Based on the original 1991 article, "47 Witnesses," that appeared in "The Third Decade," Jan/ March 1992.
This article has since been cited in:
"The Third Decade," 11/92
"The Fourth Decade," 11/93 and 9/97
"Proceedings of the Second Research Conference of the Third Decade, 6/18-6/20/93," pages 128 & 162
"The Proceedings of the Research Conference of the Fourth Decade," 7/19-7/21/96", p. 277
"The Third Alternative-Survivor's Guilt: The Secret Service and the JFK Murder," 1997, pages 20 and 53
"The Puzzle Palace" Web site
"Assassination Science...," 1998, p. 274
"Bloody Treason," 1997, Z-frame 313 photo section
"November Patriots," 1998, p. 465
"High Treason," 1998 revised edition, p. 551
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-UPI's "Four Days," 1964, p. 17 - "In the right hand picture [a frame from the Muchmore film], the driver slams on the brakes and the police escort pulls up."
-"Newsweek," 12/2/63, p. 2 - "For a chaotic moment, the motorcade ground to an uncertain halt."
-"Time," 11/29/63, p. 23 - "There was a shocking momentary stillness, a frozen tableau."
-"Case Closed" by Gerald Posner, 1993, p. 234 - "Incredibly, Greer, sensing that something was wrong in the back of the car, slowed the vehicle to almost a standstill."
AND
-Gerald Posner, with Dan Rather, on CBS' "Who Killed JFK: The Final Chapter?" 11/19/93 - By turning around the second time and looking at JFK as the car slows down, Posner says that, "What he [Greer] has done is inadvertantly given Oswald the easiest of the three shots."
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1) Houston Chronicle Reporter Bo Byers (rode in White House Press Bus) - twice stated that the Presidential Limousine "almost came to a stop, a dead stop"; in fact, he has had nightmares about this. [C-SPAN, 11/20/93, "Journalists Remember The Kennedy Assassination"; see also the 1/94 "Fourth Decade" article by Sheldon Inkol]
2) ABC Reporter Bob Clark (rode in the National Press Pool Car) - Reported on the air that the limousine stopped on Elm Street during the shooting [WFAA/ ABC, 11/22/63]
3) UPI White House Reporter Merriman Smith (rode in the same car as Clark, above) - "The President's car, possibly as much as 150 or 200 yards ahead, seemed to falter briefly..." [UPI story, 11/23/63, as reported in "Four Days", UPI, p. 32]
4) DPD motorcycle officer James W. Courson (one of two mid-motorcade motorcycles) - "The limousine came to a stop and Mrs. Kennedy was on the back. I noticed that as I came around the corner at Elm. Then the Secret Service agent [Clint Hill] helped push her back into the car, and the motorcade took off at a high rate of speed." ["No More Silence" by Larry Sneed (1998), p. 129]
5) DPD motorcycle officer Bobby Joe Dale (one of two rear mid-motorcade motorcycles) - "After the shots were fired, the whole motorcade came to a stop. I stood and looked through the plaza, noticed there was commotion, and saw people running around his [JFK's] car. It started to move, then it slowed again; that's when I saw Mrs. Kennedy coming back on the trunk and another guy [Clint Hill] pushing her back into the car." ["No More Silence" by Larry Sneed (1998), p. 134]
6) Clemon Earl Johnson - "You could see it [the limo] speed up and then stop, then speed up, and you could see it stop while they [sic; Clint Hill] threw Mrs. Kennedy back up in the car. Then they just left out of there like a bat of the eye and were just gone." ["No More Silence" by Larry Sneed (1998), p. 80]
7) Malcolm Summers - "Then there was some hesitation in the caravan itself, a momentary halt, to give the Secret Service man [Clint Hill] a chance to catch up with the car and jump on. It seems to me that it started back up by the time he got to the car…"["No More Silence" by Larry Sneed (1998), p. 104]
8) NBC reporter Robert MacNeil (rode in White House Press Bus)---"The President's driver slammed on the brakes - after the third shot…" ["The Way We Were, 1963: The Year Kennedy Was Shot" by Robert MacNeil (1988), p. 193]
9) AP photographer Henry Burroughs (rode in Camera Car #2) - "…we heard the shots and the motorcade stopped." [letter, Burroughs to Palamara, dated 10/14/98]
10) DPD Earle Brown - "…The first I noticed the [JFK's] car was when it stopped..after it made the turn and when the shots were fired, it stopped." [6 H 233]
11) DPD motorcycle officer Bobby Hargis (one of the four Presidential motorcyclists)---"…At that time [immediately before the head shot] the Presidential car slowed down. I heard somebody say 'Get going.' I felt blood hit me in the face and the Presidential car stopped almost immediately after that." [6 H 294; "Murder From Within" by Fred Newcomb & Perry Adams (1974), p. 71.
6/26/95 videotaped interview with Mark Oakes & Ian Griggs: "That guy (Greer) slowed down, maybe his orders was to slow down…slowed down almost to a stop." Like Posner, Hargis feels Greer gave Oswald the chance to kill Kennedy.]
12) DPD D.V. Harkness - "…I saw the first shot and the President's car slow[ed] down to almost a stop…I heard the first shot and saw the President's car almost come to a stop and some of the agents [were] piling on the car." [6 H 309]
13) DPD James Chaney (one of the four Presidential motorcyclists)---stated that the Presidential limousine stopped momentarily after the first shot (according to the testimony of Mark Lane; corroborated by the testimony of fellow DPD motorycle officer Marion Baker: Chaney told him that "…at the time, after the shooting, from the time the first shot rang out, the car stopped completely, pulled to the left and stopped…Now I have heard several of them say that, Mr. Truly was standing out there, he said it stopped. Several officers said it stopped completely." [2 H 44-45 (Lane)---refering to Chaney's statement as reported in the "Houston Chronicle" dated 11/24/63; 3 H 266 (Baker)]
14) DPD motorcycle officer B.J. Martin (one of the four Presidential motorcyclists) - saw JFK's car stop "…just for a moment." ["Murder From Within" by Fred Newcomb & Perry Adams (1974), p. 71]
15) DPD motorcycle officer Douglas L. Jackson (one of the four Presidential motorcyclists) - stated "…that the car just all but stopped…just a moment." ["Murder From Within" by Fred Newcomb & Perry Adams (1974), p. 71]
16) Texas Highway Patrolman Joe Henry Rich (drove LBJ's car) - stated that "…the motorcade came to a stop momentarily." ["Murder From Within" by Fred Newcomb & Perry Adams (1974), p. 71]
17) DPD J.W. Foster - stated that "…immediately after President Kennedy was struck…the car in which he was riding pulled to the curb." [CD 897, pp. 20, 21; "Murder From Within" by Fred Newcomb & Perry Adams (1974), p. 97]
18) Secret Service Agent Sam Kinney (driver of the follow-up car behind JFK's limo)---indicates, via his report to Chief Rowley, that Greer hit the gas after the fatal head shot to JFK and after the President's slump to the left toward Jackie. [18 H 731-732]. From the HSCA's 2/26/78 interview of Kinney: "He also remarked that 'when Greer (the driver of the Presidential limousine) looked back, his foot must have come off the accelerator'…Kinney observed that at the time of the first shot, the speed of the motorcade was '3 to 5 miles an hour.'" [RIF#180-10078-10493; author's interviews with Kinney, 1992-1994]
19) Secret Service Agent Clint Hill (follow-up car, rear of limo)---"…I jumped from the follow-up car and ran toward the Presidential automobile. I heard a second firecracker-type noise…SA Greer had, as I jumped onto the Presidential automobile, accelerated the Presidential automobile forward." [18 H 742; Nix film; "The Secret Service" and "Inside The Secret Service" videos from 1995]
20) Secret Service Agent John Ready (follow-up car) - "…I heard what sounded like fire crackers going off from my post on the right front running board. The President's car slowed…" [18 H 750]
21) Secret Service Agent Glen Bennett (follow-up car) - after the fatal head shot "the President's car immediately kicked into high gear." [18 H 760; 24 H 541-542]. During his 1/30/78 HSCA interview, Bennett said the follow-up car was moving at "10-12 m.p.h.", an indication of the pace of the motorcade on Elm Street [RIF#180-10082-10452]
22) Secret Service Agent "Lem" Johns (V.P. follow-up car) - "…I felt that if there was danger [it was] due to the slow speed of the automobile." [18 H 774]. During his 8/8/78 HSCA interview, Johns said that "Our car was moving very slowly", a further indication of the pace of the motorcade on Elm Street [RIF# 180-10074-10079; Altgens photo]
23) Secret Service Agent Winston Lawson (rode in the lead car) - "…I think it [the lead car on Elm Street] was a little further ahead [of JFK's limo] than it had been in the motorcade, because when I looked back we were further ahead." [4 H 352], an indication of the lag in the limo during the assassination.
24) Secret Service Agent William "Tim" McIntyre (follow-up car) - "He stated that Greer, driver of the Presidential limousine, accelerated after the third shot." [RIF#180-10082-10454: 1/31/78 HSCA interview]
25) Mrs. Earle "Dearie" Cabell (rode in the Mayor's car) - the motorcade "stopped dead still when the noise of the shot was heard." [7 H 487; "Accessories After the Fact" by Sylvia Meagher (1967), p. 4; "Murder From Within" by Fred Newcomb & Perry Adams (1974), p. 71]
26) Phil Willis - "…The [Presidential] party had come to a temporary halt before proceeding on to the underpass." [7 H 497; "Crossfire" by Jim Marrs (1989), p. 24]
27) Mrs. Phil Willis - Marilyn - after the fatal head shot, "she stated the Presidential limousine paused momentarily and then sped away under the Triple Underpass." [FBI report dated 6/19/64; "Photographic Whitewash" by Harold Weisberg (1967), p. 179]
28) Mrs. John Connally - Nellie (rode in JFK's limo) - JFK's car did not accelerate until after the fatal head shot. [4 H 147; WR 50; "Best Evidence" by David Lifton (1988), p. 122]
29) Texas Governor John Connally (rode in JFK's limo and himself a victim of the assassination) - "…After the third shot, I heard Roy Kellerman tell the driver, 'Bill, get out of line.' And then I saw him move, and I assumed he was moving a button or something on the panel of the automobile, and he said 'Get us to a hospital quick'…at about this time, we began to pull out of the cavalcade, out of line." [4 H 133; WR50; "Crossfire" by Jim Marrs (1989), p. 13];
30) Dallas Morning News reporter Robert Baskin (rode in the National Press Pool Car) - stated that "…the motorcade ground to a halt." ["Dallas Morning News", 11/23/63, p. 2; "Murder From Within" by Fred Newcomb & Perry Adams (1974), p. 71]
31) Dallas Morning News reporter Mary Woodward (Pillsworth) - "…Instead of speeding up the car, the car came to a halt."; she saw the President's car come to a halt after the first shot. Then, after hearing two more shots, close together, the car sped up. [2 H 43 (Lane); "Dallas Morning News," 11/23/63; 24 H 520; "The Men Who Killed Kennedy," 1988]. She spoke forcefully about the car almost coming to a stop and the lack of proper reaction by the Secret Service in 1993. [C-SPAN, 11/20/93, "Journalists Remember The Kennedy Assassination"; see also the 1/94 "Fourth Decade" article by Sheldon Inkol]
32) AP photographer James Altgens - "He said the President's car was proceeding at about ten miles per hour at the time [of the shooting]…Altgens stated the driver of the Presidential limousine apparently realized what had happened and speeded up toward the Stemmons Expressway." [FBI report dated 6/5/64; "Photographic Whitewash" by Harold Weisberg (1967), p. 203] "The car's driver realized what had happened and almost if by reflex speeded up toward the Stemmons Expressway." [AP dispatch, 11/22/63; "Cover-Up" by Stewart Galanor (1998), Document 28]
33) Alan Smith - "…the car was ten feet from me when a bullet hit the President in the forehead…the car went about five feet and stopped." ["Chicago Tribune," 11/23/63, p. 9; "Murder From Within" by Fred Newcomb & Perry Adams (1974), p. 71]
34) Mrs. Ruth M. Smith - confirmed that the Presidential limousine had come to a stop. [CD 206, p. 9; "Murder From Within" by Fred Newcomb & Perry Adams (1974), p. 97]
35) TSBD Supervisor Roy Truly - after the first shot "…I saw the President's car swerve to the left and stop somewheres down in the area…[it stopped] for a second or two or something like that…I just saw it stop." [3 H 221, 266]
36) L.P. Terry - "…The parade stopped right in front of the building [TSBD]." ["Crossfire" by Jim Marrs (1989), p. 26]
37) Ochus V. Campbell - after hearing shots, "he then observed the car bearing President Kennedy to slow down, a near stop, and a motorcycle policeman rushed up. Immediately following this, he observed the car rush away from the scene." [22 H 845]
38) Peggy Joyce Hawkins - she was on the front steps of the TSBD and "…estimated that the President's car was less than 50 feet away from her when he was shot, that the car slowed down almost coming to a full stop." ["Murder From Within" by Fred Newcomb & Perry Adams (1974), p. 97]
39) Billy Lovelady - "I recall that following the shooting, I ran toward the spot where President Kennedy's car had stopped." [22 H 662];
40) An unnamed witness - from his vantage point in the courthouse building, stated that, "The cavalcade stopped there and there was bedlam." ["Dallas Times Herald", 11/24/63; "Murder From Within" by Fred Newcomb & Perry Adams (1974), p. 97]
41) Postal Inspector Harry Holmes (from the Post Office Annex, while viewing through binoculars) - "…The car almost came to a stop, and Mrs. Kennedy pulled loose of him and crawled out over the turtleback of this Presidential car." [7 H 291]. He noticed the car pull to a halt, and Holmes thought: "They are dodging something being thrown." ["The Day Kennedy Was Shot" by Jim Bishop (1967), p. 176]
42) Peggy Burney - she stated that JFK's car had come to a stop. ["Dallas Times Herald", 11/24/63; "Murder From Within" by Fred Newcomb & Perry Adams (1974), p. 97.
