Ex-agent refuses to toe party line on JFK slaying

Ex-agent refuses to toe party line on JFK slaying

By Ellen Miller, Special To The News
November 20, 2003

GRAND JUNCTION - Lee Harvey Oswald didn't act alone when he killed
President John F. Kennedy, a retired agent said Wednesday, and the
president died because Secret Service agents failed at their jobs.
"Officially, the answer to Oswald when somebody asks - because we
were ordered to say it - is that the Warren Commission found that he
acted alone," retired agent Jerry O'Rourke said. "But was there more
than one gunman? Yes, personally I believe so. And my personal
opinion about Jack Ruby is that he was paid to kill Oswald."

O'Rourke grew up in Telluride and attended Western State and Regis
colleges, then spent 22 years in the Secret Service. Now retired and
back home, he spoke Wednesday to the downtown Grand Junction [COLORADO] Rotary Club [THIS IS THE SAME CITY WHERE GERALD BLAINE LIVES-VMP].

O'Rourke said his group of agents, about 10 of them, had protected
Kennedy the morning of Nov. 22, 1963, at a breakfast speech in Fort
Worth. Then the group left by air for Austin, the next stop planned
for the president's Texas tour.

"We got the word (of the assassination) in the air, and we didn't
believe it at first," he said. "We were joking. But later, most of
the agents had tears in their eyes. Agents believed in Kennedy, and
we knew we failed our job in Dallas."

After his White House tour ended during Johnson's presidency,
O'Rourke spent a year in the Secret Service intelligence division,
which offered him glimpses into the investigation of Kennedy's death.

Those glimpses, and the accounts of other agents, have convinced
O'Rourke that Oswald didn't act alone. He cited several reasons:

Kennedy had a number of enemies, any of whom could have plotted
against him. They included Southerners angered by his insistence on
civil rights; organized crime; labor unions unhappy with
investigations of them by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy; Cuban
dissidents angry over the failed Bay of Pigs invasion; and FBI
Director J. Edgar Hoover.

The shots were impossible to make. O'Rourke learned to shoot as a
boy and trained as a marksman in the military. He said his visits to
Oswald's perch at the Texas Book Depository convince him that no one
could have fired a rifle three times so quickly, hitting the
president and Texas Gov. John Connolly.

The trajectory of one of the shots could not have been made from a
gunman on the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository. The shot
entered Kennedy's body at his lower back and traveled up, to exit
near his throat.

The circumstances of the autopsy were irregular. Texas law requires
autopsies to be done in state, but agents, acting on the orders of
White House, took Kennedy's body back to Washington, D.C. The autopsy
was performed at Bethesda Naval Medical Center under secrecy that
prevails to this day.

Evidence was destroyed. O'Rourke said that on the day of the
assassination, one agent was ordered to clean out the cars used in
the motorcade, getting rid of blood and other evidence. The agent
told O'Rourke that he found a piece of skull, asked the White House
doctor what to do with it, and was told to destroy it.

Instructions were given to lie. The agent in charge of motorcade
protection told O'Rourke that he was told by the Warren Commission
during his testimony that he did not hear a fourth shot and he did
not see someone running across the grassy knoll. But the agent
insisted that his account was accurate.

Evidence about the shots is in conflict. An open microphone on a
motorcycle in the motorcade picked up four shots, not three.

"In my opinion, Hoover wanted the commission to find that Oswald
acted alone," O'Rourke said. "The complete file won't be released
until 2027, and the reason for that is most of us will be dead by
then." [THAT'S O.K.-READ BLAINE'S BOOK IN THE MEANTIME HAHAHA-VMP]

Lane Bertram and the Day Before Dallas

Lane Bertram and the Day Before Dallas

(Compiled) By Vince Palamara
From
http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/special/jfk/index.html
"Where Were You?" (Houston)

"On November 22, 1963, my family lived in Houston, and I still am living
here. When I heard
the news about President Kennedy, my 3-year-old son and I were at a
laundromat on Long
Point in Spring Branch. The laundromat had a TV set, so we heard the
first announcement.

That evening, my husband and I went over to visit our neighbors who
lived in the house
behind us, Lane and Edna Bertram. Lane Bertram at that time was head of
the Secret
Service here in Houston
[SEE BELOW*]
and had just been in charge of President Kennedy's visit to
Houston the day before. We had all talked about the successful visit
that evening and the
upcoming visit to Dallas the next day.

I will never forget Lane's comment about the assassination in Dallas.
Lane said, "It should
never have happened, there is no excuse for it; and it could never have
happened here in
Houston!"
[MAYBE BECAUSE THE SECRET SERVICE WAS ACTUALLY PROTECTING JFK PROPERLY
IN HOUSTON?]

Such a tragedy!

Arlynn Battenfield
Houston

Published Nov. 22, 1963
Edition: 3rd EXTRA
Note: This EXTRA was the third of four printed by the Chronicle as the
story of President
Kennedy's assassination unfolded. Its lead headline read: "Assassin's
Bullet Kills
Kennedy; Connally Shot, in Grave Condition"

No Hint of Trouble Noticed in
Advance

BY BOB TUTT
Chronicle Reporter

Lane Bertram, agent in charge here of
the secret service, the agency charged with protecting the
President's life, said: "There was no information that an
Assassination attempt would be made against Mr. Kennedy
during the Texas tour." Bertram, whose agents helped protect
the President during his visit here,said:
"We always anticipate trouble but there was nothing to indicate what
would happen in Dallas.
"We knew there was always the possibility that some mentally deranged
person would make an attempt on the President's life. We were worried about the
irrational [rather] than hired assassins."
[NO WONDER THE ASSASSINATION WAS A SUCCESS THE NEXT DAY!]

Bertram said he was amazed at the assassination in light of the warm
reception Kennedy received from "remarkably well-behaved and respectful crowds in
Houston."

This is the first time a President has been killed since the Secret
Service was organized
after the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901, Bertram
said.

Secret Service agents here have checked out or are investigating a half
dozen threats
against the President, but there is nothing to indicate that any of the
threats was serious,
Bertram said.
[SEE BELOW**]

The White House switchboard set up at the Rice Hotel during Kennedy's
stay here
received a number of crank calls but no threats, he said.

Every precaution possible is taken to protect the President when he
appears in public, but
it is impossible to guarantee perfect protection, he added.

When a Secret Service man takes his oath he swears to do anything
necessary to protect
the President, even to stepping in front of an assassin's bullet,
Bertram said."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

*
Lane Bertram, SAIC of the Houston office, tried to link Oswald with the
rival agency - the FBI - after the shooting, and planted the story that
Oswald heard about a Kennedy-inspired plot to kill Castro, which made
Oswald kill JFK!(CD No. 705, page 1 & 767; see also Look, 7/12/66, page
69) In addition, Bertram was the agent who reported of Jack Ruby's
presence in Houston on 11/21/63 (when JFK was present), as Ruby was
stalking the President.(25 H 378 - 381) Finally, when New Orleans
lawyer Dean Andrews (a man known to the Secret Service for his
assistance in legal matters) testified to the Warren Commission that a
"Clay Bertrand" called him on 11/23/63 and asked him to defend Oswald
(Andrews had previously seen Oswald in the summer of 1963 on various
legal matters), no one realized that "Clay Bertrand" was phonetically
close to Lane Bertram.(Andrews interview with Fred Newcomb)(CD No. 75,
page 305; 11 H 327; 26 H 704; 11 H 332 - 333; 26 H 357) In fact, the
SAIC of the New Orleans office, J. Calvin Rice, stated that Andrews was
"well known to this office"!(CD No. 87) However, when the FBI attempted
to find out who the man really was, they stated: "...locate any record
identifiable with Clay Bertrand or Bertram"!(26 H 356) Finally, Ruth
Paine stated that Oswald went to Houston to see an unidentified friend
on September 26, 1963 (the same day that the White House officially
announced JFK's trip to Dallas for the fall).(23 H 409; 3 H 10; WR 651;
Time, 12/6/63, page 33A)
Michael Dorman's "Secret Service Story"(1967)- on page 4, Dorman, later
of "Newsday" and a harsh critic of Jim Garrison, dedicated his book
"...to all the present and former members of the U.S. Secret Service,
with particular appreciation to retired Agent Lane Bertram, who took the
trouble to show a young reporter the ropes in days gone by":
This Oswald-did-it book stands out for its sickeningly sweet approach
to the Secret Service's ultimate failure evidenced on many pages,
perhaps summed up here best-
p.8- " In the confusion, one group of men acted with a dispatch and
precision born of hour upon hour of drill, discipline and professional
training. these men were the agents of the Unites States Secret Service.

"Within an instant of the time the shots were fired, agents leaped into
action. Pistols and automatic rifles appeared in their hands. An agent
in the President's limousine immediately grabbed a radio-telephone.
'Let's go straight to the nearest hospital', he shouted to nearby
policemen"-!

**
New York Times 12/20/63 Pg 19

Kennedy Threat is Laid to Texan

Dallas Machinist Held -- Remarks Made Nov. 21

By Donald Janson

Special to the New York Times

Dallas Dec 19 -- A 21-year-old Dallas Machinist was arrested by the
Secret
Service today on charges of threating to kill Presidnet Kennedy.

The machinist, Russell W. McLarry, said the threat had been made in jest

Nov. 21, the day before Mr. Kennedy was assassinated here.

Two women to whom Mr. McLarry allegedly made the statement eported it
to
the police in Arlington, about 15 miles west of here, soon after they
heard
of the assassination.

At a preliminary hearing in Fort Worth today, the Secret Service agent
who
apprehended Mr. McLarry testified that the machinist had said he was
"proud
-- no glad" that the President had been killed.

Mr. McLarry attends night classes at the Arlington State College in
Arlington as a freshman. The alleged threat was made on the campus to
two
women student.

Mr. McLarry was alleged to have told the women that he would be working
near
the Trade Mart the next day and would be waiting with a gun to "get" the

President.

Works Near Trade Mart

Charles E. Kunkel, of the Dallas office of the Secret Service testified
that
he had confronted Mr. McLarry with this report and that, in substance,
the
student had admitted it.

