Secret Service Agent Floyd Boring...is very interesting, indeed.
(click on images to enlarge)
The Secret Service agent I am most suspicious of is Assistant Special Agent in Charge (ASAIC) of the White House Detail Floyd M. Boring, the #2 man on the detail, behind SAIC Gerald Behn and ahead of #3 man Roy Kellerman.
Boring joined the Secret Service during the FDR era (right after Joe Kennedy Sr. was let go as Ambassador to the UK) and famously protected President Harry Truman from an assassination attempt on another November day 13 years before Dallas (11/1/50). Interestingly, Boring also guarded a young Congressman Kennedy in 1952 when President Truman was riding with JFK in the back seat of his limo! There were only about 200 agents in the Secret Service then and only about three dozen of them were White House Detail (and Boring was famous from all the press and honors he received for thwarting the assassination CONSPIRACY by two gunmen), while JFK was already famous: they knew about each other already for sure:
Boring (falsely) adamantly denied that JFK was a womanizer in his JFK Library oral history (a pattern of lies and strange statements that is common to the man):
(From the 1976 JFK Library Oral History interview only released in 1999 thanks to my efforts in conjunction with Bill Adams)
Yet, Boring knew; he had to have known. In fact, here he is IN FRONT OF Marilyn Monroe the night she sang "Happy Birthday" to the President! (the large photo shows the president's brothers-in-law, Stephen Smith and Peter Lawford, along with aides Larry O'Brien and Ken O'Donnell. The agent on the staircase is Bob Lilley)
Ole LBJ knew who Boring was, but we are (perhaps?) getting ahead of ourselves a little (this photo hung in Boring's home office):
I popularized/discovered the fact that, unbeknownst to many, Floyd Boring just happened to be IN CHARGE OF PLANNING THE TEXAS TRIP!
Before you can catch your breath on that one, I also popularized/discovered the fact that, again unbeknownst to many, Floyd Boring also just happened to be IN CHARGE OF ALL THE ADVANCE WORK, ADMINISTRATION, AND PLANNING OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY'S TRIPS!
(From the 1976 JFK Library Oral History interview only released in 1999 thanks to my efforts in conjunction with Bill Adams)
(From Boring's 1988 Truman Library Oral History that I received via snail mail in 1998 (unknown to millions beforehand) and now available online since around 2008)
Lead advance agent Winston Lawson admitted having many conversations with Boring (and Kellerman) during his HSCA interview that was only released in the late 1990's:
An overlooked comment made by Winston Lawson during his Warren Commission testimony- he didn't know if he actually gave his recommendations about the speech site selection in Dallas (crucial to the eventual route chosen and security) to SAIC Behn (who adamantly opposed the Trade Mart): he gave the information to his office- one of the two assistants, Boring and Kellerman (both unnamed here):
Boring gave Lawson the Dallas assignment on 11/4/63:
For his part Boring was on the 3/23/63 Chicago trip (were threats were found for JFK), the cancelled Chicago trip (cancelled due to threats), AND the 11/18/63 Florida trip (also rife with threats):
As posted elsewhere, the 11/18/63 Florida trip was also the one where both agents Tim McIntyre and Glen Bennett denied being a part of, despite the photo, film and written record (although much of it was not known or released until many years later):
In fact, Boring was a veteran of many of JFK's trips in person, as well (such as when he rode on the follow-up car in Berlin in June 1963 and saw the agents on the rear of the limo, proper motorcycle formations, press photographers riding in a flatbed truck in front, SAC Behn in the limo with the military aide, police and military lining the street, and building rooftops guarded):
Yet, strangely, when I suggested that the ARRB get in touch with Boring, the former agent, who first told me "I didn't have any involvement in that [the Texas trip] at all", started the interview with Doug Horne off on a similar strange note, sounding almost like a guilty suspect! He also flat out lies and says that he escorted LBJ on his helicopter back to the White House, but this was RUFUS YOUNGBLOOD, the unofficial new SAIC of Johnson's detail, NOT Boring! He then adds/ admits that he gave Lawson the Dallas assignment:
Boring was at Andrews Air Force Base when the casket allegedly containing JFK's body was placed into the grey Navy Ambulance and, by his own admission, he-along with former OSS man Paul Paterni, Deputy Chief- went to the White House garage to inspect the bloody presidential limousine (Paterni worked with Ray Rocca, later CIA liaison to the Warren Commission):
The JFK Library (and, more than likely, Clint Hill himself) came to Boring's "rescue" by recently (2016) posting two photos of LBJ's arrival and claiming that Boring is in the two photos. However, the gentleman they have coming off the helicopter is definitely NOT Boring (the same man appears in the second photo) and the gentleman with his back to the camera who is NOT in the first photo-presumably the other candidate for Boring- is definitely NOT Boring, either: the hair on the back of the man's head (conveniently hidden face) and the color of his suit do not match (the real Boring, from the above AAFB photo, is inset for comparison):
Incredibly, as I posted a few years back, this is not the first time the JFK Library (and Clint Hill) mistakenly identified Boring...the other time was at LOVE FIELD, yet the agent was actually---get this---DON LAWTON, the agent infamously recalled at Love Field by Emory Roberts!! Please see:
To my knowledge, after years of accessing the JFK Library's thousands of pages, no other agent was wrongly identified (and, trust me, I checked and rechecked)...only Mr. Boring: twice!