Interestingly, during the 11/20/93 C-SPAN "Journalists Remember" conference, Vivian Castleberry of the Dallas Times Herald made the claim that her first cousin, Peggy Burney, was Abraham Zapruder's assistant "and was next to him when he shot his famous film. She called and said, 'Vivian, today I saw the President die.'"! See Sheldon Inkol's article on this conference in the January 1994 "Fourth Decade"]
43) David Broeder - "…The President's car paused momentarily, then on orders from a Secret Service agent, spurted ahead." ["Washington Evening Star", 11/23/63, p. 8]
44) Sam Holland - stated that the Presidential limousine slowed down on Elm Street. [taped interview with Holland conducted in April, 1965]
45) Maurice Orr - noted that the motorcade stopped. [Arch Kimbrough, Mary Ferrell, and Sue Fitch, "Chronology," unpublished manuscript; see also "Conspiracy" by Anthony Summers, pages 20 & 23]
46) Mrs. Herman (Billy P.) Clay - "…When I heard the second and third shots I knew someone was shooting at the President. I did not know if the President had been hit, but I knew something was wrong. At this point the car President Kenedy was in slowed and I, along with others, moved toward the President's car. As we neared the car it sped off." [22 H 641]
47) Mrs. Rose Clark - "…She noted that the President's automobile came almost to a halt following the three shots, before it picked up speed and drove away." [24 H 533]
48) Hugh Betzner - "…I looked down the street and I could see the President's car and another one and they looked like the cars were stopped…then the President's car sped on under the underpass." [19 H 467]
49) John Chism - after the shots he saw "the motorcade beginning to speed up." ["Crossfire" by Jim Marrs (1989), p. 29]
50) Bill Newman - after the fatal head shot "the car momentarily stopped and the driver seemed to have a radio or phone up to his ear and he seemed to be waiting on some word. Some Secret Service men reached into their car and came out with some sort of machine gun. Then the cars roared off…"; "I've maintained that they stopped. I still say they did. It was only a momentary stop, but…" ["Crossfire" by Jim Marrs (1989), p. 70; "Murder From Within" by Fred Newcomb & Perry Adams (1974), p. 96]
"I believe Kennedy's car came to a full stop after the final shot." ["JFK: Breaking The Silence" by Bill Sloan (1993), p. 169]
"…I believe it was the passenger in the front seat [Roy Kellerman]---there were two men in the front seat---had a telephone or something to his ear and the car momentarily stopped. Now everywhere that you read about it, you don't read anything about the car stopping. And when I say "stopped" I mean very momentarily, like they hit the brakes and just a few seconds passed and then they floorboarded [sic] and accelerated on." [11/20/97 videotaped interview with Bill Law, Mark Row, & Ian Griggs, as transcribed in "November Patriots" by Connie Kritzberg & Larry Hancock (1998), p. 362]
"One of the two men in the front seat of the car had a telephone in his hand, and as I was looking back at the car covering my son, I can remember seeing the tail lights of the car, and just for a moment they hesitated and stopped, and then they floorboarded [sic] the car and shot off." ["No More Silence" by Larry Sneed (1998), p. 96]
51) Charles Brehm - "Brehm expressed his opinion that between the first and third shots, the President's car only seemed to move some 10 or 12 feet. It seemed to him that the automobile almost came to a halt after the first shot…After the third shot, the car in which the President was riding increased its speed and went under the freeway overpass and out of sight." [22 H 837-838]
52) Mary Moorman - "She recalls that the President's automobile was moving at the time she took the second picture, and when she heard the shots, and has the impression that the car either stopped momentarily or hesistated and then drove off in a hurry." [22 H 838-839]
53) Jean Hill - "…The motorcade came to almost a halt at the time the shots rang out and I would say it [JFK's limo] was just approximately, if not - it couldn't have been in the same position, I'm sure it wasn't, but just a very, very short distance from where it had been. It [JFK's limo] was just almost stunned." [6 H 208-209; Hill's testimony on this matter was dramatized in the Oliver Stone movie "JFK" (1991): "The driver had stopped - I don't know what was wrong with that driver." See also "JFK: The Book of the Film" (1992), p. 122. Therein is referenced a March 1991 conversation with Jean Hill.]
54) James Leon Simmons - "…The car stopped or almost stopped." [2/15/69 Clay Shaw trial testimony; "Forgive My Grief Vol. III" by Penn Jones, p. 53; "High Treason" by Groden & Livingstone (1990 Berkley Edition), p. 22]
55) Norman Similas - "…The Presidential limousine had passed me and slowed down slightly." ["Liberty" Magazine, 7/15/64, p. 13; "Photographic Whitewash" by Harold Weisberg (1967), p. 233];
56) Presidential Aide Ken O'Donnell (rode in the follow-up car) - "…If the Secret Service men in the front had reacted quicker to the first two shots at the President's car, if the driver had stepped on the gas before instead of after the fatal third shot was fired, would President Kennedy be alive today? [as quoted in Marrs' "Crossfire," p. 248, based off a passage from O'Donnell & Powers' book "Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye"]. On page 40 of O'Donnell's book "Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye," the aide reports that "Greer had been remorseful all day, feeling that he could have saved President Kenendy's life by swerving the car or speeding suddenly after the first shots." Indeed, William E. Sale, an airman first class aircraft mechanic assigned to Carswell AFB and who was stationed at Love Field before, during, and after the assassination, stated that "when the agent who was driving JFK's car came back to Air Force One he was as white as a ghost and had to be helped back to the plane *[undated Sale letter, provided to the author by Martin Shackelford]
57) Presidential aide Dave Powers (rode in the follow-up car) - "…At that time we were traveling very slowly…At about the time of the third shot, the President's car accelerated sharply." [7 H 473-475]. On 11/22/88, Powers was interviewed by CBS' Charles Kuralt. Powers remarked about the remorse Greer felt about not speeding up in time to save JFK"s life and agreed with Kuralt that, if Greer had sped up BEFORE the fatal head shot instead of afterwards, JFK might still be alive today [CBS, 11/22/88---this is a very dramatic and compelling short interview]. If that weren't enough, the ARRB's Tom Samoluk told me that, during the course of an interview he conducted in 1996 in which the Board was in the process of obtaining Powers' film, Powers said that he agreed with my take on the Secret Service!
58) Texas Senator Ralph Yarborough (rode in LBJ's car) - "…When the noise of the shot was heard, the motorcade slowed to what seemed to me a complete stop (though it could have been a near stop)…After the third shot was fired, but only after the third shot was fired, the cavalcade speeded up, gained speed rapidly, and roared away to the Parkland Hospital."; "…The cars all stopped. I put in there [his affidavit], 'I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings but for the protection of future Presidents, they [the Secret Service] should be trained to take off when a shot is fired." [7 H 439-440; "Crossfire" by Jim Marrs (1989), p. 482; see also "The Men Who Killed Kennedy," 1988: "The Secret Service in the car in front of us kind of casually looked around and were rather slow to react."]
59) First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy (rode in the Presidential limousine) - "We could see a tunnel in front of us. Everything was really slow then…[immediately after shooting] And just being down in the car with his head in my lap. And it just seemed an eternity…And finally I remember a voice behind me, or something, and then I remember the people in the front seat, or somebody, finally knew something was wrong, and a voice yelling, which must have been Mr. Hill, "Get to the hospital," or maybe it was Mr. Kellerman, in the front seat…We were really slowing turning the corner [Houston&Elm]…I remember a sensation of enormous speed, which must have been when we took off…those poor men in the front…" [5 H 179-181] Mary Gallagher reported in her book: "She mentioned one Secret Service man who had not acted during the crucial moment, and said bitterly to me, 'He might just as well have been Miss Shaw!'" ["My Life With Jacqueline Kennedy" by Mary Barelli Gallagher (1969), p. 342---Secret Service Agent Marty Venker and Jackie biographer C. David Heymann confirm that this unnamed agent was indeed Greer ("Confessions of an Ex-Secret Service Agent", p. 25; "A Woman Called Jackie", p. 401)] Jackie also told Gallagher that "You should get yourself a good driver so that nothing ever happens to you" [Ibid., p. 351]
* William Manchester, who interviewed Greer, tells us what the driver told Jackie on 11/22/63 at Parkland Hospital: "Oh, Mrs. Kennedy, oh my God, oh my God. I didn't mean to do it[?!?!], I didn't hear[who, Kellerman?], I should have swerved the car[how about hitting the gas!], I couldn't help it[!]. Oh, Mrs. Kennedy, as soon as I saw it[?] I swerved. If only I'd seen it in time! Oh!" (Manchester, p.290). 59 witnesses (10 police officers, 7 Secret Service agents, 37 spectators, 2 Presidential aides, 1 Senator, Governor Connally, and Jackie Kennedy) and the Zapruder film document Secret Service agent William R. Greer's deceleration of the presidential limousine, as well as his two seperate looks back at JFK during the assassination (Greer denied all of this to the Warren Commission-2HGREER[see his entire testimony]). By decelerating from an already slow 11.2 mph, Greer greatly endangered the President's life, and, as even Gerald Posner admitted, Greer contributed greatly to the success of the assassination. When we consider that Greer disobeyed a direct order from his superior, Roy Kellerman, to get out of line BEFORE the fatal shot struck the President's head, it is hard to give Agent Greer the benefit of the doubt. As ASAIC Roy H. Kellerman said: "Greer then looked in the back of the car. Maybe he didn't believe me"("The Death of a President" by William Manchester, p.160). Clearly, Greer was responsible, at fault, and felt remorse. In short, Greer had survivor's guilt.
But, then, stories and feelings changed.
Agent Greer to the FBI 11/22/63: "Greer stated that he first heard what he thought was possibly a motorcycle backfire and glanced around and noticed that the President had evidently been hit [notice that, early on, Greer admits seeing JFK, which the Zapruder proves he did two times before the fatsal head shot occurred]. He thereafter got on the radio and communicated with the other vehicles, stating that they desired to get the President to the hospital immediately [in reality, Greer did not talk on the radio, and Greer went on to deny ever saying this during his WC testimony]…Greer stated that they (the Secret Service) have always been instructed to keep the motorcade moving at a considerable speed inasmuch as a moving car offers a much more difficult target than a vehicle traveling at a very slow speed. He pointed out that on numerous occasions he has attempted to keep the car moving at a rather fast rate, but in view of the President's popularity and desire to maintain close liaison with the people, he has, on occasion, been instructed by the President to "slow down". Greer stated that he has been asking himself if there was any thing he could have done to have avoided this incident, but stated that things happened so fast that he could not account for full developments in this matter(!) [the "JFK-as-scapegoat" theme…and so much for Greer's remorse from earlier the same day!]."(Sibert & O'Neil Report, 11/22/63)
Agent Greer to the FBI 11/27/63: "…he heard a noise which sounded like a motorcycle backfire. On hearing this noise he glanced to his right toward Kellerman and out of the corner of his eye noticed that the Governor appeared to be falling toward his wife [notice that Greer now mentions nothing about seing JFK hit---he does the same thing in his undated report in the WC volumes (18 H 723)] He thereafter recalls hearing some type of outcry after which Kellerman said, "Let's get out of here." He further related that at the time of hearing the sound he was starting down an incline which passes beneath a railroad crossing and after passing under this viaduct, he closed in on the lead car and yelled to the occupants and a nearby police motorcyclist, "Hospital, Hospital! [nothing about using the radio this time out]" Thereafter follows a complete physical description of Greer, as if the FBI agents considered him a suspect, inc. age, height, and color of eyes! (Sibert & O'Neil Report, 11/29/63)
Critical excerpts from Greer's 3/9/64 Warren Commission testimony before Arlen Specter:
Mr. Specter.
Were you able to see anything of President Kennedy as you glanced to the rear?
Mr. Greer.
No, sir; I didn't see anything of the President, I didn't look, I wasn't far enough around to see the President.
Mr. Specter.
When you started that glance, are you able to recollect whether you started to glance before, exactly simultaneously with or after that second shot?
Mr. Greer.
It was almost simultaneously that he had--something had hit, you know, when I had seen him. It seemed like in the same second almost that something had hit, you know, whenever I turned around. I saw him start to fall.
Mr. Specter.
Did you step on the accelerator before, simultaneously or after Mr. Kellerman instructed you to accelerate?
Mr. Greer.
It was about simultaneously.
Mr. Specter.
So that it was your reaction to accelerate prior to the time--
Mr. Greer.
Yes, sir.
Mr. Specter.
You had gotten that instruction?
Mr. Greer.
Yes, sir; it was my reaction that caused me to accelerate.
Mr. Specter.
Do you recollect whether you accelerated before or at the same time or after the third shot?
Mr. Greer.
I couldn't really say. Just as soon as I turned my head back from the second shot, right away I accelerated right then. It was a matter of my reflexes to the accelerator.
Mr. Specter.
Was it at about that time that you heard the third shot?
Mr. Greer.
Yes, sir; just as soon as I turned my head
[…]
Mr. Specter.
To the best of your current recollection, did you notice that the President had been hit?
Mr. Greer.
No, sir; I didn't know how badly he was injured or anything other than that. I didn't know.
Mr. Specter.
Did you know at all, from the glance which you have described that he had been hit or injured in any way?
Mr. Greer.
I knew he was injured in some way, but I didn't know how bad or what.
Mr. Specter.
How did you know that?
Mr. Greer.
If I remember now, I just don't remember how I knew, but I knew we were in trouble. I knew that he was injured, but I can't remember, recollect, just how I knew there were injuries in there. I didn't know who all was hurt, even.
Mr. Specter.
Are you able to recollect whether you saw the President after the shots as you were proceeding toward Parkland Hospital?
Mr. Greer.
