Whose Fault?
The fact that the explosive headshot was the result of a tragic accident does not mean that there was no fault involved in the death of the thirty-fifth President of the United States. Au contraire. If there had been no fault, Kennedy would not have been killed.
But none of that fault really belongs to George Hickey.
Donahue’s theory does not portray Hickey as a klutz. The accidental discharge could have happened to any agent. The shot was from a sensitive high-powered weapon handled inside a moving vehicle by an agent on an unstable perch. The car he was riding in was about five feet behind the President's limousine, whose driver (according to The Kennedy Detail by former Secret Service Agent Gerald Blaine) admitted to "tapping the brakes to test the tires" when he thought the sound of a gunshot was the sound of a tire blow-out. When the driver of the Secret Service car (Sam Kinney) saw the brake lights go off on the President's limousine, Kinney likely slammed on the brakes of the follow-up car, causing Hickey to fall. It was the precarious situation and tragic chain of events that caused the head shot, not something that Hickey could have avoided. Menninger quotes Donahue as saying, “I do not believe George Hickey is to blame for what happened. He was a brave man trying to do his job. He was at the wrong place at the wrong time and fate stepped in, that’s all.” Donahue also stated that Hickey “showed a great deal of courage and nerve to stand up during an ambush and try to return fire" (http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1996-08-22/news/1996235048_1_hickey-mortal-error-dealey-plaza). Hickey wasn’t to blame. He was just trying to do his job as it was assigned to him.
I originally assigned a portion of blame to ATSAIC Emory Roberts, for assigning a rookie agent with no training except as a driver, to the position of sniper. However, Blaine’s book describes the shortage of qualified agents available for the Kennedy detail that day and states that, “every agent on the detail could shoot (the AR-15) with pinpoint accuracy. Proficiency with firearms was mandatory for all agents on the White House Detail, including drivers” (i.e., Hickey). But it should also be pointed out that, according to Blaine, agents only practiced on the rifle range "quarterly." Hickey had only been in the Secret Service for four months. If he'd had any practice, there would have only been a single opportunity. Blaine also states that the driver agents (including Hickey, presumably), while trained by the Secret Service strictly as drivers, were typically recruited from the White House police force—“the uniformed police, which was a completely separate organization from the Secret Service, and which recruited its people from the District of Columbia police force. Thus the driver agents had police training and were proficient with weapons and protection, but they worked out of the White House garage and were trained separately from the shift agents. Their training focused on the unique skills required to drive the president’s car and the follow-up car, and the security aspects involved with maintaining and transporting the cars wherever they were needed.”
I'm not sure what Hickey's resumé looked like. Presumably he had "veteran's status," or perhaps Kennedy cleared the way for Hickey to join the Secret Service (see "All in the Family?") But whatever level of proficiency and training Hickey had specifically on the AR-15, accidents can and do happen to even the most proficient weapons handlers. I don't blame Hickey for what happened.
One has to wonder whose bright idea it was to carry the weapon in the car in the first place, to have it manned by an agent in a precarious perch. It was just pure luck that no one else was hurt.
To be sure, some measure of blame goes to the Secret Service Agents who were out drinking the night and the morning before the assassination, and to the supervisors who allowed such a culture to exist inside the Secret Service. Gerald Blaine’s book The Kennedy Detail states that the agents were merely in search of a sandwich, which wasn’t to be had, so they had a beer instead, maybe one or two drinks at the most. I might believe the food-search/moderate drinking story if they had been gone only an hour or so, but some of these agents were out until 5am the next morning. (Blaine's book states that it was only until 3am, stating that the Cellar did not serve alcoholic beverages, and that agents visited while on coffee breaks, attracted by the scantily clad waitresses.) However, several sources say that despite the Cellar not having a liquor license, it had a reputation for distributing free alcohol to law enforcement personnel, and others.
