JFK & the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters (74 page)

[
116
]. Hammer,
Death in November,
p. 261.

[
117
].
FRUS
,
1961-1963,
vol. IV, p. 438.

[
118
]. Ibid., pp. 443-44.

[
119
]. Ibid., p. 444.

[
120
]. Ibid., p. 443.

[
121
]. Ibid., p. 445.

[
122
]. Tran Van Don,
Our Endless War: Inside Vietnam
(Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1987), p. 99.

[
123
].
FRUS
,
1961-1963,
vol. IV, pp. 484-85.

[
124
]. Ibid., p. 472.

[
125
]. Ibid., p. 473.

[
126
]. Ibid., p. 449.

[
127
]. Ibid., p. 450. Lodge also referred to General Don’s awareness of the withdrawal order in reports on October 28 and October 30. Ibid., pp. 449 and 493.

[
128
]. Ibid., p. 487.

[
129
]. Author’s interviews with Abraham Bolden on July 2, 1998; July 22, 1999; January 7, 2000; March 4, 2001; June 16, 2001; July 13, 2003; October 1, 2004.

[
130
]. Abraham W. Bolden, Sr., E-mail to Family and Friends on “Death of My Beloved Wife, Barbara,” December 27, 2005.

[
131
]. Investigative journalist Edwin Black wrote a breakthrough article, “The Plot to Kill JFK in Chicago November 2, 1963,” in the November 1975 issue of the
Chicago Independent
magazine. Edwin Black would later become famous for his series of books on the Holocaust:
The Transfer Agreement
(New York: Macmillan, 1984),
IBM and The Holocaust
(New York: Crown Publishers, 2001), and
War against the
Weak
(New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003). Black’s revealing JFK article, accessible only to the readers of a short-lived magazine and ignored by the national media, soon disappeared from public view. (I found a copy in the basement of the University of Chicago Library a quarter of a century later.) The article drew on the initial research of Chicago court investigator Sherman Skolnick. Black devoted eight months to interviewing witnesses and digging through government documents. Crucial to his article was the firsthand information provided at great risk by an unidentified Secret Service agent—Abraham Bolden.

[
132
]. “1,300 Policemen To Guard Routes of Kennedy Here,”
Chicago Sun-Times
(November 1, 1963), p. 1.

[
133
]. Author’s interview of Abraham Bolden, July 13, 2003. Also Black, “Plot to Kill JFK,” p. 4.

[
134
]. Black, “Plot to Kill JFK,” p. 5.

[
135
]. Author’s July 13, 2003, interview with Bolden.

[
136
]. Author’s July 13, 2003, interview with Bolden. Also Black, “Plot to Kill JFK,” p. 5.

[
137
]. Sherman Skolnick’s Suit against the National Archives and Records Service, filed on April 6, 1970, in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division, p. 2.

[
138
]. Author’s interview with Bolden, July 13, 2003.

[
139
]. Ibid. Also Black, “Plot to Kill JFK,” p. 5.

[
140
]. Author’s interview with Bolden, July 13, 2003. Also Black, “Plot to Kill JFK,” p. 5. Also House Select Committee on Assassinations Interview of Abraham Bolden, January 19, 1978, p. 3. JFK Record Number 180-10070-10273.

[
141
]. Hammer,
Death in November,
p. 282.

[
142
]. William J. Rust,
Kennedy in Vietnam
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1985), p. 162.

[
143
].
FRUS
,
1961-1963,
vol. IV, p. 517.

[
144
]. Ibid.

[
145
]. Blair,
Lodge in Vietnam,
p. 68. Hammer,
Death in November,
p. 284.

[
146
]. Vallee described himself as a “disaffiliated member of the John Birch Society.” “Quiz North Sider on Weapons Count,”
Chicago Daily News
(December 3, 1963).

[
147
]. Black, “Plot to Kill JFK,” p. 6.

[
148
]. November 2, 1963, Chicago Police Department Record of Arrest of Thomas Arthur Vallee “for traffic violation and carrying concealed weapon.”

[
149
]. “Information Concerning Thomas Vallee,” November 30, 1963, FBI Teletype “To Director and SACS [Special Agents In Charge], Dallas and New York, From SAC, Chicago,” p. 5.

[
150
]. Author’s interview with Abraham Bolden, July 13, 2003.

[
151
]. “Information Concerning Thomas Vallee,” November 30, 1963, FBI Teletype, p. 6. Also Record of Arrest for Thomas Arthur Vallee, November 2, 1963, Chicago Police Department.

[
152
]. “Information Concerning Thomas Vallee,” November 30, 1963, FBI Teletype, pp. 1-2. Author’s interview with Luke Christopher Hester, August 24, 2004. When the FBI’s red flag on the license plate of the car Vallee was driving came up, the very fact that Hugh Larkin was raising such a question made his old friends in the New York police suspicious of him. They asked him why he was checking it. They evidently also notified the FBI that Larkin and his son-in-law were inquiring about the license plate. FBI agents then showed up at the apartment door of Luke Christopher Hester and his family in Chicago on Thanksgiving morning 1963. They questioned Hester extensively concerning the reasons for his, his father-in-law’s, and NBC’s interest in Vallee. Hugh Larkin then asked his son-in-law on the phone, “What the hell have you gotten me into?” Author’s interview with Luke Christopher Hester, August 23, 2004.

Hugh Larkin’s daughter, Mary Larkin Ivino, was so curious about the car’s license plate that she conducted her own investigation. She somehow managed to obtain the address for the license plate. It was a location on Long Island. She knew from her brother, who was a firefighter, that the fire department had a registry of addresses. At her request, members of the fire department checked their registry for more information concerning the Long Island address for the license plate of the car Vallee had been driving at his arrest. They told Mary Larkin Ivino, “That address is a vacant lot.” Whoever registered the license plate for the car had given an address that would frustrate any quest for further information. Author’s interview with Luke Christopher Hester, August 24, 2004.

[
153
]. Black, “Plot to Kill JFK,” p. 33.

[
154
]. Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall,
Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret Wars against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement
(Boston: South End Press, 1990), pp. 66, 71.

[
155
]. Ibid., pp. 76-77.

[
156
]. Ibid., p. 401 endnote 73.

[
157
]. Ibid., p. 398 endnote 27.

[
158
]. Ibid.

[
159
]. Author’s interview with Dan Stern, August 14, 2002.

[
160
]. Ibid.

[
161
]. Author’s interview with Mary Vallee-Portillo, August 14, 2004.

[
162
]. Author’s interview with Mary Vallee-Portillo, August 17, 2004.

[
163
]. Vallee-Portillo interview, August 14, 2004.

[
164
]. Ibid. Also FBI Report by Leonard Lewis, St. Louis, Missouri, December 4, 1963; File #SL 105-3665.

[
165
]. “Information Concerning Thomas Vallee,” November 30, 1963, FBI Teletype, p. 6.

[
166
]. Author’s interview of Patricia Rish, cousin by marriage of Thomas Arthur Vallee, August 20, 2004.

[
167
]. Vallee-Portillo interview, August 14, 2004.

[
168
]. Ibid.

[
169
]. From a letter in Vallee’s Marine Corps medical records dated February 23, 1956, “Subject: Psychiatric evaluation of VALLEE, Thomas Arthur, Corporal, 111 44 55, United States Marine Corps.” Cited in Leonard Lewis FBI Report. Also FBI notation at the bottom of copy of letter from John Edgar Hoover, FBI Director, to Thomas A. Vallee, February 15, 1968. FBI Files, JFK Record Number 124-10335-10278.

[
170
]. Ibid.

[
171
]. Cited in Leonard Lewis FBI Report.