Mr. McLarry works at the Dahlgren Manufacturing Company, which makes
lithographic printing equipment in a plant three blocks north of the
Trade
Mart. President Kennedy was driving to the mart to make a luncheon
speech
when he was killed, apparently by rifle shots from a ixth-floor window
of a
downtown Dallas building in the other direction from the mart.

United States Attorney Barefoot Sanders said here today that he had no
evidence of any connection between Mr. McLarry and Lee H. Oswald, the
alleged assassin.

In Fort Worth, United States Commissioner Bill Atkins set bond at
$2,500.
Mr. McLarry could not raise it and was remanded to the Tarrant County
jail.

Jury Meets in January

He was arraigned earlier today in Fort Worth rather than Dallas because
the
alleged threat was made in Tarrant County, of which Fort Worth is the
seat.

Mr. Sanders said the case would be presented to the next Federal grand
jury
to be convened in the Northern District of Texas. This jury will convene
in
Amarillo the week of Jan. 6.

Mr. McLarry, who is single lives in an apartment house in the Oak Cliff
section of Dallas, a sprawling area where Oswald lived. former fellow
employees at another plant here described Mr.
McLarry as unusually argumentative.

If Mr. McLarry had a gun it has not been found.

At Arlington, it was said that Mr. McLarry was taking courses in
American
History and algebra.

The authorities said they had found no connection between Mr. McLarry
and
anti-Kennedy leaflets that appeared on the Arlington campus the day
before
the assassination. The leaflets bore the heading: "Wanted for Treason."

Mr. McLarry was interviewed by the Secret Service Tuesday night and was
arrested this morning. The agency indicated that the case had not been
pursued immediately after the assassination because there had been more
pressing things to do.

Could Get Five Years

Mr. McLarry was charged under a Federal statue that prohibits threats of

bodily harm or death to a President, Vice President or President-elect.
Conviction could carry a fine of up to $8,000 or five years in prison.

AND

>From "The (Washington) Evening Star", 12/19/63
[this newspaper article photocopy was found in DNC advance man Jerry
Bruno's
JFK Library Texas trip files]

"TEXAS STUDENT CHARGED IN THREAT ON KENNEDY"
FORT WORTH, Tex., Dec. 19 (AP)---Russell Wence McLarry, 21, a night
atudent
at Arlington State College, was arrested today and charged with
threatening
the life of the late President Kennedy.
Mr. McLarry worked in the daytime in a building across from the
Trade
Mart in Dallas where Mr. Kennedy was scheduled to speak November 22. Mr.

Kennedy was assaassinated in a motorcade in Dallas en route to the Trade
Mart.
Mr. McLarry was arraigned before United States Commissioner Bill
Atkins
today. He was to be given a preliminary hearing later.
Secret Service agents and Assistant United States Attorney William
Hughes interrogated Mr. McLarry before he was charged. When the
complaint
was issue Deputy United States Marshal Joe Parker took McLarry into
custody.
The Complaint was signed by Charles E. Kunkel, special agent for the
Secret
Service.
The complaint alleged that "on November 21 he (Mr. McLarry) made
certain
threats to take the life of and to inflict bodliy harm upon John F.
Kennedy,
then the President of the United States, by stating in substance that he

would be working near the Trade Mart in Dallas, Tex., where the
President
was suppposed to
speak, and that he would be waiting with a gun to get the president."
These remarks, the complaint alleged, were made in the presence of
witnesses.
Mr. McLarry gave his occupation as a machinist. He was sullen during
the
arraignment and said little.
When asked if he wanted a preliminary hearing, he nodded his head
affirmatively. Mr. Atkins advised him that he could have witnesses and
an
attorney at the hearing.
"I want to call my sister and get my business straightened up," Mr.
McLarry said.
Mr. Atkins asked him if anyone knew he was being charged.
"There is a probability of it," Mr. McLarry replied.

I may have missed this-more crap from Blaine circa Fall 2010

FK's Secret Service agents write about guilt, events leading to assassination in "Kennedy Detail"
Book signing Friday at Carollwood Barnes and Noble

By: Carson Chambers
TAMPA - Everyone can pinpoint a moment in life we wish we could change; details we often dwell on.
Three United States Secret Service Agents have this in common. Their regrets start in Tampa in November of 1963.
"It was sunny outside,” Blaine remembers. "We had 28 miles of motorcade.  We had an appearance at Lopez Field, which has been replaced by the Steinbrenner family and also the National Guard Armory."
Agent Gerald Blaine was working the President's Secret Service detail that day along what was once called Grand Central Avenue.
"All the sudden he looked over his shoulder and saw the agents riding on the back of the car. He tapped the agent-in-charge [FLOYD BORING]on the shoulder and said "Have the Ivy League Charlatans drop back to the follow-up car,'" according to Blaine. "The President said essentially, 'look, my political style is to be with the people and if I have agents hovering over me, it detracts from that.'"
[TOTAL FICTION: JFK NEVER SAID THAT! CONGRESSMAN SAM GIBBONS SAT RIGHT NEXT TO JFK AND DENIED THIS EVER HAPPENED; FLOYD BORING SAID IT WASN'T TRUE; THE LIST GOES ON] The President's orders, given to Agent Blaine and Secret Service Agent Chuck Zboril, along what is now Kennedy Boulevard, set the stage for the tragedy that unfolded 100 yards after a slow turn onto Elm Street in Dallas, Texas.
[MORE TOTAL CRAP]"We had the top off because the weather conditions were such that it was a beautiful day,” said Hill. He says there were a lot of people hanging out of windows and on balconies.
Agent Clint Hill's Secret Service detail was to protect Mrs. Kennedy. His regrets are he couldn't do more.
"I heard an explosive noise from the right rear," recounted Hill. "What I saw was the President grabbing his throat.  So I jumped off the follow-up car, ran toward the Presidential vehicle,” he said. "The driver accelerated, the car starting moving forward, causing me to slip. I regained my foothold but before I did a third shot rang out."
Agent Hill has spent nearly fifty years dissecting those six seconds.
"I was the only one who was in a position to do anything,” Hill said. "If I had been a second and a half faster, quicker, I'd a been there in time.”
Agent Zboril was in Tampa, but not Dallas, and still shoulders guilt.
"My shift was on-duty that day and I had the temporary assignment to go to Atoka and I thought if I had been there maybe history would have been a little different,” said Agent Zboril.
[WHY??? JFK'S "ORDER" LEFT YOU GUYS ALL OFF THE HOOK...OOPS-DO YOU SHOULDER THAT GUILT BECAUSE YOU KNOW JFK DID NOT ORDER YOU OFF THE LIMO?]"That was the terrible thing when he was assassinated, we all had the guilty feeling about it and felt that we had failed," Agent Blaine told us.
These three Secret Service Agents still dwell on these details, the kind that changed them -- and history.
"It never gets any easier," said Agent Hill.[THAT'S O.K.-JUST WRITE ANOTHER BOOK AND MAKE SOME MORE BLOOD MONEY PROFIT]
The Secret Service Agents will be signing copies of their book "The Kennedy Detail" Friday night at 7 PM at the Carrollwood Barnes and Noble on North Dale Mabry.
Editor's Note:  Some images used in the video are courtesy of the St. Petersburg Times archives.

JFK Agent Abraham Bolden LOVES Dan Emmett's new book!

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best books on presidential protection, February 24, 2012
By Fmr. Agent Abraham Bolden - See all my reviewsThis review is from: Within Arm's Length: The Extraordinary Life and Career of a Special Agent in the United States Secret Service (Paperback)
As an ex-secret service agent and the first African American to be assigned to the Secret Service White House Detail during the presidency of John F. Kennedy, I found "Within Arm's Length" to be to be a very well written and informative book detailing the duties of a secret service agent. Without embellishing or attempting to paint a heroic picture of the awesome job of presidential protection, Agent Emmett skillfully gives the reader an inside view of what it means to be an agent of the elite group of agents surrounding the president.

I was deeply impressed by his descriptions of the responsibilities and duties of the advance detail agents who are responsible for setting up the protection of the president whenever the president travels. The marvel of this book is that it describes these procedures without sacrificing the security of the current operations.

This is a book well written. It is a "must read" for anyone anticipating a job in government security services or police administration

"The Kennedy Detail"-another great review

1.0 out of 5 stars Please, No, February 24, 2012
By Dr. Michael D. Halsey "cicero" (Stockbridge, GA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME) This review is from: The Kennedy Detail: JFK's Secret Service Agents Break Their Silence (Hardcover)
This book is not only poorly written, but it's also a picture of a President and First Lady who can do nothing wrong in the author's eyes. In view of all we now know, it must have been difficult for the author to write such a like as, "The President always put his family first. Yeah, right.

The demand of Jackie Kennedy that she and all the heads of state walk in the funeral procession which put the world leaders and the new President at risk was foolish.

The book becomes repetitious in its relating of how continually exhausted the agents of the SS were and the constant, "Stay on task. Stay on task" mantra becomes just as boring. We read the endless reports of how long they were away from their families, how their holidays were ruined every year. Rather than whining, the tired, exhausted agents who always repeat, "Stay on task, stay on task," could have found other occupations. If you plan to read this publicity piece, get it from the library, or borrow it from a friend--he'll be glad to get it off his hands.

