by Jim Marrs
Following an unsuccessful attack on president Harry S. Truman by Puerto Rican nationalists in 1951, legislation was passed permanently authorizing the Secret Service to protect not only the president, but also his immediate family, the president-elect, and the vice president.
By 1963, the Secret Service remained a small and specialized group restricted by law. Nevertheless, the Secret Service had an average strength of more than five hundred and ran sixty-five field offices throughout the country.
Protecting president John F. Kennedy was no easy matter, as Kennedy was quite active in both his public and personal life.
Kennedy assistant Kenneth O’Donnell was in charge of the White House staff and, as such, had control over the Secret Service. However, O’Donnell left security measures up to the special agent-in-charge of the White House detail, Gerald Behn. Sizing up the problems of protecting an active president such as Kennedy, O’Donnell once told Behn, “Politics and protection don’t mix.”
During his fateful trip to Texas, Kennedy was assigned no fewer than seventy Secret Service agents plus eight clerks. This was about 14 percent of the entire Secret Service force. Yet glaring deficiencies in the president’s protection are now known.
Although apparently at least three assassination attempts were planned against Kennedy in the fall of 1963, information on them was not forwarded to either the agent in charge of Kennedy’s protection or the special agent-in-charge of the Dallas Secret Service office.
In Chicago the Secret Service arrested an ex-Marine named Thomas Arthur Vallee, who was a member of the right-wing John Birch Society and a vocal Kennedy critic. Vallee was discovered to have an M-l rifle, a handgun, and 3,000 rounds of ammunition in his car. It was also learned that Vallee had asked for time off from his job on November 2, the date Kennedy was to visit Chicago. Despite the weapons found, Vallee was released from custody on the evening of November 2 and was still considered a threat. Yet no word of the Vallee matter was transmitted to Dallas.
One of the most telling stories to come out of the Secret Service at this time, however, concerned the first black man to serve on the Service’s White House detail. Abraham Bolden was personally selected by Kennedy, apparently in an attempt to integrate the previously all-white Secret Service detail.
Born in poverty, Bolden had been a police officer with an outstanding record before joining the Service. However, Bolden criticized the White House detail for laxity and was transferred to the Chicago office.
According to Bolden, the Chicago Secret Service office received a teletype from the FBI shortly before Kennedy’s November 2 visit warning that an assassination attempt would be carried out in that city by a four-man Cuban hit squad armed with high-powered rifles. Bolden said the entire office was involved in this matter but that it was kept top secret.
Years later, Bolden could not identify Vallee as a participant in this threat, and the belief among researchers is that Vallee played no part in the second assassination plan.
Kennedy’s Chicago trip was canceled, although the House Select Committee on Assassinations could not determine why.
Three weeks after Kennedy’s death, Bolden discovered that information on the Chicago threat was to be kept from the Warren Commission and he made a trip to Washington to tell what he knew. However, he was quickly taken back to Chicago, where he was later charged with discussing a bribe with two known counterfeiters. Brought to trial, Bolden was convicted of accepting a bribe—even after one of the two counterfeiters admitted to perjury—and was sentenced to a lengthy prison term after his motion for a retrial was denied.
While the Secret Service has admitted the Chicago threat occurred, it has repeatedly refused to clarify the matter. Bolden was released from prison and in 2012 continued to gain signatures requesting the president to “expunge, pardon or take other executive action that will clear the record of conviction of Abraham W. Bolden, Sr.” He claimed he was framed and convicted to silence him regarding the Kennedy threat. Bolden has since learned that the information on the incident in Chicago came from an informant named “Lee,” naturally leading to speculation that it may have been informant Lee Oswald. Whatever the Chicago threat may have been, the information again was not passed along to Dallas.
