Secret Service

Resources

The most extensive study of the Secret Service involvement in JFK’s assassination has been made by Vincent Palamara. See his book: Survivor’s Guilt: The Secret Service and the Failure to Protect President Kennedy (hereinafter SG)

Kennedy’s relationship with the White House Secret Service detail is also discussed in Seymour Hersh’s The Dark Side of Camelot

Abraham Bolden covers the White House detail and the Chicago Plot in 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

Report of the U.S. Secret Service on the Assassination of President Kennedy 
Mary Ferrell  copy
History Matters copy

Web sites that summarize security stripping:
Boring's Interesting ARRB Interview by Vince Palamara
Gerald-Blaine-and-the-Kennedy-Detail-Was-the-Secret-Service-Stood-Down-in-Dallas

Click HERE for a printable copy of this chapter

CLICK HERE for a 25 minute podcast on this chapter

Foreknowledge

Clues about the JFK assassination may be found in the stories of people who predicted the assassination.  Those stories that were documented prior to November 22 should be given more weight than the many stories that emerged after the assassination, a few of which are outlined below.

Early talk of assassination

As a part of the settlement of the Cuban missile crisis in the fall of 1962, JFK pledged to the Soviets that the US would not invade Cuba. Naturally, this caused great distress to many groups which had hoped to overthrow Castro, including elements of the CIA, the anti-Castro Cubans, the Mafia which had worked with the CIA and anti-Castro Cubans to assassinate Castro, and elements of the US Military. In addition, JFK was well hated by racist southerners due to his stance on segregation. In short, there was no shortage of groups who wished him ill.

The anti-Castro Cubans were particularly outraged. As reported by Carl Oglesby in his wonderful book, The Yankee and Cowboy War, “On the first of April, 1963, Kennedy announced that all U.S. raids on Cuba would stop. On April 4, Detective Sgt. C. H. Sapp of the Miami Police Intelligence Unit reported to Assistant Chief of Police A.W. Anderson the following:

“For the past three days the Intelligence Unit has been receiving information concerning the feelings and proposed actions of the Cuban refugee colony in Miami. Since President Kennedy made the news release that the United States Government would stop all raiding parties going against Castro’s government, the Cuban people feel that the United States Government has turned against them….All violence hitherto directed toward Castro’s Cuba will now be directed toward various governmental agencies in the United States.”

Later that month, Tony Cuesta received an anonymous “Christmas” card, which stated, “Only through one development will you Cuban patriots ever live again in your homeland as freemen, … If an inspired Act of God should place in the White House within weeks a Texan known to be a friend of all Latin Americans”

This early hint of assassination is in no way linked to later events in Dallas, but it serves to show the extent of unrest in the exile community.

Joseph Milteer

There was also talk of assassination against government officials, although not necessarily JFK, among right wing extremist groups. William Somersett, a confidential informant to the Miami police reported on a meeting of the Congress of Freedom, Inc. This was a right wing group which included wealthy business people and high ranking members of the armed forces. The group discussed an assassination program targeting prominent Jewish bankers, members of the Business Advisory Council and members of the Council on Foreign Relations.

One of the members of the Congress of Freedom was Joseph Milteer. On November 9, 1963, William Somersett (Informant) was talking with Milteer (Subject) and in the course of the conversation mentioned JFK’s upcoming visit to Miami on November 18:

Subject: The more bodyguards he has the more easier it is to get him.

Informant: Well how in the hell do you figure would be the best way to get him?

Subject: From an office building with a high powered rifle, how many people (room noise tape not legible) does he have going around who look just like him?  Do you know about that?

Informant: No, I never heard that he had anybody.

Subject: He has got them.

Informant: He has?

Subject: He has about fifteen.  Whenever he goes any place they (not legible) he knows he is a marked man.

Informant: You think he knows he is a marked man?

Subject: Sure he does.

Informant: They are really going to try to kill him?

Subject: Oh, yeah, it is in the working.  Brown himself, Brown is just as likely to get him as anybody.  He hasn’t said so, but he tried to get Martin Luther King.

Informant: Boy, if that Kennedy gets shot, we have to know where we are at.  Because you know that will be a real shake, if they do that.

Subject: They wouldn’t leave any stone unturned there no way.  They will pick up somebody within hours afterwards, if anything like that would happen just to throw the public off.

A death threat of sorts was received by Miami police and the trip planning for his November 18 Miami visit was changed from motorcade to helicopter transport to and from Miami airport.