No; I don't remember ever seeing him any more until I got to the hospital, and he was lying across the seat, you know, and that is the first I had seen of him.
Mr. Specter.
Your best recollection is, then, that you had the impression he was injured but you couldn't ascertain the source of that information?
Mr. Greer.
Right. I couldn't ascertain the source.
Warren Commission finding: "The driver, Special Agent William R. Greer, has testified that he accelerated the car after what was probably the second shot...The Presidential car did not stop or almost come to a complete halt after the firing of the first shot or any other shots."(WC Report, page 641)
11/19/64 interview with "Death of a President" author William Manchester [RIF#180-10116-10119]---"After the second shot I glanced back. I saw blood on the Governor's white shirt, and I knew we were in trouble. The blood was coming out of his right breast. When I heard the first shot, I had thought it was a backfire. I was tramping on the accelerator and at the same time Roy was saying, let's get out of here fast."
But remember what Roy Kellerman said: "Greer then looked in the back of the car. Maybe he didn't believe me"("The Death of a President" by William Manchester, p.160).
2/28/78 HSCA interview [RIF#180-10099-10491]---"The first shot sounded to him like a backfire. He did not react to it. After the second shot he turned to his right and saw blood on Governor Connally's shirt. At the same moment he heard Kellerman say "We're hit. Let's get out of here," or words to that effect. He said he immediately accelerated and followed the pilot car to Parkland Hospital [However, DNC Advance man Jack Puterbaugh, who rode in the pilot car, said they "pulled over and let the motorcade pass" (HSCA interview 4/14/78). The Washington Post from 2/28/85 reported Greer as saying that "I just looked straight ahead at the car in which the police chief was leading our way to the hospital"---this is the lead car. Nevertheless, the Daniel film and still photos depict the limousine AHEAD of the lead car, as it appear it was the lead motorcyclists who actually guided Greer to Parkland! (see pp. 21-22 and 59 of "The Third Alternative" by the author)]
Bill Greer passed away from Cancer on 2/23/85.
The End?---
>From a 9/17/91 interview with Bill's son Richard:
When asked, "What did your father think of JFK," Richard did not respond the first time. When this author asked him a second time, he responded: "Well, we're Methodists..and JFK was Catholic..." (Bill Greer was born and raised in County Tyrone, Ireland; 2 H 112 - 113)
"My father certainly didn't blame himself; it's not one of those things - if only I was driving one mile per hour faster
"My father had absolutely no survivor's guilt...he figured that events were kind out of their control...it was pretty common knowledge that a person riding in an open car was subject to a bullet at any time..."
The End.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* - A thirty-two year old native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Mr. Palamara is a graduate of Duquesne University where he earned a degree in Sociology. Although not even born when President John F. Kennedy was brutally gunned down in Dallas, Vince brings fresh eyes to an old case. In fact, Vince became totally immersed in the subject at the tender age of twelve.
However, it wasn't until 1988, the twenty-fifth anniversary of JFK's murder that Vince began to do his own thinking on the topic; it was from this point that Vince decided to do research on the Secret Service aspect of the case, an area that has received a small amount of attention, especially up to that time period. Vince would soon contact over thirty five different former agents, White House aides, and surviving family members, resulting in his first book entitled, "The Third Alternative-Survivor's Guilt: The Secret Service and the JFK Murder," selling well over 500 copies to date and receiving favorable reviews in the "Fair Play," "Fourth Decade," Probable Cause, and "Lobster" magazines.
Since 1991, Vince has had articles published in the following journals:
1) "The Third Decade"
2) "The Fourth Decade"
3) "Investigator"
4) "BackChannels"
5) "Lobster"
6) "JFK/ Deep Politics Quarterly"
7) Kennedy Assassination Chronicles
8) Dealey Plaza UK
9) Fair Play
In addition, Vince has been credited for his research assistance in the following books on the subject:
1) "High Treason 2" (1992/1993) by H.E.L.
2) "Killing the Truth"(1993/1994) by H.E.L.
3) "High Treason" Revised (1998) by Livingstone and Groden
4) "The Complete Videography-1963 to 1992" (1993/1994) by Anthony Frewin
5) "Killing Kennedy"(1995) by H.E.L.
6) "Treachery in Dallas"(1995) by Walt Brown [9 pages total]
7) The JFK Assassination Quiz Book by Walt Brown (1995)
8) The Warren Omission(1996) by Walt Brown
9) Breach of Faith(1996) by Dr. William Truels
10) Motorcade Schematic(1993) by Todd Vaughan
11) Bloody Treason (1997/1998) by Noel Twyman [13 pages total]
12) Assassination Science (1998) by Prof. James Fetzer
13) "November Patriots" (1998) by Larry Hancock and Connie Kritzberg
14) The Final Report of the ARRB (1998)
15) "That Day In Dallas" by Richard Trask (1998)
Vince has also appeared as a speaker at the following:
* June 1991 Third Decade conference in Fredonia, New York
* March 1992 American Popular Culture conference in Louisville, Kentucky
* June 1993 Third Decade conference (Dr. Jerry Rose presented in absentia)
* October 1995 COPA conference in Washington, D.C.
[soon after appearing on New York's WBAI radio show]
* 1996 COPA conference in Washington, D.C.
* JFK Lancer conference in Dallas, Texas in Nov. 1997
[soon after appearing on KDKA radio in Pittsburgh, PA, as well as in "The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette"].
In this time, Vince has become known as the "Secret Service expert.
But he didn't stop there...
Not satisfied with an acclaimed first book, many journal articles, and a commanding presence on the internet, Vince set about researching and writing for his second book, "JFK: The Medical Evidence Reference." Just like with his first project, Vince went on to contact over 35 different witnesses and principals, including quite a few Parkland doctors and Bethesda technicians. The results speak for themselves: "JFK: The Medical Evidence Reference" is THE Bible on the medical evidence in the JFK assassination, with over 350 names and thousands of sources and citations!
The journey continues... - Vince Palamara, 12/98
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Arnold J. Lau, 85, retired U.S. Secret Service agent
Obama triggers memories for former agent
Arnold Lau served five U.S. presidents
Arnold J. Lau, 85, retired U.S. Secret Service agent, served from 1952 until 1979 in field offices around the eastern United States.
Rita Borden, Special to The Chapel Hill News
CHAPEL HILL - The inauguration of President Barack Obama brought back many memories for Arnold Lau, retired assistant director of the United States Secret Service, now living in Carolina Meadows.
In his 27 years with the Service he participated in the inaugurations of five presidents: Gen. Dwight D, Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.
"There's an incredible amount of research and planning that goes into providing security for such a large event," Lau said. "The men you see walking beside the president's car are just the tip of the iceberg. Every agent is involved, regardless of where they are stationed.
"While I was agent in charge of various field offices, we were constantly researching who might have an unusual interest in the president and keeping tabs on their whereabouts," he said. "At the event itself, we were stationed at posts throughout the area, usually before dawn, and usually in frigid conditions. Needless to say, I really enjoyed the time I was assigned to the inside of the parade reviewing stand!"
Lau didn't set out to become a Secret Service agent when he graduated with an education degree from Montclair State University in 1948. He taught physical education and coached high school football, basketball and baseball in New Jersey.
"After four years, I was only making $2,800 a year and I couldn't see supporting a family on that," he said. "So after I married Mary Louise Roy, a fellow teacher, I started job hunting. While walking down the street in Newark, I bumped into a fellow I'd been in the Navy with during WWII. He'd just applied to the Secret Service and1 suggested I apply, too. So I did and was appointed in 1952."
One of Lau's first assignments was in the White House where he guarded Harry Truman until Eisenhower was inaugurated.
"I'd walk at a discrete distance behind President Truman as he went from his office to his quarters," he said. "I'd also accompany him in the car when he went to play cards with his cronies."
Lau was assigned to protect Eisenhower when the president took office in 1953.
"I went everywhere with him, including to the 1955 Summit Conference in Geneva, Switzerland, for the historic meeting of President Eisenhower, Prime Minister Anthony Eden of the United Kingdom, Premier Nikolai Bulganin of the Soviet Union, and Prime Minister Edgar Faure of France," Lau said. "We scoured every inch of Eisenhower's villa on Lake Geneva for bombs, eavesdropping devices and anything electronic."
A bittersweet moment came when Lau visited Eisenhower at Walter Reed Hospital just before he died. "Mamie was there and said, 'Ike, say hello to Mr. Lau -- he's one of the old timers.'"
Another memorable experience was on election night of 1960.
"Some of us registered at a Hyannis Port motel as 'The Savings Bond Division." As soon as it was clear that John F. Kennedy had been elected, we were authorized to move into the Kennedy compound."
"Bobby Kennedy came out and offered us a cold drink. A fellow agent requested coffee instead. Shortly, JFK himself came out with the coffee and some cake. We all really liked him, he was more of a contemporary of ours."
Kennedy was the first president inaugurated who didn't wear a hat -- and that changed the Secret Service agents' dress, too. "Up until then we all wore suits, white shirts, ties and fedoras. Now we wore whatever the president wore so we would blend in."
The assassination of President Kennedy and then Bobby Kennedy brought major changes in the Secret Service. Protection was extended to presidential and vice presidential candidates and their families. Lau, for example, was temporarily assigned to President Lyndon Johnson during the election campaign and often accompanied him to the LBJ ranch in Texas.
Lau was tapped to set up a new comprehensive training program for new recruits and experienced agents. He created dozens of new and advanced courses, developed an expanded and professionalized instructor staff, and established a Counter-Sniper team. "My early teaching experience came in handy after all," he said.
Lau ended his 27-year Secret Service career as assistant director for protective research, overseeing the vital and sensitive protective intelligence needs of the Service.
Since then the authority of the Secret Service has expanded to include the investigation of financial institution fraud, access device fraud, computer crimes, fraudulent government and commercial securities, fictitious financial instruments, telecommunications fraud, false identification and identity theft. In 2003, the Secret Service was transferred to the Department of Homeland Security where it has made nearly 29,000 criminal arrests for counterfeiting, and other financial crimes, 98 percent of which resulted in convictions.
The Laus retired to Chapel Hill from the Washington, D.C., area in 1980; their children soon followed. Their son, John Lau, a lieutenant with the Carboro Police Department, and wife Lisa live in Hillsborough. Their daughter, Nancy and husband Charles Prescott run Prescott Stone Fabricators Ltd. in Durham.
Vince Palamara
http://www.youtube.com/user/VincePalamara
3/11/09:
More links:
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Vince_Palamara
http://www.encyclopediefrancaise.com/Vince_Palamara.html
Arnold Lau served five U.S. presidents
Arnold J. Lau, 85, retired U.S. Secret Service agent, served from 1952 until 1979 in field offices around the eastern United States.
Rita Borden, Special to The Chapel Hill News
CHAPEL HILL - The inauguration of President Barack Obama brought back many memories for Arnold Lau, retired assistant director of the United States Secret Service, now living in Carolina Meadows.
In his 27 years with the Service he participated in the inaugurations of five presidents: Gen. Dwight D, Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.
"There's an incredible amount of research and planning that goes into providing security for such a large event," Lau said. "The men you see walking beside the president's car are just the tip of the iceberg. Every agent is involved, regardless of where they are stationed.
"While I was agent in charge of various field offices, we were constantly researching who might have an unusual interest in the president and keeping tabs on their whereabouts," he said. "At the event itself, we were stationed at posts throughout the area, usually before dawn, and usually in frigid conditions. Needless to say, I really enjoyed the time I was assigned to the inside of the parade reviewing stand!"
Lau didn't set out to become a Secret Service agent when he graduated with an education degree from Montclair State University in 1948. He taught physical education and coached high school football, basketball and baseball in New Jersey.
"After four years, I was only making $2,800 a year and I couldn't see supporting a family on that," he said. "So after I married Mary Louise Roy, a fellow teacher, I started job hunting. While walking down the street in Newark, I bumped into a fellow I'd been in the Navy with during WWII. He'd just applied to the Secret Service and1 suggested I apply, too. So I did and was appointed in 1952."
One of Lau's first assignments was in the White House where he guarded Harry Truman until Eisenhower was inaugurated.
"I'd walk at a discrete distance behind President Truman as he went from his office to his quarters," he said. "I'd also accompany him in the car when he went to play cards with his cronies."
Lau was assigned to protect Eisenhower when the president took office in 1953.
"I went everywhere with him, including to the 1955 Summit Conference in Geneva, Switzerland, for the historic meeting of President Eisenhower, Prime Minister Anthony Eden of the United Kingdom, Premier Nikolai Bulganin of the Soviet Union, and Prime Minister Edgar Faure of France," Lau said. "We scoured every inch of Eisenhower's villa on Lake Geneva for bombs, eavesdropping devices and anything electronic."
A bittersweet moment came when Lau visited Eisenhower at Walter Reed Hospital just before he died. "Mamie was there and said, 'Ike, say hello to Mr. Lau -- he's one of the old timers.'"
Another memorable experience was on election night of 1960.
"Some of us registered at a Hyannis Port motel as 'The Savings Bond Division." As soon as it was clear that John F. Kennedy had been elected, we were authorized to move into the Kennedy compound."
"Bobby Kennedy came out and offered us a cold drink. A fellow agent requested coffee instead. Shortly, JFK himself came out with the coffee and some cake. We all really liked him, he was more of a contemporary of ours."
Kennedy was the first president inaugurated who didn't wear a hat -- and that changed the Secret Service agents' dress, too. "Up until then we all wore suits, white shirts, ties and fedoras. Now we wore whatever the president wore so we would blend in."
The assassination of President Kennedy and then Bobby Kennedy brought major changes in the Secret Service. Protection was extended to presidential and vice presidential candidates and their families. Lau, for example, was temporarily assigned to President Lyndon Johnson during the election campaign and often accompanied him to the LBJ ranch in Texas.
