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In this, my 27th article on the assassination of President
John F. Kennedy, I discuss two recent books [in a two-part
article: one book here, one in next week's issue. -Ed.]. The
first is The Echo from Dealey Plaza: The True Story of the First
African American on the White House Secret Service Detail and
His Quest for Justice After the Assassination of JFK (Harmony
Books, 2007) by Abraham Bolden. It was President Kennedy
himself who invited Bolden to join the White House detail. The
Echo from Dealey Plaza is the first JFK assassiration book by
a former White House Secret Service agent. One sentence in
Abraham Bolden's doleful narrative haunts us: "What I do know
is that the president died because of a failure of the security
around him, a situation that some of us saw coming."
The Echo from
Dealey Plaza
The true story of
the first African
American on the
White House Secret Service
detail and his quest
0
for justice after the
assassination of JFK
Abraham Bolden
that he "didn't believe the agents on the White House detail
would act swiftly or appropriately to stop an attempt on the
president's life." He always received the same response—that
he was overreacting..
After the assassination, Bolden contacted the Warren
Commission and volunteered to testify not only about the
laxity of the agents assigned to protect JFK, but also about a
conspiracy involving four men with scope-mounted rifles who
had plotted to assassinate JFK while he was on a proposed
visit to Chicago on Nov. 2, 1963, a visit canceled just before
it was to begin. The Warren Commission, however, refused to
interview Bolden. Due to this, as well as a mysterious Secret
Service cover-up, the Warren Commission was unaware of the
existence of the Chicago assassination conspir
acy, and the Warren Report says nothing about
the Chicago plot.
In May 1964, in retaliation for his offer to
testify before the Warren Commission, Bolden
was arrested on trumped-up charges of bribery,
obstruction of justice, and conspiracy. After
two trials he was convicted on all counts by an
all-white jury and served five years in federal
prison. In 1978, after his release, Bolden tes
tified before the House Select Committee on
Assassinations, relating the story of the four
plotters with scoped rifles and how the threat
they posed resulted in a last-minute scrap
ping of JFK's plans to be in Chicago on Nov. 2,
1963. The documentary evidence supporting
Bolden's story having been destroyed or hid
den away, and with no other Chicago Secret
Service agent willing to confirm Bolden's
account, the House Assassinations Committee
unfortunately regarded Bolden's testimony as
of "questionable authenticity" and announced
that it "was unable to determine specifically
why the president's trip to Chicago, scheduled
for November 2, was canceled."
The House Assassinations Committee's wari
ness of Abraham Bolden's testimony was, we
now know, unjustified. Bolden's assertions that
three weeks before the Dallas assassination a
team of killers equipped with high-power rifles
was plotting to shoot Kennedy in Chicago, and
that JFK's planned trip to that city was can
celed at the last moment due to the dangers
of the plot, have become widely recognized
truths since publication of Lamar Waldron and
Thom Hartmann's authoritative and thoroughly
documented Ultimate Sacrifice (2005), which
devotes two entire chapters to the Chicago
conspiracy. Abraham Bolden stands vindicated
by history.
The Echo from Dealey Plaza also throws
It is now an accepted truth that, due to its own blundering,
the U.S. Secret Service inadequately protected JFK in Dallas, TX
on Nov. 22, 1963. As the 1979 Final Report of the U.S. House
of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations bluntly
puts it, the Secret Service "was deficient in the performance
of its duties." In addition to the Final Report, numerous books
and articles set out the grim specifics of the Secret Service
bungling. There were shocking defects in the advance plan
ning and the final arrangements for the presidential motor
cade through Dallas on Nov. 22. As a result, escort security
for the motorcade was, in the castigating words of the House
Assassinations Committee, "uniquely insecure."
During his brief tenure (June to July 1961) on the White
House detail, Abraham Bolden became alarmed by the drinking
habits, sexual escapades, and arrogant overconfidence of many
(but certainly not all) of the Secret Service agents guarding
JFK. After completing his probationary period of service on
the White House detail, Bolden decided to opt out «f protec
tive work and return to criminal investigation, transferring
to the Secret Service field office in Chicago. Before leaving
Washington, in an exit interview with U. E. Baughman, then
chief of the Secret Service, Bolden related his personal knowl
edge of the carousing of the White House detail. On arriving
in Chicago, Bolden told every colleague or superior he could
new light on the drinking problems of agents
protecting JFK at the time of the assassination. It is well
established that, in flagrant violation of Secret Service regu
lations, nine of the agents guarding JFK in Dallas, including
four in the escort car behind the presidential limousine, had
been out drinking until the early hours on the morning of
Nov. 22. The 1964 Warren Report acknowledged but mini
mized this startling fact, as did the Final Report of the House
Assassinations Committee. Both reports focused on the drink
ing that occurred the night before the assassination. Neither
report concerned itself with whether the consumption of
alcohol by the presidential protectors while traveling with the
president—such consumption being strictly prohibited under
all circumstances—was a recurring problem. It was. Bolden's
book permits us to see that the irresponsible behavior of the
nine agents the night before the assassination was part of a
disturbing pattern of similar misbehavior by the White House
detail—a pattern that must have materially increased the pos
sibility of an assassination attempt succeeding.
Donald E. Wilkes, Jr.
To be continued next week. Donald E. Wilkes, Jr. teaches in the UGA School
of Law, and has written for Flagpole about the Kennedy assassination for
years. A fuller version of this article appears at Ragpole.com.
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