COMMENT: In an ear­li­er post, we exam­ined for­mer Secret Ser­vice agent Abra­ham Bold­en’s dis­cus­sion of carous­ing and care­less­ness on the part of the Secret Ser­vice detach­ment assigned to guard the Pres­i­dent. The first African-Amer­i­can in that agency, Bold­en felt that the care­less­ness and debauch­ery could com­pro­mise the Pres­i­den­t’s secu­ri­ty.

Fol­low­ing reports of drunk­en­ness by Secret Ser­vice agents attend­ing a Dal­las strip club on 11/21/1963, Bold­en spec­u­lat­ed that one of the ine­bri­at­ed agents may have had his cre­den­tials stolen, with the stolen cre­den­tials pos­si­bly hav­ing been used by an uniden­ti­fied man present on the Grassy Knoll just after the Pres­i­den­t’s killing. Bold­en also not­ed that the Secret Ser­vice changed iden­ti­fi­ca­tion doc­u­ments in the wake of that inci­dent, key­ing spec­u­la­tion on his part that the move may have been intend­ed to hide incom­pe­tence on the part of the Secret Ser­vice.

In this post, we present more of Bold­en’s infor­ma­tion, this con­cern­ing more sin­is­ter indi­ca­tions deriv­ing from the Secret Ser­vice’s behav­ior with regard to the assas­si­na­tion.

(In past broad­casts, we have exam­ined the over­lap between Army Reserve Intel­li­gence units to which mem­bers of both the Dal­las Police Depart­ment and the Dal­las Secret Ser­vice con­tin­gent belonged, and which appear to have played a major role in the assas­si­na­tion. As we saw in FTR #712, Jack Alston Crich­ton head­ed one of those units. Crich­ton, along with the elder George Bush, head­ed the Texas GOP con­tin­gent run­ning for office at the time of Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion. The elder Bush appears to have been deeply involved in the killing.

In the August 2 and August 30, 1992 install­ments of AFA #37, we explored the Army Intelligence/Dallas PD/Dallas Secret Ser­vice con­tin­gent con­nec­tions at much greater length. The impli­ca­tions appear alto­geth­er sin­is­ter and indica­tive of a coup d’e­tat.)

In the text excerpts below, we high­light a num­ber of points delin­eat­ed by Bold­en in his book. (Bold­en was framed for crim­i­nal mis­con­duct in the wake of his com­plaints about the Secret Ser­vice’s behav­ior with regard to the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion.) Bold­en’s top­ics of inquiry include:

• Racism on the part of many Secret Ser­vice agents and hatred for Kennedy’s civ­il rights poli­cies.
• An account of an indi­vid­ual men­tioned by Lee Har­vey Oswald as a per­son of inter­est in the assas­si­na­tion.
• A report of two His­pan­ic men rent­ing a room in Chica­go pri­or to Kennedy’s vis­it to Chica­go to attend the Army-Navy game. They report­ed­ly had two rifles with tele­scop­ic sights and were vis­it­ed by two unnamed white men.
• An account of an anti-Cas­tro Cuban named Homer Echevar­ria, who report­ed that Kennedy was going to be killed. Echevar­ria was alleged­ly involved with weapons traf­fick­ing for the CIA.
• The for­ward­ing of all paper­work regard­ing Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s Chica­go vis­it to the Secret Ser­vice’s cen­tral office. Appar­ent­ly, all field offices were instruct­ed to send their paper­work to the cen­tral office, there­by mak­ing inde­pen­dent scruti­ny of the Secret Ser­vice’s behav­ior with regard to the assas­si­na­tion impos­si­ble.
• Noth­ing ever came of any of the leads dis­cussed above.

The Echo from Dealey Plaza by Abra­ham Bold­en; Har­mo­ny Books [HC]; Copy­right 2008 by Abra­ham Bold­en; 978–0‑307–38201‑6. 

EXCERPT: . . . . Many of the agents with whom I worked were prod­ucts of the South. Time and again, I over­heard them mak­ing chill­ing racist remarks, refer­ring to kennedy as “That nig­ger-lover,” whose efforts to force inte­gra­tion in the South and enforce oth­er civ­il rights ini­tia­tives were “screw­ing up the coun­try.” I heard some mem­bers of the White House detail say that if shots were fired at the Pres­i­dent, they’d take no action to pro­tect him. A few agents vowed that they would quit the Secret Ser­vice rather than give up their lives for Kennedy. . . (The Echo from Dealey Plaza;  p. 19.)