One can sometimes not realize the ramifications of something written years ago and literally under their own nose until the right context comes about. Well, the context came last night in the form of a very predictable one-star review from former Secret Service agent (and dear Gerald Blaine friend and colleague) Chuck Zboril. I harken back to a famous line (one of many) in the Oliver Stone movie “JFK”, wherein Kevin Costner , after making a vital point buried in the 26 volumes of the Warren Commission, says (paraphrased) “but the idea gets shuffled around and the point gets lost.”
TURN TO PAGE 121 OF MY OWN BOOK “SURVIVOR’S GUILT”:
“Blaine even erroneously thought [SAIC Gerald] Behn was on the Florida trip, a testament to the frequency of his [Behn’s] trips with the president.” [author’s interview with Blaine 2/7/04]
TURN TO PAGE 294 OF MY OWN BOOK “SURVIVOR’S GUILT”:
“Zboril was sure that Kellerman, who wasn’t even on the Florida trip, was present in Tampa: “I thought it was Roy Kellerman, not Boring, in the car on the Tampa trip…that’s my recollection.” [author’s interview with Chuck Zboril 11/15/95]
Beyond just the general credibility gap issues, by this specific “recollection” of a supervisory agent OTHER THAN FLOYD M. BORING having been on the Florida trip and having rode in the presidential limousine, these two fine gentlemen have, independent of one another, totally impeached ole Blaine’s book “The Kennedy Detail” even further: how can Blaine write so authoritatively that he heard BORING over the radio relaying JFK’s alleged instruction to remove Zboril and Lawton from the rear of the limousine WHEN HE CAN’T EVEN GET THE NAME OF THE ACTUAL AGENT IN CHARGE OF THE TRIP AND RIDING IN THE PRESIDENTIAL LIMOUSINE CORRECT?
Likewise, how in the world can Zboril vouch for Blaine and his book when he, perhaps in an even worse case of “faulty memory”, ALSO CANNOT GET THE NAME OF THE ACTUAL AGENT IN CHARGE OF THE TRIP AND RIDING IN THE PRESIDENTIAL LIMOUSINE CORRECT…AND BORING WAS THE AGENT WHO ALLEGEDLY RELAYED THIS ORDER/ KIND ANECDOTE/ PRESIDENTIAL WISH (TAKE YOUR PICK) *TO* ZBORIL!
As an important aside (if it even is, considering all the above):
CHUCK ZBORIL AND THE WARREN REPORT:
Chuck Zboril recently stated on Amazon.Com that Agent David Grant was NOT an advance agent on JFK’s trip to Florida. THE WARREN REPORT even states that Agent David Grant was indeed an advance man on JFK’s trip to Tampa (WR page 445). Zboril thought ASAIC Kellerman, not ASAIC Boring, was on the Florida trip (Palamara, page 294) . Gerald Blaine thought SAIC Gerald Behn, not ASAIC Floyd Boring, was on the Florida trip (Palamara, page 121)….it was ASAIC Floyd Boring alone.
But back to the limousine inspection Boring and Paterni chose to do: Kellerman told the HSCA the following (again, in an interview not released until years later)
Boring told the ARRB about the inspection:
"Skull bone in the rear of the follow-up car"? Yes---and Boring is corroborated on this matter by JFK White House Physician Dr. James Young, who even reached to former Warren Commission member Gerald Ford about this!
