Right after that serious plot against the President’s life in Chicago was averted, and just prior to JFK’s trip to Tampa—only four days before he was shot dead in Dallas—authorities became aware of another serious threat against his life.
Authorities had received credible reports of threats against JFK, and Tampa authorities had uncovered a plan to assassinate JFK during his long motorcade there. . . . Long-secret Congressional reports confirm that ‘the threat on November 18, 1963, was posed by a mobile, unidentified rifleman shooting from a window in a tall building with a high power rifle fitted with a scope.’65
So the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Secret Service were both aware of those plots and that has been documented:
One Secret Service agent told Congressional investigators that ‘there was an active threat against the President of which the Secret Service was aware in November 1963 in the period immediately prior to JFK’s trip to Miami made by ‘a group of people.’’66
By the way, take note of those words that were above, “a group of people.” Guess what, that’s the legal definition of a conspiracy, and that’s coming to us direct from the United States Secret Service!
The police protection for Kennedy during that Tampa trip was also made aware that there was a serious threat. And so was President Kennedy himself:
The Tampa threat was confirmed to us by Chief of Police (J. P.) Mullins, who also confirmed that it wasn’t allowed to be published at the time. However, as with Chicago, JFK knew about the Tampa assassination threat. In the words of a high Florida law-enforcement official at the time, ‘JFK had been briefed he was in danger.’67
In author Vince Palamara’s new book, Survivor’s Guilt, he examines the Secret Service’s protection of JFK:
Secret Service agents in Tampa were probably subjected to the same pressure for secrecy as those in Chicago. . . . It also explains why, in the mid-1990s, the Secret Service destroyed documents about JFK’s motorcades in the weeks before Dallas, rather than turn them over to the Assassinations Records Review Board as the law required.68
The issue of threats against the President was mostly kept out of the newspapers:
While all news of the threat was suppressed at the time, two small articles appeared right after JFK’s death, but even then the story was quickly suppressed.69
Of course, the Warren Commission—which historian Walt Brown more properly dubbed the “Warren Omission”—neglected to inform the American public about the true and known nature of the previous plots.70 But that’s probably about what you figured, right? Just because they were sworn to serve the public they supposedly represented didn’t stop them from following their own pre-formed agenda.
So it was very clear that President Kennedy was being set up. Keep that point in your mind as you read the upcoming entries on the horribly inadequate security precautions in Dallas.
And the similarities are unnerving. Chicago, then Tampa, then Dallas; they all followed the same M.O. and they were one right after the other:
The Tampa attempt . . . involved at least two men, one of whom threatened to ‘use a gun’ and was described by the Secret Service as ‘white, male, 20, slender build,’. . . According to Congressional investigators, ‘Secret Service memos’ say ‘the threat on November 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.’ That was the same basic scene in Chicago and Dallas.71
And even more unnerving is the fact that all three plots —Chicago, Tampa, and Dallas—also used the same M.O. to set up their designated “patsy”:
What made the attempts to kill JFK in Chicago and Tampa [and later Dallas] different from all previous threats was the involvement of Cuban suspects—and a possible Cuban agent—in each area. In addition, these multi-person attempts were clearly not the work of the usual lone, mentally ill person, but were clearly the result of coordinated planning.
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.72
Cuban dissidents and a former defector; well my, my, doesn’t that have a familiar ring? That’s not just similar, that’s downright eerie.
In Ultimate Sacrifice, Waldron and Hartmann document “eighteen parallels between Dallas suspect Lee Harvey Oswald and Gilberto Policarpo Lopez . . .” (and) 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 U.S. involving Cuba, an ‘operation’ so secret that the CIA felt that protecting it was considered more important than thoroughly investigating the JFK assassination.73
So there weren’t just previous plots—there were actually previous plots using the exact same method of setting up the patsy to take the fall for a very sophisticated assassination scenario.
58 Palamara, Survivor’s Guilt.
59 Waldron, Lamar & Hartmann, Thom, Ultimate Sacrifice (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2005).
60 Palamara, Survivor’s Guilt.
61 Bolden, Abraham, 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 (Crown: 2008).
62 Kelly, William, “The Tampa Plot in Retrospect,” July 7, 2012: jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2012/07/tampa-plot-in-retrospect.html and Waldron & Hartmann, Ultimate Sacrifice
63 Palamara, Survivor’s Guilt.
64 Waldron & Hartmann, Ultimate Sacrifice, 145.
65 Ibid.
66 Ibid.
67 Ibid.
68 Palamara, Survivor’s Guilt.
69 Waldron & Hartmann, Ultimate Sacrifice, 254.
70 Walt Brown, Ph.D., The Warren Omission.
71 Waldron & Hartmann, Ultimate Sacrifice, cited in: William Kelly, “The Tampa Plot in Retrospect,” July 7, 2012: jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2012/07/tampa-plot-in-retrospect. html
72 Ibid.
73 Ibid.
6
Last-Minute change of Motorcycle Formation
One of the acts which clearly enabled the assassination of President Kennedy was the removal of the motorcycle police escorts around his limousine for the parade that day in Dallas. Typically—just as there had been on the previous motorcades of President Kennedy—the President is flanked on each side by two motorcycles in what is known as the standard wedge formation. For some reason—and one that I will explain—that standard wedge formation was removed in Dallas, and instead, a wide open formation placing those four motorcycles at the rear of the President’s car left him completely vulnerable.74 That’s what made President Kennedy a sitting duck in Dallas. This is such an important fact that, first off, I want to show you exactly what I’m talking about.
