Survivor's Guilt: The Secret Service and the Failure to Protect President Kennedy

Survivor’s Guilt: The Secret Service and the Failure to Protect President Kennedy

Copyright © 2013 Vincent Michael Palamara. All Rights Reserved.

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Palamara, Vincent Michael

Survivor’s Guilt: The Secret Service and the Failure to Protect President Kennedy —1st ed.

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Epub (ISBN-13) 978-1-937584-61-0

Kindle (ISBN-13) 978-1-937584-62-7

Print (ISBN-13) 978-1-937584-60-3

1. Kennedy, John F. – (John Fitzgerald), – 1917-1963 – Assassination. 2. United States. -- Secret Service -- Officials and employees -- Biography. 3. United States. -- Secret Service -- History -- 20th century. I. Title

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Stand aside: the noise they make …

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.

So now, he is a legend when he would have preferred to be a man.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Information

Dedication

Introduction

No-Agents-On-The-Limousine Policy

The evolution of the myth:

A Landslide of Truth: JFK Was Not To Blame

The deathblow to the Tampa tale

A Hot City Goes Cold: No Threats

The Bubbletop: Another Myth Dispelled

The Trade Mart & The Mystery of the Motorcade Route

Passing the buck on this crucial decision:

The conclusion from the confusion:

Newspaper confusion/obfuscation:

Excerpt from Chief James Rowley’s Warren Commission testimony:

Calling Off The Guards & Strange Omissions

General McHugh

Security Stripping: Further Examples

1. Noisy motorcycles reduced and placed to the rear for conversational purposes?

2. Press & photographers, and the good doctor, literally out of the picture:

3. Other vehicle shuffling:

4. Overpass not cleared or protected properly:

5. Buildings along the motorcade route not checked:

6. Roofs along the route not manned or checked:

7. The umbrella man:

8. Ambulance:

9. Conduct of police on motorcade route:

10. Military officers/Military aid (or lack thereof)…even a helicopter:

11. Agent conduct, reactions and reflexes:

12. JFK/LBJ:

The Studies of November

Mixed messages and morale:

HR 4158/ FBI & Secret Service feuding:

Strange connections and sentiments:

Timing, part one: promotions/demotions

Timing, part two: technical assistance

Threats:

Off-the-cuff remarks:

The 11/18/63 Special Ordinance from the DPD (in cooperation with the Secret Service):

Perhaps the greatest smoking gun in the entire Kennedy case:

In The Eye Of The Storm: Limo Driver Bill Greer

Deadly delay on Elm Street

A sampling of the sixty witnesses to Greer’s negligence:

What Greer should have done:

What really happened:

Leading the race to Parkland Hospital

Who transmitted to whom – and how?

Greer and the unauthorized Dealey Plaza Agent:

Agent Greer: from Parkland Hospital to Bethesda Hospital

Aftermath

Conclusion

Newcomb and Adams

Greer on the Record:

Clues To The Contingency

Intelligence Operative Gerry Patrick Hemming:

Roll Call of Participants: Part One

Agent Roy H. Kellerman

Agent Emory P. Roberts

Agent John D. Jack Ready

Agent Clinton J. Clint Hill

Agent William Tim McIntyre

Agent Samuel A. Sam Kinney

Agent Glen A. Bennett

Howard K. Norton

Agent Paul E. Landis, Jr.

Agent George W. Hickey, Jr.

Agent Rufus W. Youngblood

Agent Thomas L. Lem Johns

Agent Jerry D. Kivett:

Agent Warren Woody Taylor

Agent David B. Grant

Agent Andrew E. Andy Berger

Roll Call of Participants: Part Two

Agent Stewart G. Stu Stout, Jr. ATSAIC

Agent Richard E. Dick Johnsen

Agent Thomas B. Shipman

Agent Samuel E. Sulliman

Agent Ernest E. Olsson, Jr.

Agent John Joe Howlett

Agent Robert A. Steuart

Agent Donald J. Lawton

Agent Charles T. Chuck Zboril

Agent Roger C. Warner

Agent Henry J. Hank Rybka

Agent William H. Patterson

Agent John J. Muggsy O’Leary

Agent Robert Inman Bouck

Agent Forrest V. Sorrels

Roll Call of Participants: Part Three

Agent Winston G. Lawson

Agent Floyd M. Boring

Deputy Chief Paul J. Paterni

Agent Elmer W. Moore

Agent Gerald A. Jerry Behn:

Secret Service Chief James J. Rowley

Inspector Thomas J. Kelley:

Secretary of the Treasury C. Douglas Dillon:

Roll Call of Participants: Part Four

Agent Gerald W. O’Rourke:

Agent John F. Frank Yeager

Agent J. Walter Walt Coughlin

Agent Jerry Dolan

Agent Frank D. Slocum

Los Angeles Agent Leon L. Gopadze, Dallas Office Agent Charles E. Kunkel, and Dallas Office Agent James F. Mike Howard:

Agents’ Robert W. Foster, Thomas Howard Wells, and Lynn S. Meredith

Lee Harvey Oswald & The Secret Service

Motive

Nixon

The Chicago Connection, Harvey Henderson, & Other Revelations

Conclusions

Photographs and Documents

Bibliography

About The Author:

Special Thanks

Praise and Thanks

Index

Introduction

Many of the agents take to the grave what they know

– former Agent Jerry Parr

For almost 50 years, America and the rest of the world has endlessly questioned the brutal murder of the 35 th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy. During this time, countless books have espoused a wide range of conspiracy theories, opposed by a smaller but highly effective body of works defending the official government pronouncement that a lone assassin, disgruntled loser Lee Harvey Oswald, took the life of the President on an idealogical whim, a seeming quirk of fate. While a majority of the public believes a conspiracy was behind the murder, the original finding has never been been disproven; the definitive smoking gun still eludes detection. A feeling of uncertainty and dissatisfaction remains.

Something that has been missing from all these accounts, pro and con, is the role of the Secret Service on that fateful November day.