Miami SAIC (and former White House Detail agent) John Marshall was a very interesting character, indeed. He had worked with Boring before their Secret Service days when the two of them were Pennsylvania State Troopers, worked with Floyd on many occasions while in the Service, took the time to call out Boring in the first place-more than once- in his interview, noted a stick of dynamite found on JFK's motorcade route to the Orange Bowl in December 1962 the day before he was to attend (and that Ken O'Donnell knew about it, yet the motorcade and event still went on-calling Joseph McBride!), and stated, stunningly, that the Secret Service might have been involved in the assassination! Also included is Boring's reaction to this when confronted by the ARRB.
Boring was also stunned (perhaps even more) by these statements from Inspector Thomas Kelley:
Along with Boring being in charge of planning the Texas trip (and all prior trips, in general), he is also infamous (as I popularized) for conveying the false notion that JFK ordered the agents off the limo in Tampa...therefore, they shouldn't ride there in Texas, we are to assume, as there is nothing from the record that ever alleges that he said anything during the Texas trip 11/21-11/22/63. As there is 0.0 evidence that this occurred on any other trip or was documented in any written or audio/visual record, we are supposed to believe these April 1964 reports when the dead president could no longer defend himself (and many other agents and aides weren't contacted about this):
As I wrote in tremendous detail in chapter one of my first book (and expanded even further in my third book), of the five Secret Service reports, four have as their primary source for JFK’s alleged request agent Boring, including one by Boring himself, while the remaining report, written by Mr. Behn, mentions the same 11/18/63 trip with Mr. Boring as the others do. Boring’s report was the first one written, then came one each from Roberts, Ready, Behn, and Hill, respectively (Hill, Ready and Behn weren't even on the Tampa trip, while Roberts merely conveys the fact that Boring was his source). Both Behn and Boring totally contradicted the contents of their reports at different times, independent of each other, to the author. In addition, agents did ride on the rear of the limousine on 7/2/63 and 11/18/63 anyway, despite these alleged Presidential requests, as the film and photo record proves. Both the Secret Service Final Survey Report for the 11/18/63 Tampa trip, written by Gerald Blaine and dated 12/4/63, after the fact, as well as the corresponding Secret Service shift reports, make no mention of any presidential orders to have the agents stay off the limousine: “no unusual incidents occurred”, wrote Blaine. With Boring joining Behn in refuting the substance of their reports, the official Secret Service ‘explanation’ falls like a house of cards. Behn’s, Boring’s, and Hill’s reports are not even on any Secret Service or Treasury Dept. stationery, just blank sheets of paper. In fact, as noted above, Hill’s report is undated, a bizarre error to make in an official government report written by request of the head of the Secret Service. All are supposedly evidence of JFK expressing his desire to keep Secret Service agents off the limousine, particularly in Tampa, Florida on 11/18/63. Importantly, no mention is made of any alleged orders via President Kennedy’s staff, or of JFK requesting anything on the critical day, November 22. What’s more, Secret Service agents and/or police officers always guarded the rooftops of buildings during motorcades before the assassination (not just as a result of the tragedy), effectively augmenting or, in the absence of agents by the limousine itself, replacing them, depending on manpower issues and so forth. Chief Inspector Michael Torina, whom the author contacted, wrote the Secret Service manual and confirmed this security procedure as a fact.
Speaking of Hill...
Clint Hill's strangely undated report (on a blank sheet of paper instead of Treasury stationary, to boot) TWICE states that he did not know who from the office of the White House Detail conveyed this "order" [document slightly cut off in original]:
As I noted in my first book, what makes this doubly strange is the fact that his (obviously pre-rehearsed) Warren Commission testimony with Arlen Specter was done the previous MONTH when this report, undated or not, was submitted...and he reveals the name here: FLOYD BORING-
In a possible one-two punch, acclaimed author William Manchester coveys as much in his massive best-seller The Death of a President:
However, Floyd Boring, on two occasions, adamantly denied that he ever spoke to Manchester (which is backed up by his name NOT being mentioned in the interview section of the book) AND, shockingly, that JFK did not order the agents off his limo! He was forceful in conveying to me that President Kennedy was a very nice man and never interfered with their actions at all:
[Boring can be heard right after Kinney's denials and right before SAIC Behn's denials, among several others:]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgVYcyixXgA&t=872s
Uh oh---guess who Manchester DID speak to? GERALD BLAINE, the obscure author of THE KENNEDY DETAIL (well, he was very obscure until this totally unknown agent scored a Simon & Schuster book deal which became a best-seller, along with an Emmy-nominated documentary of the same name and a since-scrapped movie deal):
Blaine is credited here, yet his name does not appear in the actual text anywhere; very strange, indeed. Blaine confirmed to me in 2005 that he did indeed speak to Manchester and, furthermore, out of the many agents Manchester spoke to (not as many as I, but still pretty good), Blaine is singled out AGAIN as one of the FEW agents thanked in Manchester's OTHER JFK book!