Al Carrier is an expert in dignitary protection, which includes security protocols like protection for presidents in parades. He studied all the photographs from Dallas and other motorcades, including all the films and records. Pay attention to what he noticed:
Charts by Al Carrier75
The first chart is the Standard Wedge Formation. Note the full protection it provides the President, who is in the middle car.
The second chart is the actual motorcycle formation on November 22, 1963, in Dallas. Notice
how needlessly exposed it left the President.
With five of the motorcycle units placed in front of the lead car, they are in a totally ineffective position. With no units at the sides and no Secret Service Follow-Up car tucked in close behind, the President is left wide open to snipers from the front, back, and sides.
When it comes to security, the Standard Wedge Formation is the known and accepted “Gold Standard” for motorcade protocol. It was in use in 1963; in fact, security expert Al Carrier noted that it was “the motorcycle positioning in the 1962 Berlin Kennedy motorcade and the November 14, 1963, Tampa, Florida, motorcade” which was only a few days prior to the trip to Dallas.76 Why was it changed in Dallas? Now that’s a very important question.
So, the government once again had some answering to do on that point. And what did they do? They blamed the victim. They came up with the angle that, lo and behold, it was actually President Kennedy himself who ordered the reductions in security because it was basically a campaign trip for publicity and he didn’t want his protectors interfering with him and his ability to interact with the crowd.77 How’s that for adding insult to injury and placing the blame on the victim who, especially in this case, is completely incapable of defending himself? And on top of that, guess what? It was utter hogwash—it was completely invented, totally untrue.
The above point in particular and the Secret Service decisions in general are covered in greater detail than ever before in a new book by Vince Palamara, titled Survivor’s Guilt: The Secret Service and the Failure to Protect the President. Palamara interviewed dozens of Secret Service agents who remembered the details of protecting Kennedy, and they told him the same thing over and over again:
President Kennedy was very understanding about his protection and never ever interfered with Secret Service protection protocols. That was their job and he knew that and let them do it. He never told agents how to do their job and never ordered changes in motorcade formations or any other protection protocols. Period.78
Furthermore, as both the Secret Service and the President of the United States are acutely aware, no one, not even the President can overrule the Secret Service on matters related to security. As the Chief of the Secret Service testified to the Warren Commission:
No President will tell the Secret Service what they can or cannot do.79
That’s simply how it is. The Secret Service can and has countermanded the orders of the President of the United States.80 They decide when it comes to security. So, especially in this case, blaming JFK for reductions in his protection is blatantly misplaced.
So that’s one thing that needs to be stated clearly. It was most adamantly not President Kennedy who was responsible for the change in the motorcycle formation. It was the United States Secret Service which was responsible for the change.81
Again, the point of note here is that the motorcycle formation was apparently only changed in Dallas. The United States Congress thought the matter was pretty important, too, as an internal memorandum on the matter during the investigation by the House Select Committee on Assassinations revealed the following gem:
But in comparison with what the SS’s [Secret Service’s] own documents suggest were the security precautions used in prior motorcades during the same Texas visit, the motorcade alteration in Dallas by the SS may have been a unique occurrence.82
So there’s a huge smoking gun. Why was it only different in Dallas? Like a true government organization, that House Select Committee on Assassinations played it safe, not making the matter a big public issue. But observe their official conclusion:
The Secret Service’s alteration of the original Dallas Police Department motorcycle deployment plan prevented the use of maximum possible security precautions.. .Surprisingly, the security measure used in the prior motorcades during the same Texas visit [11/21/63] shows that the deployment of motorcycles in Dallas by the Secret Service may have been uniquely insecure. . .83
So, as I said, folks—There’s your smoking gun.