Lau was tapped to set up a new comprehensive training program for new recruits and experienced agents. He created dozens of new and advanced courses, developed an expanded and professionalized instructor staff, and established a Counter-Sniper team. "My early teaching experience came in handy after all," he said.
Lau ended his 27-year Secret Service career as assistant director for protective research, overseeing the vital and sensitive protective intelligence needs of the Service.
Since then the authority of the Secret Service has expanded to include the investigation of financial institution fraud, access device fraud, computer crimes, fraudulent government and commercial securities, fictitious financial instruments, telecommunications fraud, false identification and identity theft. In 2003, the Secret Service was transferred to the Department of Homeland Security where it has made nearly 29,000 criminal arrests for counterfeiting, and other financial crimes, 98 percent of which resulted in convictions.
The Laus retired to Chapel Hill from the Washington, D.C., area in 1980; their children soon followed. Their son, John Lau, a lieutenant with the Carboro Police Department, and wife Lisa live in Hillsborough. Their daughter, Nancy and husband Charles Prescott run Prescott Stone Fabricators Ltd. in Durham.
Vince Palamara
http://www.youtube.com/user/VincePalamara
3/11/09:
More links:
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Vince_Palamara
http://www.encyclopediefrancaise.com/Vince_Palamara.html
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Vince Palamara: leading civilian Secret Service expert
Vince Palamara
Vince Palamara is the world's leading civilian authority on the United States Secret Service, especially with regards to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Palamara's work has appeared in over 50 books by other authors, numerous articles, countless internet articles, radio, and even on The History Channel. Palamara is currently in the process of having his book entitled Survivor's Guilt: The Secret Service & The Failure To Protect The President published.
This biographical article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
Categories: People stubs
Vince Palamara is an American author who focuses on the United States Secret Service, especially with regard to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. [1][2] He is a notable alumni of Duquesne University,[3] and a native of Bethel Park and South Park, Pennsylvania[4]
References
^ Vince Palamara booksSee, for examples, "Murder in Dealey Plaza" (2000)by Prof. James H. Fetzer, numerous, but especially page 159Murder In Dealey Plaza Publisher's Weekly wrote: "A compendium of recent thought and discovery about the Kennedy assassination, this volume makes a case for official malfeasance and against the "lone gunman" explanation...Vincent Palamara names several Secret Service agents who he believes may have been compromised...This coolly angry dismantling of the theories of the Warren commission and lone-gunman supporters like Gerald Posner will be fodder for conspiracy theorists. (Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.) ; "The Secret Service: The Hidden History of an Enigmatic Agency" (2002; updated 2005)by Philip Melanson, pages 80, 87, and Bibliography Secret Service Melanson; The Final Report of the Assassination Records Review Board, pages xvii & 138 Final Report ARRB; "Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years" (2007) by David Talbot, pages 14, 22, and Bibliography Brothers ; "Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy" (2007) by Vincent Bugliosi, pages XV [page 3, endnotes disc], 146 [source notes disc], 347 [endnotes disc], 403, 404, 408, 691 [endnotes disc], 711 [endnotes disc], 998, 1242-1243, 1276, 1529 (Bibliography), 1592 (index), 1603 (index), & 1604 (index)Bugliosi JFK book, and even "Four Days in November: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy" by the aforementioned Vincent Bugliosi (2008) Four Days by Bugliosi
^ See also episode seven of the A & E/ History Channel series "The Men Who Killed Kennedy" (TMWKK) titled "The Smoking Guns" (aired four times in November 2003; available on VHS and DVD from 11/03-4/04; still shown in the UK and on YouTube). Palamara appears in the first segment of the program and is referred to by the British narrator as "A Secret Service expert" with an accompanying title at the bottom of the picture saying the same thing Palamara on History Channel. Vincent Bugliosi refers to Palamara as a "Secret Service expert" in his 2008 book "Four Days In November", as well as on his website:Bugliosi official book website In addition, former Secret Service agent Abraham Bolden favorably mentioned Palamara's research during his November 2007 ABC News interview, as well as on his book's website:Agent Bolden official book website
^ PDF Palamara-Duquesne University alumniNotable Duquesne University Alumni
^ UK website on Palamara Palamara official MySpace page Palamara official MySpace page two
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vince_Palamara
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Vince-Palamara
Encyclopedia > Vince Palamara
Vince Palamara is a civilian authority on the United States Secret Service, especially with regards to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Palamara's work has appeared in over 32 books by other authors, numerous articles, countless internet articles, radio, and The History Channel. Palamara is currently in the process of having his book entitled Survivor's Guilt published. USSS redirects here. ... President Kennedy, with his wife, Jacqueline Kennedy, and Texas Governor John Connally in the Presidential limousine shortly before the assassination. ... John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to as John F. Kennedy, JFK or Jack Kennedy, was the 35th President of the United States. ... History Channel logo. ...
Category: United States writer stubs
http://www.duq.edu/frontpages/aboutdu/magazines/DUMagWinter2004.pdf
-------------------
Vincent Palamara was born in Pittsburgh and graduated from Duquesne University with a degree in Sociology.
Although not even born when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Vince brings fresh eyes to an old case. In fact, Vince would go on to study the largely overlooked actions - and inactions - of the United States Secret Service in unprecedented detail, as well as achieving a world's record in the process, having interviewed and corresponded with over seventy former agents (the House Select Committee on Assassinations had the old record of 46 with a 6 million dollar budget and supboena power from Congress), not to mention many surviving family members, White House aides, and even quite a few Parkland and Bethesda medical witnesses for a corresponding project. The result was Survivor's Guilt; The Secret Service & The Failure To Protect The President, a very successful self-published book that sold thousands of copies in the 1990's before becoming a free online e-book in 2006.
In addition, the aforementioned corresponding project on the John F. Kennedy assassination medical evidence, JFK: The Medical Evidence Reference, Vince's second book, although almost an afterthought to Vince's main area of research, still sold hundreds of copies and was favorably mentioned in books by William Law, R. Andrew Kiel, James Fetzer, and even Vince Bugliosi. Like his first book, Vince's medical evidence tome became a free online e-book in 2006.
All told, Vince has been favorably mentioned in over 50 JFK and Secret Service related books to date (including two whole chapters in Murder in Dealey Plaza, The Secret Service: The Hidden History Of An Enigmatic Agency by Philip Melanson, and the Final Report of the Assassination Records Review Board, among many others), often at length, in the bibliographies, and in the Secret Service - and even medical evidence - areas of these works.
Vince has appeared on the History Channel, local cable access television, YouTube, radio, newspapers, print journals, at national conferences, and all over the internet. Also, Vince's original research materials, or copies of said materials, are stored in the National Archives (by request under Deed Of Gift by the ARRB), the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Harvard University, the Assassination Archives and Research Center, and the Dallas Public Library.
Vince Palamara has become known (as he was dubbed by the History Channel in 2003) "the Secret Service expert." As former JFK Secret Service agent Joe Paolella proclaimed: "You seem to know a lot about the Secret Service, maybe even more than I do," while fellow JFK Secret Service agent Chuck Zboril stated: "You might be helpful to the official Secret Service historian who works out of Washington!"
http://lads.myspace.com/slides/slideshow_random.swf?u=58490370
-------------
Vince Palamara Biography (extended/ part two)
Vince Palamara is the leading civilian authority on the United States Secret Service, especially with regard to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He is a graduate of Duquesne University, and a native of Bethel Park and South Park, Pennsylvania.
Writing
Palamara's work has appeared in over 50 books by other authors, in print articles,and internet articles,YouTube, newspapers, radio, at national conferences, and The History Channel.
Palamara is currently in the process of having his book entitled Survivor's Guilt: The Secret Service & The Failure To Protect The President published, as well as continuing his role as international consultant on the actions---and inactions---of the United States Secret Service on November 22, 1963, during the tragic assassination of President John F. Kennedy [note: Vince Palamara is also consulted, from time to time, regarding the Secret Service's interaction with other U.S. Presidents such as Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Lyndon Johnson, to name but a few, although the agents that protected President John F. Kennedy are his primary focus.
Palamara is also the author of JFK: The Medical Evidence Reference.
Music
Palamara is also an accomplished guitarist, performing in the original, progressive hard rock bands Seance, Entourage, Diamond Haze, and now Silent Choir (featured on college and foreign radio, in international fanzines and magazines, on cable access television, on the internet, and on YouTube).
http://www.youtube.com/user/VincePalamara
http://www.myspace.com/vincepalamara
http://twitter.com/vincepalamara
http://www.facebook.com/vince.palamara
http://vincepalamara.blogspot.com/
http://vincepalamarasecretservicejfk.blogspot.com/
I am in over 50 other author's books to date, including:
"RECLAIMING HISTORY: THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY" (2007) BY VINCE BUGLIOSI: 16 pages, inc. the disc, biblio., index, & text
"FOUR DAYS IN NOVEMBER" by Vincent Bugliosi (2008)
Vince Bugliosi letter to Vince Palamara dated 7/14/07:"I want you to know that I am very impressed with your research abilities and the enormous amount of work you put into your investigation of the Secret Service regarding the assassination. You are, unquestionably, the main authority on the Secret Service with regard to the assassination. I agree with you that they did not do a good job protecting the president (e.g. see p. 1443 of my book)..."
"FINAL REPORT OF THE ASSASSINATION RECORDS REVIEW BOARD" (1998) [ALSO ONLINE] [Given to President Clinton, Trent Lott, & Newt Gingrich!]
"BROTHERS" (2007) by David Talbot
In all versions of "THE SECRET SERVICE: THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF AN ENIGMATIC AGENCY" (2005) BY PHILLIP H. MELANSON WITH PETER F. STEVENS--- see especially *updated and revised version with different cover*
"MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA" (2000) BY JAMES FETZER [2 whole chapters+; favorable mention by Publisher's Weekly; Amazon.Com "best-seller"] Publisher's Weekly, 8/28/00: "A compendium of recent thought and discovery about the Kennedy assassination, this volume makes a case for official malfeasance and against the "lone gunman" explanation...Vincent Palamara names several Secret Service agents who he believes may have been compromised...This coolly angry dismantling of the theories of the Warren commission and lone-gunman supporters like Gerald Posner will be fodder for conspiracy theorists. "
Sample of my research:
Special Agent In Charge (SAIC) of White House Detail (WHD), later known as the Presidential Protective Division (PPD)---***compiled*** by Vince Palamara
The Associated Press, 7/18/98: "[Larry] Cockell is one of only 24 special agents to be in charge of the presidential protective division since it started in 1901 and is the first black to hold the job."--- SAIC's [24 from 1901 to 1999]:
1 Joseph E. Murphy (Teddy Roosevelt [1901]-Taft; became Asst. Chief in 1919 under Wilson)
2 Dick Jervis Wilson; his asst.: Col. Edmund W. Starling)
3 Col. Edmund W. Starling (1935; ASAIC: Michael F. Reilly; his own book "Starling of the White House")
4 Michael F. Reilly (1943-1946/47; had been ASAIC 1941-1943, along with Guy H. Spaman and Thomas J. Qualters; his own book "Reilly of the White House")
5 George C. Drescher (joined the Secret Service in 1919; worked in the Philadelphia, and Washington field offices; SAIC 4/12/45-5/3/46 when replaced by Rowley; 5/46: SAIC of Baltimore office; retired in 1953; Herbert Hoover Library 6/1/67; mentioned by Boring and Rowley during their Truman Library Oral Histories in 1988; deceased; nephew Earl L. Drescher became the deputy chief of the Executive Protective Service in the late 1970's)
6 James J. Rowley (1946-Sept. 1961; during late Ike into early JFK era: Behn & Campion: ASAIC; Boring, Kellerman, Stout & Roberts: ATSAIC) ; became Director 1961-1973; Secret Service training facility in Beltsville, MD named after Rowley
7 Gerald A. Behn (Sept. 1961-Jan. 1965; ASAIC's: Boring, Campion [replaced by Kellerman 10/62], and Kellerman; after 11/22/63, ASAIC's inc. Youngblood; ATSAIC's: Roberts, Godfrey, & Stout)
8 Rufus W. Youngblood (Jan. 1965; ASAIC's: Kellerman [2] + Johns & Taylor); later, became an Asst. Director
9 Thomas "Lem" Johns (Fall 1965; ASAIC: Robert H. Taylor); son later served on PPD
10 Clinton J. Hill (Approx. 1966-1968; Became SAIC of V.P. Agnew's Detail in 1969); later, bnecame an Asst. Director; on "60 Minutes" 12/75 and 11/93; "The Secret Service", 1995; "Inside The Secret Service", 1995; "Inside The U.S. Secret Service", 2004; Larry King, 2006
11 Robert H. Taylor (LBJ & NIXON: 1969-Feb. 1973/Nixon; ASAIC: William L. Duncan)
12Richard E. Keiser (Feb. 1973-1978; Nixon, Ford [Keiser bore a resemblance to Ford], Carter; ASAIC: Warren "Woody" Taylor; ASAIC of V.P. Detail: David B. Grant; Ronald M. Pontius; Robert L. Kollar: was ASAIC of Ford Detail in 1978)
13John R. Simpson (Carter) later, became Director; "Inside The Secret Service", 1995
14Gerald S. Parr (Carter-Reagan; ATSAIC: Ray Shaddick; ASAIC: Robert DeProspero; SAIC of Nancy Reagan's Detail: George Opfer); "The Secret Service", 1995; "Inside The Secret Service", 1995; Larry King 1998; "Inside The U.S. Secret Service", 2004; etc.