So, what's the problem (other than--ahem--Blaine appearing to be THE SOURCE FOR THE PHONY "JFK-ORDERED-US-OFF-THE-LIMO" crap)? Well, Blaine is now DENYING that he spoke to Manchester. While he confirms that Boring was not interviewed by Manchester (thanks, Jerry), his denial of being interviewed is a lie and he knows it...and I know it, too. For what it's worth, I contacted Wesleyan University, which houses the William Manchester collection (I spoke to Manchester in 1993 and he told me that all his records are sealed and won't be released in my lifetime. He has since passed away and quite a few, but not all, of his records are now available). The Blaine transcript is MISSING and they confirmed that there is NO TRANSCRIPT OF A FLOYD BORING INTERVIEW! Furthermore, some other agent and White House aide interview transcripts AND JACKIE KENNEDY'S won't be released until---get this---2067!
The man sitting next to Blaine in the above interview is, of course, Clint Hill. 2010 was a banner year for these men in more ways than one: Hill came clean and basically admitted that JFK didn't order them off the limo! During Clint Hill’s 11/19/10 Sixth Floor Museum oral history, the former agent revealed the full, unvarnished truth about JFK: he did not order the agents to do anything; they did what they wished to do, security-wise: “He can tell you what he wants done and he can tell you certain things but that doesn’t mean you have to do it. What we used to do was always agree with the President and then we’d do what we felt was best anyway. Here is the video:
If that weren't enough, on 9/18/96, by request of the author, the ARRB’s Doug Horne interviewed Mr. Boring regarding this matter. Horne wrote:
The author finds this admission startling, especially because the one agent who decided to ride on the rear of the limousine in Dallas anyway, on at least 4 different occasions, was none other than Clint Hill himself. This also does not address what the agents were to do when the crowds were heavier, or even what constituted a “crowd,” as agents did ride on the rear steps of the limousine in Tampa on November 18, 1963 (agents Donald J. Lawton, Glen A. Bennett & Charles T. Zboril, to be exact!) Furthermore, as noted above, both Clint Hill’s written report and his testimony surely convey a more strict approach than one stemming from an alleged kind anecdote. In fact, as mentioned above, Hill twice stated in his report that he did not recall who the agent was who told him, and the other agents, not to ride on the rear of the limousine, yet named him under oath to Counsel Specter: Floyd Boring.
The deathblow to the Tampa tale
The author wrote to former Florida Congressman Samuel Melville Gibbons1 on 1/7/04 and asked him if he had heard President Kennedy order the agents off the rear of the limousine. Gibbons rode in the rear seat with JFK and Senator George Smathers on the Tampa trip of 11/18/63.117 Here is Gibbons’ response in full, dated 1/15/04: “I rode with Kennedy every time he rode. I heard no such order. As I remember it the agents rode on the rear bumper all the way. Kennedy was very happy during his visit to Tampa: Sam Gibbons.”