Likewise, the Service failed to follow up on another threat, this time from the volatile Miami area. Here a wealthy right-wing extremist named Joseph A. Milteer accurately predicted what was to happen to Kennedy in Dallas almost three weeks before the event. Again, while this information was forwarded to the Service’s Protective Research Section (PRS) in Washington, it was never relayed to Winston G. Lawson, the advance agent in Dallas, or to Forrest V. Sorrels, the special agent in charge in Dallas.
And neither Lawson nor Sorrels got a preview of the zigzag turn that placed Kennedy below the Texas School Book Depository windows on November 22.
The journey through Dealey Plaza itself was made necessary because of the selection of the Dallas Trade Mart as the site of the noon luncheon for the Kennedy entourage. And according to White House aide and advance man Jerry Bruno, this decision was made by Texas Governor John Connally after some questionable manipulations.
After reviewing possible luncheon sites, the Secret Service and White House advance men settled on two locations—the new Dallas Trade Mart on Stemmons Expressway and the Women’s Building in Fair Park, home of the Texas State Fair, located south of the downtown area.
The Secret Service and the Kennedy people decided the Women’s Building would be a preferable location because it presented fewer security problems and could accommodate more people. However, Democrats headed by Lyndon Johnson and John Connally wanted the Trade Mart because it was more modern and would be more acceptable to Dallas’s wealthy elite.
Bruno wrote, “There was another point about the Women’s Building site that didn’t seem important to anyone at the time. If Kennedy had been going there instead of to the Trade Mart, he would have been traveling two blocks farther away from the Texas School Book Depository—and at a much faster rate of speed.”
The struggle over the luncheon site continued until November 18, when Bruno got a call from White House aide Kenneth O’Donnell. Bruno quoted O’Donnell as saying, “We’re going to let Dallas go, Jerry. We’re going to let Connally have the Trade Mart site.”
Bruno was flabbergasted. Despite the recommendations of the Secret Service, the Kennedy White House, and himself, Connally had managed to swing the decision to the Trade Mart. Bruno said he later learned that the Johnson-Connally people had held up selling tickets to the fund-raising luncheon in an effort to force the site-location selection their way.
Bruno wrote that upon learning of Kennedy’s death, “I was angry, furious, at Connally and his demands to control the trip, where Kennedy should go, and now the President had been shot because we went here instead of there.”
But if the Secret Service had no control over the luncheon site, they certainly were in control of the motorcade. And several strange things happened there.
Police Chief Curry originally had asked that the presidential limousine be flanked by eight motorcycle policemen, four on each side of the car. However, Curry told the Warren Commission that Secret Service Agent Lawson ordered the number of cycles reduced to four, two on each side, and that the cycles were told to stay by the rear fender of the limousine. This order seems unusual to those familiar with motorcade security, since the purpose of motorcycle outriders is to form a screen for the limousine rider in the event of trouble.
Curry was puzzled, too, over this apparent lack of concern for security as well as the fact that Dallas authorities were kept in the dark about Oswald. Years later, he wrote:
In retrospect, the physical security arrangements provided by the Dallas Police Force for the Secret Service were carried out exactly as they had requested. In my opinion all police officers involved gave their complete and wholehearted cooperation. Yet the Dallas Police Department was never given any information or asked to coope
rate with the FBI or Secret Service in any attempt to locate possible conspirators. The Dallas Police Department was never informed of the presence of Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas, of his connections with the Communist Party, or the fact that he “was capable of committing the assassination of President Kennedy.”
Curry also had planned to have a car containing police captain Will Fritz and other Dallas detectives immediately following the presidential limousine, a traditional practice during similar motorcades in the past. However, again Lawson vetoed this plan “so Fritz and his men were not in the motorcade.”
And certainly the Dallas detectives could not have moved any slower than Kennedy’s Secret Service protectors when the shots were fired in Dealey Plaza.
Photos taken several seconds after the first shots show almost a total lack of response by the agents riding in a backup car behind the presidential limousine. While Kennedy is clutching at his throat, two of his guards have begun looking toward the rear while the others are looking directly at the president. The only agent to react with speed was Clint Hill, who was not even supposed to be on the Dallas trip. Assigned to protect Jackie Kennedy, Hill had been brought along at the last minute due to a specific request by the First Lady.
