"In the Line of Fire" 
A Review of the Book and the Film


By Vincent M. Palamara
Copyright 1993



First, we will take an in-depth look at the book, 
a novel written by Max Allan Collins (Based on the 
screenplay written by Jeff Maguire copyright 1993 
Jove Books).  Perhaps the back jacket of the book 
summarizes the theme best:  "1963 - Three shots 
have been fired at President John Kennedy...It was 
his job to safeguard the destiny of the nation.  
But at the crucial moment, Secret Service agent 
Frank Horrigan was a split second too late."

"1993 - Frank Horrigan?  I've read about you, seen 
photos.  You were JFK's favorite.  Dallas.  What 
happened to you that day?"

"Now, after a lifetime of second thoughts and second 
guesses, Frank Horrigan is about to get a second chance.  
And this time, he'll be ready."

"I see you, Frank.  I see you standing over the grave 
of another dead President..."

"That's not gonna happen."

"Frank Horrigan" is a fictional name used to protect 
one of the agents assigned to protect JFK on 11/22/63.  
Who is the actual agent portrayed, you ask?  Before 
directly answering this question, it is important to 
look closer at the actual text of the book:

(Pages 1-2) "The Dream was always the same.  Hot but 
beautiful day in Dallas; gliding along, riding the 
running board of the follow-up car.  Nervous - so 
many people in Texas hated the President - and there 
the Man was, just up ahead, smiling, waving, lovely 
wife doing the same, radiant...
The President and The First Lady.  But they were in 
black and white.  And so was he.
Gliding along, like in a newsreel, an ancient newsreel 
he'd been spliced into, he was doing his job, watching 
the crowd, looking for the blank or hostile faces or 
any  suspicious movement or sound; and then there was 
one, a suspicious, sudden sound; but it was just a 
firecracker. 
Wasn't it?
And as he rode the running board, he turned, stuck in 
the slowest of slow motion, and looked up toward the 
limo where the President was slumping - was he hit?

Christ, the President was hit!
But the shock of it  froze Secret Service Agent Frank 
Horrigan; it froze him and he watched in wide-eyed, 
open-mouthed horror as the President's head exploded 
into a nightmarish cloudburst of blood and brain and 
bone, only the bloody burst wasn't in black and white, 
but color, vivid, horrible Zapruder color...
And Frank Horrigan, as he had so many times over these 
past decades, sat straight up in bed, sweating, wide-
eyed, panting, afraid.
Ashamed.";

(Page 3) "He hadn't taken a bullet that day (11/22/63).  
If he had, perhaps this country he'd been in the 
business of protecting for so many years would still 
have been worth protecting.  Of course, in that case, 
he wouldn't have been alive to know.
Not that he particularly gave a damn.";

(Page 4) "Even after all these years, he could still 
hear his ex-wife's voice intoning those ominous words:  
"Drinking problem."  So he didn't have one anymore.  
In his line of work, in his line of duty, in the line 
of fire as he was, you goddamn well better not have a 
drinking problem."

(Page 6) "...a photograph - of John Kennedy slumped 
in his limo in Dallas as an agent ran toward him from 
the follow-up car, where other stunned agents rode 
the running boards";

(Page 26) "...three other agents stood on running boards
...  He was in the photo";

(Page 35) "You were JFK's favorite agent, weren't you?  
...you used to play touch football on the White House 
lawn with Jack and Bobby and the whole gang.  Singing 
Irish folk songs on Air Force One.  Boating at Hyannis 
Port...(emphasis added)";

(Page 149) "He (JFK) was my friend.  He was different."
Taking all these excerpts into focus, it appears that 
"Frank Horrigan" is actually Agent Clint Hill, the 
only agent to overtly respond to the shooting (albeit 
much too late):

1.	From an interview conducted on 10/9/92 with 
advance man Marty Underwood, the author learned that 
Agent Hill was "Kennedy's favorite agent".

2.	Agent Hill was the only agent who could even 
remotely be referred to as being "a split second too 
late".

3.	Clint Hill was the only agent to (publicly) 
show any sense of shame or guilt over the tragedy of 
11/22/63.  The "60 Minutes" interview conducted by 
Mike Wallace on 12/7/75 is an explicit statement of 
Hill's troubled feelings.  In addition to his guilt, 
Hill told Wallace that he didn't care if he had taken 
the bullet that instead killed JFK ("That would have 
been just fine with me").

4.	During the author's interview with Agent Sam 
Kinney conducted on 10/19/92, it was revealed that it 
took Kinney and a host of his fellow agents to finally 
get Hill "straightened out" - this occurred at a 1990 
conference of the former agents of the Secret Service 
(June Kellerman also confirmed that Hill is finally 
doing alright these days).  Kinney told the author 
that Hill had a heart attack and was close to needing 
help from mental facilities - this, combined with the 
help of his former agents, persuaded Hill to stop 
drinking and smoking entirely.

Seems pretty convincing, doesn't it - Clint Hill, 
through a modern-day dramatization, is vindicated 
by a "second chance" to make amends thirty years 
later for his ineptitude back on 11/22/63, and the 
Secret Service benefits?  Although this author stands 
firmly behind all the aforementioned evidence, there 
are problems with this specific identification of 
Agent Hill as "Frank Horrigan":

(Page 31) "It was the Dallas photo, of course, the 
slumped President in the limo, an agent running toward 
him, three other agents riding the running board of the 
follow-up car.  The head of the nearest of those fol-
low-up car agents was circled in red...  "Why, that's 
you," D'Andrea said... "You are the show" (emphasis 
added)

(Page 62) "What happened to you that day?  Only one 
agent reacted to the gunfire - and the rest of you, 
highly trained, your reflexes like coiled springs?  
Nothing... You were actually closer to Kennedy than 
the agent who did react - you were closer to him than 
any of the agents, in more ways than one";

(also Page 62) "Horrigan had been on the Texas Book 
Depository side of the follow-up car."