COMMENT: Mind­ful of the ani­mos­i­ty many mem­bers of the Secret Ser­vice had toward Kennedy, Bold­en’s reflec­tions about the actions tak­en by that agency in the wake of Kennedy’s death take on added sig­nif­i­cance.

. . . “They shot the Pres­i­dent! Margie called out to me as I got off the ele­va­tor. Inside the office, Agent Joe Noo­nan was pac­ing back and forth in a bare­ly con­trolled rage. He had served three years on the White House detail and shared my view of the con­duct and over­con­fi­dence of the agents on that detail.

“I knew it would hap­pen,” he shout­ed, wav­ing his arms. “I told those play­boys that some­one was going to get the Pres­i­dent killed if they kept act­ing like they did. Now it’s hap­pened.” Noo­nan’s pac­ing grew more rapid as he resumed his rant. “I’d like to see the faces of all those guys on the detail now, who told me that nobody wants to kill Pres­i­dent Kennedy,” he sneered. . . .

. . . June Marie Ter­pinas, one of the agen­cy’s pool stenog­ra­phers, came up to me with tears in her eyes, and told me that when she heard that Pres­i­dent Kennedy had been shot, she rushed into [Mau­rice] Mar­tineau’s office and gave him the news. Accord­ing to June, Mar­tineau’s response had been a cold “So what else is new?” Sob­bing, June said that Mar­tineau “act­ed like he did­n’t care one way or the oth­er.”

At a meet­ing of all the Chica­go agents dur­ing the week of Kennedy’s state funer­al, we received orders from the chief’s office in Wash­ing­ton. We were not to dis­cuss Kennedy’s pro­tec­tion, regard­less of who asked us. We were told to chan­nel all inquiries con­cern­ing the pro­tec­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy through the chief’s office. I remem­ber think­ing, Pro­tec­tion? What pro­tec­tion? The mes­sage from Wash­ing­ton made it clear that any­one who vio­lat­ed the direc­tive would be dealt with severe­ly. . . (Ibid.; p. 51.)

. . . . Before Dal­las, I had voiced my opin­ion of the Pres­i­den­t’s pro­tec­tion detail to col­leagues and supe­ri­ors in the Chica­go office. I told any­one who would lis­ten that I did­n’t believe the agents on the White House detail would act swift­ly or appro­pri­ate­ly to stop an attempt on the Pres­i­den­t’s life. A long line of supe­ri­ors, from Har­ry Geighlen and James Burke to Mau­rice Mar­tineau, tried to tell me that I was over-react­ing, that things appeared lax to me only because I was new to the detail. The senior agents struck me as arro­gant and over­con­fi­dent, and saw to it that nobody acknowl­edged the appre­hen­sion of any less expe­ri­enced agents regard­ing the Pres­i­den­t’s safe­ty. I even told my sto­ry to a Secret Ser­vice inspec­tor, Thomas J. Kel­ley, who vis­it­ed the Chica­go office just after I returned from the White House detail. I told Kel­ley every­thing I had seen and every­thing that had hap­pened to me in Wash­ing­ton, and although he promised me that he’s look into it all, I heard noth­ing from him or from Chief Row­ley pri­or to the assas­si­na­tion. The senior agents’ cock­sure atti­tudes gov­erned right up to the moment of Kennedy’s death.

One of the younger agents rid­ing on the car behind the Pres­i­den­tial lim­ou­sine heard what sound­ed to him like a rifle shot. He start­ed to jump from the run­ning board to assist the Pres­i­dent, just as Agent Clint Hill had run to pro­tect the First Lady. But the young agent was called back to the fol­low-up car by a more senior agent, just as the third and fatal shot tore into the back of the Pres­i­den­t’s skull. The same inspec­tor, Kel­ley, to whom I had pre­vi­ous­ly com­plained about the lax­i­ty of the Secret Ser­vice agents sur­round­ing the Pres­i­dent, over­saw the Dal­las inves­ti­ga­tion of Kennedy’s Assas­si­na­tion. . . . (Ibid.; p. 52.)

. . . . Two nights after the events in Dal­las, I received a call from SAIC For­rest Sor­rels of the Dal­las office at about 10:00pm, look­ing for Agent Mar­tineau. Sor­rels said he was in the Dal­las police sta­tion and that he and Inspec­tor kel­ley had inter­viewed Lee Har­vey Oswald, who had men­tioned the name John Hurd.

