FORT WORTH PRESS 11/22/63 morning edition

FORT WORTH PRESS 11/22/63 morning edition: Fort Worth advance agent Bill Duncan...but look at the headline below: "16 GOOFS HERE ARE CHECKED OUT BY SECRET SERVICE GUARDING JFK"--full text below

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"..if they could have gotten close enough, they could have harmed the president"

"A Secret Service man said today 16 persons were "checked out" here last night by agents guarding President Kennedy's life.

"The public doesn't know it," the agent said, "but we checked out 16 goofs." The agent described them as "goofs." "But if they could have gotten close enough they could have harmed the President."

The agent, who asked not to be quoted by name, declined to elaborate. He would not say whether any of the persons investigated were carrying arms.

Police officers said they know a no persons arrested and jailed last night by SS men.

THE SECRET Service men protected President Kennedy and his wife and Vice President Lyndon Johnson during their reception at Carswell Air Force Base and during their overnight stay at Hotel Texas.

Police officers, sheriff's deputies and federal men roped off Eighth St outside Hotel Texas as the President arrived.

"Everything went smoothly," Police St. S. B. Pruitt, one of dozens of city officers who spent the night at the hotel, said. "We didn't have any trouble at all."

REPORTERS were not allowed in the corridor of the eighth floor where the President and Mrs. Kennedy slept.

SS men and police kept the halls cleared of everybody except those wearing "special badges."

Policemen were stationed on the seventh and ninth floor stairs to keep anybody from going to the floor with the President.

One SS man was stationed outside Vice President and Mrs. Johnson's 13th floor suite.

City firemen stood in the halls on the seventh, eighth and ninth floors and in the hotel kitchens. It was the first time that many of the firemen could remember that such a precaution had been made to protect visiting dignitaries.

"But we don't have the President visit us very often," one fireman said."