15Robert DeProspero (Reagan, Jan. 1982-approx. April 1985; pictured on pages 110, 111, 114, 122, 123, 126, & 127 of AFAUSSS book from 1991; later, became the Assistant to the Director [Simpson]; ASAIC: Joe Petro) see this wikipedia which I created: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_DeProspero
16Ray Shaddick (Reagan/ Bush)
17John W. Magaw (Bush) later, became Director
18Rich "Skip" Miller (Bush/ Clinton); later, became an Assistant Director; pictured in Petro's book and President Bill Clinton's book
19David Carpenter (Clinton) ; "Inside The U.S. Secret Service", 2004; pictured in President Bill Clinton's book
20Don Flynn (Clinton); "Inside The U.S. Secret Service", 2004; pictured in President Bill Clinton's book
21Pat Miller (Clinton; "The Secret Service" video 1995); pictured in President Bill Clinton's book
22Lewis C. Merletti (Clinton; appears in "The Secret Service" video 1995[un-credited]); later, became Director; pictured in President Bill Clinton's book
23Brian L. Stafford (Clinton); later, became Director; "Inside The U.S. Secret Service", 2004; pictured in President Bill Clinton's book
24Larry Cockell (Clinton; testified before Kenneth Starr's investigation into the Monica Lewinsky matter); later, became an Assistant Director; "Inside The U.S. Secret Service", 2004; ; pictured in President Bill Clinton's book
Reginald Moore (Clinton)
Nick Trotta (at least since 2004 to the present [2007]; George W. Bush)
----------------------
Vince Palamara is the world's leading civilian authority on the United States Secret Service, especially with regards to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Palamara's work has appeared in over 50 books by other authors, numerous articles, countless internet articles, radio, and even on The History Channel. Palamara is currently in the process of having his book entitled Survivor's Guilt: The Secret Service & The Failure To Protect The President published.
This biographical article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
Categories: People stubs
Vince Palamara is an American author who focuses on the United States Secret Service, especially with regard to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. [1][2] He is a notable alumni of Duquesne University,[3] and a native of Bethel Park and South Park, Pennsylvania[4]
References
^ Vince Palamara booksSee, for examples, "Murder in Dealey Plaza" (2000)by Prof. James H. Fetzer, numerous, but especially page 159Murder In Dealey Plaza Publisher's Weekly wrote: "A compendium of recent thought and discovery about the Kennedy assassination, this volume makes a case for official malfeasance and against the "lone gunman" explanation...Vincent Palamara names several Secret Service agents who he believes may have been compromised...This coolly angry dismantling of the theories of the Warren commission and lone-gunman supporters like Gerald Posner will be fodder for conspiracy theorists. (Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.) ; "The Secret Service: The Hidden History of an Enigmatic Agency" (2002; updated 2005)by Philip Melanson, pages 80, 87, and Bibliography Secret Service Melanson; The Final Report of the Assassination Records Review Board, pages xvii & 138 Final Report ARRB; "Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years" (2007) by David Talbot, pages 14, 22, and Bibliography Brothers ; "Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy" (2007) by Vincent Bugliosi, pages XV [page 3, endnotes disc], 146 [source notes disc], 347 [endnotes disc], 403, 404, 408, 691 [endnotes disc], 711 [endnotes disc], 998, 1242-1243, 1276, 1529 (Bibliography), 1592 (index), 1603 (index), & 1604 (index)Bugliosi JFK book, and even "Four Days in November: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy" by the aforementioned Vincent Bugliosi (2008) Four Days by Bugliosi
^ See also episode seven of the A & E/ History Channel series "The Men Who Killed Kennedy" (TMWKK) titled "The Smoking Guns" (aired four times in November 2003; available on VHS and DVD from 11/03-4/04; still shown in the UK and on YouTube). Palamara appears in the first segment of the program and is referred to by the British narrator as "A Secret Service expert" with an accompanying title at the bottom of the picture saying the same thing Palamara on History Channel. Vincent Bugliosi refers to Palamara as a "Secret Service expert" in his 2008 book "Four Days In November", as well as on his website:Bugliosi official book website In addition, former Secret Service agent Abraham Bolden favorably mentioned Palamara's research during his November 2007 ABC News interview, as well as on his book's website:Agent Bolden official book website
^ PDF Palamara-Duquesne University alumniNotable Duquesne University Alumni
^ UK website on Palamara Palamara official MySpace page Palamara official MySpace page two
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vince_Palamara
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Vince-Palamara
Encyclopedia > Vince Palamara
Vince Palamara is a civilian authority on the United States Secret Service, especially with regards to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Palamara's work has appeared in over 32 books by other authors, numerous articles, countless internet articles, radio, and The History Channel. Palamara is currently in the process of having his book entitled Survivor's Guilt published. USSS redirects here. ... President Kennedy, with his wife, Jacqueline Kennedy, and Texas Governor John Connally in the Presidential limousine shortly before the assassination. ... John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to as John F. Kennedy, JFK or Jack Kennedy, was the 35th President of the United States. ... History Channel logo. ...
Category: United States writer stubs
http://www.duq.edu/frontpages/aboutdu/magazines/DUMagWinter2004.pdf
-------------------
Vincent Palamara was born in Pittsburgh and graduated from Duquesne University with a degree in Sociology.
Although not even born when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Vince brings fresh eyes to an old case. In fact, Vince would go on to study the largely overlooked actions - and inactions - of the United States Secret Service in unprecedented detail, as well as achieving a world's record in the process, having interviewed and corresponded with over seventy former agents (the House Select Committee on Assassinations had the old record of 46 with a 6 million dollar budget and supboena power from Congress), not to mention many surviving family members, White House aides, and even quite a few Parkland and Bethesda medical witnesses for a corresponding project. The result was Survivor's Guilt; The Secret Service & The Failure To Protect The President, a very successful self-published book that sold thousands of copies in the 1990's before becoming a free online e-book in 2006.
In addition, the aforementioned corresponding project on the John F. Kennedy assassination medical evidence, JFK: The Medical Evidence Reference, Vince's second book, although almost an afterthought to Vince's main area of research, still sold hundreds of copies and was favorably mentioned in books by William Law, R. Andrew Kiel, James Fetzer, and even Vince Bugliosi. Like his first book, Vince's medical evidence tome became a free online e-book in 2006.
All told, Vince has been favorably mentioned in over 50 JFK and Secret Service related books to date (including two whole chapters in Murder in Dealey Plaza, The Secret Service: The Hidden History Of An Enigmatic Agency by Philip Melanson, and the Final Report of the Assassination Records Review Board, among many others), often at length, in the bibliographies, and in the Secret Service - and even medical evidence - areas of these works.
Vince has appeared on the History Channel, local cable access television, YouTube, radio, newspapers, print journals, at national conferences, and all over the internet. Also, Vince's original research materials, or copies of said materials, are stored in the National Archives (by request under Deed Of Gift by the ARRB), the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Harvard University, the Assassination Archives and Research Center, and the Dallas Public Library.
Vince Palamara has become known (as he was dubbed by the History Channel in 2003) "the Secret Service expert." As former JFK Secret Service agent Joe Paolella proclaimed: "You seem to know a lot about the Secret Service, maybe even more than I do," while fellow JFK Secret Service agent Chuck Zboril stated: "You might be helpful to the official Secret Service historian who works out of Washington!"
http://lads.myspace.com/slides/slideshow_random.swf?u=58490370
-------------
Vince Palamara Biography (extended/ part two)
Vince Palamara is the leading civilian authority on the United States Secret Service, especially with regard to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He is a graduate of Duquesne University, and a native of Bethel Park and South Park, Pennsylvania.
Writing
Palamara's work has appeared in over 50 books by other authors, in print articles,and internet articles,YouTube, newspapers, radio, at national conferences, and The History Channel.
Palamara is currently in the process of having his book entitled Survivor's Guilt: The Secret Service & The Failure To Protect The President published, as well as continuing his role as international consultant on the actions---and inactions---of the United States Secret Service on November 22, 1963, during the tragic assassination of President John F. Kennedy [note: Vince Palamara is also consulted, from time to time, regarding the Secret Service's interaction with other U.S. Presidents such as Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Lyndon Johnson, to name but a few, although the agents that protected President John F. Kennedy are his primary focus.
Palamara is also the author of JFK: The Medical Evidence Reference.
Music
Palamara is also an accomplished guitarist, performing in the original, progressive hard rock bands Seance, Entourage, Diamond Haze, and now Silent Choir (featured on college and foreign radio, in international fanzines and magazines, on cable access television, on the internet, and on YouTube).
http://www.youtube.com/user/VincePalamara
http://www.myspace.com/vincepalamara
http://twitter.com/vincepalamara
http://www.facebook.com/vince.palamara
http://vincepalamara.blogspot.com/
http://vincepalamarasecretservicejfk.blogspot.com/
I am in over 50 other author's books to date, including:
"RECLAIMING HISTORY: THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY" (2007) BY VINCE BUGLIOSI: 16 pages, inc. the disc, biblio., index, & text
"FOUR DAYS IN NOVEMBER" by Vincent Bugliosi (2008)
Vince Bugliosi letter to Vince Palamara dated 7/14/07:"I want you to know that I am very impressed with your research abilities and the enormous amount of work you put into your investigation of the Secret Service regarding the assassination. You are, unquestionably, the main authority on the Secret Service with regard to the assassination. I agree with you that they did not do a good job protecting the president (e.g. see p. 1443 of my book)..."
"FINAL REPORT OF THE ASSASSINATION RECORDS REVIEW BOARD" (1998) [ALSO ONLINE] [Given to President Clinton, Trent Lott, & Newt Gingrich!]
"BROTHERS" (2007) by David Talbot
In all versions of "THE SECRET SERVICE: THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF AN ENIGMATIC AGENCY" (2005) BY PHILLIP H. MELANSON WITH PETER F. STEVENS--- see especially *updated and revised version with different cover*
"MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA" (2000) BY JAMES FETZER [2 whole chapters+; favorable mention by Publisher's Weekly; Amazon.Com "best-seller"] Publisher's Weekly, 8/28/00: "A compendium of recent thought and discovery about the Kennedy assassination, this volume makes a case for official malfeasance and against the "lone gunman" explanation...Vincent Palamara names several Secret Service agents who he believes may have been compromised...This coolly angry dismantling of the theories of the Warren commission and lone-gunman supporters like Gerald Posner will be fodder for conspiracy theorists. "
Sample of my research:
Special Agent In Charge (SAIC) of White House Detail (WHD), later known as the Presidential Protective Division (PPD)---***compiled*** by Vince Palamara
The Associated Press, 7/18/98: "[Larry] Cockell is one of only 24 special agents to be in charge of the presidential protective division since it started in 1901 and is the first black to hold the job."--- SAIC's [24 from 1901 to 1999]:
1 Joseph E. Murphy (Teddy Roosevelt [1901]-Taft; became Asst. Chief in 1919 under Wilson)
2 Dick Jervis Wilson; his asst.: Col. Edmund W. Starling)
3 Col. Edmund W. Starling (1935; ASAIC: Michael F. Reilly; his own book "Starling of the White House")
4 Michael F. Reilly (1943-1946/47; had been ASAIC 1941-1943, along with Guy H. Spaman and Thomas J. Qualters; his own book "Reilly of the White House")
5 George C. Drescher (joined the Secret Service in 1919; worked in the Philadelphia, and Washington field offices; SAIC 4/12/45-5/3/46 when replaced by Rowley; 5/46: SAIC of Baltimore office; retired in 1953; Herbert Hoover Library 6/1/67; mentioned by Boring and Rowley during their Truman Library Oral Histories in 1988; deceased; nephew Earl L. Drescher became the deputy chief of the Executive Protective Service in the late 1970's)
6 James J. Rowley (1946-Sept. 1961; during late Ike into early JFK era: Behn & Campion: ASAIC; Boring, Kellerman, Stout & Roberts: ATSAIC) ; became Director 1961-1973; Secret Service training facility in Beltsville, MD named after Rowley
7 Gerald A. Behn (Sept. 1961-Jan. 1965; ASAIC's: Boring, Campion [replaced by Kellerman 10/62], and Kellerman; after 11/22/63, ASAIC's inc. Youngblood; ATSAIC's: Roberts, Godfrey, & Stout)
8 Rufus W. Youngblood (Jan. 1965; ASAIC's: Kellerman [2] + Johns & Taylor); later, became an Asst. Director
9 Thomas "Lem" Johns (Fall 1965; ASAIC: Robert H. Taylor); son later served on PPD
10 Clinton J. Hill (Approx. 1966-1968; Became SAIC of V.P. Agnew's Detail in 1969); later, bnecame an Asst. Director; on "60 Minutes" 12/75 and 11/93; "The Secret Service", 1995; "Inside The Secret Service", 1995; "Inside The U.S. Secret Service", 2004; Larry King, 2006
11 Robert H. Taylor (LBJ & NIXON: 1969-Feb. 1973/Nixon; ASAIC: William L. Duncan)
12Richard E. Keiser (Feb. 1973-1978; Nixon, Ford [Keiser bore a resemblance to Ford], Carter; ASAIC: Warren "Woody" Taylor; ASAIC of V.P. Detail: David B. Grant; Ronald M. Pontius; Robert L. Kollar: was ASAIC of Ford Detail in 1978)
13John R. Simpson (Carter) later, became Director; "Inside The Secret Service", 1995
14Gerald S. Parr (Carter-Reagan; ATSAIC: Ray Shaddick; ASAIC: Robert DeProspero; SAIC of Nancy Reagan's Detail: George Opfer); "The Secret Service", 1995; "Inside The Secret Service", 1995; Larry King 1998; "Inside The U.S. Secret Service", 2004; etc.
