(Cancelled) Chicago trip Secret Service documents

I hate to give credit for this to a certain person, but I must (for honesty’s sake): ole Fred Nitwit found these documents within other HSCA docs. That said, he acts as if this nullifies the destruction of records by the Secret Service during the ARRB’s tenure! It most certainly does NOT as this was merely a fluky find within other docs. One is reminded of former Secret Service agent Gerald Blaine attempting the same thing in his book The Kennedy Detail just because he owned a copy of the Tampa trip docs (never mind the embarrassing fact that those docs escaped the shredder in the first place). MANY other Secret Service docs WERE destroyed, so this doc (similar to author Barry Ernest’s 1999 discovery of the Martha Stroud doc buried within other unrelated docs) does not exonerate the government for burying the doc and the information it contained in the first place.

 

The doc is valuable because it names Secret Service agent Nemo Ciochina (who has a whole chapter in my latest book), SAIC Maurice Martineau, Abraham Bolden and others as being part of the security for JFK’s cancelled Chicago trip. Importantly, this is the Protective Survey Report and NOT the preliminary survey report, so important security details are missing or glossed over. That said, the docs do reveal that 4 press/photographer’s vehicles were to be close behind the presidential limousine [as we know, the press was far behind the limo in Dallas and out of the picture (literally)]; a mayor’s car with police/detectives was to be right behind the Secret Service follow-up car [Dallas Police Captain Jesse Curry and Chief of Homicide Will Fritz wanted their own cars in the Dallas motorcade but their requests were cancelled at the last minute]; General Godfrey McHugh was slated to ride in the presidential limousine [as we know, he was asked in Dallas-for the first time-not to ride there by the Secret Service in order to accentuate full exposure for the president]; ASAIC Floyd Boring was scheduled for the trip and was to ride in the presidential limo [#3 man Roy Kellerman took Boring’s place in Dallas]; Press Secretary Pierre Salinger and his immediate assistant, Andy Hatcher, were scheduled for the trip [as with third-stringer Kellerman, third-stringer Malcolm Kilduff made his first presidential trip on his own for the Texas trip. Salinger was very knowledgeable about motorcade security and admitted in his 1997 book that he might have missed maybe 2-3 trips in all his time with JFK. Texas was one of them!]; Secret Service agents Don Lawton and Chuck Zboril were scheduled to ride in the follow-up car [both agents rode on the rear of the limo in Tampa shortly after (11/18/63), while Lawton rode on the rear of the limo in the prior Chicago trip of 3/23/63. As we know, Lawton was famously recalled from the area of the rear of the limo at Love Field on 11/22/63 by the very same shift leader assigned to the cancelled Chicago trip of 11/2/63- Emory Roberts].

Also, a 11/5/63 addendum merely states that “his trip was cancelled,” not that he [JFK] cancelled the trip.

I don’t care if it turns out that a few surviving agents have some of the shredded documents. The point is that the Secret Service destroyed them in 1995 after they were formally asked for them and being in private hands does not change anything.