Wow.
Yes Hilsman was the real thing. USMA grad, commando in the Big War, super spook, Assistant Sec. of State for East Asia. Whatever can be said for the Kennedy people a lot of them had earned their stones in combat and were a piece of their time. Kennedy's Inaugural Address contains a valedictory on the generation who went from the Depression to the Big War to the Cold War without a break. Hard to remember what it was like back then when the combination of communists and H-Bombs meant things were really being played for keeps.