Former President John F. Kennedy told the Secret Service to keep a farther distance from him days before he was assassinated, historian Carol Leonnig claimed.
“It’s excessive, Floyd,” Kennedy reportedly told his agents on Nov. 18, 1963. Leonnig’s claim was noted in a Monday report from Fox News. “And it’s giving the wrong impression to people. We’ve got an election coming up. The whole point is for me to be accessible to the people.”
A new book called “Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service” is causing a stir in Washington and raising questions about the agency tasked with protecting the president. @HallieJackson reports. pic.twitter.com/Q0ULEstlzK
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Kennedy was allegedly assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald on Nov. 22, 1963. Oswald himself was shot and killed days later. (RELATED: JFK’s Letters To His Alleged Swedish Mistress Hit The Auction Block)
Leonnig detailed the way the Secret Service handled Kennedy’s unruly behavior in the upcoming book, “Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service.”
“In private, Kennedy’s Secret Service agents saw a man courting danger,” Leonnig wrote in the book, according to Fox News.
“Kennedy was extremely reckless with his own personal safety,” Leonnig added. “His actions made some of his protectors uneasy and a few quite angry. Professionally, he was their toughest assignment yet.”
Despite working double shifts and extra hours, Kennedy would still find ways to ditch the Secret Service members to meet up with women for sex, Leonnig wrote.
“Members of his detail feared that within a sea of random women he met for trysts, one would try to blackmail, poison or kill him,” the book reportedly said.
The Secret Service was also forbidden to run background checks on the mistresses of the former president, although background checks were run for everyone Kennedy came into contact with, according to the book.
On the day of Kennedy’s assassination, he had told the agents to ride one car back instead of on the special boards that had been installed near the trunk of the vehicle, Leonning claimed.