Survivor’s Guilt is a unique work. For the first time ever, the actions – and inactions – of the United States Secret Service before, during, and after the assassination are dramatically and exhaustively detailed with disturbing and revealing results. No other book or official investigative body has ever chronicled the specific actions and responsibilities of the Secret Service, and the ramifications concerning the President’s tragic and untimely death, in such detail. This author is the only person to have contacted such a large number of former Secret Service agents, White House aides, and surviving family members, over 70 in all, many of whom have never spoken on the record before (by comparison, the 1963-1964 Warren Commission spoke to a mere dozen Secret Service agents and officials). With scrupulous documentation and much primary source information, Survivor’s Guilt lays bare the Secret Service’s failure in Dallas on November 22, 1963. The results are alarming: regardless of one’s own view about who committed the assassination and why, the evidence proves that the Secret Service, through its sins of omission, is ultimately responsible for the President’s death.

Official history has claimed that the President was difficult to protect and had even ordered the Secret Service agents to take certain actions that left JFK wide open for assassination. Survivor’s Guilt conclusively overrules this verdict.

In fact, JFK was very cooperative and did not interfere with the Secret Service. In addition, much evidence of gross negligence and, in a few instances, seeming culpability, is revealed. The reader also receives a critical, behind-the-scenes look at the agency during the JFK, LBJ, and Nixon years, clearly the most tumultuous in the agency’s history.

Survivor’s Guilt provides a new framework for discourse and, in the process, many long-festering questions are answered.

Example: House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) interview, 2/22/78, of Miami Special Agent In Charge John Marshall, former White House Detail agent who conducted all the advance work on President Kennedy’s frequent trips to Palm Beach:

Twice during the interview, Mr. Marshall mentioned that, for all he knew, someone in the secret service could possibly have been involved in the assassination. This is not the first time an agent has mentioned the possibility that a conspiracy existed, but it is the first time that an agent has acknowledged the possibility that the secret service could have been involved.

Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) Director Tom Samoluk told the author in 1996 that JFK’s longtime friend and Presidential Aide Dave Powers agreed with your take on the Secret Service, based on a lengthy interview Samoluk had with the gentleman during the process of obtaining Power’s film of the fateful Dallas motorcade from the JFK Library.

Chapter 1

No-Agents-On-The-Limousine Policy

The Warren Commission was puzzled, as were select members of the media and the public. Why were no agents posted on the back of the limousine, on November 22, 1963, holding the hand rails built for just that purpose? Or, at the very least, why weren’t the agents walking or running beside the car? After all, in most people’s minds, agents had performed these functions since at least the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, if not beforehand. In response to the Warren Commission’s justifiable curiosity on this subject, Secret Service Chief James J. Rowley had agents Jerry Behn, Floyd Boring, Emory Roberts, John Ready, and Clint Hill wrote reports of their experiences with the President concerning this matter of security (why Roy Kellerman, the nominal agent in charge of the Dallas trip, and the numerous other Texas agents weren’t asked is unstated). Oddly, nothing is mentioned specifically about 11/22/63, as was requested by the Commission.

At first glance, all five reports appear to support the notion that President Kennedy did not want agents on or near the rear of his limousine:

Special Agent In Charge (SAIC) of White House Detail (WHD) Gerald A. Jerry Behn, not on the Texas trip, stated unequivocally in his report (dated 4/16/64; the fourth report to Rowley) that JFK told me that he did not want agents riding on the back of his car during several trips all the way back to November 1961, without referencing any trips in 1962 or 1963. Behn, the number one agent in JFK’s Secret Service detail, mentions the trip to Bonham, Texas in November 1961, yet this was for the non-motorcade funeral of Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn and a hardtop vehicle without steps for the agents was used, rendering any alleged instructions moot, as the car was protected.

Behn also mentions the trip to Seattle, Washington during this same period. While the car was a rented Lincoln Continental without rear grab handles or platforms for the agents, again making any alleged instructions moot, to more than compensate for this situation, the Secret Service protected the motorcade with hundreds of Seattle policemen guarding rooftops, as well as lining the parade route and mingling in the crowds.¹

In addition, Behn discusses JFK’s famous trips to Mexico City in 1962 and to Berlin in 1963. However, since agents did indeed ride on or near the rear of the limo during these high-profile motorcades, Behn brought these trips up only in the context of both the president’s desire to meet the people and his seeming disapproval of an instance of security that was invoked on each trip. Still, the net effect of the mere mention of these trips was the presentation of a small mosaic of presidential disapproval. Taken at face value and coming from the leader of the White House Detail, the man who was the direct pipeline to the President, this alleged presidential edict seems to be an authoritative and conclusive fact.

However, during the course of three exclusive interviews with the author on 9/27/92, Mr. Behn dropped an unexpected bombshell:

I don’t remember Kennedy ever saying that he didn’t want anybody on the back of his car.

Before the author could catch his breath, Behn added that newsreel footage from the period will bear him out on this point, one example being the June 1963 trip to Berlin (there are many others from 1961 to 1963²): I think if you watch the newsreel pictures you’ll find agents on there from time to time, Behn said. Again, Behn was the number one agent in the Kennedy detail and he was forceful, matter of fact, and unequivocal to a complete stranger—the author—on the phone (luckily for history, Behn consented to being taped, as he died of cancer 4/21/93).

Mr. Behn’s reputation was and is impeccable: former Agent Maurice G. Martineau told the author on 9/21/93: No one that I can think of would have been better positioned to give you information than Jerry Behn … (he was) as well informed as anyone I can think of that you could contact. Behn garnered the utmost respect from his colleagues that the author spoke with, making his unequivocal statements to the author that repudiated his own report of crucial importance. Remember, Behn, who served in the agency from 1939-1967 and who became the number one agent for JFK and LBJ, passed away over a decade before one of his men, Gerald Blaine, a buck private, so to speak, who only served from 1959-1964, wrote his book, The Kennedy Detail. Behn is also on record stating that JFK’s staff did not pose any unique problems versus other presidential staffs he dealt with.³

Mr. Behn ended his report to Rowley by stating, As late as November 18 [1963] … he [JFK] told ASAIC Boring the same thing [or so Boring claimed].