15Robert DeProspero (Reagan, Jan. 1982-approx. April 1985; pictured on pages 110, 111, 114, 122, 123, 126, & 127 of AFAUSSS book from 1991; later, became the Assistant to the Director [Simpson]; ASAIC: Joe Petro) see this wikipedia which I created: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_DeProspero
16Ray Shaddick (Reagan/ Bush)
17John W. Magaw (Bush) later, became Director
18Rich "Skip" Miller (Bush/ Clinton); later, became an Assistant Director; pictured in Petro's book and President Bill Clinton's book
19David Carpenter (Clinton) ; "Inside The U.S. Secret Service", 2004; pictured in President Bill Clinton's book
20Don Flynn (Clinton); "Inside The U.S. Secret Service", 2004; pictured in President Bill Clinton's book
21Pat Miller (Clinton; "The Secret Service" video 1995); pictured in President Bill Clinton's book
22Lewis C. Merletti (Clinton; appears in "The Secret Service" video 1995[un-credited]); later, became Director; pictured in President Bill Clinton's book
23Brian L. Stafford (Clinton); later, became Director; "Inside The U.S. Secret Service", 2004; pictured in President Bill Clinton's book
24Larry Cockell (Clinton; testified before Kenneth Starr's investigation into the Monica Lewinsky matter); later, became an Assistant Director; "Inside The U.S. Secret Service", 2004; ; pictured in President Bill Clinton's book
Reginald Moore (Clinton)
Nick Trotta (at least since 2004 to the present [2007]; George W. Bush)
----------------------
Monday, February 9, 2009
Secret Service agents Dale Wunderlich & Jim Jeffries
http://www.timescall.com/news_story.asp?ID=14293
Ex-Secret Service agent talks at Rotary Club about JFK assassination
By Scott Rochat
Longmont Times-Call
LONGMONT — No grassy knolls. No mob conspiracies. Just one man, one
rifle and three shots.
That was and is the conclusion of Dale Wunderlich, a retired Secret
Service agent who helped investigate the death of President John F.
Kennedy as part of the Warren Commission. Wunderlich spoke about the
assassination Thursday at the Twin Peaks Rotary Club.
“There’s a lot of theories about what happened,” said Wunderlich, who
lives in Parker. “At some point, you have to wonder — if it had been a
conspiracy, do any of you really believe that anyone in Washington can
keep a secret for 46 years?”
Wunderlich helped protect five presidents, from Kennedy through Jimmy
Carter. On Nov. 22, 1963, he looked after Kennedy during a rally in
Fort Worth, Texas, but was off duty when the president went on to
Dallas.
Wunderlich was at the airport when he heard the motorcade had been
shot at. An early report said a Secret Service agent had been hit, and
Wunderlich hurried back.
As he arrived, he realized that all the agents were accounted for.
“Who got killed?” he asked agent Roy Kellerman.
“The president,” Kellerman said.
The sight of Kennedy’s body, face down in the hospital, is still
engraved on Wunderlich’s mind. So is the funeral ceremony, when even
the agents themselves were in mourning.
“I had such tears in my eyes that I couldn’t see anything,” Wunderlich
said. “If someone had wanted to kill President (Lyndon) Johnson, that
would have been the best time to do it. Everyone had tears in their
eyes. No one could see.”
Since then, he said, there have been a lot of stories and myths about
the assassination. Among them:
The Secret Service was drunk. Not true, Wunderlich said. Several
agents did go to a place called the Cellar Bar the night before, but
despite the name, the Cellar didn’t sell liquor. “We had sandwiches
and near-beer,” he said.
There was a fourth shot. Not likely, Wunderlich said. Researchers at
California Polytechnic State University analyzed the Zapruder film — a
home movie that captured the assassination — a few years back, he
said, and concluded the sound of the “fourth shot” was actually a
police Harley-Davidson backfiring.
Oswald couldn’t have shot so fast, so accurately. The range wasn’t
very far, especially for the rifle used, Wunderlich said — 192 feet
for the closest shot and 292 feet for the longest one. Moreover, he
said, Lee Harvey Oswald had spent hours practicing rapid-fire shots.
Fast enough to fire three shots in 8.5 seconds? As a test, Wunderlich
said, investigators sent a truck filled with hay bales down the street
at the same speed while the FBI armorer and the Secret Service armorer
took shots at it. In 8.5 seconds, each put five shots in the kill
zone.
Oswald was trying to kill Texas Gov. John Connally. That may never be
known, Wunderlich said. He said Oswald is believed to have had a
grudge against Connally, who as secretary of the Navy wouldn’t change
his “hardship” discharge to an “honorable” one. The field of fire
would have allowed a good shot at Connally, who was wounded by a
bullet that clipped Kennedy’s shoulder first. And Kennedy may not have
even been in the sights when the second shot was fired — his head was
in his wife’s lap after the first shot hit; the second hit his head as
she pulled him up.
“Sam Donaldson is the biggest supporter of this theory,” Wunderlich
said. “I love to watch people’s eyes when I describe it. It’s another
thing that could be logical.”
Jack Ruby, who shot Oswald, was on the mob payroll. Actually,
Wunderlich said, Ruby was a big admirer of Jacqueline Kennedy and
closed himself in his club after the Kennedy assassination, drinking
heavily. He knew several police officers and had a permit to carry a
gun because he frequently carried bank deposits with him.
He was on his way with a deposit and had made up a slip to put $20 in
an employee’s account when he saw the crowd of media around the police
station. After finding out it was Oswald on his way to be arraigned,
Wunderlich said, Ruby worked his way close and shot Oswald — a gun in
one hand and a bank bag in the other.
“If you plan to kill someone, are you going to be prepared to also
make a deposit?” Wunderlich asked. “I think it was a spur-of-the-
moment thing.”
To this day, he said, America remains fascinated with the case,
conspiracy or no.
“Hardly a day goes by when I don’t see something related to Kennedy,”
Wunderlich said. “It’s a topic I don’t think will ever go away.”
--------------
http://www.kansascity.com/115/story/1011370.html
Tribute: James Gordon Jeffries protected presidents as Secret Service
agent
By RUTH BAUM BIGUS
Special to The Star
Associated Press file photo
Secret Service agent James Gordon Jeffries was the personal bodyguard
for first lady Jacqueline Kennedy. He held an umbrella for her while
it rained.More News
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Watchdog | Filling Sprint Center?s seats not always easyTribute |
Every day was a good day for Herbert RempelPublic safety | KCK
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8Competition is stiff, but some of the bridges aren?t in student
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Organization to honor CleaverDump trucker trade show offers lesson in
how an economy crumblesAcross the yard ? or the world ? mortal
contests elicit aversionKC Parks and Recreation Department faces
budget cutsLottery numbers for Saturday, Feb. 7Who: James Gordon
“Jeff” Jeffries, 83, a Kansas City, Kan., native most recently of
Iowa.
When and how he died: Jan. 18, of pneumonia. He had suffered a stroke
more than 10 years ago.
An active beginning: Known as Jeff to some family members and Jimmie
by others, the boy born in Kansas City, Kan., in 1925 led an
adventurous life. He attended Argentine High School until he moved in
his sophomore year with his mother, Mildred Hamilton, to Washington.
Jeffries enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1943 and served in World War
II. After leaving the service, Jeffries attended Benjamin Franklin
University, which later merged with George Washington University.
Jeffries went to work for the embezzlement division of the U.S.
Treasury Department and thus began a long career in the federal
government.
Presidential proximity: Jeffries then worked for the Secret Service,
serving presidents from Harry Truman to Richard Nixon. He traveled
extensively with them but did find time to marry Thelma Thompson in
1955. They had no children.
Jeffries seldom spoke about his Secret Service experiences.
“Jeff was the consummate Secret Service agent: He never shared much,”
said niece Beth Hanna of Iowa, who helped care for her uncle in his
final years.
“He was very secretive about what he did,” said nephew Dave Horseman
of Kansas City. “He did have Christmas cards on the wall from various
presidents (he served), and he hunted with (Dwight) Eisenhower.”
When John Kennedy was elected president, Jeffries was assigned to be
Jacqueline Kennedy’s personal bodyguard.
Hanna recently found a letter that the first lady had written to her
Uncle Jeff in April 1962, just after he was assigned to another
detail.
“The letter said, ‘I will miss you so much. … I will never meet anyone
who has been as loyal and faithful as you, patient and understanding
with me, so sweet and kind with my children. … The President is as
grateful as I am for all you did to make easy my adjustment to being
guarded all the time. I will always remember you. My deepest
appreciation and affection and all good wishes. Your friend,
Jacqueline Kennedy.’ ”
Other interests: In 1972, Jeffries retired from the Secret Service on
disability from an injury aggravated by the performance of his duties.
He sold real estate in Northern Virginia and pursued other interests.
He enjoyed spending time at the couple’s cabin at Lake Anna, Va., as
well as fishing and playing tennis.
“His ideal home would have been where he could have gone out the front
door and play tennis and out the back door to fish,” Horseman said.
In the mid-1990s, Jeffries and his wife moved back to the Kansas City
area. As the years passed, they developed health problems. Hanna moved
her aunt and uncle to Hiawatha Care Center near her home in west-
central Iowa so she could help care for them. Thelma died in 2005.
“I had a relationship that was very dear with my uncle,” Hanna said.
“My aunt and uncle were incredibly unassuming and humble about their
experiences.”
Survivors include: Four sisters, two brothers, several nieces and
nephews.
The last word: “Family and friends were very important to him,” Beth
Hanna of her uncle. “He never acted as though what he did was
special.”
Ex-Secret Service agent talks at Rotary Club about JFK assassination
By Scott Rochat
Longmont Times-Call
LONGMONT — No grassy knolls. No mob conspiracies. Just one man, one
rifle and three shots.
That was and is the conclusion of Dale Wunderlich, a retired Secret
Service agent who helped investigate the death of President John F.
Kennedy as part of the Warren Commission. Wunderlich spoke about the
assassination Thursday at the Twin Peaks Rotary Club.
“There’s a lot of theories about what happened,” said Wunderlich, who
lives in Parker. “At some point, you have to wonder — if it had been a
conspiracy, do any of you really believe that anyone in Washington can
keep a secret for 46 years?”
Wunderlich helped protect five presidents, from Kennedy through Jimmy
Carter. On Nov. 22, 1963, he looked after Kennedy during a rally in
Fort Worth, Texas, but was off duty when the president went on to
Dallas.
Wunderlich was at the airport when he heard the motorcade had been
shot at. An early report said a Secret Service agent had been hit, and
Wunderlich hurried back.
As he arrived, he realized that all the agents were accounted for.
“Who got killed?” he asked agent Roy Kellerman.
“The president,” Kellerman said.
The sight of Kennedy’s body, face down in the hospital, is still
engraved on Wunderlich’s mind. So is the funeral ceremony, when even
the agents themselves were in mourning.
“I had such tears in my eyes that I couldn’t see anything,” Wunderlich
said. “If someone had wanted to kill President (Lyndon) Johnson, that
would have been the best time to do it. Everyone had tears in their
eyes. No one could see.”
Since then, he said, there have been a lot of stories and myths about
the assassination. Among them:
The Secret Service was drunk. Not true, Wunderlich said. Several
agents did go to a place called the Cellar Bar the night before, but
despite the name, the Cellar didn’t sell liquor. “We had sandwiches
and near-beer,” he said.
There was a fourth shot. Not likely, Wunderlich said. Researchers at
California Polytechnic State University analyzed the Zapruder film — a
home movie that captured the assassination — a few years back, he
said, and concluded the sound of the “fourth shot” was actually a
police Harley-Davidson backfiring.
Oswald couldn’t have shot so fast, so accurately. The range wasn’t
very far, especially for the rifle used, Wunderlich said — 192 feet
for the closest shot and 292 feet for the longest one. Moreover, he
said, Lee Harvey Oswald had spent hours practicing rapid-fire shots.
Fast enough to fire three shots in 8.5 seconds? As a test, Wunderlich
said, investigators sent a truck filled with hay bales down the street
at the same speed while the FBI armorer and the Secret Service armorer
took shots at it. In 8.5 seconds, each put five shots in the kill
zone.
Oswald was trying to kill Texas Gov. John Connally. That may never be
known, Wunderlich said. He said Oswald is believed to have had a
grudge against Connally, who as secretary of the Navy wouldn’t change
his “hardship” discharge to an “honorable” one. The field of fire
would have allowed a good shot at Connally, who was wounded by a
bullet that clipped Kennedy’s shoulder first. And Kennedy may not have
even been in the sights when the second shot was fired — his head was
in his wife’s lap after the first shot hit; the second hit his head as
she pulled him up.
“Sam Donaldson is the biggest supporter of this theory,” Wunderlich
said. “I love to watch people’s eyes when I describe it. It’s another
thing that could be logical.”
Jack Ruby, who shot Oswald, was on the mob payroll. Actually,
Wunderlich said, Ruby was a big admirer of Jacqueline Kennedy and
closed himself in his club after the Kennedy assassination, drinking
heavily. He knew several police officers and had a permit to carry a
gun because he frequently carried bank deposits with him.
He was on his way with a deposit and had made up a slip to put $20 in
an employee’s account when he saw the crowd of media around the police
station. After finding out it was Oswald on his way to be arraigned,
Wunderlich said, Ruby worked his way close and shot Oswald — a gun in
one hand and a bank bag in the other.
“If you plan to kill someone, are you going to be prepared to also
make a deposit?” Wunderlich asked. “I think it was a spur-of-the-
moment thing.”
To this day, he said, America remains fascinated with the case,
conspiracy or no.
“Hardly a day goes by when I don’t see something related to Kennedy,”
Wunderlich said. “It’s a topic I don’t think will ever go away.”
--------------
http://www.kansascity.com/115/story/1011370.html
Tribute: James Gordon Jeffries protected presidents as Secret Service
agent
By RUTH BAUM BIGUS
Special to The Star
Associated Press file photo
Secret Service agent James Gordon Jeffries was the personal bodyguard
for first lady Jacqueline Kennedy. He held an umbrella for her while
it rained.More News
Rally for U.S. workers attracts nearly 1,000 in KCLeavenworth carousel
museum adds a sideshowWoman charged in 7-year-old son?s deathCritics
oppose term limits for KC school boardKansas Guard discharges first
gay soldierCalendar | Monday, Feb. 9Nuns in need of someone to fix up
bikes for the poorPeltier movement goes beyond one man?s caseThe
Watchdog | Filling Sprint Center?s seats not always easyTribute |
Every day was a good day for Herbert RempelPublic safety | KCK
shooting death investigated as a homicideOn the air | How to find a
job and build a resumeWinning lottery numbers | Sunday, Feb.
