I hate to give credit for this to a certain person, but I
must (for honesty’s sake): ole Fred Nitwit found these documents within other
HSCA docs. That said, he acts as if this nullifies the destruction of records
by the Secret Service during the ARRB’s tenure! It most certainly does NOT as
this was merely a fluky find within other docs. One is reminded of former Secret
Service agent Gerald Blaine attempting the same thing in his book The Kennedy
Detail just because he owned a copy of the Tampa trip docs (never mind the embarrassing
fact that those docs escaped the shredder in the first place). MANY other
Secret Service docs WERE destroyed, so this doc (similar to author Barry Ernest’s
1999 discovery of the Martha Stroud doc buried within other unrelated docs)
does not exonerate the government for burying the doc and the information it
contained in the first place.
The doc is valuable because it names Secret Service agent
Nemo Ciochina (who has a whole chapter in my latest book), SAIC Maurice
Martineau, Abraham Bolden and others as being part of the security for JFK’s
cancelled Chicago trip. Importantly, this is the Protective Survey Report and
NOT the preliminary survey report, so important security details are missing or
glossed over. That said, the docs do reveal that 4 press/photographer’s
vehicles were to be close behind the presidential limousine [as we know, the
press was far behind the limo in Dallas and out of the picture (literally)]; a
mayor’s car with police/detectives was to be right behind the Secret Service
follow-up car [Dallas Police Captain Jesse Curry and Chief of Homicide Will
Fritz wanted their own cars in the Dallas motorcade but their requests were
cancelled at the last minute]; General Godfrey McHugh was slated to ride in the
presidential limousine [as we know, he was asked in Dallas-for the first
time-not to ride there by the Secret Service in order to accentuate full exposure
for the president]; ASAIC Floyd Boring was scheduled for the trip and was to
ride in the presidential limo [#3 man Roy Kellerman took Boring’s place in
Dallas]; Press Secretary Pierre Salinger and his immediate assistant, Andy
Hatcher, were scheduled for the trip [as with third-stringer Kellerman,
third-stringer Malcolm Kilduff made his first presidential trip on his own for
the Texas trip. Salinger was very knowledgeable about motorcade security and
admitted in his 1997 book that he might have missed maybe 2-3 trips in all his
time with JFK. Texas was one of them!]; Secret Service agents Don Lawton and
Chuck Zboril were scheduled to ride in the follow-up car [both agents rode on
the rear of the limo in Tampa shortly after (11/18/63), while Lawton rode on
the rear of the limo in the prior Chicago trip of 3/23/63. As we know, Lawton
was famously recalled from the area of the rear of the limo at Love Field on
11/22/63 by the very same shift leader assigned to the cancelled Chicago trip
of 11/2/63- Emory Roberts].
Also, a 11/5/63 addendum merely states that “his trip was
cancelled,” not that he [JFK] cancelled the trip.
I don’t care if it turns out that a few surviving agents
have some of the shredded documents. The point is that the Secret Service
destroyed them in 1995 after they were formally asked for them and being in private
hands does not change anything.