Assistant Special Agent In Charge (ASAIC) Floyd M. Boring, also not on the Texas trip, dealt primarily with the 11/18/63 Tampa, Florida trip in his report (dated 4/8/64; the first report to Rowley), while also mentioning the 7/2/63 Italy trip, alleging that President Kennedy made this request for both stops. Boring made the Florida trip in place of Mr. Behn in his position as the number two agent in Kennedy’s Secret Service detail. Boring was also a respected veteran of the agency, serving from 1944 to 1967 and was decorated for valor regarding his role in protecting another president during an assassination attempt involving multiple shooters: the attempt on President Harry Truman at Blair House in Washington, D.C. on 11/1/50.⁴

Then, in yet another alarming contradiction, Boring exclaimed to the author on 9/22/93:

No, no, no-that’s not true … [JFK] was a very easy-going guy … he didn’t interfere with our actions at all. He actually – No, I told them … He didn’t tell them anything … He just – I looked at the back and I seen these fellahs were hanging on the limousine – I told them to return to the car.

The author reiterated the point – Mr. Boring was still adamant that JFK never issued any orders to the agents. Remember, Boring is admitting it came from him, and not JFK! With regard to exactly who makes the decision regarding the agents’ proximity to the President, Agent Jerry Parr told Larry King: I would say it was the agent in charge who makes that decision.⁵ (Boring’s cousin, Kimberly Ann Boring-Ruiz, wrote to the author on 12/30/10: I also recognize that your point was that JFK never told the agents to get off of the car. I even heard Floyd’s own voice tell you that JFK never interfered with their job.)

In a later interview conducted by the author on 3/4/94, Boring was equally as adamant with regard to the notion (alleged by Behn and Boring in their own reports, among others) that JFK ever asked that the agents remove themselves from the limousine: He said, "Well that’s not true. That’s not true. He was a very nice man; he never interfered with us at all [emphasis added]."

As with Behn, it is quite fortunate that Boring also consented to having the interview recorded, as he later did for his interview with the Assassination Records Review Board in 1996, as Boring was quite ill for a time and died at the age of 92 on 2/1/08, a solid two-and-a-half years before The Kennedy Detail saw the light of day. And, if that wasn’t enough, Boring also wrote the author in November 1997 and said that President Kennedy "was very cooperative with the Secret Service [emphasis added]."

Finally, Boring, who makes no mention of any alleged desires by President Kennedy to restrict security during his two presidential library oral histories, told the JFK Library on 2/25/76: … of all the administrations I worked with [FDR-LBJ], the president and the people surrounding the president were very gracious and were very cooperative. As a matter of fact, you can’t do this type of security work without cooperation of the people surrounding the president.

To say this is of paramount importance, as it greatly refutes official history and his own report to Rowley, would not be an overstatement: Agent Boring just happened to be in charge of planning the Texas trip.

Assistant To the Special Agent in Charge (ATSAIC) Emory P. Roberts (on the Florida and Texas trips), one of three Shift Leaders on the Kennedy detail and the commander of the Secret Service follow-up car, deals exclusively with the 11/18/63 Tampa, Florida trip in his report (dated 4/10/64; the second one submitted to Rowley): Boring was Roberts sole source, via radio transmission from the limousine ahead of his follow-up vehicle, for the alleged removal of the agents. Since Roberts makes no mention of any presidential directive, his report is essentially, from an evidentiary standpoint, meaningless. Quite frankly, Roberts, who died on 10/8/73 without talking to anyone officially except William Manchester, is an agent this author finds very suspicious.

As Agent Tim McIntyre, one of Emory’s agents in the follow-up car in Dallas, put it to author Seymour Hersh: His shift supervisor, the highly respected Emory Roberts, took him aside [when he first joined the Kennedy detail in November of 1963, shortly before the assassination] and warned … that ‘you’re going to see a lot of shit around here. Stuff with the President. Just forget about it. Keep it to yourself. Don’t even talk to your wife....

Roberts was nervous about it. Emory would say, McIntyre recalled with a laugh, How in the hell do you know what’s going on? He could be hurt in there. What if one bites him, in a sensitive area? Roberts ‘talked about it a lot’, McIntyre said … McIntyre said he and some of his colleagues … felt abused by their service on behalf of President Kennedy … McIntyre said he eventually realized that he had compromised his law enforcement beliefs to the point where he wondered whether it was time to get out of there. I was disappointed by what I saw. McIntyre repeated the Roberts story on ABC, with this comment included: Prostitution, that’s illegal. A procurement is illegal. And if you have a procurer with prostitutes paraded in front of you, then, as a sworn law enforcement officer, you’re asking yourself, ‘well, what do they think of us’?⁶

Roberts was the President’s receptionist during the Johnson administration while still a member of the Secret Service, effectively replacing loyal JFK aide Dave Powers, receiving a Special Service Award from the Treasury Department for improving communications and services to the public in 1968.⁷ This was and is unheard of, as agents are supposed to be apolitical. They were officially employees of the Treasury Department (in 2003 the Service was transferred to the newly-created Department of Homeland Security). A year later, during the start-up of the Nixon administration in 1969, Roberts was promoted to the coveted position of Inspector at Secret Service headquarters, responsible for overseeing a number of protective procedures and policies. Roberts retired from the Secret Service in February 1973.⁸ (Emory Roberts’ grandson John worked in the White House as aide to President George W. Bush and is now state Republican House policy director⁹). Much more about Agent Roberts later on.

In any event, there are alarming parallels between what LBJ thought of Roberts and Bobby Baker, a man he referred to as his son (Baker was his longtime aide who was later embroiled in scandal, serving time in jail): Bobby is my strong right arm. He is the last person I see at night and the first person I see in the morning.¹⁰ LBJ said this of Roberts on 11/23/68: He greets me every morning and tells me goodbye every night.¹¹

There are more reasons not to trust Roberts and some of the other agents’ after-the-fact reports: Roberts, in attempting to defend Agent Ready’s lack of action in Dallas, wrote, SA Ready would have done the same thing (as Agent Hill did) if motorcycle was not at President’s corner of car¹², a blatant falsehood that went unchallenged by the government.¹³ Strange, but this posed no problem at all for Agent Donald J. Lawton on November 18, 1963, in Tampa (but unfortunately, like Agent Henry Rybka, Lawton was left at Love Field on the 22nd). Even Chief Rowley got in on the act. He told the Warren Commission:

"Mr. Hill, who was on the left side, responded immediately—as he looked toward the Presidential car, being on the left side, he scanned from left to right, and when he saw there was something happening to the President following a noise, he immediately jumped from his position to get aboard from his side. Mr. Ready scanned to the right so he was looking away from the President, because he was looking around from the right side. As a consequence, he wasn’t aware of what was happening in the front. The car was also going on a turn at that time [emphasis added]."¹⁴

The car was actually heading straight to the overpass.

