AGENTS: THEN AND NOW (WITH LINKS)

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/palamara/thenandnow.html

[NOTE: this one---FROM 1999--- is a tad dated. I have included some updates and have removed most of the dead links]

AGENTS: THEN AND NOW (WITH LINKS)

by Vince Palamara

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In my never-ending quest to uncover each and every minute detail pertaining to the Secret Service agents who served under President Kennedy, I recently chose to undertake somewhat of a more human-interest path: as some have asked, whatever became of some of the more notable former JFK-era agents? Where are they now? Have any of them gone on to prominence? The answers may just surprise you...in some cases, I was quite shocked. One is still active, one introduces the current president on television, another governs our money, while a couple others protect our freedom, to various degrees! And that's just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. I have also provided some interesting direct links to futher information on some of these agents and related topics.Read on.

John R. Simpson, involved with limo security the night of 11/22/63 and later Director of the Secret Service (1981-1992), is now head of the U.S. Parole Commission. (NOTE: NOW DECEASED)

Gerald W. Bechtle, a member of Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson's's detail who was stationed at the LBJ Ranch when JFK was killed, is now on the Board of Governors for the Federal Reserve System, reporting directly to Chairman Alan Greenspan.

Robert R. Burke, WHD advance agent for JFK's proposed Austin trip, is now Chief of Security for the State Department & Monsanto.

Gerald S. Blaine, a member of JFK's WHD on the Texas trip, went on to become the Director of International Security Company for ARCO International Oil & Gas (like Burke, Blaine is part of The Overseas Security Advisory Council and the U.S. Department of State).

Wilson "Bill" Livingood, a member of the White House Secret Service Detail from November 1963 until 1972 , is now the Sgt. at Arms of the House of Representatives---it was his voice that cries out, "Mr. Speaker, The President of the United States" before President Clinton's State of the Union speeches (he appeared on television with his own caption)! Livingood also appeared on CBS after the bizarre1994 machine gun incident at the White House. [Livingood letter to Palamara dated 11/19/97] See http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/document091698.htm



Donald J. Lawton, a member of Kennedy's White House Secret Service Detail who rode on the rear of JFK's limousine on 11/18/63 but was relegated to Love Field on 11/22/63, is STILL a member of the Secret Service [Lawton letter to Palamara dated 11/22/97]. (NOTE-NOW DECEASED)

A. Dale Wunderlich, a PRS agent who went to Dallas after the assassination re: investigation, and William L. Duncan, the WHD advance agent for the Fort Worth stop, now are leaders of an established executive protection firm: See http://www.careerlab.com/safeteam.htm (NOTE: WUNDERLICH IS NOW DECEASED)

Thomas H. Wells, a member of the "Kiddie" detail that guarded John and Caroline Kennedy, is now a police chief in the southern United States.


Charles T. "Chuck" Zboril, a member of Kennedy's WHD who was on the 11/18/63 Florida trip, is now the Acting Director of Security for McCormick Place in Chicago, IL. (NOTE: NOW DECEASED)

J. Walter Coughlin, a member of Kennedy's WHD who took part in the San Antonio leg of the Texas tour, is now president of J. Walter Coughlin & Associates, an international security consulting firm, headquartered in Dallas.

Joseph Paolella, one of the agents who talked trash on JFK to author Seymour Hersh, is now a detective (NOTE: NOW DECEASED)

"Tony Sherman, one of the JFK agents who talked to Hersh, is demanding an apology from [Clinton SS director Lewis Merletti. Sherman told the Associated Press that Merletti's letter "implies that our First Amendment rights are limited, but there's no oath [of silence] and no law, no 'Official Secrets Act'" that muzzles former Secret Service agents.
When asked about the Secret Service shush letter issued in the wake of his book, Hersh suggested that by outing a dead president's secrets he might have put the present administration on guard. "Why would the current head of the detail want to put his nose in the tent?" Hersh said (before the latest Clinton sex scandal broke). "Is he condoning coverup? Why would the Clinton White House care what happened 35 years ago?" Two and two is always four and there are certain things that are obvious."