Let me choose my words very carefully here. I’m not saying that the Secret Service, as an agency, conspired to kill President Kennedy by intentionally reducing his protection that day in Dallas. I have a great deal of respect for the men and women of the U. S. Secret Service and particularly for the hard work done by the individual agents on the ground. But I am saying this: One of the things that enabled the Kennedy assassination was his security reductions that day in Dallas. Those reductions did not come from President Kennedy or his staff. Those security reductions are traceable to certain individuals in the Secret Service who ordered several things that made President Kennedy a sitting duck as that limo took him through Dealey Plaza, and I am going to tell you exactly what they were:
• Changing the standard motorcycle protection from the wedge formation to an insecure formation;
• Ordering Secret Service agents off the riding ports of the President’s limo, which were designed specifically for them to ride on the back of the car and provide him with cover;
• Changing the already scheduled parade route from its original route to the new path—a path which took the President very slowly through Dealey Plaza and along a dangerous route that was virtually unprotected.
Those last two are so important that they will be covered in the following entries. But if you’ve read above, you’re beginning to get the big picture of what really happened and why these decisions are what enabled the assassination in the first place.
74 Al Carrier, 2003 “The United States Secret Service: Conspiracy to Assassinate a President,” Dealey Plaza Echo, Volume 7, Issue 1, March 2003, 36—48: maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/ viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=389290
75 Carrier, “The United States Secret Service: Conspiracy to Assassinate a President.”
76 Ibid.
77 Palamara, Survivor’s Guilt
78 Ibid.
79 Ibid.
80 Carrier, “The United States Secret Service: Conspiracy to Assassinate a President”; Palamara, Survivor’s Guilt
81 Ibid.
82 Vince Palamara, “The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly: A Review of The Kennedy Detail, A Compelling but Dangerous Mix of Fact, Faction, and Fiction,” CTKA (Citizens for Truth about the Kennedy Assassination), retrieved 16 April 2013: kennedydetailkennedydetailkennedy.blogspot.com/2012/08/updated-jfk-did-not-order- agents-off.html
83 Ibid.
7
Secret Service Agents ordered off Limousine
So, to put it bluntly, President Kennedy was a sitting duck waiting to get shot because he had no protective motorcycle formation around him and no Secret Service agents riding on the back or sides of the car. The agents being ordered off the car is another issue of note.
There’s an amazing film on the Internet that you have to see. It was taken at Dallas’s Love Field after Air Force One arrived, late on the morning of the fateful day—in fact, less than an hour before President Kennedy is shot and killed. The President and First Lady Jackie Kennedy can be seen in the limousine as it pulls away from the airport . . . and then an amazing thing happens. A Secret Service agent who had positioned himself on the rear riding platform of the slow-moving limousine is ordered off the rear of the car by a superior.
The man ordered off the bumper is U.S. Secret Service Agent Don Lawton. SA Lawton then openly questions his superior by gesturing with his open palms up in the air, as if to say “Hey, what’s the deal?” He’s clearly confused about why he has been ordered off the riding bumper of the car of the President whom he is trying to protect. The order came from Emory Roberts, Shift Leader of the White House Secret Service Detail, which is whom SA Lawton is gesturing toward. It’s accessible online: youtube.com/watch?v=lzNS15ssgIk.
But there were not only an absence of agents riding in the car; there were not even agents near enough to the car. We can see that by the painful crucial seconds that it took Special Agent Clint Hill to finally get to the limo as Jackie Kennedy was reaching in the air on the trunk of the car.
In case you’re wondering, the speed of the limousine also has little to do with whether or not agents are placed on the back of the limousine. As one Secret Service agent noted, on a JFK trip to Caracas, Venezuela, he and “Roy Kellerman rode on the back of the limousine all the way to the Presidential palace” at speeds of “50 miles per hour.”84 It’s not the traveling speed that determines whether or not the agents ride there, it’s the perceived threat level. And as we know from the serious threats and previous plots that were learned of just prior to the Texas trip, the perceived threat level in Dallas was very high.
Also bear in mind that, just as you’ve no doubt seen in film footage, ordinarily Secret Service agents are walking or jogging alongside the President’s limousine as it goes through the crowds.85 The slow crowd speed of the limo makes it easy for agents to keep up. But they weren’t there in Dealey Plaza; look at the Zapruder film of the assassination and see how dreadfully long it took any agent to reach the car of the man they were sworn to protect.
Especially from a wider angle view of the assassination, one can clearly note a very disturbing fact: There were no Secret Service agents at the sides—or even near the rear—of the President’s car at the time of the shots. In fact, Special Agent Clint Hill, the agent who finally climbed onto the rear running board of the Kennedy limo after it was already far too late, had to run there by jumping off from his position on the riding board of the Secret Service Follow-Up car.
So I respectfully have a very serious question. Where was the Secret Service?
84 Palamara, Survivor’s Guilt.
85 Ibid.
8
Motorcade Route changed
Why was the motorcade route changed? Instead of taking the original route planned to the speaking engagement at the Dallas Trade Mart, a new route was ordered that necessitated a long and slow dog-leg turn into the killing zone of Dealey Plaza. That turn was in blatant violation of standard Secret Service policy; it was “against the book.”86
They Killed Our President Page 4