8Competition is stiff, but some of the bridges aren?t in student
engineering contestFamily wanted: Mishellay, 16Black Heritage
Organization to honor CleaverDump trucker trade show offers lesson in
how an economy crumblesAcross the yard ? or the world ? mortal
contests elicit aversionKC Parks and Recreation Department faces
budget cutsLottery numbers for Saturday, Feb. 7Who: James Gordon
“Jeff” Jeffries, 83, a Kansas City, Kan., native most recently of
Iowa.
When and how he died: Jan. 18, of pneumonia. He had suffered a stroke
more than 10 years ago.
An active beginning: Known as Jeff to some family members and Jimmie
by others, the boy born in Kansas City, Kan., in 1925 led an
adventurous life. He attended Argentine High School until he moved in
his sophomore year with his mother, Mildred Hamilton, to Washington.
Jeffries enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1943 and served in World War
II. After leaving the service, Jeffries attended Benjamin Franklin
University, which later merged with George Washington University.
Jeffries went to work for the embezzlement division of the U.S.
Treasury Department and thus began a long career in the federal
government.
Presidential proximity: Jeffries then worked for the Secret Service,
serving presidents from Harry Truman to Richard Nixon. He traveled
extensively with them but did find time to marry Thelma Thompson in
1955. They had no children.
Jeffries seldom spoke about his Secret Service experiences.
“Jeff was the consummate Secret Service agent: He never shared much,”
said niece Beth Hanna of Iowa, who helped care for her uncle in his
final years.
“He was very secretive about what he did,” said nephew Dave Horseman
of Kansas City. “He did have Christmas cards on the wall from various
presidents (he served), and he hunted with (Dwight) Eisenhower.”
When John Kennedy was elected president, Jeffries was assigned to be
Jacqueline Kennedy’s personal bodyguard.
Hanna recently found a letter that the first lady had written to her
Uncle Jeff in April 1962, just after he was assigned to another
detail.
“The letter said, ‘I will miss you so much. … I will never meet anyone
who has been as loyal and faithful as you, patient and understanding
with me, so sweet and kind with my children. … The President is as
grateful as I am for all you did to make easy my adjustment to being
guarded all the time. I will always remember you. My deepest
appreciation and affection and all good wishes. Your friend,
Jacqueline Kennedy.’ ”
Other interests: In 1972, Jeffries retired from the Secret Service on
disability from an injury aggravated by the performance of his duties.
He sold real estate in Northern Virginia and pursued other interests.
He enjoyed spending time at the couple’s cabin at Lake Anna, Va., as
well as fishing and playing tennis.
“His ideal home would have been where he could have gone out the front
door and play tennis and out the back door to fish,” Horseman said.
In the mid-1990s, Jeffries and his wife moved back to the Kansas City
area. As the years passed, they developed health problems. Hanna moved
her aunt and uncle to Hiawatha Care Center near her home in west-
central Iowa so she could help care for them. Thelma died in 2005.
“I had a relationship that was very dear with my uncle,” Hanna said.
“My aunt and uncle were incredibly unassuming and humble about their
experiences.”
Survivors include: Four sisters, two brothers, several nieces and
nephews.
The last word: “Family and friends were very important to him,” Beth
Hanna of her uncle. “He never acted as though what he did was
special.”
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Updates: Death of FBI Agent Frank O'Neill; Secret Service Agent Dale Wunderlich writes
I wrote to Mr O'Neill, although he never responded (his partner James Sibert did write back to me in 1998 and, as of this writing [2/7/09], is still living at the age of 90). However, Mr. O'Neill does mention me in William Law's excellent book "In The Eye Of History."
Francis X. O'Neill; FBI agent witnessed JFK's autopsy
By J.M. Lawrence Globe Correspondent / February 6, 2009 |
Retired FBI agent Francis X. O'Neill Jr., who was one of the last surviving investigators who observed President John F. Kennedy's autopsy in 1963, has died.
Mr. O'Neill, who lived in Brewster, died of a stroke Tuesday in Cape Cod Hospital, according to his family. He was 85.
For decades, Mr. O'Neill battled conspiracy theorists about the JFK assassination. He later became a Connecticut state legislator and recently finished his autobiography, entitled "A Fox Among Wolves."
"The evidence is overwhelming and undeniable that Oswald alone shot and killed President Kennedy," Mr. O'Neill wrote, according to galleys of his book, which is scheduled for publication this year.
Mr. O'Neill and senior agent James W. Sibert were sent by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to meet the president's body at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland and to begin the bureau's investigation.
"Frank was a hard-working fellow; he would tackle anything," said Sibert, who is 90 and lives in Fort Myers, Fla.
After the assassination in Dallas and the arrival of the body in Maryland, the agents joined the motorcade to Bethesda Naval Hospital, where they kept track of who entered the autopsy room.
Mr. O'Neill confiscated and exposed the film of a Navy service member who began taking pictures at the autopsy but did not have security clearance, according to author Gerald Posner, who interviewed Mr. O'Neill for his book "Case Closed."
Conspiracy theorists often point to the lost film to bolster their theories, Posner noted.
Mr. O'Neill appeared before several investigative panels over the years. He adamantly rejected theories claiming the president's body had been switched.
In an interview with Posner, he lamented a minor mistake in his FBI report, in which he wrongly used the word "surgery" and fueled speculation that somehow Kennedy's body had been altered between Dallas and Maryland. "We weren't doctors," he told Posner.
He retired from the FBI in 1978, after serving as assistant special agent in charge of the Connecticut office for four years.
He worked as chief of investigations for the Recording Industry Association of America's antipiracy division before going into state politics in 1980.
He lost his first bid for the Connecticut House of Representatives and was elected in 1982 in the 98th District. He held office until 1990 and was a staunch opponent of the state's income tax, which narrowly passed the House after he left office.
Born in Elmhurst in Queens, N.Y., he was the oldest of six. He fought in World War II as a paratrooper with the 503d Regimental Combat Team in the South Pacific and made jumps on Corregidor, an island in the Philippines.
After the war, he returned to New York and received a bachelor's degree in economics from Fordham University. He enlisted in the Air Force during the Korean War and later joined the New York City Police Department. He became an FBI agent in 1955.
He and his wife Elizabeth were married for 57 years.
"Dad was the strongest advocate you would ever want on your side," said one of his sons, Frank III of Madison, Conn.
He said his father visited the Philippines to see the graves of his Word War II buddies.
In addition to his son and wife, Mr. O'Neill leaves six other sons, Brian of Medford, Andrew of Killingworth, Conn., Colin of Nanuet, N.Y., Owen of Guilford, Conn., Damian of Okinawa, Japan, and Regis of Middletown, Conn.; a daughter, Sheila Baker of Southington, Conn.; two brothers, Joseph of Vero Beach, Fla., and Vincent of Glen Rock, N.J.; a sister, Rita Black of Indian Land, S.C.; and 18 grand- children.
A funeral Mass will be said Monday in St. George Church in Guilford, Conn. Burial will be in Massachusetts National Veterans Cemetery in Bourne.
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.
---------------
> From: ADWunderlichInc [...]
> Subject: JFK Assassination
> To: vincebethel@yahoo.com
> Date: Friday, February 6, 2009, 12:42 AM
> Dear Vince;
>
> I was reading through some of your information on the
> Internet and in one
> location where you mention me doing a Intelligence advance
> in Fort Worth, you
> indicate that there is no record of me being on that trip.
> I can assure you
> that I prepared a report that would have been submitted to
> SAIC Robert I.
> Bouck when I returned from Texas. I traveled to Fort Worth
> from Washington where
> I jointed Bill Duncan and Ned Hall. The advance man for
> the Vice President
> was Jerry Kivett. I was the only person from Protective
> Research Division
> and I coordinated the electronic, technical and explosives
> sweeps with local
> military agencies at Carswell AFB, the Hotel Texas and for
> the speech in front
> of the Hotel Texas the morning of November 22, 1963. I
> also gathered the
> names of the people that worked at the Hotel Texas and had
> them run through
> Texas state criminal records and NCIC. In addition, it
> was my job to issue id
> pins for the employees at the hotel. Although Ned is no
> longer with us, Bill
> Duncan, Jerry Kivett and Mike Howard (Dallas FO) and
> myself have often
> discussed our advance in Fort Worth. I might comment that
> Bill Duncan (Lead PPD
> advance) and I remain very good friends and in fact worked
> together for several
> years after leaving the Secret Service. The local DNC
> advance man from Texas
> that we worked with was Bedford Winn. He was a lawyer
> from Dallas.
>
> On the day after the funeral, I drove from WDC to Dallas
> and transported a
> car load of technical equipment for screening mail that was
> being sent to
> Marina Oswald and the Dallas Field Office. I assisted
> with the investigation in
> various capacities and also served on Marina Oswalds'
> protective detail. I
> returned to WDC with Marina Oswald on Sunday February 2,
> 1964 and I believe
> she testified before the Warren Commission on the following
> day.
>
> If you still have any question about my presence on the
> advance team in Fort
> Worth, I still have my daily activity reports from that
> trip.
>
> Regards,
> Dale Wunderlich
Vince Palamara
Francis X. O'Neill; FBI agent witnessed JFK's autopsy
By J.M. Lawrence Globe Correspondent / February 6, 2009 |
Retired FBI agent Francis X. O'Neill Jr., who was one of the last surviving investigators who observed President John F. Kennedy's autopsy in 1963, has died.
Mr. O'Neill, who lived in Brewster, died of a stroke Tuesday in Cape Cod Hospital, according to his family. He was 85.
For decades, Mr. O'Neill battled conspiracy theorists about the JFK assassination. He later became a Connecticut state legislator and recently finished his autobiography, entitled "A Fox Among Wolves."
"The evidence is overwhelming and undeniable that Oswald alone shot and killed President Kennedy," Mr. O'Neill wrote, according to galleys of his book, which is scheduled for publication this year.
Mr. O'Neill and senior agent James W. Sibert were sent by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to meet the president's body at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland and to begin the bureau's investigation.
"Frank was a hard-working fellow; he would tackle anything," said Sibert, who is 90 and lives in Fort Myers, Fla.
After the assassination in Dallas and the arrival of the body in Maryland, the agents joined the motorcade to Bethesda Naval Hospital, where they kept track of who entered the autopsy room.
Mr. O'Neill confiscated and exposed the film of a Navy service member who began taking pictures at the autopsy but did not have security clearance, according to author Gerald Posner, who interviewed Mr. O'Neill for his book "Case Closed."
Conspiracy theorists often point to the lost film to bolster their theories, Posner noted.
Mr. O'Neill appeared before several investigative panels over the years. He adamantly rejected theories claiming the president's body had been switched.
In an interview with Posner, he lamented a minor mistake in his FBI report, in which he wrongly used the word "surgery" and fueled speculation that somehow Kennedy's body had been altered between Dallas and Maryland. "We weren't doctors," he told Posner.
He retired from the FBI in 1978, after serving as assistant special agent in charge of the Connecticut office for four years.
He worked as chief of investigations for the Recording Industry Association of America's antipiracy division before going into state politics in 1980.
He lost his first bid for the Connecticut House of Representatives and was elected in 1982 in the 98th District. He held office until 1990 and was a staunch opponent of the state's income tax, which narrowly passed the House after he left office.
Born in Elmhurst in Queens, N.Y., he was the oldest of six. He fought in World War II as a paratrooper with the 503d Regimental Combat Team in the South Pacific and made jumps on Corregidor, an island in the Philippines.
After the war, he returned to New York and received a bachelor's degree in economics from Fordham University. He enlisted in the Air Force during the Korean War and later joined the New York City Police Department. He became an FBI agent in 1955.
He and his wife Elizabeth were married for 57 years.
"Dad was the strongest advocate you would ever want on your side," said one of his sons, Frank III of Madison, Conn.
He said his father visited the Philippines to see the graves of his Word War II buddies.
In addition to his son and wife, Mr. O'Neill leaves six other sons, Brian of Medford, Andrew of Killingworth, Conn., Colin of Nanuet, N.Y., Owen of Guilford, Conn., Damian of Okinawa, Japan, and Regis of Middletown, Conn.; a daughter, Sheila Baker of Southington, Conn.; two brothers, Joseph of Vero Beach, Fla., and Vincent of Glen Rock, N.J.; a sister, Rita Black of Indian Land, S.C.; and 18 grand- children.
A funeral Mass will be said Monday in St. George Church in Guilford, Conn. Burial will be in Massachusetts National Veterans Cemetery in Bourne.
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.
---------------
> From: ADWunderlichInc [...]
> Subject: JFK Assassination
> To: vincebethel@yahoo.com
> Date: Friday, February 6, 2009, 12:42 AM
> Dear Vince;
>
> I was reading through some of your information on the
> Internet and in one
> location where you mention me doing a Intelligence advance
> in Fort Worth, you
> indicate that there is no record of me being on that trip.
> I can assure you
> that I prepared a report that would have been submitted to
> SAIC Robert I.
> Bouck when I returned from Texas. I traveled to Fort Worth
> from Washington where
> I jointed Bill Duncan and Ned Hall. The advance man for
> the Vice President
> was Jerry Kivett. I was the only person from Protective
> Research Division
> and I coordinated the electronic, technical and explosives
> sweeps with local
> military agencies at Carswell AFB, the Hotel Texas and for
> the speech in front
> of the Hotel Texas the morning of November 22, 1963. I
> also gathered the
> names of the people that worked at the Hotel Texas and had
> them run through
> Texas state criminal records and NCIC. In addition, it
> was my job to issue id
> pins for the employees at the hotel. Although Ned is no
> longer with us, Bill
> Duncan, Jerry Kivett and Mike Howard (Dallas FO) and
> myself have often
> discussed our advance in Fort Worth. I might comment that
> Bill Duncan (Lead PPD
> advance) and I remain very good friends and in fact worked
> together for several
> years after leaving the Secret Service. The local DNC
> advance man from Texas
> that we worked with was Bedford Winn. He was a lawyer
> from Dallas.