Nice new Amazon review of "The Kennedy Detail"

Apple polishing for the Kennedy Secret Service agents, February 23, 2012
By Gary Warne "Gary Warne" (Orlando, FL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME) This review is from: The Kennedy Detail: JFK's Secret Service Agents Break Their Silence (Hardcover)
I picked up this book after reading the back cover blurb that stated it was the first time in almost fifty years that the remaining agents who were a part of Kennedy's protection team were speaking about what happened the day they lost the very person they were tasked to protect. This was their one and only duty at that time and their version of events needed to be set down for posterity. I was very interested in reading their story and I was hoping there would be some new information that came to light along with explanations for events involving agents that, so far, had not been addressed. It was a vain hope.
To say I am extremely disappointed in Gerald Blaine's whitewash of events surrounding the assassination does a disservice to the word 'disappoint'. This was a lot of fluff with selected remembrances interspersed throughout to show what dedicated men these were, and that they cannot truly be blamed for what transpired on November 22, 1963.
It's interesting to know what individual agents thought about doing as the assassination unfolded, but the only agent who actually reacted, and even his was too late, was Clint Hill, In the book, Blaine's memory doesn't serve him well as what he claims about Clint and the other agent's reactions, and what is evident in the Zapruder film and dozens of other photographs taken during the assassination, are at complete odds. At no point does Blaine explain why the Secret Service, to this day, maintains that shots one and three hit only Kennedy, and shot two hit only Connally. What about the shot that ricocheted off a curb across the plaza and the debris injured James Tague? His wounding doesn't count?
He doesn't address the issue of Dallas policeman Joe M. Smith who confronted a man behind the picket fence at the top of the grassy knoll who showed Secret Service credentials just seconds after the assassination. The Secret Service maintains that ALL of its agents were in the motorcade, at the Love Field, or at the Trade Mart, and that none were anywhere in Dealey Plaza during the shooting, except in the motorcade. One would think the Secret Service would be VERY interested in anyone masquerading as an agent.
What about agent Roy Kellerman who stated that the second and third shots came almost one on top the other, and that that testimony is backed up by Constable Seymour Weitzman who was in the lead car, reporter Mary Elizabeth Woodward; the closest reporter to the assassination at the time it happened, Abraham Zapruder and his secretary, and Linda Kay Willis among others? All of those people testified to the Warren Commission that the second and third shots were very close together, and ALL of their testimonies were ignored. NO ONE testified that the assassination went 'first shot...two and half seconds pass...second shot...two and a half seconds pass...third shot'.
He makes light of the fact that, according to Texas law, it was illegal to remove a homicide victim's body before an autopsy could be performed: calling compliance with that law 'nonsense', 'completely irrational' and 'they didn't have to put up with this crap.' This book is nothing more than apple polishing to exonerate and cover the asses of the agents who lost JFK.
Blaine supports the Warren Commission Report even though the Warren Report came to a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT conclusion than the Secret Service! Laughably, in his attempt to sustain the Warren Commission's fiction, he addresses a handful of conspiracy theories, making sure to only tackle the most bizarre or easily refuted ones, like Bonar Menninger's absurd Mortal Error. What Blaine himself states repeatedly throughout the book can be turned back on him...Where does he come up with this stuff?
Oddly, the book is written in the third person as if Blaine is trying to disassociate himself from the experience. But maybe that was his intent; to somehow be excluded from connection with the event that eliminated the president whose life Blaine was charged with protecting. The only way to justify that loss was to conclude that it wasn't possible to save JFK from a lone-nut assassin. So anything that bolstered that scenario was the only one to support, and that would be the Warren Report.
If you enjoy feces dipped in sugar before consumption, this is the book for you.

ABRAHAM BOLDEN PETITION FOR PRESIDENTIAL PARDON

The following petition has been started at:

ABRAHAM BOLDEN PETITION FOR PRESIDENTIAL PARDON
http://abrahambolden-petition-presidentialpardon.com/

Please consider signing it in support of former Secret Service Agent Abraham Bolden who threatened to expose the Chicago plot to kill President Kennedy in 1963.



Abraham Bolden: Imprisoned for Following the Oath

Published February 12, 2011



To the President of These United States of America

The Honorable Barack H. Obama



The undersigned hereby petitions the President of the United States of America to expunge, pardon or take other executive action that will clear the record of conviction of Abraham W. Bolden, Sr. In support of this petition, we submit the following:



Abraham Bolden is an African American and was born to Daniel and Ophelia Bolden in East St. Louis , Illinois on January 19, 1935. He attended Lincoln High School and, upon graduation, entered Lincoln University in Jefferson City , Missouri . Later, Bolden married his long time friend and schoolmate, Barbara L. Hardy (Bolden) to whom he was married for 49 years prior to her death. To that marriage were born 3 children, Ahvia Maria Bolden (Reynolds), Abraham Bolden Jr., and Dr. Daaim Shabazz . Bolden has two grandchildren, Ismail and Cydni Bolden.



Bolden attended public schools in East St. Louis , Illinois and was graduated from Lincoln High School in June, 1952. Because of his proficiency in playing the trumpet, he received a scholarship to Lincoln University in Jefferson City , Missouri and was graduated “cum Laude” in June of 1956 with a BA in Music Composition.



After graduating from Lincoln University , Bolden decided to enter the field of law enforcement. He subsequently became the first African American Detective to be employed by the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. After leaving the detective agency, he served as a State Highway Patrolman in the State of Illinois . Continuing to advance in the field of police work, Bolden became a member of the United States Secret Service in October 1960.



Bolden met President John F. Kennedy in Chicago , Illinois and, after a brief conversation with Bolden, President Kennedy was instrumental in making Bolden the first African American to be assigned to the Secret Service White House Detail in Washington , D.C. in June of 1961.



Bolden traveled with the President; but he became disenchanted with the assignment when some of his fellow agents used racial slurs in his presence and engaged in a pattern of conduct that, in Bolden’s professional opinion, endangered the life of President John F. Kennedy. Bolden was very vocal in his criticism of the protective detail first discussing the matter of the laxity and misconduct of the President’s security with the then Chief of the United States Secret Service U.E. Baughman. Bolden further complained above the unprofessional activities of the detail with his immediate superiors in Chicago , Illinois .



After President John F. Kennedy was assassinated and after having previously discussed his complaints of secret service misconduct with the Chief of the U.S. Secret Service and his immediate superiors in Chicago to no avail, Bolden was intent upon bringing information concerning the President’s lack of proper security to officials of the Warren Commission who were investigating the President’s death. On May 18, 1964, while attending Secret Service School, Bolden was whisked out of Washington , D.C. under a pretext, returned to Chicago whereupon he was denied a request for representation by an attorney and hastily arrested by high administrators within the secret service who charged Bolden with the commission of a federal crime.



Bolden endured two federal criminal trials within a period of less then two months in the Federal District Court in Chicago , Illinois . At the end of the first trial, during the deliberation of the jury, the trial judge stated to the jury that in his opinion, the evidence sustained a verdict of guilty on all counts of the indictment. The trial judge then prompted the jury to continue deliberation taking the judge’s opinion into consideration. That trial ended when the jury, in spite of the judge’s prejudicial remarks, was unable to reach a verdict. (See United States vs. Bolden, 64CR324 and Fed. 2nd 453)



Bolden’s second trial was conducted before the same trial judge who denied a motion for a substitution of judge and a change of venue. At the conclusion of the second trial on August 11, 1964, at the judge’s instigation and acquiescence, Bolden and his attorney, and other non government employed spectators, were locked out of the court building during the deliberation of the jury. During the forced absence of Bolden from the trial procedures, a verdict of guilty was returned.

The case against Bolden began to fall apart when one of the witnesses

Joseph Spagnoli, who testified against Bolden, confessed that he and another witness, Frank William Jones, concocted and fabricated the criminal case against Bolden with the help of an Assistant United States Attorney. In spite of Spagnoli’s confession and documentary evidence tending to support Spagnoli’s accusation, the government refused to deny the charges levied by Spagnoli. When questioned before a three judge panel during oral arguments before the United States Court of Appeals concerning Spagnoli’s assertions made under oath in open court, the accused assistant government attorney refused to answer the question of the subornation of perjury and availed himself of his fifth amendment rights against self incrimination. Notwithstanding, Bolden was sent away to the penitentiary.



Bolden was subsequently sent to the prison camp at the Springfield Medical Center for Federal Prisoners. Following a disagreement with one of the psychiatric patients, Bolden was held in solitary confinement, in the psychiatric ward against his will and without the mandatory court order regarding inmate medical treatment. He was forced to ingest psychotropic drugs. The effort to declare Bolden insane was unsuccessful and Bolden was paroled in September of 1969 after serving three years and three months in federal confinement.



After being released from prison, Bolden established himself as a master at quality control administrative procedures in various machining and metal fabricating companies in Chicago . He retired after serving 35 years in quality control supervisory positions.



For his tireless efforts in the pursuit of justice and equity before the law, Bolden has been the recipient of the 2008 Scottish Hugo’s Companion Tankard Award for Courage, the 2008 African American Arts Alliance Award for Excellence, the 2008 Alpha Phi Alpha Award for Courage. He has been cited by the National Urban League as one of America ’s Outstanding Black Men.



He now lives in Chicago , Illinois where he has been a resident for the past 47 years.



The undersigned believes that the above circumstances of injustice and a lack of due process in obtaining a conviction of Bolden cry out for executive action that will remedy the sufferings of Abraham W. Bolden, Sr. He has been a model citizen since his release from federal confinement on September 25, 1969 and it is now time that his human rights



John Judge

Coalition on Political Assassinations (COPA)

PO Box 772

Washington, DC 20044

copa@starpower.net



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Thursday, January 19, 2012

The Unsinkable Vince Palamara


Recently on Facebook, the recipient of this derisive comment boldly posted it for all to see:

"Vince Palamara?! I know who you are. I think you're crazier than a shithouse rat! Don't ever call me again!"



The remark was made by former JFK Secret Service agent Larry Newman who, up to that point, Vince had considered to be a "friendly contact."

For those unfamiliar with the name, Vince Palamara has spent years researching the role of the Secret Service throughout the Kennedy administration, specifically pinpointing the period prior to, during, and following the president's assassination. He is recognized as an authority in this particular area.

Lately, Vince has been on a mission to clarify issues raised by author and former Secret Service agent Gerald Blaine in his recent book, "The Kennedy Detail" (Gallery Books, 2010). Type "Vince Palamara" into You Tube and you'll get a sampling of Vince's feelings regarding that book as well as Blaine's feelings regarding Vince. Rewarding also is a visit to Vince's blog at: http://vincepalamara.blogspot.com/

Because of continued interest in this aspect of the case, I asked Vince if he'd care to submit an article for inclusion on this website. He agreed and, in fact, submitted two. You'll find the first, a 13,000-word treatise, by clicking on the new Submissions tab above. Vince's second article will appear later.

In fact, let me extend to all -- researchers and readers alike -- an invitation to send me anything you may have written related to the JFK assassination that you'd like to share with others in future updates to this page. Hopefully, your words will spark further interest and discussion.

Former JFK Secret Service agents dine at D.C. restaurant

Former JFK Secret Service agents dine at D.C. restaurant February 9, 2012, 3:26 pm by Megan McCourt

SPOTTED: Former Secret Service agents Clinton Hill and Gerald Blaine, who were guarding President John F. Kennedy the day of his assassination.

