Some members of the university community got an inside look into President John F. Kennedy’s assassination yesterday as five former Secret Service agents came to discuss their personal experiences with the president and ultimately to address the circumstances surrounding his death.

The event, which was cooperatively organized by the Discovery Channel, the Lecture Fund and Lauinger Library, followed the recent release of “The Kennedy Detail,” a new book co-written by former Secret Service agent Gerald Blaine and journalist Lisa McCubbin.

Though Secret Service agents remained largely silent after the president’s death, Blaine explained that conspiracy theories and false information drove him to write what he considers to be the most thorough and factual account of the president’s death.

“I wrote the book because history has been written by a cottage industry that I call conspiracy,” Blaine said during the event.

For the agents, emerging from silence was difficult, perhaps more so because the men had never spoken about the assassination even among themselves. Most said that they had not talked about it with their wives, either.

“We didn’t have trauma counseling or anything else,” Blaine said. “We just had to resolve the issue for ourselves.”

Though the event began somewhat somberly, video clips of the men playing with the Kennedy children and accompanying the first family on vacation soon had the agents exchanging anecdotes about the president and his family. All of the agents agreed that the Kennedy family forged special relationships with their detail.

“Most of the times were very good,” said Clint Hill, who had been responsible for guarding first lady Jacqueline Kennedy.

After reminiscing about inter-squad softball games and jokes with the president, the men took time to address the Cuban Missile Crisis, praising Kennedy for his poise throughout the situation.

“Luckily the Russians blinked, and the world has President Kennedy to thank for that,” said Winston Lawson, who was in the leading car on the day of the president’s death.

Finally, the men turned their attention to the assassination, which occurred while the president and his wife were on an open-top car campaign tour through Dallas, Texas. As the president was being driven down Elm Street, Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots from the window of the Texas Schoolbook Depository.

Hill, who ran to cover the president and his wife after the initial shots were fired, gave a detailed account of what happened in the president’s car.

“I saw the president grabbing at his throat and twitching to the left, so I knew something was wrong,” recalled Hill, who was next to the president when the third shot was fired.

“There were blood and brains spewed about myself and the car,” Hill added.

Though the mystery around Kennedy’s death has given rise to several conspiracy theories, the agents were very adamant that the theories contain no truth. Lawson, who had been in the lead car in the presidential procession, responded to a popular conspiracy that alleges that a fourth shot was also fired from a nearby “grassy knoll.”

“There was no fourth shot fired,” Lawson said.

Agents also spoke briefly to the lasting effects on their own psyches following the president’s death.

“Every time the president leaves the grounds of the White House, I’m worried,” Hill said.

Ultimately, Hill expressed the fact that the world was forever changed after Kennedy’s death.

“After he was shot, the age of innocence died right then and there,” Blaine said. “We knew anything that could happen probably would.”

The release of the book and the agents’ formal appearance was, for Blaine, the right step to ensure that history is not corrupted by what he considers to be faulty teaching.

“A recent article from USA Today said that 80 percent of young people believe that the Kennedy assassination was a conspiracy. If we didn’t speak up to put a balance to this, history would never know what happened,” he said.

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