Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (51 page)

Even after Lincoln was fatally shot by actor John Wilkes Booth in
Ford's Theater on April 14, 1865, there was no clamor to create official
protection for the President. Americans thought his death was just a freak
accident of the war.

The Secret Service, which was organized as a division of the Treasury
Department the year Lincoln was killed, was meant only to pursue
counterfeiters.

It was not until after the assassination of President James A. Garfield in
1881 that serious attempts at presidential protection were made.

While the number of White House policemen was increased to twentyseven after mail threats increased against President Grover Cleveland, it
was not until 1894 that Secret Service agents were informally assigned to
the President.

Throughout the Spanish-American War, a small detail of Secret Service
men were stationed at the White House. However, Secret Service protection of President William McKinley did not prevent his assassination on
September 6, 1901. McKinley was attending a public reception at the Pan
American Exposition in Buffalo, N.Y., when self-professed anarchist
Leon F. Czolgosz fired two bullets into him despite the proximity of four
Buffalo detectives, four soldiers, and three Secret Service agents. McKinley died eight days later and Czolgosz was executed.

The McKinley assassination finally provoked a response from Congress,
which in 1902 ordered the Secret Service to assume full-time protection of
the President. Two agents were permanently assigned to the White House.
This onset of around-the-clock presidential protection prompted President
Theodore Roosevelt to write: "The Secret Service men are a very small
but very necessary thorn in the flesh."

Slowly over the years, the power and funding of the Secret Service was
increased. Their jurisdiction eventually covered threats against the President and even security for presidential candidates.

By World War II, the White House detail of the Secret Service had
grown to thirty-seven men.

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 had an active personal life, which included the desire to meet and be with
people.

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 less 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.

First, although apparently there were at least three assassination attempts
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.

An ex-Marine named Thomas Arthur Vallee, who was a member of the
right-wing John Birch Society and a vocal Kennedy critic, was arrested by
the Secret Service in Chicago. Vallee was discovered to have an M-1 rifle,
a handgun, and three thousand 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 strangest 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 the cause of the cancellation.

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
perjury-and was sentenced to a lengthy prison term after his motion for a
retrial was denied.

While the Secret Service had admitted the Chicago threat occurred, it
has repeatedly refused to clarify the matter. Bolden, who had since been
released from prison, claimed he was framed and convicted to silence him
regarding the Kennedy threat. Whether the Chicago threat was real or not,
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 under the Texas School Book Depository window 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 displayed 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
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 persons 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 cooperate 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." The enclosed sworn statement of Jack Revill,
Lieutenant of the Criminal Intelligence Section, revealed later that FBI
agents were aware of Oswald and his movements but made no attempt
to communicate this to the Dallas Police Department.

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. "

Curry said Fritz later told him: "I believe that had we been there we
might possibly have got that man before he got out of that building or we
would have maybe had the opportunity of firing at him while he was still
firing. "

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.

Greer testified that he turned back forward and began to accelerate the
limousine at the same time that Agent Roy Kellerman, riding to Greer's
right, yelled, "Get out of here fast!" Then he claimed to have heard a
third shot fired.

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
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. Only then does Greer face
forward and the limousine begin to accelerate.

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.