An amazing document was released in the 1990’s concerning, among many other related topics, the issue of the agents’ presence (or lack thereof) on the limousine. This is a 28-page “Sensitive” memorandum from Belford Lawson, the attorney in charge of the Secret Service area for the HSCA, addressed to Gary Cornwell & Ken Klein dated 5/31/77 and revised 8/15/77. Apparently, Attorney Lawson was suspicious of Mr. Boring, for he wrote on the final page of this lengthy memorandum, “Subject: Florida Motorcades in November 1963 … Was Floyd Boring, the Senior SS Agent on the White House detail, lying to SS Agent Hill when he told Hill that JFK had said in Tampa … that he wanted no agents riding upright on the rear bumper step of the JFK limousine? Did JFK actually say this? Did Boring know when he told this to Hill that Hill would be riding outboard on the JFK follow-up car in Dallas on November 22, 1963? Did Boring say this to Ready or Roberts?” On page 27 of the same memo, Belford Lawson wrote, “Why did only one Agent, Hill, run forward to the JFK limousine?” [note: document slightly cut off in original]
From the 1976 JFK Library Oral History interview only released in 1999 thanks to my efforts in conjunction with Bill Adams:
Boring, who makes no mention of any alleged desires by President Kennedy to restrict security during his two presidential library oral histories, told the JFK Library on 2/25/76: “ … of all the administrations I worked with [FDR-LBJ], the president and the people surrounding the president were very gracious and were very cooperative. As a matter of fact, you can’t do this type of security work without cooperation of the people surrounding the president.” In addition, included are Chief Rowley and SAIC Gerald Behn's comments to the JFK Library also debunking the "staff" notion of interfering with the agency [the Behn oral history has been available for years, while Chief Rowley's only became available around 2005!]:
In addition to what Boring conveyed above to both myself and the JFK Library, he also wrote me a letter and stated that President Kennedy was "very cooperative with the Secret Service":
Yet, before we can catch our collective breath on all of this, Boring may have been influenced by Blaine and company late in life (he passed away in early 2008)- he told author Dan Robertson the following in 2006:
“He [JFK] was responsible for his own death.”--?!
For what it's worth, he did end his ARRB interview with the following predictable tidbit:
So, how DID ole Secret Service headquarters think about President Kennedy behind closed doors, so to speak? Part of the answer may lie in an obscure, out-of-print book from 1962 by Wayne Hyde (with, ironically, Boring on the cover) titled What Does A Secret Service Agent Do?
On page 14, Secret Service headquarters is depicted with a photo of President Eisenhower, not the then-current office holder, JFK, on the wall. An older photo, perhaps? No: for there is a disturbing sticker at the bottom left corner!
"I Miss Ike", huh? Imagine if today's Secret Service Headquarters had an "I Miss Obama" sticker: heads would roll...but, alas, no one on Earth noticed this but I, decades later.
Whether one believes Seymour Hersh or not (or the allegations in his book), one thing is certain: four Secret Service agents sat down for ABC Television cameras from the book and expressed their anger and disgust over President Kennedy's private life, including follow-up car agent Tim McIntyre:
Here he is again SPEAKING FOR EMORY ROBERTS (who passed away in 1973; Roberts is actually NAMED in Hersh's book in this anecdote McIntyre reveals here):
These agents--and many more---told me that President Kennedy did not order the agents off the limo, nor did he interfere with their actions at all (yes, that IS Gerald Blaine---he said this to me back in 2004-2005, several years before his book came out saying other things):
Oh, yes: Yeager was assistant advance agent in Tampa with GERALD BLAINE, the same trip FLOYD BORING was on!
I told you Boring was interesting!
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Hi Vince:
A few hours ago, I completed a very careful reading of your entire write-up of Floyd Boring. I don't know how you manage to keep track of all these different details. Quite an accomplishment. And I really liked the video where you countered Clint Hill's statement(s) that he never received, or didn't bother to read, your letter, with you holding up a copy of the "return receipt" (which he signed).
Hill deserves credit for racing to the limo on 11/22/63, but a lot of his behavior since then has not been particularly admirable. Also, and as I'm sure you remember, Clint Hill apparently made a series of notes about 11/22/63; and during the period when he was seeing a psychiatrist, he was apparently advised that for sake of his mental health, he should destroy those notes; and so, he said (to Brian Lamb's considerable astonishment, as I recall) that he destroyed his notes! (Shades of Dr. Humes!)
Wouldn't it have been great had there been a serious Grand Jury investigation of all these issues and not the shallow and superficial questioning done by the Warren Commission? And had there been such an event, you would ave been ideal as an informal "advisor." What I found most interesting--and truly shocking--was your reporting about the Manchester materials at Wesleyan. And their statement that some of these key interviews won't be released until "2067". FYI: Around 1985, I attended the "Hofstra Conference" on the JFK Presidency. Dave Powers and others were there, and so was William Manchester. I vividly recall a scene in one of the reception areas, where William Manchester stood, surrounded by a circle of eager listeners (mostly students) and stating, quite forcefully, words to the effect that "I had so much information "against" Lyndon Johnson that, had it been released at the time, it could have prevented him from being re-nominated for the presidency in Atlantic City (referring to the August 1964 Democratic National Convention held in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Manchester never spelled out the specific of what his "information" was--just that it would ave prevented LBJ from being re-nominated.
DSL
6/3/2018 - 5:25 AM PDT
South Orange County, California
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