In addition, the alleged speed and distance between the two cars (9-11 mph and 5 feet,¹⁵ not the 20-25 mph and 20-25 feet stated in Roberts reports) was also used as the pretext for the recall of Ready during the shooting.¹⁶ Even Inspector Thomas Kelley got into the act, later testifying, The agents, of course, in the follow-up car were some distance away from the action.¹⁷ If that wasn’t enough, as this author discovered back in 1991 when viewing slow motion black and white video footage of the Love Field departure, one can see agent Donald J. Lawton¹⁸ jogging at the rear of the limousine on JFK’s side only to be recalled by none other than Emory P. Roberts, who rises in his seat in the follow-up car and, using his voice and several hand-gestures, orders Lawton to cease and desist.¹⁹ As the ARRB’s Doug Horne wrote in a memo dated 4/16/96, based on viewing the aforementioned video shown during the author’s presentation at a 1995 research conference (later to be shown during my appearance on the History Channel in 2003): "The bafflement of the agent who is twice waved off of the limousine is clearly evident.

This unambiguous and clearly observed behavior would seem to be corroboration that the change in security procedure which was passed to SA Clint Hill earlier in the week by ASAIC Floyd Boring of the Secret Service White House Detail was very recent, ran contrary to standing procedure, and that not everyone on the White House Detail involved in Presidential protection had been informed of this change. In regard to the Love Field video, former agent Larry Newman told me he never saw that before and, when questioned on the matter, said he didn’t know all the particulars and that Tim McIntyre would be a good source on this. Agents Hill and Blaine stated in 2010 that Lawton told them he was saying, I’m going to lunch- have a nice trip", a damage control statement so ludicrous it is unworthy of further comment.

Finally, Emory Roberts placed Agent Rybka in the follow-up car in his (initial) reports, only to correct the record later, after November 22.²⁰ Incredibly, Emory Roberts made this same mistake twice: In the shift report of 11/22/63 (separate from the one depicted in the Commission’s volumes²¹), Roberts placed Rybka in the center rear seat between Hickey and Bennett.²² Rybka remained at Love Field.

All of this begs the question: were Rybka and Lawton the two agents who were supposed to ride on the rear of the limousine in Dallas?

In any event, instead of a shout of alarm, or orders to his agents to take protective action, Roberts did nothing to help the wounded President. Allen Dulles of the Warren Commission asked Chief Rowley: Who would cover straight ahead? Chief Rowley responded, The man in the front seat [i.e., Roberts] has that responsibility.²³ Agent John Ready was recalled by Agent Emory Roberts to the follow-up car when he started to react to the gunfire on 11/22/63. Mr. Roberts had ordered the men not to move even after recognizing the first shot as gunfire, while a host of others thought the noise was a mere firecracker or motorcycle backfire.²⁴ Regarding Roberts’ disturbing order not to move, agent Sam Kinney, the driver of the follow-up car, told the author that this was exactly right. SA Ready was the agent who was assigned to JFK’s side of the limousine, as Clint Hill was assigned to Jackie’s side.²⁵

Special Agent (SA) John David Jack Ready’s very brief report (dated 4/11/64; the third given to Rowley) deals exclusively with the 11/18/63 Tampa, Florida trip. However, Mr. Ready was not on this specific trip: Mr. Boring was, once again, his source for JFK’s alleged request. Ready would not respond to written inquiries. I phoned him on 6/13/05 and asked if it was true that Floyd Boring said this, based on JFK’s request. After confirming he wasn’t on the Tampa trip, Ready stated, Not on the phone. I don’t know you from Adam. Can you see my point? This author does not see the point. If there is nothing to hide and this alleged statement by the president was the common knowledge Ready claimed, would it not have been a simple matter for him to affirm what his report stated? Interestingly, Ready submitted yet another report dealing with the assassination itself: There appeared to be no spectators on the right side of the road [Elm Street, where the assassination occurred], a blatant falsehood easily debunked via the photographic record.

Like Roberts, Ready claimed that the limousine was traveling between 20-25 mph, approximately 20-25 feet in front of the follow-up car. However, films, photos, Clint Hill’s Warren Commission testimony, and Paul Landis’ report confirms that there were actually only five feet between the cars when the shooting commenced, and that the limousine was slowing down from an original speed of only around 11.2 mph. In fact, in Ready’s first report, he stated that the follow-up car slowed. In Ready’s next report, he corrected the record to read that the presidential limousine slowed instead. The irony of his name aside, perhaps all these ammendments were needed because Ready was ultimately the agent responsible for JFK’s side of the limousine.²⁶

SA Clinton J. Clint Hill (on the Texas trip) – Like Ready, Hill also deals with the 11/18/63 Tampa, Florida trip and Boring second-hand in his (strangely undated and, presumably, the last) report: Mr. Hill was not on this trip, either. Agent Hill’s report was the most honest of the five: "I … never personally was requested by President John F. Kennedy not to ride on the rear of the Presidential automobile. I did receive information passed verbally from the administrative offices of the White House Detail of the Secret Service to agents assigned to that Detail that President Kennedy had made such requests. I do not know from whom I received this information … No written instructions regarding this were ever distributed … (I) received this information after the Presidents return to Washington, D. C. This would have been between November 19,1963 and November 21, 1963 [note the time frame]. I do not know specifically who advised me of this request by the President (emphasis added)."

Why Mr. Hill could not remember the specific name of the agent who conveyed JFK’s alleged desires is very troubling – he revealed it on 3/9/64, presumably before his report was written, in his (probably pre-rehearsed) testimony under oath to the future Senator Arlen Specter, then a lawyer with the Warren Commission: none other than Floyd Boring.²⁷

Specter: Did you have any other occasion en route from Love Field to downtown Dallas to leave the follow-up car and mount that portion of the President’s car [rear portion of limousine]?

Hill: I did the same thing approximately four times.

Specter: What are the standard regulations and practices, if any, governing such an action on your part?

Hill: It is left to the agent’s discretion more or less to move to that particular position when he feels that there is a danger to the President: to place himself as close to the President or the First Lady as my case was, as possible, which I did.

Specter: Are those practices specified in any written documents of the Secret Service?