“I don’t know if it’s spelled H‑E-A-R‑D, H‑U-R‑D, H‑E-R‑D or H‑U-R‑T. I’m giv­ing you the pho­net­ic sound,” he explained. ’ I want you to tell Mar­tineau to drop every­thing he’s doing out there and put every agent pos­si­ble on track­ing down any­one who has the name John Hurd. This is top pri­or­i­ty and we need to get this done as soon as pos­si­ble.” he went on to ask about the out­come of the inves­ti­ga­tion of a Chica­go gun shop called Klein’s, as if he assumed that any agent in our office would have been aware of it. I could­n’t tell him a thing, because I had nev­er heard of the case.

“Well”, Sor­rels con­clud­ed with some urgency, “tell Mar­tineau to get on this right away. Every agent should be assigned to iden­ti­fy­ing this man.”

I could­n’t reach Mar­tineau until around mid­night, and when I did, he was none too pleased.

“What the hell does he want us to do, run out in our paja­mas? We’ll take care of it tomor­row morn­ing.” In fact, Mar­tineau did mobi­lize every agent and sec­re­tary in the Chica­go office first thing the next morn­ing. We pored over every file and reg­is­ter in our office, com­pil­ing a list of peo­ple named John Hurd, Heard, Herd, Hurt, or sim­i­lar. ASAIC Mar­tineau instruct­ed us to track down every per­son who fit the pro­file and to noti­fy him when he had locat­ed each one. He also made it clear that we were not to inter­view any of these sus­pects unless we cleared it with him.

The search turned up sev­er­al like­ly can­di­dates, and we turned over the infor­ma­tion to Agent Mar­tineau. Yet not only were no air­rests ever made con­nect­ed to this inves­ti­ga­tion, but we nev­er heard anoth­er word about it from Martineau–no fol­low-up, not even any feedback–even though he had demand­ed we turn over every scrap of paper, every note and scrib­ble, gen­er­at­ed by our search. I could­n’t help won­der­ing how we could have got­ten an urgent night­time call instruct­ing us to drop every­thing and chase down this John Hurd, as oth­er Secret Ser­vices offices around the coun­try pre­sum­ably did as well, and yet that name nev­er came up in any offi­cial report or inves­ti­ga­tion nor in any press account of the assas­si­na­tion. . . . (Ibid.; pp. 53–54.)

. . . . The third instance relat­ed to a Secret Ser­vice inves­ti­ga­tion that we had begun just before Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion. Toward the end of Octo­ber 1963, while prepa­ra­tions were being made for the pres­i­dent to vis­it Chica­go to attend the annu­al Army-Navy game at Sol­dier Field, a phone call came into our office for ASAIC Mar­tineau. he took the call dur­ing one of our reg­u­lar meet­ings, so the agents present heard his side of the con­ver­sa­tion. He said that he did­n’t have enough per­son­nel to look into what­ev­er mat­ter had been dis­cussed.

“All of our agents are tied up at the moment, and we don’t have any­one to send over there,” he said firm­ly to who­ev­er was on the oth­er end of the line. When he hung up, Mar­tineau explained that the call had been from the chica­go office of the FBI, which had infor­ma­tion pos­si­bly con­cern­ing the Pres­i­den­t’s upcom­ing trip. A woman who owned a room­ing house on the city’s North Side had gone into one of the rooms to do some house­keep­ing and had dis­cov­ered two rifles equipped with tele­scop­ic sights. She had rent­ed the room to two men she believed to be His­pan­ic, and had also seen two white men going in and out of the room. Know­ing that the pres­i­dent was due to vis­it Chi­a­go, she grew con­cerned and called the author­i­ties.

Mar­tineau pro­fessed to believe that this was not yet a Secret Ser­vice mat­ter, in that there had been no direct threat to the pres­i­dent in con­nec­tion with these rifles. he felt strong­ly that this prob­lem fell under FBI juris­dic­tion, espe­cial­ly since the Ser­vice did­n’t have the resources to inves­ti­gate every indi­vid­ual who had a rifle and dis­liked John Kennedy. As we all sat there lis­ten­ing, Mar­tineau called the office of James Row­ley, who had become chief of the Secret Ser­vice. When he got off the phone, he told us that we were, in fact, going to inves­ti­gate the case.

