"The Kennedy Detail"

I would say that the majority of people who are avid for the Internet remember September 11, 2001 as a day they will never forget. They will never forget where they were when they heard about the towers being hit, or watching the tragedy unfold on television, or sharing the grief with their family and friends.

There is another set of the population in America that has the same kind of memories when asked about the Kennedy assassination.

It has been over 47 years ago that a shot ended the life of President John F. Kennedy. There have been hundreds of books written. There have been hundreds of conspiracy theories developed, and debunked. There have been countless television programs, and one big movie (JFK '" director, Oliver Stone) '"a movie that spliced together a myriad of conspiracy theories.

It is the most well-known unsolved mystery of the 20th century.

Because of all the attention that has revolved around this nation-changing event, I really thought that a new program that was going to be shown, "The Kennedy Detail" on the Discovery Channel, would just be more of the same.

It wasn't.

I believe the "Kennedy Detail" is as close as any of us are ever going to get to the way the Kennedy Family interacted with a group of men who were protecting them before and during the day of the assassination.

The first segment of the program delves into the backgrounds of each of the Secret Service men who were assigned to the Kennedy family during their time in the White House. All of these men were from working class backgrounds and were definitely not in the Secret Service for the money. They were paid a whopping $4600.00 a year. Of course, this was in the early 1960's. But, that is still a pretty average income even for those times. They talked about their interaction with President Kennedy, said he was a "man's man". They talked about the extended Kennedy Family as well and the time they spent at Hyannis Port.

Clint Hill who was the detail man for First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy choked up several times during the program, most memorably when discussing the loss of the Kennedy's third child, Patrick that died hours after his birth from lung complications.

The next section aims in on the day of the assassination. Because I have followed all of this so closely and so much of it has been discussed over the years, I found it relevant that these men, who were there at the time of his death, had so much to add to the actual fine points of November 22, 1963.

"The Kennedy Detail" is not a mock-up, or a computerized version of the Kennedy assassination. Nor, is it the Zapruder film dissected many times over. It is the memories of a time in our history by men who were actually on the scene. Their lives changed on that day, as did our nation.

But, when a viewer hears them tell it, for once, we can believe it was not a conspiracy.