Hill: No, they are not.

Specter: Now, had there been any instruction or comment about your performance of that type of a duty with respect to anything President Kennedy himself had said in the period immediately preceding the trip to Texas?

Hill: Yes, sir; there was. The preceding Monday, the President was on a trip to Tampa, Florida, and he requested that the agents not ride on either of those two steps.

Specter: And to whom did the President make that request?

Hill: Assistant Special Agent in Charge Boring.

Specter: Was Assistant Special Agent in Charge Boring the individual in charge of that trip to Florida?

Hill: He was riding in the Presidential automobile on that trip in Florida, and I presume that he was. I was not along.

Specter: Well, on that occasion would he have been in a position comparable to that occupied by Special Agent Kellerman on this trip to Texas?

Hill: Yes sir; the same position.

Specter: And Special Agent Boring informed you of that instruction by President Kennedy?

Hill: Yes sir, he did.

Specter: Did he make it a point to inform other special agents of that same instruction?

Hill: I believe that he did, sir.

Specter: And, as a result of what President Kennedy said to him, did he instruct you to observe that Presidential admonition?

Hill: Yes, sir.

Specter: How, if at all, did that instruction of President Kennedy affect your action and – your action in safeguarding him on this trip to Dallas?

Hill: We did not ride on the rear portions of the automobile. I did on those four occasions because the motorcycles had to drop back and there was no protection on the left-hand side of the car.

Yet, during Chief Rowley’s Warren Commission testimony, he was asked the following:

Mr.

Rankin: Chief Rowley, I should like to have you state for the record, for the Commission, whether the action of President Kennedy in making these statements was understood by you or properly could have been understood by the agents as relieving themselves of any responsibility about the protection of the president.

Mr.

Rowley: No; I would not so construe that, Mr. Rankin. The agents would respond regardless of what the President said if the situation indicated a potential danger. The facilities were available to them. They had the rear steps, they would be there as a part of the screen. And immediately in the event of any emergency they would have used them [emphasis added].²⁸

Rowley even added, Now, if the thing gets too sticky, you put the agent right in the back seat, which I have done many times with past Presidents.²⁹ However, in the coup de grace, Rowley said, No President will tell the Secret Service what they can or cannot do … sometimes it might be as a political man or individual he might think this might not look good in a given situation. But that does not mean per se that he does not want you on there [the rear of the limo]. And I don’t think anyone with common sense interprets it as such.³⁰

Interestingly, the same gentleman who interviewed Clint Hill for the Warren Commission, Arlen Specter, denigrated the former agent during an official oral history televised by PCN on 5/15/12 and later shown by C-SPAN, as well – Specter said Hill was carousing the night before [the assassination] to all hours of the morning, a statement that, in point of fact, was quite true (Specter passed away 10/14/12).

That said, out of all the Secret Service agents in Kennedy’s detail, Clint Hill was the first one to reveal his guilt and sorrow in a public forum.32 As Jackie Kennedy revealed soon after the assassination: … Clint Hill, he loved us, he was the first man in the car … ³¹ Before the publication of The Kennedy Detail and, later, his own book, Mrs. Kennedy and Me, Mr. Hill lived incommunicado in Virginia and would not grant private interviews. The author was the first private researcher to get through to Mr. Hill. Interestingly, Mr. Hill’s brother-in-law is David B. Grant, a former advance agent who worked on the planning of the Florida and Texas trips with none other than Mr. Boring. What’s more, Agent Hill and his best friend, fellow former Agent Blaine, would go on to debate the merits of this author and his research on C-SPAN in November 2010 and again, with Hill alone, on the same network in May 2012. The reason for their interest was the author’s 22-page letter to Hill in the Summer of 2005 that directly led to the writing of The Kennedy Detail and, indirectly, all the following books and other projects, such as the television documentary and movie of the same name.

During Clint Hill’s 11/19/10 Sixth Floor Museum oral history, the former agent revealed the full, unvarnished truth about JFK: he did not order the agents to do anything; they did what they wished to do, security-wise: He can tell you what he wants done and he can tell you certain things but that doesn’t mean you have to do it. What we used to do was always agree with the President and then we’d do what we felt was best anyway.

In Hill’s own book, the former agent wrote, I had never heard the president ever question procedural recommendations by his Secret Service detail³² On page 202 of his 2012 memoir, there is a photo of the agents surrounding the presidential limousine at the Orange Bowl in Miami in December 1962: agents Gerald Blaine (of Kennedy Detail infamy), Ken Giannoules, Clint Hill himself, Paul Landis, Frank Yeager (uncredited), Ron Pontius (uncredited), and Bob Lilley (also uncredited). Hill writes, I and the other agents jogged alongside the car, constantly scanning the crowd for any sign of disturbance or disruption, as we headed toward the waiting helicopter outside the arena. On page 212, Hill says, There would always be at least five or six Secret Service agents around the president, and trailing close behind the president’s limousine was the not so unobtrusive follow-up car.³³

So of the five Secret Service reports, four have as their primary source for JFK’s alleged request agent Boring, including one by Boring himself, while the remaining report, written by Mr. Behn, mentions the same 11/18/63 trip with Mr. Boring as the others do (again, Boring’s report was the first one written, then came one each from Roberts, Ready, Behn, and Hill, respectively). Both Behn and Boring totally contradicted the contents of their reports at different times, independent of each other, to the author. In addition, agents did ride on the rear of the limousine on 7/2/63 and 11/18/63 anyway, despite these alleged Presidential requests, as the film and photo record proves.³⁴ Both the Secret Service Final Survey Report for the 11/18/63 Tampa trip, written by Gerald Blaine and dated 12/4/63, after the fact, as well as the corresponding Secret Service shift reports, make no mention of any presidential orders to have the agents stay off the limousine: no unusual incidents occurred, wrote Blaine. With Boring joining Behn in refuting the substance of their reports, the official Secret Service ‘explanation’ falls like a house of cards.

Behn’s, Boring’s, and Hill’s reports are not even on any Secret Service or Treasury Dept. stationery, just blank sheets of paper. In fact, as noted above, Hill’s report is undated, a bizarre error to make in an official government report written by request of the head of the Secret Service.

All are supposedly evidence of JFK expressing his desire to keep Secret Service agents off the limousine, particularly in Tampa, Florida on 11/18/63.