"In private Kennedy was apparently consumed with his almost daily sexual liaisons and libertine partying, to a degree that shocked many members of his personal Secret Service detail. The sheer number of Kennedy's sexual partners, and the recklessness of his use of them, escalated throughout his presidency. The women -- sometimes paid prostitutes located by Powers and other members of the so-called Irish Mafia, who embraced and protected the president -- would be brought to Kennedy's office or his private quarters without any prior Secret Service knowledge... "Seventy to eighty percent of the agents thought it was nuts,"recalled Tony Sherman, a former member of Kennedy's White House Secret Service detail, in a 1995 interview for this book. "Some of us were brought up the right way," Sherman added. "Our mothers and fathers didn't do it. We lived in another world. Suddenly, I'm Joe Agent here. I'm looking at the president of the United States and telling myself, 'This is the White House and we protect the White House.'"

http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/bookauth/nov22.htm

Seymour Hersh's controversial book The Dark Side of Camelot ,and the December 4, 1997, ABC-TV special entitled "Dangerous World- The Kennedy Years" (based on Hersh's book) included interviews with former Secret Service agents Joseph Paolella, Tony Sherman, Larry Newman, and Tim McIntyre (the latter rode in the follow-up car in Dallas on 11/22/63). All four former WHD agents expressed concern and dismay over Kennedy s dalliances with women. Tony Sherman: "I wanted out; I didn't want a part of it. I got mad I got angry at any president who doesn't treat the White House like I think he should ; Larry Newman: "It [JFK s behavior] caused a lot of morale problems with the Secret Service, you felt impotent and you couldn't do your job. It was frustrating" ; Joseph Paolella: [He] that the Secret Service's socializing intensified each year of the Kennedy administration, to a point where, by late 1963, a few members of the presidential detail were regularly remaining in bars until the early morning hours. What about Tim McIntyre? His account is devastating and must be read at length: His shift supervisor, the highly respected Emory Roberts, took him aside and warned that 'you re going to see a lot of s--t around here. Stuff with the president. Just forget about it. Keep it to yourself. Don t even talk to your wife. Roberts was nervous about it. Emory would say, McIntyre recalled with a laugh, 'How in the hell do you know what's going on? He could be hurt in there. What if one bites him in a sensitive area?' Roberts talked about it a lot , McIntyre said.

In McIntyre's view, a public scandal about Kennedy s incessant womanizing was inevitable. "It would have had to come out in the next year or so. In the campaign, maybe." McIntyre said he and some of his colleagues felt abused by their service on behalf of President Kennedy. McIntyre said he eventually realized that he had compromised his law enforcement beliefs to the point where he wondered whether it was "time to get out of there. I was disappointed by what I saw" McIntyre felt this way after having only spent a VERY brief time with JFK before the assassination (he joined the WHD in the Fall of 1963). In addition, these feelings of anger and impotence-- especially by Roberts (and McIntyre)-- loom large in the context of the actions and inactions of the Secret Service on the day of the assassination.

(NOTE: ALL FOUR AGENTS ARE NOW DECEASED)

George W. Hickey, Jr., a member of JFK's White House Secret Service Detail who rode in the follow-up car on 11/22/63, is now (as of this writing, October 1999) is reportedly quite ill. Hickey: too late in retrieving the AR-15 and in filing lawsuits--- (remember the "Mortal Error" book?)
(NOTE: NOW DECEASED)

"The former Secret Service agents in charge of protecting every president from Dwight D. Eisenhower to George Bush have asked an appeals court to block independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr from questioning current officers, warning flatly that it would lead to the death of a president, lawyers said yesterday. The dire prediction, included in a friend-of-the-court brief filed under seal on Friday, echoed the views of Secret Service Director Lewis C.Merletti, who is appealing a decision by Chief U.S. District Judge Norma Holloway Johnson ordering two officers and a Secret Service lawyer to testify in the Monica Lewinsky investigation.The arguments were much the same as made in the Justice Department brief also filed under seal on Friday on behalf of the Secret Service, but the agents hope they carry extra power because they were the ones charged with taking a bullet to protect the nation's leaders. Signing the brief were all nine living former special agents in charge of the presidential protection division, including Clint Hill, the agent who leaped onto President John F. Kennedy's car moments after the first shot rang out in Dallas in 1963, and agentJerry Parr, who quickly shoved President Reagan into his car to escape John Hinckley Jr.'s bullets in 1981."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/service061698.htm

(NOTE: PARR IS NOW DECEASED)

"This is a total embarrassment. We are all red faced about this," says Hamilton Brown, president of the 1,400-strong Association of Former Agents of the United States Secret Service. Mr. Brown, who also protected Kennedy, says code of silence or not, he would have turned down Mr. Hersh's request for an interview based on the poor quality of Hersh's information. "He kept reporting things to me that were patently false. He keptsaying he had documentation. I told him the information was false because I was there. At the end of our conversation, I told him never to call again," Brown says of his conversation with Hersh.