Three agents were dis­patched to inter­view the woman at the room­ing house. I was not involved, since they antic­i­pat­ed tail­ing the sus­pects in a pre­dom­i­nant­ly white part of Chica­go, but at one point, I was able to lis­ten in on the car radio for sev­er­al hours while our agents fol­lowed the sus­pect­ed assas­sins. Amaz­ing­ly, they botched the sur­veil­lance and lost the sus­pects. One of the agents had neglect­ed to turn off his two-way radio, which went off with a loud squawk–a trans­mis­sion from Mar­tineau back at the office–as the agents drove past the sus­pects in an alley­way behind the room­ing house. The sus­pects bolt­ed, and four guys prompt­ly lost them in traf­fic. The inves­ti­ga­tion was abrupt­ly ter­mi­nat­ed, and the chief was noti­fied. (Ibid.; pp. 55–56.)

Just a few days before the shoot­ing in Dal­las, the Secret Ser­vice received even more threat­en­ing infor­ma­tion, this time about a group of anti-Cas­tro Cuban activists alleged­ly plot­ting to assas­si­nate the Pres­i­dent. Homer S. Echevar­ria had been over­heard to make a state­ment to the effect that Kennedy was about to be tak­en care of. Instead of imme­di­ate­ly con­tact­ing the White House detail, which was with the Pres­i­dent in Fort Worth, Texas, ASAIC Mar­tineau assigned sev­er­al of his agents in Chica­go to look into the mat­ter. None of our agents was able to get next to Echevar­ria, and the inves­ti­ga­tion fell apart.

Lat­er, when the War­ren Com­mis­sion con­vened to inves­ti­gate the assas­si­na­tion, the chief of the Secret Ser­vice feared that agents who were on duty in Dal­las that day might be held account­able in some way. With the Pres­i­dent dead and his alleged killer, Lee Har­vey Oswald, known to have had Cuban con­nec­tions, the inves­ti­ga­tion of Echevar­ria took on new urgency, and some of the Chica­go agents tried to revive the case, but to no avail. I sat in the cubi­cle next to one of the agents who had been involved with both threats in the Chica­go area, so I could over­hear his con­ver­sa­tions. I lis­tened to him dic­tat­ing his reports and com­plain­ing about the progress of the inves­ti­ga­tion. It seemed that this agent thought Echevar­ria was a gun­run­ner for the CIA and that a con­tact agent from the CIA had called Mar­t­in­beau to inquire about the Echevar­ria case. The agent was “unhap­py,” con­cerned that what­ev­er the con­nec­tion was between Echevar­ria and the FBI or CIA, one or both of those agen­cies might have been inter­fer­ing in the inves­ti­ga­tion.

In ear­ly Decem­ber, Agent Mar­tineau called us togeth­er to tell us that the FBI was tak­ing over the Echevar­ria case and that our inves­ti­ga­tion was to ter­mi­nate imme­di­ate­ly. He told us to turn all doc­u­ments, reports, note­books, scrib­blings, and sup­port files in to him, and he would in turn for­ward them to the chief’s office by spe­cial couri­er. He warned us not to dis­cuss the case with any­one, any­where. In fact, he said, we should for­get that the Echevar­ria case had ever exist­ed. . . .

. . . . One week lat­er, the chief’s office in Wash­ing­ton sent an order that all copies of reports relat­ing to the advance secu­ri­ty arrange­ments for Pres­i­dent Kennedy in Chica­go be removed from the files and deliv­ered to Wash­ing­ton. My under­stand­ing, from con­ver­sa­tions that I heard between the office sec­re­taries, was that the chief’s office com­mu­ni­cat­ed this same order ver­bal­ly to field offices across the coun­try. The field reports referred to by this order were the reports that Secret Ser­vice advance teams pre­pared pri­or to any pres­i­den­tial vis­it to any loca­tion. . . . If all copies of all such reports were removed from all offices except that of the chief, he would be the only one in a posi­tion to pro­vide inves­ti­ga­tors, such as the War­ren Com­mis­sion, with infor­ma­tion regard­ing the secu­ri­ty around the pres­i­dent at any tiv­en time or any giv­en loca­tion. And there would be no way to ver­i­fy or refute that infor­ma­tion. . . .
(Ibid.; pp. 56–58.)