The pair was seen lunching at LINCOLN, a downtown D.C. restaurant devoted to another famous former president, on Wednesday. The group dined on a braised pork belly Cuban sandwich, salmon, a LINCOLN burger, and lemonades as they sat in the restaurant’s “Lincoln Chair.”

Earlier in the day, Hill and Blaine had some high-flying fun, as the U.S. Park Police took them to the Arlington National Cemetery, the Holocaust Memorial Museum, and on a helicopter ride.

The men have remained mum for nearly 50 years since JFK’s death [false: many spoke to me, while several spoke to others, years before Blaine's book came out], but spoke at park police trainings on Wednesday and Thursday.

Blaine wrote a book called The Kennedy Detail released in 2010 that reveals the details of JFK’s assassination from the Secret Service agents’ point of view.



Reactions
ThomasTincher 1 week ago

From twitter

"@thehill: Former JFK Secret Service agents back in DC to lecture US Park Police http://t.co/Gd2DGr18" like these r the guys u want advising

Fact-Checking Mimi Alford

In Mimi Alford's 2012 book "Once Upon A Secret", the inside flap jacket, as well as pages 3-5, not to mention press interviews she has given, gives the distinct and quite erroneous impression that Mimi's original last name---Beardsley--- was heretofore unknown, although acknowledging that she was mentioned in Robert Dallek's 2003 masterpiece "JFK: An Unfinished Life", wherein historian Dallek quotes from Barbara Gamarekian's 1964 JFK Library oral history, then recently released. Gamarekian was the one who claimed not to remember Mimi's last name at that time, not Dallek. For her part, Alford states on page 5 of her book: "Dallek's mention of an UNNAMED "White House intern" lit a fire at the New York Daily News (emphasis added)."

However, Dallek's book, a #1 national best seller, not only DOES indeed note Mimi's then-last name of Beardsley, on page 476 and the index on page 813, but she is PICTURED in Dallek's book with a caption "Mimi Beardsley, intern in the White House", in the second set of unpaginated photographs between pages 502 and 503 (with the photo acknowledgement going to CNN) [all references are to the 2004 Trade Paperback edition-YOU WOULD THINK SOMEONE AT RANDOM HOUSE WOULD HAVE NOTED THE MASS PAPERBACK/KINDLE/ONLINE UPDATE]! In fact, Alford's book purposely OMITS the relevant Dallek passage (s) in question: on page 4 of her own book (quoting word for word from pages 475-476 of Dallek's work), she quotes a verbatim passage from the historian's seminal work that began on page 475 with "Kennedy's womanizing" and ended on page 476 with "she couldn't type." Alford's use of Dallek's quote intentionally omits her name! For his part, Dallek wrote: "...and MIMI BEARDSLEY, a "tall, slender, beautiful: nineteen-year-old college sophomore and White House intern... (emphasis added). Again, not only does Alford intentionally omit this specific identification of her, which could not have been an accident, she says Dallek referred to her as an "unnamed" White House intern (page 5 of her book) and makes great play of the fact that Gamarekian, as previously mentioned, could not remember her last name back in 1964...but she could and did later on, as Dallek interviewed Gamarekian on 4/19/2001 (see page 779 of Dallek's book, Notes section)!
But the point is: Dallek DID mention her last name---on three different pages, including a captioned photograph. Remember, it is Alford who purposely omits the mention of her name "Mimi Beardsley" from an otherwise word-for-word verbatim quote from Dallek---what was the motive for that omission? Yes, we know she became Mimi Fahnestock (page 6) and, later, Mimi Alford (page 9), but she was "found out" as Mimi Beardsley eleven years before publication of her own book (2001 Gamarekian interview with Dallek; 9 full years before via Dallek's published book). In addition, any good investigative reporter worth his or her own salt could find out a woman's current last name with the starting point of having the woman's maiden name. Nevertheless, Dallek HAD that information, publicized it, and Alford makes great stock out of the erroneous "fact" that her then-last name was not known when Dallek's huge best seller came out.

And, if that wasn't enough, Alford mentions being contacted by and politely turning down the author Sally Bedell Smith (page 6): "She honored my request. My secret was safe." However, like Dallek, Smith ALSO mentioned her in her own massive New York Times best-selling book from 2004 entitled "Grace & Power: The Private World Of The Kennedy White House", with as yet ANOTHER captioned photo, as well (photo: unpaginated first photo between pages 290 and 291), as well as with credit on NINE formal pages (287, 330, 334-335, 382-383, 385, 416, and the index on page 584), not to mention sourcing a MARION BEARDSLEY FAHNESTOCK interview on the following "Source Notes" pages: 537 and 561!

What does that say about one's credibility? You decide. Those are the facts. Depending on your love or hate for the book, spin them any way you want.

Yes, I have actually read the entire book now; every word. Verdict: it is good if you like this type of sordid tale; well written, as well. Again, my misgivings go to the credibility factor as outlined above.

11 Responses to FACT-CHECKING MIMI ALFORD
Greg Parker says:
February 14, 2012 at 8:02 pm (Edit)
Vince, you say “any good investigative reporter worth his or her own salt could find out a woman’s current last name with the starting point of having the woman’s maiden name. Nevertheless, Dallek HAD that information, publicized it”. Given that Dallek could have easily tracked her down to request an interview, I can’t fathom your decision to laud him and his book.

It is what a good historian should have done.

Instead, his decision to publish as fact, that which Barbara Gamarekian clearly only delineated as second or third hand gossip, is all the more unconscionable.

Reply
Kirk Stricker says:
February 14, 2012 at 8:26 pm (Edit)
Hello Vince, I love your work and support you enthusiastically. I’ve not read Ms. Alford’s book and have no interest in nor intention of reading it. I think her motives and veracity ought to come under close scrutiny. However, I have a 2003 edition of Robt. Dallek’s book, “An Unfinished Life”, and in my edition the photo you mentioned is not present, the quote you cited beginning on pg. 475 and continuing to 476 mentions a “tall, slender, beautiful, etc.” but does not mention her by name, and the index on pg. 813 goes from an entry for “Bay of Pigs” to “Beck,Dave” and has no citation for “Beardsley” of any kind. I’m confused. Help. Thank you.

Reply
vincepalamara says:
February 14, 2012 at 8:30 pm (Edit)
oh! ok: I have the 2004 Trade Paperback edition. Still predates Alford by many a year. Thanks for that clarification!

Reply
vincepalamara says:
February 14, 2012 at 8:51 pm (Edit)
also: if you go to the Amazon site, pull up Dallek’s book, then search “Look Inside”, you will see the Beardsley references. To put it another way: if we can somehow let Alford off the hook for her ignorance regarding the changes from the hardcover to the trade paperback (and, now, kindle) made the next year, as well as even the 2004 Smith book, it is VERY hard to give a huge publishing company like Random House the benefit of the doubt. Fact checking is crucial, especially with such a controversial subject sure to be (as it is) a massive best-seller reaching the public and influencing people

vincepalamara says:
February 14, 2012 at 8:57 pm (Edit)
(and Sally Bedell Smith’s book is ALSO a Random House venture!)

vincepalamara says:
February 14, 2012 at 8:27 pm (Edit)
VMP [from our Facebook posts/ comments/ replies]-Fair enough; I respect your opinion/ perspective. That said, I am amazed that Alford would pull such a stunt and that no one discovered the ruse until now (my blog). Then again, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised LOL
Greg- “Any thoughts on why she did it?”
VMP- Yes: to make her story more of an “exclusive” and worth publishing.The fact that Gamarekian’s oral history, dated 1964, was sealed until 2003 adds to her credibility. Coupled with the “Fiddle” and “Faddle” ‘affairs’, it seems that there is merit to Alford’s story, albeit NOT the gorey details; they remain and always will be unconfirmed.
Greg- “Exactly”
VMP-(this is all separate from the MERITS of having actually written a book in the first place). JFK had affairs; big deal. Old news. Real or imagined, he allegedly had affairs with Exner(?), Monroe (?), Fiddle, Faddle, etc. Presidents Harding, FDR, Ike, and Clinton also had affairs. I think JFK getting his head blown off “squares his …account”, so to speak. Why the need to further sully his memory is the real question—perhaps to vanquish the enthusiasm for the upcoming 50th anniversary a la Posner, Bugliosi, and Thomas (not-to-be-confused-with-Richard) Reeves before her?
Greg-”Gamarekian’s oral history – as I understand it – was not sealed in entirety – only that part dealing with Mimi – and then only at Gamarekian’s own request. If I have that right, I assume she made that request due to having misgivings about passing on unsubstantiated gossip.”

Reply
Dan Armstrong says:
February 14, 2012 at 10:31 pm (Edit)
Great post, Vince! Also, the 5/13/2003 website The Smoking Guns “smoked” her out years before her book: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/jfk-had-intern-too

Reply
vincepalamara says:
February 14, 2012 at 10:41 pm (Edit)
Thanks! While we can “forgive” Alford somewhat for not knowing about the trade paperback update with Dallek, this 2003 website has been there for almost 9 years and, most damning of all, on the very same publishing house as her book, Sally Bedell Smith, the author she claims she did not cooperate with, sources an interview withAlford (Beardsley-Fahnestock), has a captioned photo of her, and devotes quite a few pages to her. Like Dallek’s book, Smith’s 2004 work was a major best-seller. Random House needed to perform better fact-checking

Reply
Tracie Donato says:
February 14, 2012 at 10:52 pm (Edit)
Excellnt information! You are on more solid ground with the Bedell Smith book than Dallek’s, although someone should have informed Mimi that Dallek’s book mentioned her in the paperback edition-it’s on my kindle and, as you said, on the Amazon website. Random House seems guilty of trying to make her book more of an exclusive than it really is.

Reply
Kirk Stricker says:
February 15, 2012 at 12:00 am (Edit)
Excellent work, as usual, Vince. Thank you for the swift clarification and update. While still reeling a bit from this most recent chapter in the ongoing second assassination of JFK (this time his memory and image), I am grateful that the work you’ve done to expose Mimi Alford’s distortion of facts now stands on solid ground. Thanks again.

