Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [285]
What continued to torment Agent Hill as he replayed these images in his head, decades later, was the fact that he had been pushed away. “If we had been in proximity, where we should have been,” he explained, “… the event would not have happened as it did.” Had Hill been allowed to do his job, a human shield would have been formed between the unseen shooter and President Kennedy, creating a near-impossible shot. As Hill would summarize it, “Either the guy would have been faced with, ‘Well, I can’t do it… I’ll do it again some other time.’ Or he would have made the attempt, but he would have had to have shot through an agent.”
Regardless of which of those scenarios would have confronted the assassin, one of the great tragedies in American history would have been undone.
Merletti’s PowerPoint presentation clicked forward to a blowup of the key frame of the famous Zapruder film, with a red circle around the empty space on the limousine behind President Kennedy, showing a clear shot for the assassin.
With the lights in the conference room still dimmed, Merletti cut to a rarely seen television interview with Clint Hill by Mike Wallace, filmed in the 1970s, after Hill’s premature retirement from the Secret Service. The forty-three-year-old Hill chain-smoked cigarettes and choked up with emotion as he spoke of failing to protect the president that day in Dallas and of allowing himself to be pushed away by the president. “It was my fault,” said Hill, crying as he stared into the camera. “I’ll live with that till my grave.”
Said Merletti, as the film clip ended and the room fell absolutely silent: “The sound of a gunshot is what every Secret Service agent prepares for his whole life. That takes place in a second.” Allowing agents to be subpoenaed and forcing them to reveal the intimate details of a president’s activities and conversations, said Merletti, his voice becoming emotional as he concluded his presentation, would cause presidents to push away any time that sensitive matters were being discussed. If this happened, the trust between agent and chief executive would dissolve and the protective function of the agency would be destroyed.
Janet Reno shook Merletti’s hand, telling him that his presentation had moved her deeply. That night, Eric Holder called him and said, “Listen, I don’t know how you did this, but you now have the vast majority of the Department of Justice that believes you are right.” Merletti replied, “Eric, I mean it’s logic. There’s nothing secret here. There’s nothing that’s a trick here. This is the truth.”
Merletti next paid a visit to the Office of Independent Counsel on Pennsylvania Avenue, determined to make a similar impression on Ken Starr and his prosecutors. Merletti knew that this was his only shot at persuading the special prosecutor. He first handed Starr a booklet—his PowerPoint presentation in printed form—to vividly illustrate the danger of presidents pushing away. He also gave Starr a 1910 memorandum written by USSS chief John E. Wilkie, who explained the critical importance of the presidential protective function. “So far as the actions of the President and his family and his social or official callers are concerned the men [of the USSS] are deaf, dumb and blind,” Wilkie wrote. “In all the years this service has been maintained at the White House and the freedom with which many important public matters have been discussed in the presence, there never has been a leak or betrayal of trust.”
Merletti also presented Starr with a letter from John W. Magaw, USSS director during the Bush administration, written to Senator John F. Kerry, then chairman of the Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs. That committee had subpoenaed a retired agent who had served in the PPD for President Reagan and Vice President Bush, seeking to “compel his testimony” regarding a conversation he reportedly heard involving the president. Director Magaw had written to Senator Kerry to oppose this directive, insisting that such a subpoena would undermine the Secret