's Secret Service detail. Many more are outraged by its insult to the memory of the late president, since it goes so far as to implicate John Kennedy in his own death. It is unfortunate that Stephen Gyllenhaal should become a willing participant in this insult to a great man and try to make capital from it, but I believe

that it was even worse for him to try to involve you in this controversy. For the sake of balanced coverage on this subject, I think it would be fair if you interviewed Mr Palamara as well. Sincerely, the Author of A Poet from Hollywood

WHAT THEY KNEW OF THAT DAY: BOOK REVIEW

Survivor's Guilt: The Secret Service and the Failure to Protect the President by Vince Palamara is not a book to be read for pleasure. It is not a sterling contribution to literature. Short, but packed with names, dates, citations and, significantly, stripped of narrative, it is probably the best compendium of basic facts having to do with the

United States Secret Service (or USSS) circa 1963—specifically, one particular day towards Thanksgiving. First off I must disclose that I am not a JFK Assassination Conspiracy nut. I vividly remember the day Kennedy died and I have my own theories about what happened (which I'll explore at a more appropriate time). But I'm no expert. Conspiracy theorists who get into the game usually choose one

exclusive aspect or another to cover, and Palamara has chosen the Secret Service detail assigned to protect President Kennedy in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. Palamara is not so much a journalist as a competent thesis writer and is enough of a thorough researcher and impartial interviewer to back up his ideas. And there is no disputing what happened that day: Simply, the Secret Service detail assigned to the

President failed to protect him from a fatal bullet. Quite evidently there was sloppiness in their protocol and security checks. There was some faulty decision-making. But to a man the agents of the Kennedy detail also displayed a high degree of professionalism up to the moment of the assassination. And no conspiracy within the Service, no malice acted upon, no criminality in the performance of duty, has ever been proved.

It's what the Service did immediately afterwards that's remained a problem for nearly fifty years. Blatantly confiscating evidence, falsifying documents, illegally taking people into custody—these were some of the acts committed by agents almost as soon as the alleged assassin was arrested by Dallas police. Rumors persist to this day that they did far worse things to preserve the image of the Service—or as some people would term it, cover

their asses. A House Committee in 1979 found a hornet's nest of misdeeds and I'm sure many more remain uncovered. And all of it has only helped to foster an atmophere of suspicion and mistrust in our goverrnment and our institutions that, as I say, has remained a problem since the early sixties. The thing is, this arrogant manipulation of facts by this agency of our government was completely unnecessary. As far as the American public was

concerned, the human factors that might have contributed to the success of the assassination were plausible and entirely forgiveable, had they known them. The driver of the limousine, Agent Bill Greer, on hearing the first shot panicked and hit the brake rather than the accelerator. Agent Clint Hill, following behind on foot, simply couldn't climb on the limousine fast enough. Had they acted any differently the President may still well have died on

the surgeon's table. It's old news, but it's still a hurtful subject to some, not least of all to the most important agent still living, Clint Hill, the focus of a recent account entitled The Kennedy Detail. I mention this 2010 book because, if chronology can be correctly interpreted, The Kennedy Detail was written by Hill's former superior in the USSS, Gerald Blaine, as a direct response to Survivor's Guilt, which was

published in 2006 and for which Palamara interviewed, among others, Blaine and Hill themselves. Palamara's book must certainly have opened old wounds. But here's the marked difference. Blaine's book was positioned from the very beginning to be accepted by the general reading audience in a big way—to be a bestseller, in other words. A young up-and-coming journalist was hired as co-writer to help

shape his story into a soft sympathetic narrative about Real People. Personal anecdotes were added as were photographs and intimate letters. In Detail the “official” story of the assassination (three bullets, one shooter) is adhered to. Kennedy is wrongly portrayed as an outgoing public leader with a cavalier attitude to being protected. The blighted lives of the agents in the aftermath of the shooting are brought to the forefront. The Kennedy

Assassination as human drama, in other words. It's all been said before in fact and fiction, even the blighted lives of the agents part. Remember that great Clint Eastwoood movie, In the Line of Fire? But The Kennedy Detail is a big comfortable book from a big comfortable publisher, Simon & Schuster (who by the way I used to work for, in Marketing). It's made the Times bestseller list, and I just read in the Hollywood trades that it's going to become a

sort of dramatized documentary on the Discovery Channel, their second one on this subject. “This is the project of a lifetime and I could not be more excited to be part of it,” the director and book adapter hired for the project, Stephen Gyllenhaal—a man of my acquaintance who is no stranger to image preserving—was quoted as saying. “Everyone know how this story ends, but the true stories told through the eyes of this extraordinary band of brothers, from

JFK's election to that awful day in Dallas, have never been told. It is time to share their perspective with the world.” Well. I can understand buttering your bread, but it's this “band of brothers” malarky that gets me. There was no Henry V and there was no Agincourt. There was just a group of specially trained government employees who failed their single mission.

Survivor's Guilt, a self-published book, sold moderately well to a niche audience and garnered some excellent endorsements from the very people in key positions to know the facts of that day and some who were there. The book is now available from Trine Day. Read it, use it as a springboard for your own private investigation, and to remove the bad taste of The Kennedy Detail's whitewash.

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