Reply
vincepalamara says:
February 15, 2012 at 12:47 pm (Edit)
Thanks! And another thing: Mimi Alford notes on page 4 that she refused to buy any JFK books, merely being satisifed to read snippets of books at bookstores to see if they talked about her, yet she twice quotes, verbatim, from Ted Sorenson’s 2009 book “Counselor”, as well as a Washingtonian magazine article about Pierre Salinger, not to mention other bits and bobs from other Kennedy-worthy items, betraying a knowledge of details she shouldn’t, especially if she really sought to, by and large, avoid Kennedy books as she stated (and that, of course, doesn’t include Dallek’s updated paperback or Smith’s 2004 work that quotes FROM AN INTERVIEW she gave!)

Secret Service Describes JFK as Reckless

Secret Service Describes JFK as Reckless
Monday, 13 Feb 2012 02:37 PM

By Ronald Kessler

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, decisions made by President John F. Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev could have plunged both countries into thermonuclear war.

But the 45-year-old president was preoccupied with 19-year-old White House aide Mimi Beardsley Alford, according to her memoir “Once Upon a Secret.”

Secret Service agents assigned to Kennedy’s detail say that his affair with Alford was just the tip of the iceberg.

As revealed in my book “In the President’s Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect,” agents assigned to Kennedy’s detail soon learned that he led a double life.

He was the charismatic leader of the free world. But in his other life, he was the cheating, reckless husband whose aides snuck women into the White House to appease his sexual appetite.

Former agent Robert Lutz remembers a gorgeous Swedish Pan Am flight attendant who was on the press plane following Kennedy on Air Force One. She seemed to take a liking to Lutz, and he planned to invite her out to dinner. The detail leader noticed that they were getting chummy and told the agent to stay away.

“She’s part of the president’s private stock,” he warned Lutz.

Besides one-night stands, Kennedy had several consorts within the White House. Besides Alford, whose book came out on Feb. 8, one was Pamela Turnure, who had been Kennedy’s secretary when he was a senator and then became Jacqueline Kennedy’s press secretary in the White House.

Two others, Priscilla Wear and Jill Cowen, were secretaries who were known, respectively, as Fiddle and Faddle. Wear already had the nickname Fiddle when she joined the White House staff, so Kennedy aides applied the name Faddle to Cowen.

“Neither did much work,” says former agent Larry Newman, who was on the Kennedy detail.

Wear and Cowen would have threesomes with Kennedy.

When I interviewed Cowen some years back in her New York apartment, she would neither admit nor deny the affair. She pointed out that Kennedy’s women had remained loyal to him up to that point, and she said she was not going to be the first one to break silence. An art historian, Cowen died of brain cancer in 2003.

“When Jackie was away, Pam Turnure would see JFK at night at the residence,” says former Secret Service agent Chuck Taylor. “Fiddle and Faddle were well-endowed and would swim with JFK in the pool. They wore only white t-shirts that came to their waists. You could see their nipples. We had radio contact with Jackie’s detail in case she came back.”

One afternoon, Kennedy was cavorting in the White House pool with young women when Secret Service agents on Jackie’s detail radioed that she was returning unexpectedly to the White House.

“Jackie was expected back in 10 minutes, and JFK came charging out of the pool,” says agent Anthony Sherman, who was on his detail at the time. “He had a bathing suit on and a Bloody Mary in his hand.”

Kennedy looked around and gave the drink to Sherman. “Enjoy it, it’s quite good,” the president said.

According to Secret Service agents, Kennedy had sex with Marilyn Monroe at New York hotels and in a loft above the Justice Department office of then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, the president’s brother.

Between the fifth and sixth floors, the loft contains a double bed that is used when the attorney general needs to stay overnight to handle crises. Its proximity to a private elevator made it easy for Kennedy and Monroe to enter from the Justice Department basement without being noticed.

“He [Kennedy] had liaisons with Marilyn Monroe there,” a Secret Service agent says. “The Secret Service knew about it.”

Kennedy was following the example of his father, Joseph P. Kennedy, who served as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and U.S. ambassador in London.

Like his son Jack, Joe Kennedy mesmerized the press. Until his death in 1969 at the age of 81, Joe would be described in print as a Horatio Alger hero and chaste Roman Catholic, a man who had risen from the home of a saloon keeper in east Boston to become one of the richest men in America.

Usually, Joe Kennedy would be pictured with his wife Rose and one or more of his nine children. The pictures never showed his well-sculpted, green-eyed Hyannis Port secretary, Janet Des Rosiers. As disclosed in my book “The Sins of the Father: Joseph P. Kennedy and the Dynasty He Founded,” she was his mistress for nine years.

Des Rosiers — now Janet Fontaine — concluded that Joe’s wife Rose was aware of Joe’s affair with her and others such as actress Gloria Swanson. She decided that Rose not only tolerated Joe’s philandering but approved of it, since it took pressure off her.

“She must have known I was around all the time and not unattractive,” Des Rosiers told me. “I used to massage Joe’s scalp and neck with Rose in the living room.”

Eventually, Des Rosiers left Joe. She became the stewardess on JFK’s campaign plane and eventually served as one of his secretaries in the White House.

On the plane, Des Rosiers often massaged Jack’s feet and hands behind closed doors. Many reporters thought she must have been having sex with him. In fact, he had made a pass at her, giving her a printed napkin that said, “Don’t you think it’s about time you found me attractive?”

Des Rosiers was not interested.

“A lot of my friends said, ‘Why don’t you get a Kennedy boy?’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t marry one of them for anything.’ I wasn’t impressed by their wealth. They didn’t appeal to me. I didn’t want to be in that group.”

Since the “kill shot” to the president’s head came 4.9 seconds after the first shot that hit him, Secret Service agents would have had a chance to protect him.

“If agents had been allowed on the rear running boards, they would have pushed the president down and jumped on him to protect him before the fatal shot,” former agent Taylor tells me.

Confirming that, Secret Service Director Lewis Merletti later said, “An analysis of the ensuing assassination — including the trajectory of the bullets which struck the president — indicates that it might have been thwarted had agents been stationed on the car’s running boards.”

JFK mistress gets no love from her tale

JFK mistress gets no love from her tale
By Margery Eagan
Sunday, February 12, 2012 -
Boston Herald Columnist

Maybe America has lived through so many political sex scandals, one more fails to grab us. Mimi Alford, the latest JFK mistress to tell all, drew only 5 million viewers to her debut interview Wednesday with NBC’s Meredith Vieira. Meanwhile, 19 million tuned into “American Idol” that night and 70 million watched Barbara Walters depose Monica Lewinsky in 1999.

Or maybe we’re not as titillated by a grandmother’s confession, no matter how gorgeous Mimi Alford remains at 69.

But clearly the double standard remains. There’s one for the powerful, one for the powerless; one for the middle-aged politician, another for the teenage intern or, in Lewinsky’s case, the 22-year-old. No new revelation about the sordid womanizing of both Clinton and Kennedy seems to hurt these men’s legacies. Clinton is the most popular Democrat alive today. Lewinsky, 38, lives with struggle and ridicule. NBC on Wednesday brought out historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and MSNBC’s Chris Matthews to assure viewers that Alford’s “Once Upon A Secret” has not sullied Camelot, though she is even more sympathetic than Lewinsky.

Alford arrived at the White House a 19-year-old virgin kissed just once — in eighth grade. In pictures taken then, she looks like a baby-faced middle-schooler in modest cardigan sweaters and pearls. She writes that JFK got her tipsy, escorted her into a White House bedroom and quickly had sex with her. Worse, he allegedly later asked her to perform sex acts on his aide Dave Powers and his brother Ted. This is uncorroborated, but Vieira, a veteran journalist, described Alford as “credible” and her name has been known by Kennedy biographers, none of whom she talked to.

Still, the trashing of Alford is well under way. It was so uncomfortable watching Barbara Walters go after her on “The View,” particularly since Walters has written an autobiography revealing her affair with a married U.S. senator of Massachusetts, Ed Brooke. And Walters was no teenager at the time but the co-host of “Today” and well into her 30s.

All but pummeled by Walters, Alford said she wrote her story now both because she did not want some other biographer to tell it for her, perhaps erroneously; and because her secret had haunted her, taking a terrible toll on her marriage, which failed, and her psyche.

Alford, while not blaming Kennedy, tries to explain how easily she fell for the most powerful man on earth. She tells of limousines fetching her at Wheaton College, of parties at Bing Crosby’s, of the thrill of being allowed so close to this glamorous world. “Being part of it — that was huge, for me,” she said. “I was special; I was taken in. When I think about it, I go back to feeling sort of — chosen ...” Then, “I’m in the bedroom, he’s so handsome, I’m 19, and I’ve had two daiquiris. ... Do I know one person who would have done differently?”

My bet: Many would do just what she did, then pay an awful price. But Clinton and Kennedy did not, and won’t, pay a price anywhere near so dear for their many, many, many transgressions
--
Posted at 12:14 PM ET, 02/09/2012
JFK Mistress Mimi Alford: Do you care?
By Michael Katz

(Mimi Alford in January 1963 (Courtesy of Mimi Alford)) The details of Mimi Alford’s affair with President John F. Kennedy continue to trickle out from her new book and into the news cycle.

The latest salacious tidbit from the former White House intern’s memoir is that JFK once asked her to “take care of my baby brother” Ted.

There was also the revelation that she was with the president on the final night of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

With more sordid tales sure to come, how interested are you in this story?


[More: Why it’s relevant | Why she did it | Affairs still political killer?]

Vote in our reader poll after the jump and explain yourself in the comments.

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Yes 38%
Washington Post

GREAT REVIEW of Alford's book

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars When is a secret really a secret?, February 13, 2012
By The Good Book Lady (Philadelphia) - See all my reviewsAmazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Once Upon a Secret: My Affair with President John F. Kennedy and Its Aftermath (Hardcover)
This book - though well-written and captivating - is an embarrasment to Mimi and the American Public. So she had an intimate relationship with JFK. I believe those intimate moments should have been kept a secret. It was not "the secret" that ruined Mimi's first marriage, it was her incredible and overwhelming guilt over the affair. She should not have told her fiance in fact, she should not have even married him. After JFK was killed she should have gone straight to therapy! It sounds as though she has convinced herself she is well now - by virtue of her current marriage. She is also using this book as therapy and we - who bought it - are all party to this charade. While I do not condone JFK's actions with Mimi or any other woman outside his marriage, what I do know is that she has not been loyal to JFK's love for her nor loyal to his memory. She said after the first time, she not only knew what she was doing but, she accepted and wanted his intimacy so, she was the other dancer in the dance. JFK would not have expected nor wanted her to "tell all" about the inner workings of the White House, no matter how sordid the situation, that was then. We can argue that she might or might not have been old enough to play adult games when she was an Intern but, what is her excuse now? I guarantee this book will not clear her conscience nor relieve her guilt, and the money she makes on the sale of the books and the interviews will only make her life worse.