But the one aspect of the Secret Service protection that raises the disturbing possibility of complicity concerns the actions of presidential limousine driver William Greer.
At age fifty-four, Greer was one of the oldest members of the White House detail. He had driven both president Harry Truman and president Dwight Eisenhower. On the evening of November 22, 1963, Greer drove Kennedy’s body from Air Force One to Bethesda Naval Hospital for autopsy.
Greer testified to the Warren Commission that as the limousine cruised down the incline of Elm Street through Dealey Plaza, he heard a noise that he thought was a motorcycle backfire. Shortly he heard a second similar noise and glanced over his right shoulder long enough to see Governor Connally begin to slump to his left. Greer said he never caught sight of Kennedy.
He said the presidential limousine was moving at between twelve and fifteen miles per hour the entire time.
However, based on films made during the assassination and eyewitness testimony, it is now known that immediately after the first shot, the brake lights on the limousine came on and the big Lincoln slowed to almost a complete standstill, causing the Secret Service follow-up car to move up and almost touch the rear bumper. Contrary to his testimony, films show Greer looking over his right shoulder in Kennedy’s direction for several seconds—in fact, until after the fatal head shot is delivered.
This discrepancy between Greer’s testimony and reality has caused the more suspicious-minded researchers to suspect that some individuals within the Secret Service may have played a role in placing an underprotected president under the guns in Dealey Plaza. Some even still accept the rumor that Greer himself shot Kennedy.
By comparing the Zapruder film with the Orville Nix film, it is clear that when shots were first fired at the president, Greer braked the limousine to almost a complete stop, and only after the fatal head shot do the brake lights go off and the car accelerates. All this violates Secret Service regulations, which state at the first sign of trouble, accelerate and drive out of danger. It is also clear that Greer turns his head and looks back at Kennedy at the time of the fatal head shot, which is at odds with his Warren Commission testimony, in which he claimed he never looked back and did not even know the assassination had taken place until Roy Kellerman next to him said, “Let’s get out of here, we’re hit!”
However, a lingering theory that the driver shot Kennedy is not true. If Greer had shot JFK, someone in the crowd, some less than ten feet away, would have said something. Other Secret Service agents and others in the know would have whispered about this for years. Rumors would have floated around Washington and Nellie Connally would have talked, at least as gossip. But none of this happened.
This issue didn’t come up until the mid-1980s, when conspiracy author William Cooper latched onto a hypothesis of researcher Lars Hanson of California, who, upon viewing a bad fourth- or fifth-generation copy of the Zapruder film, speculated that the driver turned and shot Kennedy. Upon careful inspection of the film and further reflection, Hanson denounced his own theory but this did not stop Cooper from selling bad copies (some so bad there was no color) of the Zapruder film and continuing to assert the driver had shot JFK even though Hanson and several other JFK researchers, this author included, warned him it was a false claim. Cooper continued to sell his story to other credulous researchers until he was killed after shooting at local deputies who came to serve him a warrant in 2001. In addition to his claim that Greer shot JFK, Cooper also claimed that all the nearest witnesses to the JFK head shot were dead within a few years of the assassination, a demonstrably false claim.