Whether the agents had consumed enough alcohol to become inebriated or not, agents who were to be on duty the next morning should have been trying to rest up so that the would be as alert as possible. And given Blaine's statements about how thinly stretched and overworked the Secret Service agents were throughout the Florida and Texas trips, I find it difficult to believe that more than one or two agents would be on a coffee break at any given time.
How much drinking was done by Secret Service agents at The Press Club and The Cellar is open to debate, but the Secret Service isn't as above board as Blaine would like us to think.
The misconduct scandals in Columbia (involving heavy drinking and prostitutes) and later in the Netherlands (one of the agents passing out drunk in a hotel hallway) and very recently (Presidential detail agents driving into a White House gate while presumably inebriated) demonstrate that this “elite” organization isn’t above reproach, although their response to the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan was nothing short of heroic.
The lethargy of the Kennedy Detail on that fateful day of November 22, 1963 was apparent in the Zapruder film. The excuse for some of them was that they thought the first shot was a firecracker. One has to wonder how many firecrackers had ever been set off in a motorcade for them to think that this was a minor incident.
Could the Secret Service agents have changed things by not going "bar-hopping" the night before? Probably not, given what I believe happened with the first shot. (See my book.) And, in fact, there were two agents who did try to respond relatively quickly to the threat: Clint Hill and George Hickey.
There was an article in Vanity Fair (found at http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2014/10/secret-service-jfk-assassination) which contains a significant quote from a Secret Service agent (bold/underlined emphasis mine):
Those fatal seconds, although they were caught on film by at least two amateur cameramen, still elude our understanding. But one thing about those moments—one thing on which the government panels agree—has gone relatively unnoticed and under-reported during the five decades since. Nine of the 28 Secret Service men who were in Dallas with the president the day he died had been out until the early hours of the morning. A few of them were sleep deprived and had been drinking while traveling with the president, an activity that was clearly prohibited in the Secret Service rulebook. As agent John Norris explained in Bill Sloan’s book J.F.K.: Breaking the Silence and in an interview for Vincent Michael Palamara’s book Survivor’s Guilt: The Secret Service and the Failure to Protect President Kennedy: “Except for George Hickey and Clint Hill, [the other agents] just basically sat there with their thumbs up their butts while the president was gunned down in front of them.”
Hickey was specifically exempted from the "do-nothing" agents. He was not out drinking the night before the assassination. In fact, he wasn't even in Fort Worth. He was in his hotel room in Dallas, having seen to the limousine in preparation for the motorcade. And in the "official" version of events, all Hickey did was pick up the AR-15--and even then, not until his car had reached the triple underpass. Yet he was exempted from the "do nothing" agents, despite the "official" version of events.
Obviously, I don't believe the "official" version of events.
In the end, there was one and only one person at whose doorstep the tragic events of November 22, 1963 can be laid: Lee Harvey Oswald. If Oswald hadn’t shot at Kennedy, Hickey would never have picked up the AR-15. And let’s not forget that the “Magic Bullet” shot would very likely have killed Kennedy anyway. Even if it hadn’t, Oswald had another bullet loaded into the chamber of his rifle, ready to shoot. Oswald may not have been the lone shooter on Dealey Plaza, but he was the lone nut. And he was determined to kill Kennedy. Could he have gotten off another round if he didn’t see Kennedy’s head explode? Probably. And who knows who else may have gotten hurt by his full-metal jacket round.
It was Oswald who initiated the chain of events on Dealey Plaza. It was Oswald who was to blame, not George Hickey. Hickey deserves our sympathy for being a good-guy who was just trying to do his job as ordered by his superior. He was vigilant and responsive. He was, however, no match for a suddenly accelerating car (which according to Gerald Blaine, also swerved to avoid hitting Clint Hill, who was running to climb onto the back of the presidential limousine) given his precarious position.
So let the truth come out as it should, but leave the memory of Hickey untainted, and leave the blame for Kennedy’s death where it belongs: on Oswald.