Reader's scathing comments about Alford

Why now? Good grief; leave him to RIP. It's been nearly 49 years since JFK's death, but ne'er-do-well folks, such as this aide, refuse to let him lie in peace, or offer his remaining family any shred of dignity.

Money, the root of all evil, runs rampant once again! I, for one, will not buy her book, and refuse to allow this 'dead-in-the-water' story, cloud my mind. Our beloved Mr. Kennedy was human, and he suffered the same frailties as any person throughout history. While I don't condone extramarital affairs, this appears to have been a mutual consent tryst, so, to me, becomes a non-issue. It's also a non-story, and this senior citizen is merely trying to capture her youth. She's pathetic and a sore loser.
-------
Well it`s one thing to have an affair - alot of people do that..... It`s quite another thing to be asked to blow his buddy while he watches and than asked again to do his brother....

She might have been 19 but she was a doing the w hore thing .....

So getting it off her chest now --- just makes them both look bad....

JFK intern recounts long-ago affair in new book

JFK intern recounts long-ago affair in new book
By KAREN MATTHEWS | Associated Press 2/13/12

NEW YORK (AP) — Mimi Alford was terrified in 1998 when the Monica Lewinsky scandal turned the word "intern" into a dirty joke, exposing an affair with a president. Her decades-old secret about her trysts with John F. Kennedy was still safe then.

Outed in a 2003 biography and a New York newspaper account, Alford has learned to tell her story and not be ashamed of it — from the moment she said Kennedy seduced her on her fourth day working at the White House until the affair ended shortly before his death.

In "Once Upon a Secret: My Affair with President John F. Kennedy and its Aftermath," published last week by Random House, she writes of her first encounter as a naïve teenager, her "varied and fun" sex life with Kennedy, whom she always called Mr. President.

The Rumson, N.J., native was 19 and had no sexual experience when she first went to bed with Kennedy in his wife, Jacqueline's, bedroom. It was June 1962.

"Short of screaming," she writes, "I doubt I could have done anything to thwart his intentions."

Nor did she want to thwart his intentions.

"I wouldn't describe what happened that night as making love," she writes. "But I wouldn't call it nonconsensual, either." Addressing people who have questioned the encounter, she said: "I don't consider it was rape. I have never considered it rape because I was willing."

The relationship continued, even after Alford had become engaged while attending college in suburban Boston, until Kennedy's 1963 assassination, she wrote.

The two raced rubber ducks in the bathtub; they had multiple sexual encounters, though he never kissed her; when he called her at her college dorm, he would use the code name Michael Carter, she wrote.

Her account seems "quite credible," said Robert Dallek, whose Kennedy biography made a passing reference to a college sophomore who was a favorite of the president's.

"This is how he operated," Dallek said. "He was a compulsive womanizer."

A lawyer for the Kennedy family did not respond to requests for comment over the weekend.

Writing the book was liberating, Alford said in an interview last week in her publisher's midtown Manhattan offices. Now 68, Alford was slim and elegant in a gray knit dress, gray pageboy hairstyle and pearl earrings.

She was Marion "Mimi" Beardsley when she arrived at the White House press office the summer after her freshman year at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, then an all-girls school.

The affair began during her summer internship and continued when she returned to Wheaton in the fall, she wrote. It continued while she dated and until a few months after her engagement to Tony Fahnestock, a senior at Williams. She was deep into wedding preparations when Kennedy was shot.

Overcome with grief, she confessed the affair to her fiancé. He told her never to breathe a word of it. She promised, fearful that the only alternative was to break off the engagement, and she largely kept the promise, telling only a trusted few. It took years for her to see the connection between her silence about the relationship and "the emotional shutting down" that had blighted much of her life.

"I needed to look at the secret and then look at the impact of having kept the secret for so long," she said.

Mimi and Tony Fahnestock divorced in 1991 and he died in 1993. Alford married again in 2005, to Dick Alford. Her two daughters from her marriage to Fahnestock are in their 40s, are mothers themselves and have supported her decision to write of her experience, she said.

The book took several years and multiple drafts. Alford supplemented her memory with research at the Kennedy Library, where she found her name on passenger logs from plane trips with Kennedy's entourage.

The story she tells is not always flattering to Kennedy or to Alford herself.

She felt no guilt, she wrote, with regard to the first lady, whom she never met.

"I do now," she said.

But at the time, "it wasn't as if I was trying to replace her or that the president was trying to replace her. I think I just went along. And so I didn't feel guilty. It's kind of embarrassing to say that."

Alford knows that readers may judge her harshly; "it doesn't frighten me," she said.

She describes Kennedy as "a kind and thoughtful man." And then, she tells stories of what she calls his darker side.

She says Kennedy once asked her to "take care of" his aide Dave Powers, who had served as the go-between facilitating the affair; she performed oral sex on Powers while Kennedy watched. The president later apologized to both of them.

On another occasion, she wrote, he asked her to do the same for his brother Teddy. She refused.

Then there was a party with a "fast Hollywood crowd" at Bing Crosby's house in Palm Springs, Calif., that she attended with the president. A guest offered yellow pills that she believed were poppers, or amyl nitrate, a drug often used to enhance sexual pleasure.

Kennedy asked her if she wanted to try one and she said no, but she said he popped the capsule and held it under her nose anyway.

"Within minutes of inhaling the powder, my heart started racing and my hands began to tremble," she writes. "This was a new sensation, and it frightened me. I panicked and ran crying from the room, praying that it would end soon."

Alford debated whether to share episodes like this, taking them out of the book and putting them back in. If she had excluded them, she said, "it would have felt like I was not telling the whole story."

When the affair with Kennedy was revealed in 2003 — the Daily News of New York published her name — Alford spent a few days holed up in her apartment with the media camped outside. Then they left and she started going to work and going grocery shopping again.

After interviews to promote "Once Upon a Secret," she expects to return to her quiet life once more.

"It's sort of like closing a chapter on that 18 months," she said, "and closing a chapter on keeping secrets."

..

This comment from a reader sums up Mimi Alford's book well

This comment from a reader sums up Mimi Alford's book well

"It really won't shock many readers coming at this late date when JFK's sexual adventures are well known. And it includes a lot of great stuff about the hidden, secret personality of JFK. This is one of the best reads to be published so far this year. And it won't cause JFK's fans to lose their respect for President Kennedy."

Blaine's book proven a lie AGAIN: Secret Service aware of JFK affairs!

MIMI ALFORD: "TODAY" transcript 2/9/12

Woman reveals ‘dark side’ of JFK affair Advertise | AdChoices>>> back now at 8:09 with the woman who claims she had an affair with president john f. kennedy during her time as a white house intern. we'll talk to mimi alford exclusively in just a moment. but first, her story. for mimi alford , then mimi beardsley, it was a secret that started in the summer of 1962 rks when the 19-year-old debutante from a prominent new jersey family began what she says was an 18-month affair with president john f. kennedy . her secret was first revealed in 2003 , when historian, robert dallek wrote in his biography of jfk ha a tall, slender, beautiful white house intern was rumored to be among the president's many paramours. at the time, mimi wasn't offering details. she released a short statement confirming the affair, and then disappeared. now in a tell-all book, "once upon a secret," she reveals explicit details about her alleged affair with jfk, which include close encounters in this white house swimming pool , losing her virginity to the president in jackie kennedy 's bedroom. sleep-overs at the white house and trips with the 35th president. mimi alford , good morning to you. and welcome. thanks for being here.

>> thanks for having me.

>> watching the interviews that meredith vieira did with you last night. you watched it as well --

>> i did.

>> i was struck by how you are still sad after 50 years. by all that's happened. what makes you most sad?

>> what really makes me most sad is not having been able to talk. not having been able to talk about what i was part of, what had happened to me. and that's what makes me the saddest.

>> you write --

>> and also that you know, going back and from hindsight, looking back as that relationship i had with president kennedy was, was so imbalanced. though there were lots of positive things about it for me. it was also imbalanced. so it wasn't, it didn't help me learn how to have a real relationship with a man.

>> so you're sad in part for that 19-year-old, happy, joyful, fun-to-be around girl, who suddenly lost her innocence?

>> yes. but she also had fun. i also had fun. so i'm sad for that, that she -- but i had a good time. i was there.

>> you write that for years afterwards, you were quote emotionally crippled. and you were struggling to overcome the consequences of that relationship. do you think we would ever be sitting here if you had not been outed in 2003 ?

>> i can't say for sure. but i don't think so. because so many things would have been different in my life, and what's given me the confidence to tell my story and to talk about my story now, is that i have a life and a relationship that has given me space to be myself. all of me. and i think that that's, that's what changed.

>> and so you tell the story now of this intern who on her fourth day as an intern at the white house , was invited to join the president, essentially, in a swimming pool . and then later on, being led then to private quarters, and then, invited by the president on a tour to mrs. kennedy 's bedroom. what happened in that bedroom, mimi ?

>> well the president had invited me to take a tour of the white house . of the upstairs of the white house . and i followed along behind him. and as i say in my book, really feeling as if i was being pulled by a magnet. and in the last room that we went into, was the bedroom. i learned that it was mrs. kennedy 's bedroom. and the president came very close to me and put his hands on my shoulders. and guided me down to the edge of the bed. and i lost my virginity right there. i feel that i was, it wasn't something that i had planned. and certainly not something that i was expecting to have happen. on the other hand, i think i allowed it to happen.

>> you didn't say no?

>> i didn't say no.

>> but at 19 years old, as you were in this situation, that you didn't expect, what did you think was happening to you?