Following the assassination in Dallas, Somersett contacted Milteer who told him that it had happened just as Milteer predicted. Somersett also stated, “During the journey to South Carolina, he told me, he was connected with an International Underground.  He expressed along the way that there would be a propaganda campaign put on now to prove to the Christian people of the world, that the Jews, the Zionist Jews had murdered Kennedy.  He said there would be pamphlets distributed throughout the world stating that The Jews killed Christ 2,000 years ago, and on the 22 of November, they killed President Kennedy.” Milteer also stated prior to Oswald’s murder that Oswald had not said anything and would not say anything, and “That the underground had no worry as to being exposed, because this group that this Oswald belong to which was Pro-Castro had been promptly infiltrated, and of course, money had been put into right hands, furnished to the right people to do the job without throwing anything on the patriots.”

Milteer did not seem to know that the assassination would take place in Dallas, nor did he seem to be intimately involved in the plot; it’s unclear the degree to which he had actual knowledge, had heard rumors, or was just making stuff up. It should be noted that JFK’s motorcade in Miami was cancelled due to security concerns, so perhaps the Secret Service had heard similar rumors, but we can’t know because the Secret Service illegally destroyed their fall 1963 trip reports.  For more information, see Joseph Milteer's page at Mary Ferrell.

Eugene Dinkin

Eugene Dinkin was a cryptographic code operator for U.S. Army Ordinance, stationed in Metz, France. On November 4, 1963 he went AWOL from his unit and travelled to Geneva Switzerland, Frankfurt Germany and Luxemborg and spoke with reporters affiliated with Time-Life and Newsweek as well as meeting with several embassies in an attempt to warn of a pending assassination attempt on JFK in Texas in late November. Dinkin later claimed that he had sent a warning letter to RFK on October 22:

“I did offer in this letter a warning that an attempt to assassinate President Kennedy would occur on November 28, 1963; that if it were to succeed, blame would then be placed upon a Communist or Negro, who would be designated the assassin, and believing that the conspiracy was being engineered by elements of the military, I did speculate that a military coup might ensue. I did request of the Attorney General that he dispatch a representative of the Justice Department to Metz, France to discuss this warning.”

Dinkin was persuaded to return to his base where on November 13 he was arrested and held in a psychiatric unit until his discharge in March 1964. After confinement his story changed; he claimed that his semantic analysis of the Stars and Stripes newspaper had led him to understand that the newspaper had been subliminally conditioning its readers with the message that Kennedy was soft on communism.

Conspiracy theorists believe that Dinkins was pressured to change his story and that his job as a cryptographic code operator involved deciphering cable traffic from the French OAS. This group had long experience in assassination attempts against De Gaulle and some believe that the CIA’s Bill Harvey, who had been in charge of the CIA’s Staff D assassination unit and was CIA Station Chief in Rome at the time, had perhaps been in touch with French or Corsican assassins who were used in Dallas. This theory is bolstered by a CIA cable stating that a notorious Corsican assassin, Jean Soutre aka Michel Roux aka Michel Mertz was in Fort Worth and Dallas on November 22, 1963 and was expelled from the US two days later.

Rose Marie Cheramie

Rose Cheramie was struck by a car on November 20, 1963 in Eunice, Louisiana. She had been travelling by car with two drug couriers from Florida to Dallas when they got into an argument and left her there. While being taken to hospital by police Lt. Francis Fruge, she told him that she and her travelling companions had planned to kill Kennedy in Dallas. Due to detox from heroin she was confined to East Louisiana State Hospital where she told several nurses that Kennedy was to be killed during his motorcade in Dallas. She also said that she knew Jack Rubenstein (aka Ruby), having worked for him as a stripper and drug courier. Following the assassination, when Fruge got in touch with Dallas Police Captain Will Fritz, he was told they had no interest in Cheramie so she was released. On September 4, 1965 she was killed, probably by gunshot, in Big Sandy, Texas. Fruge told the HSCA that Cheramie had told him her travelling companions were two Cubans: Sergio Arcacha Smith and a man named Osanto.    See more details of the story here or here.

Homer Echevarria

On November 21, 1963, a government informant named Thomas Mosley was negotiating the sale of machine guns to a Cuban exile named Homer Echevarria. In the course of the transaction, Echevarria said that “we now have plenty of money – our new backers are Jews” and would close the arms deal “as soon as we [or they] take care of Kennedy.” The next day, Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.