The fact that the explosive headshot was the result of a tragic accident does not mean that there was no fault involved in the death of the thirty-fifth President of the United States. Au contraire. If there had been no fault, Kennedy would not have been killed.
But none of that fault really belongs to George Hickey.
Donahue’s theory does not portray Hickey as a klutz. The accidental discharge could have happened to any agent. The shot was from a sensitive high-powered weapon handled inside a moving vehicle by an agent on an unstable perch. The car he was riding in was about five feet behind the President's limousine, whose driver (according to The Kennedy Detail by former Secret Service Agent Gerald Blaine) admitted to "tapping the brakes to test the tires" when he thought the sound of a gunshot was the sound of a tire blow-out. When the driver of the Secret Service car (Sam Kinney) saw the brake lights go off on the President's limousine, Kinney likely slammed on the brakes of the follow-up car, causing Hickey to fall. It was the precarious situation and tragic chain of events that caused the head shot, not something that Hickey could have avoided. Menninger quotes Donahue as saying, “I do not believe George Hickey is to blame for what happened. He was a brave man trying to do his job. He was at the wrong place at the wrong time and fate stepped in, that’s all.” Donahue also stated that Hickey “showed a great deal of courage and nerve to stand up during an ambush and try to return fire" (http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1996-08-22/news/1996235048_1_hickey-mortal-error-dealey-plaza). Hickey wasn’t to blame. He was just trying to do his job as it was assigned to him.
I originally assigned a portion of blame to ATSAIC Emory Roberts, for assigning a rookie agent with no training except as a driver, to the position of sniper. However, Blaine’s book describes the shortage of qualified agents available for the Kennedy detail that day and states that, “every agent on the detail could shoot (the AR-15) with pinpoint accuracy. Proficiency with firearms was mandatory for all agents on the White House Detail, including drivers” (i.e., Hickey). But it should also be pointed out that, according to Blaine, agents only practiced on the rifle range "quarterly." Hickey had only been in the Secret Service for four months. If he'd had any practice, there would have only been a single opportunity. Blaine also states that the driver agents (including Hickey, presumably), while trained by the Secret Service strictly as drivers, were typically recruited from the White House police force—“the uniformed police, which was a completely separate organization from the Secret Service, and which recruited its people from the District of Columbia police force. Thus the driver agents had police training and were proficient with weapons and protection, but they worked out of the White House garage and were trained separately from the shift agents. Their training focused on the unique skills required to drive the president’s car and the follow-up car, and the security aspects involved with maintaining and transporting the cars wherever they were needed.”
I'm not sure what Hickey's resumé looked like. Presumably he had "veteran's status," or perhaps Kennedy cleared the way for Hickey to join the Secret Service (see "All in the Family?") But whatever level of proficiency and training Hickey had specifically on the AR-15, accidents can and do happen to even the most proficient weapons handlers. I don't blame Hickey for what happened.
One has to wonder whose bright idea it was to carry the weapon in the car in the first place, to have it manned by an agent in a precarious perch. It was just pure luck that no one else was hurt.
To be sure, some measure of blame goes to the Secret Service Agents who were out drinking the night and the morning before the assassination, and to the supervisors who allowed such a culture to exist inside the Secret Service. Gerald Blaine’s book The Kennedy Detail states that the agents were merely in search of a sandwich, which wasn’t to be had, so they had a beer instead, maybe one or two drinks at the most. I might believe the food-search/moderate drinking story if they had been gone only an hour or so, but some of these agents were out until 5am the next morning. (Blaine's book states that it was only until 3am, stating that the Cellar did not serve alcoholic beverages, and that agents visited while on coffee breaks, attracted by the scantily clad waitresses.) However, several sources say that despite the Cellar not having a liquor license, it had a reputation for distributing free alcohol to law enforcement personnel, and others.