So what exactly do you see in the Zapruder film? It is true that Greer turns to his right and looks back at JFK at the time of the head shot, a somewhat suspicious circumstance, as Greer claimed he never looked back. Greer then faces front and the car accelerates. In those days it was customary for men to wear hair grease and Kellerman’s hair was especially slicked down. Sunlight glinted off the top of his head. In viewing the Zapruder film in slow motion, one notices that the “pistol” moves simultaneously with Kellerman’s head. Also, a few frames earlier when the sunlight gleams off the tops of both Kellerman’s head and Greer’s, the brightness of the highlight is the same. As Greer turns to his right, Kellerman bends forward slightly and the sun fully catches the top of his head, resulting in a bright highlight, which is a horizontal “L” shape and could be misidentified as a gun, especially if one has been preconditioned to think of it in that way. But as Kellerman’s head moves, so does the shape. The brief flash seen is simply the sunlight reflecting off the metal rim of the frame for the privacy window, used when the top was on the car. That day, the top was down and the privacy window rolled down but the frame remained. While it may be questionable as to why Greer turned and looked back at Kennedy and then could not recall that fact for the Warren Commission, at no time did his two hands leave the steering wheel of the limousine.
Greer’s testimony, like that of all government officials presented to the Warren Commission, was taken at face value and there was no real attempt at cross-examination. Likewise, testimony that indicated why the reaction of the Secret Service agents that day was so sluggish was not examined closely by the Warren Commission.
A Few Drinks at the Cellar
Within days of the assassination, it was common knowledge in the Fort Worth–Dallas area that Kennedy’s Secret Service agents were drinking well into the morning hours of November 22 at a notorious Fort Worth club, the Cellar.
The story eventually spread nationwide when columnist Drew Pearson wrote about the incident, adding editorially, “Obviously men who have been drinking until nearly 3 a.m. are in no condition to be trigger-alert or in the best physical shape to protect anyone.”
The stories set off an investigation within the Secret Service. Chief James J. Rowley, a former FBI man who had been with the Secret Service since 1938, obtained statements from the ten agents involved, plus some Fort Worth news reporters and Pat Kirkwood, the club’s owner and an acquaintance of Jack Ruby.
Everyone, including Kirkwood, stressed that the Cellar had no license to sell alcoholic drinks. Rowley told the Warren Commission, “This is a place that does not serve alcoholic beverages.”
Why the concern about alcohol? The Warren Commission cited Section 10 of the Secret Service Manual:
10. Liquor, use of—a. Employees are strictly enjoined to refrain from the use of intoxicating liquor during the hours they are officially employed at their post of duty, or when they may reasonably expect that they may be called upon to perform an official duty. During entire periods of travel status, the special agent is officially employed and should not use liquor, until the completion of all of his official duties for the day. . . . However, all members of the
White House Detail and Special Agents cooperating with them on Presidential and similar protective assignments are considered to be subject to call for official duty at any time while in travel status. Therefore, the use of intoxicating liquor of any kind, including beer and wine, by members of the White House Detail . . . while they are in travel status, is prohibited.
The regulations further stated, “Violation or slight disregard of the above paragraphs . . . will be cause for removal from the Service.”
Several of the agents involved, including four who were riding in the Secret Service follow-up car behind Kennedy, admitted drinking, but no more than two beers. Of those who went to the Cellar, most said they had one or two drinks called a “Salty Dick,” described as grapefruit juice and soda. Again, everyone concerned stressed that the Cellar did not sell alcohol, although alcohol brought in by a patron was allowed.
At least three agents guarding Kennedy’s hotel suite took their “coffee break” at the Cellar, leaving two Fort Worth firemen behind to guard the president.
Since all the agents turned out at seven that morning “sober, alert and ready for the performance of their duties,” Rowley told the Warren Commission he did not punish them for violating regulations.
According to the Warren Commission:
Chief Rowley testified that under ordinary circumstances he would have taken disciplinary action against those agents who had been drinking in clear violation of the regulation. However, he felt that any disciplinary action might have given rise to an inference that the violation of the regulation had contributed to the tragic events of November 22. Since he was convinced that this was not the case, he believed that it would be unfair to the agents and their families to take explicit disciplinary measures.
Obviously, Rowley and others in the government were very much concerned that the public might recall that President Lincoln was killed when his guard left his post to have a drink next door and might attach some significance to the fact that Kennedy’s agents were keeping late hours in a “beatnik” club owned by an associate of Jack Ruby.