The HSCA investigation determined that the Secret Service tried to follow up on this lead after JFK’s assassination but the FBI then stepped in, asserted jurisdictional authority, and dropped the case. Thus, we have little further information to go on.

It is however interesting that Echevarria claimed that his new backers were Jews and that they would be involved in taking care of Kennedy. This ties in to Joseph Milteer’s comment that the Kennedy assassination would be blamed on the Jews. Jack Ruby was purportedly also extremely upset on the night of the assassination that the Jews would be blamed.  In Larry Hancock's Tipping Point, he claims that the Jews who were funding Echevarria were the Jewish Mafia, led by Meyer Lansky in Las Vegas.  In Week 8 we'll look more at Ruby's association with Jewish mobsters in Chicago and California who may have helped finance the assassination.

Peter Dale Scott examines these links in his book, Dallas ’63: The First Deep State Revolt Against the White House. Echevarria was financed by another Cuban exile, Paulino Sierra Martinez, the head of the Chicago based and Mafia financed Junta del Gobierno de Cuba en Exilio, or JGCE. Sierra was working on an initiative sponsored by Bobby Kennedy through Enrique (Harry) Ruiz Williams to move the more militant anti-Castro groups off shore, especially Alpha 66, SFNE and the 30th of November Movement. His financing of arms purchases by the DRE was antithetical to RFK and indicates that Sierra may have been working against RFK’s interests.  

The connection between the anti-Castro Cubans and the assassination was highlighted when on the afternoon of the assassination after Oswald had been arrested, RFK called his closest friend in the Cuban community, Harry Ruiz Williams and told him, “One of your guys did it.”

There is a report that Oswald was seen at a house in Dallas with members of Alpha 66, SFNE and the 30th of November Movement shortly before the assassination.

Bobby’s failure to investigate the assassination as Attorney General, and his subsequent depression are viewed by many researchers as guilt due to his belief that his Castro assassination efforts using the Mafia and anti-Castro Cubans may have been turned against his brother.  RFK’s suspicions may have been well founded, but it is unclear how Bobby made the connection between Oswald and the anti-Castro Cuban groups.

Other Foreknowledge Incidents

 John Martino (see Larry Hancock’s book, Someone Would Have Talked)
Larry Hancock video clips and John Martino

Parrot Jungle
Larry Hancock on the Parrot Jungle Incident
Education Forum on the Parrot Jungle Incident

Long Beach

Jose Aleman testimony of threat by Santos Trafficante

Dr. Jose Rivera/Adele Edison

The Oxnard Call

The Tampa Plot

Another assassination attempt was made on November 18, just four days before Dallas. This incident was briefly reported at the time, but was not deeply investigated until the Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann books “Ultimate Sacrifice” (Carroll & Graf, 2005) and “Legacy of Secrecy” (Counterpoint, 2008). As in Chicago and Dallas, ‘the threat on Nov. 18, 1963 was posed by a mobile, unidentified rifleman shooting from a window in a tall building with a high powered rifle fitted with a scope.’ “In both the Tampa and Dallas attempts, officials sought a young man in his early twenties, white with slender build, who had been in recent contact with a small pro-Castro group called the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC). In Dallas that was Lee Harvey Oswald, but the Tampa person of interest was Gilberto Policarpo Lopez, who – like Oswald- was a former defector. We later document eighteen parallels between Dallas suspect Lee Harvey Oswald and Gilberto Policarpo Lopez, but here are a few: Like Oswald, Lopez was also of interest to Navy Intelligence. Also similar to Oswald, Gilberto Lopez made a mysterious trip to Mexico City in the fall of 1963, attempting to get to Cuba. Lopez even used the same border crossing as Oswald, and government reports say both went one way by car, though neither man owned a car. Like Oswald, Lopez had recently separated from his wife and had gotten into a fistfight in the summer of 1963 over supposedly pro-Castro sympathies. Declassified Warren Commission and CIA documents confirm that Lopez, whose movements parallel Oswald in so many ways in 1963, was on a secret ‘mission’ for the US involving Cuba, an ‘operation’ so secret that the CIA felt that protecting it was considered more important than thoroughly investigating the JFK assassination.”