Importantly, no mention is made of any alleged orders via President Kennedy’s staff, or of JFK requesting anything on the critical day, November 22. What’s more, Secret Service agents and/or police officers always guarded the rooftops of buildings during motorcades before the assassination (not just as a result of the tragedy), effectively augmenting or, in the absence of agents by the limousine itself, replacing them, depending on manpower issues and so forth. Chief Inspector Michael Torina, whom the author contacted, wrote the Secret Service manual and confirmed this security procedure as a fact (See Chapter 6 for more on this important issue).³⁵

In fact, the devastating effect these agents’ tales had can be best summed up by Treasury Secretary C. Douglas Dillon’s memorandum for Chief Justice Warren dated 12/18/63 (predating the April 1964 reports): " … the President had frequently stated that he did not wish to have the agents riding on these steps [on rear of limousine] during a motorcade and had repeated this wish only a few days previously to agents assigned to him in Tampa [Florida, 11/18/63]. (In Dallas SA Hill, who had been assigned to Mrs. Kennedy and had not been in Tampa with the President, occasionally rode on the left rear step. Agent Ready, who was aware that the President had specifically stated his objection to agents’ riding on the steps, did not ride the step in Dallas) [emphasis added]."

Not satisfied with this December 1963 blanket statement from Dillon, speaking for agents Hill and Ready, the March 1964 testimony of Agent Hill (the only agent asked about the agents-on-the-limousine question), and the contradictory March 1964 testimony of Chief Rowley himself, the Warren Commission thus sought out more specific, straight answers from Rowley and his men in April 1964, five months after the assassination. None of these so-called answers are satisfying, especially when one weighs the evidence and the contradictory statements, the record and the reality.

The evolution of the myth:

Floyd Boring (and quite a few of his colleagues) categorically denied to the author what William Manchester reports in his acclaimed massive best-seller, The Death of a President: "Kennedy grew weary of seeing bodyguards roosting behind him every time he turned around, and in Tampa on November 18, just four days before his death, he dryly asked Agent Floyd Boring to ‘Keep those Ivy League charlatans off the back of the car.’ Boring wasn’t offended. There had been no animosity in the remark..." ³⁶ (emphasis added)

Incredibly, Boring informed this author, I never told him that. As for the merit of the quote itself, as previously mentioned, Boring said, No, no, no, that’s not true, thus contradicting his own report. In fact, Boring was not even interviewed for Manchester’s book! We may never know Mr. Manchester’s source for this curious statement: he told the author on 8/23/93 that all that material is under seal and won’t be released in my lifetime and denied the author access to his notes (Manchester has since passed away).³⁷ Interestingly, Manchester did interview the late Emory Roberts (whose April 1964 report does not specifically mention JFK or any first-hand details) and Gerald Blaine (author of the blame-the-victim book The Kennedy Detail), Manchester’s probable and, as we shall see, very questionable source.³⁸

Blaine now denies that either himself or Floyd Boring were interviewed by William Manchester.³⁹ While his confirmation that Boring was not interviewed is merely icing on the cake, Blaine himself was indeed interviewed for the book on 5/12/65, as the source notes confirm.⁴⁰ Sadly, many of these interviews will not become available until the year 2067 and Blaine’s transcript is missing, as confirmed by Keith Johnson of Wesleyan University, home of the Manchester collection. That said, the author was granted permission to view the transcript of Chief of Staff Kenneth O’Donnell, in which nothing is mentioned concerning alleged presidential security-related orders of any kind. Blaine was also thanked by Manchester in his 1983 JFK book One Brief Shining Moment, and the agent himself admitted to me in 2005 that he in fact spoke to Manchester.⁴¹ Yet Blaine stated on C-SPAN on 11/28/10, I have never talked to any author of a book. What’s more, Blaine is the only agent – save two headquarters Inspectors – whose interview comments are not to be found in the actual text or index of Manchester’s lengthy book. For his part, Manchester, having interviewed 21 different agents and officials for his book,⁴² chose to include interviews with Secret Service headquarters Inspectors Burrill Peterson and Jack Warner.

What’s the problem with that? Well, these men, not associated with the Texas trip in any way, were interviewed more than any of the other agents: four times each (Peterson: 10/9/64, 11/17/64, 11/18/64, 2/5/65; Warner: 6/2/64, 11/18/64, 2/5/65, 5/12/65, the last date being identical to the date of Blaine’s interview! Only Emory Roberts, Clint Hill, Roy Kellerman, and Forrest Sorrels had two interviews apiece, while all the other agents or officials garnered just one interview each. And, unlike all the other 19 agents, save one, Gerald Blaine, these two inspectors are not even mentioned in the actual text or the index themselves. As with Blaine, their comments are invisible to the reader. It appears, then, that Manchester’s book was truly a sanitized, official book; more so than was thought before (the book was written with Jackie Kennedy’s approval: it was her idea, in fact.)⁴³ Manchester even had early, exclusive access to the Warren Commission itself: At the outset of my inquiry the late Chief Justice Earl Warren appointed me an ex officio member of his commission … and provided me with an office in Washington’s VFW building, where the commission met and where copies of reports and depositions were made available to me.⁴⁴

Jim Bishop, in his own best-selling book entitled The Day Kennedy was Shot, does nothing more than repeat the written record of the Warren Commission and the previously mentioned five reports, taken at face value. Again, Mr. Boring was not interviewed for the book. With Mr. Bishop dead, this is where the matter rests. That said, Jim Bishop did sum up the situation best: "No one wanted to weigh the possibilities that, if a Secret Service man had been on the left rear bumper going down Elm Street, it would have been difficult to hit President Kennedy (emphasis added). Bishop also noted, The Secret Service men were not pleased because they were in a ‘hot’ city and would have preferred to have two men ride the bumper of the President’s car with two motorcycle policemen between him [JFK] and the crowds on the sidewalks."⁴⁵

Still, thanks to the Secret Service reports (and, in large measure, to Agent Boring himself), five best-sellers – the Warren Report,⁴⁶ Manchester‘s The Death of a President, Bishop’s The Day Kennedy Was Shot, Ronald Kessler’s In The President’s Secret Service, and Gerald Blaine’s The Kennedy Detail, have created the myth that JFK was difficult to protect and had ordered the agents off his car and the like, a dangerous myth that endures to this day in the media, thus doing great damage to the true historical record.⁴⁷