Whether the agents had consumed enough alcohol to become inebriated or not, agents who were to be on duty the next morning should have been trying to rest up so that the would be as alert as possible. And given Blaine's statements about how thinly stretched and overworked the Secret Service agents were throughout the Florida and Texas trips, I find it difficult to believe that more than one or two agents would be on a coffee break at any given time.
How much drinking was done by Secret Service agents at The Press Club and The Cellar is open to debate, but the Secret Service isn't as above board as Blaine would like us to think.
The misconduct scandals in Columbia (involving heavy drinking and prostitutes) and later in the Netherlands (one of the agents passing out drunk in a hotel hallway) and very recently (Presidential detail agents driving into a White House gate while presumably inebriated) demonstrate that this “elite” organization isn’t above reproach, although their response to the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan was nothing short of heroic.
The lethargy of the Kennedy Detail on that fateful day of November 22, 1963 was apparent in the Zapruder film. The excuse for some of them was that they thought the first shot was a firecracker. One has to wonder how many firecrackers had ever been set off in a motorcade for them to think that this was a minor incident.
Could the Secret Service agents have changed things by not going "bar-hopping" the night before? Probably not, given what I believe happened with the first shot. (See my book.) And, in fact, there were two agents who did try to respond relatively quickly to the threat: Clint Hill and George Hickey.
There was an article in Vanity Fair (found at http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2014/10/secret-service-jfk-assassination) which contains a significant quote from a Secret Service agent (bold/underlined emphasis mine):
Those fatal seconds, although they were caught on film by at least two amateur cameramen, still elude our understanding. But one thing about those moments—one thing on which the government panels agree—has gone relatively unnoticed and under-reported during the five decades since. Nine of the 28 Secret Service men who were in Dallas with the president the day he died had been out until the early hours of the morning. A few of them were sleep deprived and had been drinking while traveling with the president, an activity that was clearly prohibited in the Secret Service rulebook. As agent John Norris explained in Bill Sloan’s book J.F.K.: Breaking the Silence and in an interview for Vincent Michael Palamara’s book Survivor’s Guilt: The Secret Service and the Failure to Protect President Kennedy: “Except for George Hickey and Clint Hill, [the other agents] just basically sat there with their thumbs up their butts while the president was gunned down in front of them.”
Hickey was specifically exempted from the "do-nothing" agents. He was not out drinking the night before the assassination. In fact, he wasn't even in Fort Worth. He was in his hotel room in Dallas, having seen to the limousine in preparation for the motorcade. And in the "official" version of events, all Hickey did was pick up the AR-15--and even then, not until his car had reached the triple underpass. Yet he was exempted from the "do nothing" agents, despite the "official" version of events.
Obviously, I don't believe the "official" version of events.
In the end, there was one and only one person at whose doorstep the tragic events of November 22, 1963 can be laid: Lee Harvey Oswald. If Oswald hadn’t shot at Kennedy, Hickey would never have picked up the AR-15. And let’s not forget that the “Magic Bullet” shot would very likely have killed Kennedy anyway. Even if it hadn’t, Oswald had another bullet loaded into the chamber of his rifle, ready to shoot. Oswald may not have been the lone shooter on Dealey Plaza, but he was the lone nut. And he was determined to kill Kennedy. Could he have gotten off another round if he didn’t see Kennedy’s head explode? Probably. And who knows who else may have gotten hurt by his full-metal jacket round.
It was Oswald who initiated the chain of events on Dealey Plaza. It was Oswald who was to blame, not George Hickey. Hickey deserves our sympathy for being a good-guy who was just trying to do his job as ordered by his superior. He was vigilant and responsive. He was, however, no match for a suddenly accelerating car (which according to Gerald Blaine, also swerved to avoid hitting Clint Hill, who was running to climb onto the back of the presidential limousine) given his precarious position.
So let the truth come out as it should, but leave the memory of Hickey untainted, and leave the blame for Kennedy’s death where it belongs: on Oswald.