>> i'm not sure i knew what was going to happen. and i think i was taken by surprise. and i think that i felt -- if i can recall my feelings from that moment, it would have been that it was almost what i was supposed to be doing. it's very odd to feel that way. but it was, i didn't, i didn't say no. and i didn't, i didn't feel like i was really being forced.

>> but you were definitely in a state of shock afterward?

>> i think i must have been, yes.

>> were you in a state of shock , do you think, during?

>> no. i don't think so.

>> you didn't tell your parents. you went home.

>> yes.

>> you didn't want to be around anyone. you took a shower.

>> well i went home, no the to my parents' home, but to where i was living in georgetown. and my roommate there, she wasn't home. and i did, i took a shower and i just tried to put my mind around what had happened. and i really, i didn't call my parents.

>> why not? why didn't you call your parents and tell them what had happened?

>> i don't know. i think it was an era when we really, when i didn't really have that kind of a relationship with my parents, that i would have told them. and that makes me sad, and i regret that today. i regret that my parents don't know. maybe not even at that moment, if i hadn't told them. but later on, because they would have known more about me.

>> but did you feel that they would have comforted you? do you think that would have understood? or do you think when you talk about this being that era, are you thinking that they would have condemned you?

>> i think at the time, i didn't think that. i just thought, this has happened. and i was just trying to understand it myself. so i didn't reach out to them.

>> after that, you were invited to another swim.

>> yes.

>> and there was a pivotal, you call it a pivotal moment.

>> uh-huh.

>> because you were pretty shocked as you write about it in the book, but you said yes.

>> i know.

>> why did you say yes?

>> well, you have to understand what it was like to be in the white house at that time. and this is president kennedy . and this was, i was being included in a small group of people that knew him. it was very, it was almost like being swept away.

>> but at the same time, you say you always called him mr. president. you didn't call him jack.

>> always mr. president.

>> there was always a separation. he was an older man, you were 19.

>> right.

>> you didn't have conversations about world events.

>> no.

>> he never kissed you?

>> that is right. the relationship was very imbalanced. i was 19, he was 45. but i accepted that imbalance. because i think i felt very special from having been included.

>> do you believe that if your story is true, do you believe that president john f. kennedy abused his power in having a relationship with a 19-year-old intern?

>> you know, as i've said before, he was extremely powerful. he was very alluring. he was very, he made you feel, made me feel as if i was the only person in his presence. and if that's an abuse of power, yes. but i didn't ever feel abused.

>> did you feel that you were in some ways being abusive, in the sense that he was married? did you think about mrs. kennedy ?

>> no.

>> were you aware, i'm having an affair with the president of the united states , who is married?

>> i hate to admit today, that i didn't feel guilty. but i was 19 years old. and i was very young. and i was being included in something so glamorous and special, that i didn't feel guilty. and today, i regret that.

>> do you feel guilty today?

>> i feel guilty about not having felt guilty about mrs. kennedy , yes.

>> what's also surprising is that at some point, you started to spend the night at, and you would actually walk past some of the president's i guess secret service agents on the way back downstairs to go back to work where you were an intern. how many people knew about this mimi ?

>> i don't know how many people knew. but certainly secret service that were there at the elevator on the second floor would have known. the thing that's so amazing to me is that those, that all felt very natural. and that's what's so interesting to me. looking back. i didn't feel like i was really hiding. i felt like it was natural.

>> so if what you're saying is true, it begs the question -- how was the president able to live in this kind of way? with a wife and children being present, being the united states and having as you put it, a relationship with a 19-year-old? there's something that mrs. kennedy said in some oral history just a few months after her husband's death. that it's interesting to listen to as we talk about this. let's take a listen to what she had to say.

>> he really kept his life in compartments, and the wonderful thing is that everyone in every one of those compartments was ready to die for him.

>> you wrote that the president's compartmentalizing allowed him to effectively segregate people in all areas of his life.

>> right. well that's how i felt and i also had read that. i hadn't heard mrs. kennedy 's tapes. but i had read that in ted sorenson 's book. a lot of people felt he compartmentalized. was good at that. and i think that's exactly what he did.

>> an example of that would be what you write about the president, as he was dealing with the cuban missile crisis , having you upstairs, in his bedroom.

>> yeah.

>> while he was negotiating a standoff with khrushchev. describe that time?

>> it's really ludicrous that i was there. i realized that today. but i wanted to be there. and obviously the president wanted me there, too. and i was there.

>> you also write about some very tough stuff that meredith also asked you about last night. let me ask you about, you say in the book, that the president encouraged you to try a drug at a party at bing crosby 's house. that the president emotionally abused you by suggesting that you sexually service another person, and that at one point you thought you were pregnant and you called the president. and what was his reaction?

>> it was to get help for me, to take care of that. but you know my, i included these dark, this dark side and these dark memories i have of the president in my book. because first, i had them in. then i would take them out, and then i would put them back in and take them out. and i really felt that i needed to do that. i needed to include them, because my book is about being honest. and i -- if i had kept all of that out, it would have been just another layer of a secret, really.

>> at the same time, mimi , you know that all the principles who principals are not around to defend themselves. what do you say to people who say look, you're profiting off a story. you're making money.

>> i know.

>> off of this. what do you say to that?

>> i wrote this book because of the secret that i held. and that was the focus of my book. there's no way i could have separated the kennedy 's name from the book. because that's part of the story. and that's how i feel. people will have their judgments. and they're entitled to them.

>> what about caroline, who is still alive? she's going to have to deal at some point with the fact of this. did you think about, as you talk about, unburdening yourself? the idea that you burdened other people with this?

>> well i don't intentionally burden someone else. i'm telling my story. and that is what i needed to do.

>> any push-back from the kennedy family ? yes or no?

>> no.

---------------
Chris Matthews Explains JFK’s Affairs: He Was Able To ‘Understand People’s Feelings And Not Be Moved’
Video
by Alex Alvarez | 9:54 am, February 10th, 2012
On Friday, the folks at Morning Joe invited Chris Matthews — who recently published Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero, a book about (you guessed it!) John F. Kennedy — to the show to discuss Mimi Alford, a former White House intern who recently came forward with the story of her affair with the former President.
Joe Scarborough, for one, isn’t exactly shocked by the news that Kennedy engaged in an affair with a young press intern. He brought up two other interns — named “Fiddle and Faddle” by the secret service — and Joe Kennedy‘s rumored interest in his son’s dates.
Matthews called JFK’s actions “indefensible” and gave us some insight into what Kennedy was like as a person:
Part of it that’s indefensible is his tone of detachment, his ability to understand the feelings of those around him, and in fact track them and manipulate them, whether it’s Curtis LeMay or it’s his wife. I mean, his amazing ability to understand people’s feelings and not be moved by them at all. I think the word that’s been used recently is “heedless.” Cold detachment.
And the other part of it is the compartmentalization of his life where he could have what seems to be — if you’ve listened to all these tapes that have come out — a full marriage. Discussions about emotions and life, the normal things that most married couples think of as marriage, that sharing of emotions and life. And, yet, having these other compartments with these other women at the same time. He was able to keep them sealed off from one another in a way that was almost inhuman.
At the end of the segment, Matthews implored viewers to buy his book instead of Alford’s.

MIMI ALFORD---MY THOUGHTS

Please see all my other blogs via my complete profile. On the one hand, I have great misgivings about former JFK White House intern Mimi Alford, writing a book for (massive) profit a half century after the fact and including highly explicit details that no one can now corroborate, seeing that JFK, Dave Powers, and Ted Kennedy, among others, are deceased. However, that said, on the OTHER hand, Alford's tale adds further fuel to the fire for those (like myself) who believe several agents, disgusted with President Kennedy's private life, chose action via INaction on 11/22/63. Former agents Larry Newman, Tony Sherman, Tim McIntyre, and Joe Paolella, as well as Robert Bouck (again, to myself) waxed on about both their knowledge and anger over JFK's sordid extra-marital affairs to best-selling author Seymour Hersh for his 1997 book "The Dark Side of Camelot", as well as to Peter Jennings for the December 1997 ABC television special (and video) "Dangerous World: The Kennedy Years" (I have excerpts from this special in several videos).

Nonetheless, we have long known---for decades---that JFK was a womanizer: Judith Campbell Exner, (allegedly) Marilyn Monroe, secretaries "Fiddle" and "Faddle", etc.

Robert Dallek "smoked out" Alford in his excellent 2003 book "JFK: An Unfinished Life". In addition, the website THE SMOKING GUN offers further corroboration via a long-suppressed JFK Library oral history:

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/jfk-had-intern-too


NBC's "Rock Center" aired a long interview with Alford on 2/8/12 and ended with the opinions of writers/ historians Chris Matthews, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Richard Reeves that, despite his dark side, President Kennedy's legacy, although taken down a notch from these latest allegations, is still secure as a statesman, leader, and cultural icon...I agree. Even Alford defended JFK, saying she still admires him and that she does not reget their 18-month affair, only keeping it a secret (she also said it was consensual, fun, and she would do it all over again).

Vince Palamara

Regarding Mimi Alford's book

I have tremendously flip flopped on the merits and substance of the book, as one can tell from my deleted and changed blogs and Amazon reviews LOL :O) I guess I must put aside the skeptic in me and put the best spin on her "tale": it further debunks Blaine's book and corroborates the 4 agents interviewed for Seymour Hersh's book, adding further fuel to the fire for the agents to have disgust over JFK's private life: motive for inaction on 11/22/63

NOW we know why JFK visited NY twice in November 1963...and Blaine's book is further debunked

Once JFK's mistress, N.J. woman tells all in explosive new memoir
Published: Tuesday, February 07, 2012, 7:30 AM
By Amy Ellis Nutt/The Star-Ledger The Star-Ledger

Mimi Alford (aka Marion Beardsley), a former White House intern, is shown in this file photo. This week, the Rumson native details an affair she had with John F. Kennedy during his term in the early 1960s.
Four days after arriving at the White House as a college intern in the summer of 1962, 19-year-old Rumson native Mimi Beardsley lost her virginity to the President of the United States.

In an explosive and salacious new memoir, "Once Upon a Secret: My Affair with President John F. Kennedy and its Aftermath," to be published Wednesday by Random House, Mimi Beardsley Alford describes what she says was an 18-month-long tryst with the most powerful man in the world that ended with JFK’s assassination in November 1963.