In the late 1970’s, The House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) Final Report continued the Secret Service’s myth that Kennedy was to blame in this fashion: … [JFK] almost recklessly resisted the protective measures the Secret Service urged him to adopt … He [allegedly] told the Special Agent in Charge of the White House Detail [Behn] that he did not want agents to ride on the rear of his car. Also, the Committee wrote, He scoffed at many of the measures designed to protect him … Finally, in the coup de grace, the Report states, Had the agents assigned to the motorcade been alert to the possibility of sniper fire [?], they possibly could have convinced the President to allow them to maintain protective positions on the rear bumper of the Presidential limousine … the Committee recognized, however, that President Kennedy consistently rejected the Secret Service’s suggestions that he permit agents to ride on the rear bumper of the Presidential limousine.⁴⁸

Furthermore, in the Secret Service sponsored 1993 Clint Eastwood film, In The Line Of Fire, actor John Malkovich’s diabolical character repeated the myth to millions of unsuspecting theater patrons: You wanted to station agents on his bumpers and sideboards; he refused. And do you know why I think he refused? I think he refused because he had a death wish. Author Gerald Posner did the same in his best-selling book Case Closed: As the President and his staff had requested … no Secret Service men rode on the running boards attached to the rear.⁴⁹ Not only is it a matter of common knowledge that Clint Hill rode briefly on the rear of the limousine four different times, albeit before entering the site of the assassination, Dealey Plaza (and against the ‘new’ Secret Service wishes), no actual Secret Service agents are credited in the actual text or endnotes of Posner’s book.

So, where did Posner get his information? The author e-mailed Posner and received this surprising reply on 3/4/98: Without checking my files (you’re asking about research six and seven years ago), I don’t remember interviewing any SS agents for the record, and I don’t remember off-hand even talking to any for background. I am almost certain I merely relied on orig. docs, or the agents’ original interviews and/or testimony, a stance Posner later confirmed to researcher W. Tracy Parnell. That said, Posner did contact, but did not interview, Agent Floyd M. Boring, who put him in touch with Percy Hamilton Brown, the Executive Secretary of the Former Agents of the Secret Service (although Brown is credited on page 503 of his book, in the Acknowledgements section, it was only through the author’s interview with Boring that his contact with Posner was inadvertently revealed). Posner’s statements to this author and Parnell appear to be true. In addition, it appears that, ostensibly, like Boring, Brown was of no actual help to Posner, but his name was put in the tail end of the book anyway.⁵⁰

A one-two punch was provided in the late 1990’s by both former Carter & Reagan SAIC Jerry Parr’s comments to Larry King on CNN dated 7/14/98, and, controversially, Bill Clinton’s Secret Service Director Lewis C. Merletti. Parr, a major consultant on In The Line of Fire, told Larry King, The critical factor [in Dallas] … was the fact that he ordered the two agents off the car … which made him very vulnerable to Lee Oswald’s attack. Regarding Merletti, The Washington Post reported on 5/14/98: "During private meetings, sources said, Merletti told officials from [Kenneth] Starr’s office [investigating the President Clinton-Monica Lewinsky matter] and the Treasury and Justice departments that trust and proximity to a president are crucial to protecting him⁵¹ … the service ran through the history of assassination attempts, showing instances where they succeeded or failed, possibly depending on how close agents were to an intended victim. Sources said they produced rare photographs of John F. Kennedy’s fateful 1963 motorcade through Dallas, where agents were not standing on running boards on the back of his exposed automobile when shots rang out because the president several days before had ordered them not to … Merletti indicated to the court that the assassination in a moving limousine of President John F. Kennedy might have been thwarted had agents been stationed on the car’s running boards (emphasis added).

To drive the point home, here is an excerpt from Director Merletti’s testimony, as reported in The Washington Post from 5/20/98: "I have attached, as Exhibit A to this Declaration, photographs of President John F. Kennedy’s visit to Tampa, Florida on November 18, 1963. We use these photographs, and the ones attached as Exhibit B, in our training exercises. Exhibit A demonstrates the lengths to which protective personnel have been forced to go to try to maintain proximity to the President. In the photographs contained in Exhibit A, agents are kneeling on the running board of the Presidential limousine, while the vehicle was traveling at a high rate of speed [note: a contradiction – according to prior official agency mythology, the agents shouldn’t even be there at all!].⁵² I can attest that this requires extraordinary physical exertion. Nevertheless, they performed this duty in an attempt to maintain close physical proximity to the President. Exhibit B, by contrast, scarcely needs any introduction. It is a series of photographs of the Presidential limousine, taken just four days later, on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas. As can be seen, at the instruction of the President, Secret Service agents had been ordered off of the limousine’s running boards. (emphasis added)

An analysis of the ensuing assassination (including the trajectory of the bullets which struck the President) indicates that it might have been thwarted had agents been stationed on the car’s running boards. In other words, had they been able to maintain close proximity to the President during the motorcade, the assassination of John F. Kennedy might have been averted. Exhibit C contains a series of photographs taken during the actual assassination that demonstrate how critical and tragic the absence of proximity to the protectee can be."

Finally, the aforementioned recent books by Ronald Kessler, In The President’s Secret Service, and Gerald Blaine, The Kennedy Detail, have brought this false blame-the-victim crusade to its zenith without providing any actual documentation to support their spurious claim. Enough is enough. It is time to end, once and for all, the blaming of JFK for his own death.