Since the Tampa plot was not properly investigated by the Warren Commission, the information we have is tantalizing, but falls short of direct linkage with the Dallas plot.  It is noteworthy that Tampa was the home base of mobster Santos Trafficante, who was reported to have been behind JFK's assassination.  Perhaps the most that we can conclude is that the Secret Service response, in suppressing all reports of the Chicago and Tampa plots, is highly suspicious. See The Tampa Plot in Retrospect.  The HSCA received classified reports suggesting that the alleged Tampa potential assassin, Gilberto Lopez, had been involved in the Dallas assassination and went to Cuba via Mexico immediately afterward.  See this seven minute video clip by Lamar Waldron

Motorcade Route

The parade route left Love Field, proceeded through downtown Dallas on Main Street and proceeded to the luncheon destination at the Trade Mart. After the motorcade travelled through downtown Dallas, there were two choices for the route: continuing on Main Street and proceeding down Industrial Boulevard to the Trade Mart, or turning right onto Houston Street and taking a sharp 120 degree turn onto Elm Street in front of the TSBD and then proceeding to the Trade Mart via the Stemmons Expressway. Neither route was optimal; the Industrial Boulevard route was through a run down industrial neighborhood and the eventual route through Dealey Plaza forced the motorcade to slow to an insecure speed at the Elm Street turn. Vince Palamara interviewed many of the Secret Service and Dallas Police Department officials about the selection of the route and found that the route decision was changed to the Dealey Plaza route from a prior decision on or around November 18. White House Special Agent in Charge Gerald Behn testified about this change in executive session testimony to the HSCA, but that testimony has not been released.

No Police protection in Dealey Plaza

Dallas Police Assistant Chief Charles Batchelor was in charge of traffic and motorcade security.  He testified that he had no one stationed west of Houston Street in Dealey Plaza, in part because they did not have sufficient advance notice of the motorcade route from the Secret Service.  As noted above, the motorcade route was changed a few days prior to the assassination in order to travel through Dealey Plaza, but the police said that they were not informed until a day or so before.

Motorcade Motorcycles Ordered to Stay to the Rear of Limo

In many previous motorcades, the motorcycle escort would include motorcycles ahead, flanking and behind the limo. In Dallas, the Secret Service reduced the number of motorcycles that the Dallas Police had proposed and ordered them not to ride forward of the limo’s rear bumper.

• Palamara's SG p130 Captain Perdue Lawrence in charge of traffic control. On 11/19 DPD told him to plan for 18 solo motorcycles, including motorcycles alongside Presidential limo.

• On 11/21 this was changed when the Secret Service told him not to have any motorcycles alongside the limo and Lawson cut the limo coverage to two motorcycles on each side of the rear Presidential limo, not to go forward of the rear bumper

• Testimony of DPD Officer Martin who was told not to ride past the President's car and to stay behind the rear bumper.

• DPD Officer Marrion Baker was also assigned to ride his motorcycle alongside the Presidential limo but told at Love Field to ride in back by the press car.

• See also HSCA summary, as with orders not to stand on the back of the Presidential limo, the motorcycle changes were blamed on JFK.

• See the HSCA report on the role of the SS in motorcade planning.

Orders Not to Stand on Back of Presidential Limo

The Warren Commission wanted to know why, in contrast to previous presidential motorcades, no agents in Dallas were riding on the back of limousine where they might have been able to save the President during the shooting. Clint Hill who was Jackie's agent, not a member of the White House Detail was the only agent to have jumped on the back of the limousine; during the entire Dallas motorcade he hopped on the limo four times. Behn, Boring, Roberts, Ready and Hill wrote reports where they said that they had heard that the president didn’t want agents on back (as of Tampa trip 11/18/63). All of the agents except Boring reference Boring as the source of this alleged presidential order.

William Manchester in The Death of a President pp. 37-38 wrote “Kennedy grew weary of seeing bodyguards roosting behind him every time he turned around, and in Tampa on November 18 [1963], 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.” 

Taken from Palamara's essay, Boring is Interesting:  Palamara gives a long refutation by virtually all SS agents including Boring that no such order was ever given by the President. The story apparently originated with Boring on 11/18/63.  Florida Rep Sam Gibbons rode with JFK in Tampa; said he heard no such order.

Palamara interviewed 70 Secret Sevice agents, they all said JFK would not say such a thing and in any rate, by law SS decisions on security are final.  Chief Rowley testified that  “No President will tell the Secret Service what they can or cannot do.”