(NOTE: NOW DECEASED)

Rufus W. Youngblood, famous for shielding LBJ with his body after shots rang out in Dallas, passed away October 2, 1996, but gave an interesting interview back in 1992 (NOTE: HIS DAUGHTER REBECCA CAME OUT WITH AN UPDATED VERSION OF HIS 1973 BOOK IN 2018)

SAIC of WHD Gerald A. "Jerry" Behn, who passed away in April 1993, and SAIC of PRS Robert I. Bouck, as they appeared upon graduating Michigan State University. [NOTE: BOTH AGENTS ARE NOW DECEASED AND THE LINK NO LONGER WORKS]

More re: Bouck----While Air Force One was still in the air, a senior Secret Service agent named Robert I. Bouck began disassembling yet another of the Kennedy brothers' deep secrets -- Tandberg tape-recording systems in the Oval Office, Cabinet Room, and the president's living quarters on the second floor of the White House. There was also a separate Dictabelt recording system for use on the telephone lines in the president's office and his upstairs bedroom. In the summer of 1962, John Kennedy had summoned Bouck and instructed him to install the devices and be responsible for changing the tapes. Apparently Bouck told only two people of the system -- his immediate superior, James J. Rowley, chief of the Secret Service, and a subordinate who helped him monitor the equipment. It was Bouck's understanding that only two others knew of the system while JFK was alive -- Bobby Kennedy and Evelyn Lincoln, the president's longtime personal secretary.

http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/bookauth/nov22.htm

SAIC of WHD, later Director (1973-1981), H. Stuart "Stu" Knight (NOTE: NOW DECEASED)

ATSAIC (Shift Leader) of the WHD Arthur L. "Art" Godfrey (Fort Worth, Austin part of Texas trip) and SA Robert A. Mampel (NOTE: BOTH NOW DECEASED)

SA's Rex W. Scouten, Vincent P. Mroz, and Robert R. Lapham (NOTE: ALL NOW DECEASED)

SA Kenneth S. Giannoules, on JFK's Texas trip only in Fort Worth and Austin, later became Domestic Chief of Interpol during the Nixon era

ASAIC Floyd M. Boring retired from the Secret Service as an Inspector in 1967 and went on to found the Assoc. of Former Secret Service Agents in 1969. Believe it or not (Orwell, are you listening?), there is a "Floyd Boring Award" given by the Treasury Department & the Secret Service (and you thought GETTING an award for what transpired on November 22, 1963 was something. Well, Clint Hill and Rufus Youngblood, you've been outdone: how about an award NAMED IN YOUR HONOR???)

Here is an excerpt:

The Floyd Boring Award
Department of the Treasury
United States Secret Service
The United States Secret Service established the Law Enforcement Assistance Award in 1972. In 1998, the award was renamed "The Floyd Boring Award." Floyd Boring, a now retired agent, was responsible for the initial organizing of the Association of Former Agents of the United States Secret Service (AFAUSSS). His personal integrity, commitment to duty, and personal convictions exemplify the tenets of the Exploring program. The purpose of this award is to recognize Explorers who assist law enforcement agencies with meaningful and exceptional service.

(NOTE: BORING IS NOW DECEASED)

 


G. d'Andelot Belin, the former General Counsel and acting Secretary of the Treasury [18 H 810-815; 933-934; also 11/21/97 letter to Palamara], is now a Life Trustee, Museum of Science and the Boston Chairman, MTA Board Nominating Committee. (NOTE: BELIN IS NOW DECEASED)

Needless to say, several of these gentlemen went on to quite prominent roles in government and into important and perhaps influential postitions in society; in some cases, much further than anyone could have imagined back in November 1963. Directly or indirectly, these men have and continue to impact our lives --- once, when serving the nation's leader. At present, they are oftentimes highly placed individuals working within our monetary system, our legal system, and involved in organizations dealing with our national and international freedoms. And sometimes, even in the scandals of former presidents and the current president. Truly amazing.

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