Mr. Kessler, who claims to have interviewed over 100 agents, past and present, from many different presidential administrations (although the vast majority are quoted anonymously), spends a mere five pages talking about JFK in his slim, non-footnoted book.⁵³ In those five pages, Kessler quotes agents Larry Newman, Tony Sherman, Charles Taylor, Robert Lutz and an anonymous agent about Kennedy’s sordid private life, yet only quotes Taylor regarding the absence of agents on the presidential limousine. The actual quote does not blame JFK for their removal, although, as written, it is obviously Kessler’s intention to make that inference. What is more, Taylor was a member of the Washington Field Office (WFO) and not Kennedy’s White House detail.⁵⁴ So, in the event Taylor somehow did attempt to convey that inference, he was doing so without first-hand knowledge. This author finds Taylor’s extended bona fides suspect. In Kessler’s book, he speaks about JFK’s dalliance at the White House. Again, Taylor was not there. Even Gerald Blaine does not mention him in his book or list him as a JFK agent on his website.⁵⁵ For the record, Kessler reached out to this author in 2009, right after publication of his book, and told me he attempted to get in touch with me but could not (an idea that is very hard to swallow, due to this author’s prolific presence online) and that he agreed with me on some things and not on others.⁵⁶

On page 19 of The Kennedy Detail, Gerald Blaine begins to (using a lawyer’s term) lay the foundation for blaming the victim, JFK and, in the process, stabs him in the back with baseless allegations. Blaine writes, the Secret Service was not authorized to override a presidential decision. This is ridiculous. Ample proof to the contrary abounds. Chief James J. Rowley testified under oath to the Warren Commission: No President will tell the Secret Service what they can or cannot do.⁵⁷ In fact, Rowley’s predecessor, former Chief U.E. Baughman, who had served under JFK from Election night 1960 until he was fired in September 1961, had written in his 1962 book Secret Service Chief, Now the Chief of the Secret Service is legally empowered to countermand a decision made by anybody in this country if it might endanger the life or limb of the Chief Executive. This means I could veto a decision of the President himself if I decided it would be dangerous not to. The President of course knew this fact.⁵⁸ Indeed, an Associated Press story from November 15, 1963 stated, The [Secret] Service can overrule even the President where his personal security is involved. President Harry Truman agreed, stating, The Secret Service was the only boss that the President of the United States really had.⁵⁹

In an 11/23/63 UPI story, titled Secret Service Men Wary of Motorcade, based in part on private conversations with unnamed agents, Robert J. Serling wrote, "An agent is the only man in the world who can order a President of the United States around if the latter’s safety is believed at stake … in certain situations an agent outranks even a President (emphasis added). In addition, Democratic National Committee advance man Jerry Bruno wrote, [The Secret Service’s] word on security was final. They could by law order a President not to go some place, on security grounds, and he was bound to obey them."⁶⁰

Former Agent George McNally wrote, Legally the Secret Service could forbid a President to do such and such or go to this or that place.⁶¹ Finally, JFK Secret Service agent Bill Carter wrote, The Secret Service still had absolute authority … complete authority when it came to a presidential visit.⁶² Agent Blaine, on the aforementioned C-SPAN appearance, said this author was not credible … I feel the same could be said of agent Blaine.

Forty-seven years later, speaking for long-dead colleagues, Blaine claims, on pages 285-289 and 360 of his book, that there was a meeting at 8 a.m. on 11/25/63, the morning of JFK’s funeral, in which the issue of JFK’s alleged orders to remove the agents from the car in Tampa and Dallas were covered up so the public would not blame the president for his own death. Blaine claims that this meeting was attended by himself, Chief James Rowley (deceased 11/1/92), Rowley’s secretary Walter Blaschak (long deceased), ASAIC Floyd Boring (deceased 2/1/08 and in ill-heath long beforehand), SAIC Jerry Behn (as noted previously, deceased 4/21/93), ATSAIC Stu Stout (deceased December 1974), and ATSAIC Emory Roberts, (deceased 10/8/73). ASAIC Roy Kellerman (deceased 3/22/84) allegedly did not attend and, while Blaine mentions that every supervising agent was in attendance, he does not mention ATSAIC Art Godfrey (deceased 5/12/2002) by name, although it is inferred that he was there, as well. It must be said forcefully: there is no documentation whatsoever that this alleged meeting occurred and all the participants, save Blaine, are long dead (imagine that) and many of them said and wrote to this reviewer statements absolutely contradictory to Blaine’s account of this alleged meeting.

Former JFK-era agent Talmadge Bailey angrily told the author on 11/29/10, Look, you conspiracy buffs are all the same. You people have no problem with making things up as you go along. I happen to know, and know about, Mr. Gerald Blaine fairly well. He is well respected in our little community [presumably, the former agents association to which they both belong]. While that is horseshit about that meeting Mr. Blaine says happened on the day of President John Kennedy’s funeral, I personally have no problem with him making that one up because a lot of you people have a field day making things up. Well, maybe not you personally but I think you know what I am driving at. Nice visiting with you. I believe that is all. Thanks for your interest. Bye-bye. As with the author’s interviews with Mr. Behn and others, the timing was fortuitous: Talmadge Bailey passed away about three months later, on 3/11/11.

Finally, it is worth noting that Blaine recently submitted what he claimed are contemporaneous handwritten notes to the JFK Collection in the National Archives, yet there are several instances where it is quite obvious that these were created many months, if not decades, later. The handwritten notes were made on a schedule dated 11/8-11/30/63 containing revealing mistakes in the time sequence such as, The ordeal we were to all go through for the next few months was a sad one and self-serving statements such as, There wasn’t a thing anyone could have done to stop it [the assassination] and the Secret Service did everything it could do and, of course, He states that he [JFK] wants no agents riding on the rear of his car as we did in Europe. If one was there the assassination might not have occurred.⁶³ Methinks Blaine has adopted Winston Churchill’s famous saying, History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

As for Blaine’s best friend, it appears that Mr. Hill disobeyed Mr. Roberts by running after the limousine during the shooting. Just as important, Mr. Hill disobeyed Mr. Boring’s orders by mounting the rear of the limousine four times briefly prior to the shooting on 11/22/63.⁶⁴ Interestingly, Agent Boring just happened to be in charge of planning the Texas trip for the Secret Service.⁶⁵ For his part, #3 man Roy Kellerman indicated to the Warren Commission that on 11/17/63 he was given the assignment to be the nominal agent in charge of the Dallas trip.⁶⁶

A Landslide of Truth: JFK Was Not To Blame

Keeping everything above into sharp focus, in addition to the comments made by Chief Rowley, Behn (the #1 agent), Boring (the #2 agent), and Hill, the following agents, family members, White House aides, and sundry other important figures in-the-know, well over 30 in all, confirmed that Kennedy did not restrict agents from riding on or near the rear of the limousine, including debunking the whole fraudulent notion that JFK was difficult to protect (a few duly noted exceptions that are anything but, are included, as well ⁶⁷):

Rufus W. Youngblood, ASAIC of LBJ Detail: On 10/22/92, Youngblood confirmed to the author, "There was