No Protection from Buildings

Palamara's SG p110. According to Secret Service protocol, whenever a President is due to appear in a parade agents and policemen are assigned posts atop buildings and on the street along the parade route. In addition, buildings along the motorcade route had to be inspected. In Dallas, there was no inspection of buildings or posting of men on top of buildings and police protection did not extend as far as Dealey Plaza. The lack of inspections may have been due to the threat level in Dallas. Prior to the Dallas trip the Protective Research Division of the Secret Service checked their files to determine if there were any threats to JFK in Dallas and found none. This was “unusual” as Kellerman testified, since there had been serious threats to JFK very recently in Chicago, Miami and Tampa, General Walker had been shot at earlier in 1963, Adlai Stevenson had been attacked by a crowd in Dallas in October 1963, and there were Impeach Earl Warren billboards, Wanted for Treason handbills, and a full page ad on 11/22 in the Dallas Morning News accusing JFK of, among other things, communist sympathies. Palamara suggests that the PRS research was filtered through Secret Service agent Floyd Boring and was perhaps sanitized.

Recall of Ready

During the assassination Secret Service agent Clint Hill, who was Jackie’s personal agent leapt off the left side of the Secret Service follow up car and ran to the presidential limo, arriving after the head shot. Secret Service agent John Ready on the right side of the follow up car also jumped off to run to the limo but was recalled by his boss shift leader Emory Roberts. See:

• 11/22 Shift Report from John Ready

• 11/22 assassination description by John Ready

• 11/29 Letter by Emory Roberts

Perhaps this happened because Ready jumped off later than Hill, but that’s not the excuse that was given to the Warren Commission. Secret Service Chief Rowley testified that Ready was looking to his right at the time and thus was unaware of what was happening, which is not consistent with Ready’s report and clearly not true if Ready jumped off. Rowley also said that the car was going on a turn at the time, which was also untrue. In Emory Roberts’ report he said that he told Ready not to jump (according to Ready he had already jumped) because the cars were traveling at 15-20 miles per hour and the limo was 20-25 feet ahead; the Zapruder and Muchmore films show the limo travelling at 8 miles per hour with the follow up car no more than 10 feet behind it.

Relationship between Agents and President Kennedy

Seymour Hersh, in The Dark Side of Camelot described a White House detail which was demoralized, frustrated and upset with President Kennedy over his womanizing. Hersh interviewed four members of the White House detail on record: Larry Newman, William McIntyre, Tony Sherman, and Joseph Paolella who all told stories of sexual frolics in the White House pool and frequent procurement of starlets and prostitutes by White House aides Dave Powers and Kenny O’Donnell. McIntyre described the impact on Secret Service morale: “Each agent is, after all, a sworn law enforcement officer. When you see some type of criminal offense, whether it’s a misdemeanor or a felony, occurring in your presence, blatantly, that makes you feel a little bit used.   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?’ When that occurs, the agent would feel that his authority and his reason for being there is nullified.” Newman and Sherman left the White House detail prior to the assassination. Paolella described how the President’s conduct was a bad influence on the rest of the White House detail, whose own drinking and partying increased in the fall of 1963, leading up to the assassination.

There was also tension between the Secret Service and Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, who had attempted to change the procedures to allow the Justice Department to select the White House Secret Service detail through a bill, HR 4158, which was first introduced in February 1963. Secret Service Chief Rowley opposed the bill, as outlined in his Warren Commission testimony.

Secret Service agents may have also had differences with President Kennedy over his stance on civil rights. As Abraham Bolden, the first black Secret Service agent on the White House detail recounted, a fellow agent, Harvey Henderson, said to him, “You’re a nigger. You were born a nigger. You’re going to die a nigger. So act like a nigger.”

The right wing Secret Service agents were also upset with President Kennedy over his accommodations with Soviet President Nikita Khruschev. James Gochenaur was interviewed by the HSCA about his discussions with Dallas Secret Service agent Elmer Moore, who played a role following the assassination in pressuring the Parkland doctors to change their story about JFK’s throat entry wound. Gochenaur described a frightening tirade by Moore who told him that Kennedy was a traitor because he was giving everything away to the Russians, and it was a shame that people had to die but maybe it was a good thing.

Conclusions?

After reading this, what's your impression?  It's difficult to contemplate any Secret Service agent being complicit in an assassination.  If an assassination conspiracy gets too big, it becomes unwieldy.  Just as we saw two or three Dallas police who were suspicious, in this chapter we saw two or three Secret Service agents whose actions in orchestrating the security stripping of JFK left JFK unprotected from the assassin's bullets.  What do you think?  Were they complicit in the assassination plot, or merely incompetent?