I THAS BECOME A CLICHE THAT EVERYONE OF A CERTAIN AGE COULD TELL YOU where they were when they heard President John F Kennedy was dead. Clint Hill spent decades trying to forget.
The Secret Service agent was in the Dallas motorcade as a member of the First Lady's detail when Kennedy was assassinated on 22 November 1963. Hill leaped on to the back of the presidential limousine to use his body to shield the Kennedys from any additional shots.
For a long time he remained silent, stalked by guilt and gnawed by doubts that he could have done more to save the president. He drank himself into depression before turning his life around. In recent years he has published memoirs, taken part in public forums and, at 91, is the most prominent living link to the day that, in his telling, America lost its innocence.
But 60 years on, Hill fears that the last surviving witnesses will take the truth of the assassination to their graves. In an age of division, disinformation and internet fuelled movements such as QAnon, conspiracy theories about who killed Kennedy and why are thriving as never before.
"It concerns me a great deal," says Hill, who addresses the issue in the afterword of a new edition of his book, Five Days in November, "because there aren't many of us left - very, very few - and eventually, the way things have been going, those conspiracy theories are going to win out and take over, and then you won't have any factual information about what happened on November 22nd, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, and that's a shame.
"It should be documented, it should be factual, not conspiratorial, and that's why I wrote the book because I wanted to make sure everybody who wants to has an opportunity to get the facts about November 22nd, 1963, and not be just part of a conspiratorial theoretical group."
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der November 24, 2023-Ausgabe von The Guardian Weekly.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent ? Anmelden
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der November 24, 2023-Ausgabe von The Guardian Weekly.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent? Anmelden
Starlink's conquest of the Amazon leaves Brazil in a dilemma
The helicopter swooped into one of the most inaccessible corners of the Amazon rainforest. Brazilian special forces commandos leaped from it into the caiman-inhabited waters below.
Dalai Lama's mountain town feels the strain of tourist boom
SUVs and saloon cars pass slowly along McLeod Ganj's narrow one-way Jogiwara Road, blaring horns at pedestrians and scooter riders and playing loud music.
'I am all the world' The brutal rule of a West Bank settler
Palestinians tell ofblacklisted Yakov's reign across the Jabal Salman valley and heisjust one of many violent bosses
Stormy waters New flashpoint emerges in South China Sea dispute
Hopes that tensions in the South China Sea might ease have been short lived.
'Justice delayed' Why trust in public inquiries to bring closure is fading
After the final report of the Grenfell fire inquiry was published, Hisam Choucair, who lost six family members in the blaze, said: \"We did not ask for this inquiry... It's delayed the justice my family deserves.\"
Celeriac soup with almond pangrattato
I'm not ashamed to say that as soon as September hits, my stick blender comes out. Just as I embrace salads when the clocks go forward in the UK, I wholeheartedly throw myself into soup season once the summer holidays end. Autumn is approaching in the northern hemisphere and I'm ready with my ladle. Celeriac is one of my favourite soup heroes, because it gives the creamiest, silkiest finish with little effort. You don't have to make the almond pangrattato, but it is a wonderful addition.
Are smoke signals telling me to make an oil change in the kitchen?
Should you that is, not can you) cook with extra-virgin olive oil? Antonio, Atlanta, Georgia, US
Going underground
A darkly humorous encounter between an American spy-cop and the members ofan eco-commune she is hired to infiltrate
All work and no play
Hard Graft, a powerfulnew London exhibition, focuses onworkers’ exploitation, from the ruined hands ofa washerwoman to mothers forced to sell their bodies
What the princess and the shaman tell us about hereditary privilege
It should have been an Instagram-perfect wedding image, but it turned out to be something more embarrassing.