Fifty years later, Alford’s book, which was obtained early by the New York Post at a Manhattan bookstore, recounts in detail how the president asked her to join him in a swim at the White House pool just days after arriving in Washington, D.C. He then asked her if she wanted a tour of the family quarters and a short time later seduced her in "Mrs. Kennedy’s room."

"After he finished, he hitched up his pants and smiled at me," she writes in the memoir, after which Kenndey asked her if she wanted anything to eat, then sent her home in a limousine.

Alford, 69, is a wife, mother and grandmother and lives now in Western Massachusetts. The retired Manhattan church administrator came from a well-to-do Monmouth County family, graduated from Rumson County Day School and had her coming out at the Rumson Debutante Ball in September 1961.

Wednesday evening, she appears on NBC’s "Rock Center" with Brian Williams and describes how she fell under the "aura" of JFK. Although he never kissed her on the lips, she says the fact that he chose her made her "feel very special."

"I’m not going to say he loved me," she tells Meredith Vieira in the interview, "but I think he liked me. I think he cared about me."

Alford, who at the time had just finished her freshman year at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, details sexual escapades that included performing oral sex on one of the president’s close aides while Kennedy watched, as well as taking baths with the president.

The relationship continued even after the teenager returned to Wheaton College for her sophomore year. Kennedy would call her using the pseudonym "Michael Carter" and provide car service and a plane ticket for her to visit D.C.

The story of Kennedy’s liaison with a teenager intern first came to light nine years ago when a reference to an affair with a 19-year-old intern was mentioned in the Kennedy biography, "An Unfinished Life," by Robert Dallek. After the New York Daily News identified the previously unknown woman, Alford, who at the time was married to Anthony Fahnestock, publicly admitted she was the intern.

"From June 1962 to November 1963, I was involved in a sexual relationship with President Kennedy," she said at the time in a written statement.

Not until this week, however, has she publicly discussed the affair. According to recently released audiotapes made by historian Arthur Schlesinger in March 1964, four months after Kennedy’s assassination, the First Lady apparently suspected her husband was having an affair but referred to his extramarital escapades as "Jack’s meaningless flings."

Kennedy and his young lover met for the last time at The Carlyle Hotel in New York City on Nov. 15, 1963, seven days before he was shot to death in Dallas.

Before parting, the president embraced her and said, "I wish you were coming with me to Texas," Alford writes. Then he added, "I’ll call you when I get back."

see also
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/jfk-had-intern-too
-----------
Memoir: Mistress Spills Kinky JFK Sex Secrets
Mimi Alford writes of president pressuring her to do drugs during 18-month affair.
By Daniel Politi | Posted Sunday, Feb. 5, 2012, at 2:07 PM ET
Tweet 465MYSLATE Save this story. Follow all articles. Follow The Slatest. Follow stories by Daniel Politi.
MySlate is a new tool that you track your favorite parts Slate. You can follow authors and sections, track comment threads you're interested in, and more.

US President John Fitzgerald Kennedy leaves the Saint Stephen Martyr catholic church after attending mass, on October 29, 1962 in Washington DC Photo by STF/AFP/Getty Images
Mimi Alford has officially broken her silence and recounts details of her affair with John F. Kennedy in her memoir, Once Upon a Secret: My Affair With President John F. Kennedy and its Aftermath. The book is to be released Wednesday but the New York Post apparently got a copy at a Manhattan bookstore and reveals lots of salacious details.

Mimi Alford, then Mimi Beardsley, interned at the White House in the summer of 1962, quickly caught the president’s eye. The 19-year-old joined the 45-year-old president for a noon swim four days into her internship. Later that day, he took her virginity in “Mrs. Kennedy’s room.”

“After he finished, he hitched up his pants and smiled at me.” Alford says their sex life was “varied and fun” and describes an affair that was more than just sex. They apparently spent an “inordinate amount of time taking baths” and listened to music together. He confided in her during key personal and professional moments, such as when his infant son died and during the Cuban Missile Crisis. But he never kissed her on the lips.

At one point, during another noon swim, Kennedy allegedly asked Alford to “take care” of an aide. He watched as she performed oral sex on him. Kennedy ended up apologizing to both of them. At a later date, Kennedy asked her to “take care of my baby brother,” meaning Ted Kennedy, during a Democratic fund-raiser. She refused.

Alford also describes a party in Bing Crosby’s desert ranch when “yellow capsules” that were “most likely amyl nitrate” were passed around. The president asked her if she wanted to try it. She said no, but “he just went ahead and popped the capsule and held it under my nose.”

Alford’s identity was first revealed in 2003 when Robert Dallek published portions of a 1964 oral history that described the affair. A press aide had described the affair to a researcher but had asked that it be kept secret. Dallek convinced her to release the interview for his book. The New York Daily News then tracked down Marion Fahnestock, who, faced with a media frenzy, confirmed the affair.

At the time, the late Hugh Sidey, who covered Kennedy at the White House, wrote in Time, confirming that “there was a Mimi,” quickly adding: “there was also a Pam, a Priscilla, a Jill (actually, two of them), a Janet, a Kim, a Mary and a Diana I can think of offhand.”

In 2009, the New York Times wrote that Alford was working on a memoir. Random House’s executive editor said she bought the book after seeing 20 pages, noting it would have “an extraordinary heart and soul.” The editor also insisted that Alford’s “just not that type of person, where she’s going to spill her guts about intimate stuff for the whole country to see.”

ANOTHER great review for "Within Arm's Length"!

GET THIS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE-AMAZING!

Dan Emmett has hit a literary home run with "Within Arm's Length": simply put, this is the best book ever written on the Secret Service. What's more, Emmett knows about what he is writing about, having served in the agency from 1983-2004. Get this asap! Best book on the agency since 1865 and the book of the year!

Within Arm's Length: The Extraordinary Life and Career of a Special Agent in the United States Secret Service

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Work, February 3, 2012
By Brenda (Ohio) - See all my reviewsThis review is from: Within Arm's Length: The Extraordinary Life and Career of a Special Agent in the United States Secret Service (Paperback)
Dan Emmett documented an interesting and honest account of his important responsibilities and accomplishmets within the Secret Service. Mr. Emmett brought us through the "ups and downs" of what agents go through with their personal lives and family due to mandatory transfers, long working hours and the overall stress of constantly working both protection and investigaions. The author's writing method, while serious, also maintained a sense of humor throughout the book indicating that his flexibility and optimistic attitude brought him through many difficult times. I enjoyed this book and highly recommend reading it for anyone who desires insight into what is behind the curtain of the U.S. Secret Service.

A Message For Gerald Blaine

Your book failed miserably*---as usual, the people have spoken; NOTHING has changed:

YAHOO international POLL 2/1/12:
Do you believe JFK was killed by one shooter?

Poll Choice Options Yes, there was no conspiracy. No, the truth's been covered up.

See results »

Do you believe JFK was killed by one shooter?


Yes, there was no conspiracy.

27%


No, the truth's been covered up.

73%
Thank you for voting
.
200,000+ votes [and counting]

*and this doesn't even deal with the substantive issues that have been debunked IN your book

Have a nice day! :O)

Vince
P.S. I attempted to speak again (for the third time) to former JFK agent Larry Newman, whom you decided to avoid speaking to for your book. He told me that I am "crazier than a shithouse rat", so someone is on your side haha :)

Chilling tape from Air Force One on day JFK shot

It's been nearly a half-century since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.


But new information from that day in Dallas has just been released -- audiotape of conversations between Air Force One and Washington.


For the first time, the complete audio record of the flight back from Dallas to Washington is available to the public online, from the National Archives, for free.


It helps to fill in the record of that day of sorrow, confusion and fear.


"Gonna put Mrs. Rose Kennedy on the line now," one voice can be heard saying.


Lyndon Johnson, newly sworn-in as president of the United States, and his wife, Ladybird, attempted to console President Kennedy's mother.


"I wish to God," Lyndon Johnson said, "there was something that I could do. And I wanted to tell you that we are grieving with you."


"Thank you very much," Rose Kennedy responded. "Thank you very much. I know you loved Jack. And he loved you."


"Mrs. Kennedy," Ladybird said, "We just wanted to -- we feel like we've lost..."


"Thank you very much," Rose Kennedy repeated." Then, goodbyes all-around.



Secretary of State Dean Rusk and other cabinet members were over the Pacific in an aircraft code-named Wayside. They had just turned back from a trip to Asia when the White House confirmed their worst fears.


"This is the (White House) Situation Room. Relay following to Wayside. We have report quoting that the president is dead, that he died about 35 minutes ago."


The full audio of transmissions from White House Communications Agency (which captured the tapes) that day includes 42 minutes edited out of the original public version. It's likely to peak the interest of conspiracy theorists who are already asking why this material was cut out of the original.


Then-Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Curtis LeMay had been a frequent opponent of Kennedy's. His whereabouts on the day of the assassination has always been a mystery.


In the newly public audio, we learn that LeMay was airborne, even as JFK's body was being flown back to Washington. And an aide to LeMay tried urgently to reach his boss.


"General LeMay," the aide said, "is in a C 140. ... He's inbound. His code name is Grandson. And I wanna talk to him. ... If you can't work him now, it's gonna be too late, because he'll be on the ground in a half-hour."


Historian Robert Dallek suggests doubters will wonder if the aide's comments about not reaching LeMay within 30 minutes may be "too late" could have some sinister meaning. "I'd doubt these tapes will put the conspiracy theory to rest," he says. "They continue to believe it was a conspiracy and again, they just can't accept the proposition that a lone wolf, a single, and someone as dysfunctional as Lee Harvey Oswald, could have carried off this assassination of the president." [oh, shut up, Dallek---sure, lone nuts shoot at presidents (Hinckley), but there is an overwhelming amount of evidence of conspiracy in the death of JFK. See Doug Horne's 5-volume set]


At the end of that fateful day, the body of the fallen president arrived in Washington -- and the new president made a promise to the nation.


"I will do my best," Johnson said, "That is all I can do. I ask for your help and God's."


The complete audio record of the flight back to Washington was lost for years until the estate of JFK's top military aide, Army Gen. Chester "Ted" Clifton Jr., sold his copy of the tapes to The Raab Collection, historical document dealers, which gave a copy of the audio to the National Archives.