It now seems that "Frank Horrigan" is actually Agent 
John Ready, the agent who was recalled to the fol-
low-up car by SAIC Emory Roberts (Roberts ordered the 
agents not to move during the shooting, although he 
recognized the first shot as a shot, one of the few 
Dealey Plaza witnesses to do so)!  So what is going 
on here, you say?  This author believes that "Frank 
Horrigan" is actually Hill but, to muddle the picture 
(and perhaps for legal reasons), he is treated as a 
composite character (not unlike "Willy O'Keefe" in 
the movie "JFK").  Indeed, in the movie, and promo 
clips, the Altgen's photo is depicted with John Ready's 
head blocked out by a cleverly superimposed head of 
Clint Eastwood (hmm, maybe Jack White is on to some-
thing...)!

So, is this entertainment, or is this clever propa-
ganda, designed to counter "Mortal Error", "JFK", 
and a host of other works that cast the Secret Ser-
vice in a bad light?  A look at two excerpts from 
the book is in order here:

(Page 95) The Assassin:  "They (the Warren Commis-
sion) criticized you and the other agents...for 
drinking the night before.  As if Kennedy would be 
alive today, if Frank Horrigan had just been tucked 
in bed at ten p.m.!  Why, it's simply ludicrous."

Horrigan:   "Maybe they were right."

The Assassin:  "No, no, Frank...it's nonsense.  
You wanted the President to use the bubble top on 
his limo.  You begged your friend...'Jack, Jack'... 
- I can hear you saying it - 'Jack, you gotta let 
us station agents on the bumpers and sideboards of 
your goddamn limo!'  But no.  He was a politician, 
our fair-headed handsome boy...(Page 96)  He wouldn't 
let you do the right thing, would he, your friend 
Jack?" (emphasis added);


(Pages 223-224) "For thirty years I've endured idiots 
on their bar stools with their cockamamie theories 
about Dallas...  'It was the Cubans, it was the CIA, 
white supremacists, oil-rich Texans, the mob.  There 
was one gun, there were five guns."  (emphasis added)

Interestingly, the latter "complaint" never gets 
answered by Horrigan (for example, he never says 
"Oswald did it").  In any event, these two excerpts 
are disturbing by the nature of their unfounded bias 
and opinion:

1.	Drinking on duty is a violation of Secret Service 
regulations and is grounds for dismissal from the agency;

2.	the Bubbletop's removal was a Secret Service 
decision;

3.	the removal of agents from the limousine 
was also a Secret Service decision.

Paradoxically, Jack Ruby is referred to on Page 7 
as a "mob hitman"!

When we consider that (as reported by "Entertainment 
Tonight" and "USA Today" in February 1993) this marks 
the very first time that the United States Secret 
Service has ever given their full participation and 
cooperation to a book/film project, the word "prop-
aganda" is not such a paranoid term (the NBC series 
"Secret Service" features watered-down dramatizations 
of the counterfeiting cases the agency investigates.  
However, the agency does not fully endorse this show).  
Perhaps the ultimate  disclaimer for the agency comes 
from the mouth of JFK as quoted before Page 1 in the 
book:  "If someone is willing to trade his life for 
mine there is nothing anyone can do about it."  The 
"JFK as scapegoat" theme continues.

The bottom line:  excellent, highly entertaining, 
but beware of the disinformation in relation to the 
events of 11/22/63.

Now we will take a look at the film...Well, I saw 
the movie on opening night, 7/9/93, and I was not 
disappointed:  it was every bit as entertaining as 
the book, if not more so.  There are several explicit 
references to the Kennedy assassination, including 
the use of the Zapruder film, the Thomas Atkin's film, 
and other well-known films.  Also, the autopsy photos 
make an appearance (courtesy of Mark Crouch, who ob-
tained them thru Secret Service employee James  K. 
Fox - both are credited at the end of the movie).






It is not until we get to the very end of the 
credits that we get the specific names of the 
Secret Service officials who took part in the 
making of this extraordinary film:

1.	Robert Snow - mentioned in "Confessions 
of an Ex-Secret Service Agent"
2.	Jerry Parr - protected former President 
Reagan on March 30, 1981
3.	Jack Warner - an Inspector during the 
Kennedy-Johnson years, Warner was interviewed 
by author William Manchester for "The Death of 
a President", and he also makes a noteworthy 
appearance on Page 555 of Harold Weisberg's 
"Post Mortem"

Bottomline:  A terrific film but, as with the 
book, take a closer look at the references to 
the Secret Service's performance on 11/22/63.



SPECIAL NOTES:

1.	The following pages are of special 
interest to Kennedy researchers:  backjacket, 
pages 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 26, 31, 35, 36, 42, 
47, 48, 62, 95, 96, 114, 115, 149, 176, 223, 224.

2.	Both agents Hill and Ready were involved 
in the drinking incident of 11/21 - 11/22/63.  
In addition, both agents described the first shot 
as sounding like a firecracker.
??