>
> On the day after the funeral, I drove from WDC to Dallas
> and transported a
> car load of technical equipment for screening mail that was
> being sent to
> Marina Oswald and the Dallas Field Office. I assisted
> with the investigation in
> various capacities and also served on Marina Oswalds'
> protective detail. I
> returned to WDC with Marina Oswald on Sunday February 2,
> 1964 and I believe
> she testified before the Warren Commission on the following
> day.
>
> If you still have any question about my presence on the
> advance team in Fort
> Worth, I still have my daily activity reports from that
> trip.
>
> Regards,
> Dale Wunderlich
Vince Palamara
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Secret Service Agent William R. "Bill" Greer
http://www.tyronetimes.co.uk/2617/Did-Stewartstown-native-kill-JFK.4297701.jp
Did Stewartstown native kill JFK?
Published Date: 17 July 2008
By Mark Rainey
A NATIVE of County Tyrone, who retired from work in July 1966 and died in 1985, has become one of the most investigated figures of the 20th century.
Despite being relatively unknown on this side of the Atlantic, William Greer, a farmer's son from Stewartstown who emigrated to America in 1929, has come to prominence at the epicentre of the biggest conspiracy theory of the millennium.
Special Agent William Robert Greer joined the Secret Service in 1945 having served in the US Navy during the war. He was a trusted servant and acted as a personal bodyguard to both Presidents Truman and Eisenhower before being chosen to drive John F Kennedy through Dallas on 22 November 1963.
Everyone knows what happened next, but thanks to a mixture of the American craving for conspiracy theories and the accessibility of the internet, Greer has become the focus of attention for an ever-increasing number of sleuths.
What began as open criticism of Greer's inaction at the time of the assassination, has grown over the years into a deluge of amateur investigators accusing the Tyrone man of having fired the second, and fatal, shot from inside the car itself. This train of thought has snowballed following the publication of 'Behold a Pale Horse' by William Cooper in 1991.
Greer had been the subject of stringent examination at the Warren Commission set up in 1964 to investigate the assassination. On newsreel footage he had been shown to slow the car at the crucial period following the first shot, and then turning twice to look into the rear of the limo instead of speeding away.
Cooper alleges that the first glance established the likelihood of the President surviving the external attack, and the second was to initiate 'plan B' where Greer himself was to ruthlessly finish the job while all eyes were on the victim.
Producing a wealth of 'evidence' to substantiate their claims, the conspiracy theorists on hundreds of websites point to several unexplained events both during and after the assassination.
Drawing heavily on film footage shot by Abraham Zapruder, they have swamped the internet with what appears to be images of Greer turning and raising his hand towards the President at the crucial moment of what was almost certainly his death.
While many observers have dismissed the apparent gun in Greer's hand as nothing more than a reflection, a die-hard contingent will accept nothing else. They also allege that later TV footage, where Greer is seen ordering the ambulance crew from their vehicle and then driving the President's body to the autopsy from Andrews Air Force Base, is further evidence of the need to keep others from seeing the body.
Greer's actions, and his alleged part in a right-wing conspiracy within the CIA against Kennedy, have been analysed time and again in books such as, The Death of a President, Crime of the Century, and Deadly Alliance, but no definitive conclusions have been reached.
Many of the speculators even go as far as drawing on Greer's Protestant upbringing to beef up their theories of anti-Catholic sentiments influencing the assassins.
It was widely reported that the President's wife, Jacqueline Kennedy, was bitterly critical of Greer's actions and compared his performance on the day to that of 'Maud Shaw,' the Kennedy children's nanny.
It's most likely that if Greer had saved the President with timely reactions then he would have gone on to become a household name around the globe and his background highly publicised. As it is, records of his past are hard to come by and quite a bit of detective work was required to glean any further information at all.
What the records do show is that a William Greer (21) sailed from Belfast to Quebec on the Cunard ship, 'Andania' as a third class passenger on 25th May 1929. His address was listed as Drumbanaway, Stewartstown, Co. Tyrone. A further record exists of a William Greer crossing into America at Vanceboro, Maine not long after that date.
The Stewartstown Greers feature heavily in the history of the Unionist Party, the Orange Order, and the UVF between 1912 and 1917. In 1916, a Thomas MacGregor Greer was commended in a letter from Sir Edward Carson for his help in recruiting battle casualty replacements for the 36th Ulster Division.
At the time of his retirement through ill health in 1966, William Greer had a sister, Ella Torrens, living in Dunmurry and several cousins living in Lisburn.
He could have been just another of the countless anonymous exiles from these shores over the centuries, but thanks to the hand of fate and the power of the internet, the William Greer story looks set to run and run.
The full article contains 792 words and appears in Tyrone Times newspaper.Page 1 of 1
Last Updated: 17 July 2008 9:43 AM
Source: Tyrone Times
Location: Dungannon
http://jfkfiles.blogspot.com/2008/07/assassination-of-william-greer.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Greer
http://www.assassinationresearch.com/v4n1/v4n1chapter08.pdf
Did Stewartstown native kill JFK?
Published Date: 17 July 2008
By Mark Rainey
A NATIVE of County Tyrone, who retired from work in July 1966 and died in 1985, has become one of the most investigated figures of the 20th century.
Despite being relatively unknown on this side of the Atlantic, William Greer, a farmer's son from Stewartstown who emigrated to America in 1929, has come to prominence at the epicentre of the biggest conspiracy theory of the millennium.
Special Agent William Robert Greer joined the Secret Service in 1945 having served in the US Navy during the war. He was a trusted servant and acted as a personal bodyguard to both Presidents Truman and Eisenhower before being chosen to drive John F Kennedy through Dallas on 22 November 1963.
Everyone knows what happened next, but thanks to a mixture of the American craving for conspiracy theories and the accessibility of the internet, Greer has become the focus of attention for an ever-increasing number of sleuths.
What began as open criticism of Greer's inaction at the time of the assassination, has grown over the years into a deluge of amateur investigators accusing the Tyrone man of having fired the second, and fatal, shot from inside the car itself. This train of thought has snowballed following the publication of 'Behold a Pale Horse' by William Cooper in 1991.
Greer had been the subject of stringent examination at the Warren Commission set up in 1964 to investigate the assassination. On newsreel footage he had been shown to slow the car at the crucial period following the first shot, and then turning twice to look into the rear of the limo instead of speeding away.
Cooper alleges that the first glance established the likelihood of the President surviving the external attack, and the second was to initiate 'plan B' where Greer himself was to ruthlessly finish the job while all eyes were on the victim.
Producing a wealth of 'evidence' to substantiate their claims, the conspiracy theorists on hundreds of websites point to several unexplained events both during and after the assassination.
Drawing heavily on film footage shot by Abraham Zapruder, they have swamped the internet with what appears to be images of Greer turning and raising his hand towards the President at the crucial moment of what was almost certainly his death.
While many observers have dismissed the apparent gun in Greer's hand as nothing more than a reflection, a die-hard contingent will accept nothing else. They also allege that later TV footage, where Greer is seen ordering the ambulance crew from their vehicle and then driving the President's body to the autopsy from Andrews Air Force Base, is further evidence of the need to keep others from seeing the body.
Greer's actions, and his alleged part in a right-wing conspiracy within the CIA against Kennedy, have been analysed time and again in books such as, The Death of a President, Crime of the Century, and Deadly Alliance, but no definitive conclusions have been reached.
Many of the speculators even go as far as drawing on Greer's Protestant upbringing to beef up their theories of anti-Catholic sentiments influencing the assassins.
It was widely reported that the President's wife, Jacqueline Kennedy, was bitterly critical of Greer's actions and compared his performance on the day to that of 'Maud Shaw,' the Kennedy children's nanny.
It's most likely that if Greer had saved the President with timely reactions then he would have gone on to become a household name around the globe and his background highly publicised. As it is, records of his past are hard to come by and quite a bit of detective work was required to glean any further information at all.
What the records do show is that a William Greer (21) sailed from Belfast to Quebec on the Cunard ship, 'Andania' as a third class passenger on 25th May 1929. His address was listed as Drumbanaway, Stewartstown, Co. Tyrone. A further record exists of a William Greer crossing into America at Vanceboro, Maine not long after that date.
The Stewartstown Greers feature heavily in the history of the Unionist Party, the Orange Order, and the UVF between 1912 and 1917. In 1916, a Thomas MacGregor Greer was commended in a letter from Sir Edward Carson for his help in recruiting battle casualty replacements for the 36th Ulster Division.
At the time of his retirement through ill health in 1966, William Greer had a sister, Ella Torrens, living in Dunmurry and several cousins living in Lisburn.
He could have been just another of the countless anonymous exiles from these shores over the centuries, but thanks to the hand of fate and the power of the internet, the William Greer story looks set to run and run.
The full article contains 792 words and appears in Tyrone Times newspaper.Page 1 of 1
Last Updated: 17 July 2008 9:43 AM
Source: Tyrone Times
Location: Dungannon
http://jfkfiles.blogspot.com/2008/07/assassination-of-william-greer.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Greer
http://www.assassinationresearch.com/v4n1/v4n1chapter08.pdf
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Secret Service online news articles: Bouck, Knight, Mroz, Rowley, Bechtle, Blaine, Johns, etc. [11/30/08]
http://wink.com/p/Vince-Palamara
http://home.rochester.rr.com/tbouck/rib1.htm
The Sagacity to Uncover Secrets And the Integrity to Keep Them
By Patricia Sullivan, Washington Post
Robert Inman Bouck epitomized discretion.
He knew the ins and outs of the White House like few people do. He kept secrets, personal and political, without a qualm. It was the code of the Secret Service, Bouck's employer for 30 years.
"A lot of things he did, I didn't know he was doing," said his wife of 67 years, Marjorie Bouck.
"Some things he would talk about, but he would not talk about the private lives of the presidents at all, he really didn't. He didn't even tell us," said James Bouck, one of his sons.
He protected six presidents, from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Richard M. Nixon, but he had a special affection for President John F. Kennedy and his family, and the assassination "just devastated him," said his wife. The subsequent years were "the worst couple years of his life," she added.
Bouck, who died of congestive heart failure April 27 at age 89, was the special agent in charge of the protective research division at the time and was in Washington on Nov. 22, 1963. Upon hearing the news, he immediately removed a secret reel-to-reel tape recording system that he had installed at Kennedy's request in July 1962.
Kennedy left the machine running when he left the room during the Cuban missile crisis. The tapes, a television documentary later reported, recorded members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff cursing what they considered the president's weak-minded proposal to blockade Cuba without invading it.
Bouck also oversaw the chain of evidence from Kennedy's assassination after it arrived in Washington. He testified before the Warren Commission and a congressional investigative committee that he turned over boxes of evidence to Kennedy's personal secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, at the National Archives. At the time, he said that one of the containers held remains of Kennedy's brain.
The brain was discovered to be missing some years later, and because of this discrepancy, Bouck's name still turns up on conspiracy-theory Web sites.
As important as the Kennedys were to him, Bouck had an enviable career before 1960. A Michigan farm boy, he studied police science at Michigan State, married his college sweetheart and joined the Secret Service in 1939. He was rejected for active duty in the Army during World War II because of high blood pressure.
Yet he traveled the world as an advance man for President Dwight D. Eisenhower and then accompanied him on the official trips to Europe, China, India, Pakistan, Africa and South America. He was a member of the U.S. delegation to the Potsdam Conference in 1945, where Allied leaders determined the future of postwar Europe. He was at the Allied Commission on Reparations in Europe in 1945 and was at the Geneva Convention in 1955.
Bouck also completed the advance trip to arrange for Eisenhower's 1960 trip to the Soviet Union, which was canceled after an American U-2 spy plane was shot down over Russia.
In 1957, he was described as the "electronics ace" of the Secret Service in an article in The Washington Post, a description that a former colleague endorses.
"He knew the mechanical gadgets, the electronic devices you use to supplement human intelligence," said H. Stuart Knight, the director of the Secret Service from 1972 to 1982, who called Bouck a mentor whom he admired for his character, professionalism and integrity. "He was head of training when I went there. He was an example you aspire to emulate. That's part of the culture of the Secret Service.
"He was a leader."
Bouck was on a presidential trip to Moscow when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev greeted a throng of visitors. Bouck did not want to shake Khrushchev's hand, so he kept moving to the back of the crowd.
Khrushchev spotted him, pursued him, and finally thrust his hand between two people, forcing Bouck to acknowledge the host.
Another time, Bouck was at a meeting at Winston Churchill's home when the British prime minister and famous amateur painter interrupted the proceedings to call for his paints and a ladder. He climbed up to one of his pieces and dabbed a bit of paint on a hanging painting.
Bouck also told his family about a time in Bermuda when Churchill, worried that the ocean was too chilly for swimming, asked a well-known aide to dip his top hat to test the water's temperature.
After 30 years of protecting presidents, Bouck retired in 1969. He had a second and third career with the Federal Reserve and with central banks of several foreign countries. But there's little doubt how Bouck defined himself.
One of the few mementos that Bouck kept, his son said, was a receipt, signed by Robert Kennedy, for the president's Cartier watch that he returned to the family after the assassination.
http://home.rochester.rr.com/tbouck/rib2.htm
Robert I. Bouck, 89; Protected Presidents
By Patricia Sullivan, Washington Post
Robert Inman Bouck, 89, a retired Secret Service agent who protected six presidents, rose to administrative positions in several divisions of the agency and later provided security services for the Federal Reserve System, died of congestive heart failure April 27 at the Powhatan Nursing Home in Falls Church.
Mr. Bouck was born on a farm near Elkton, Mich. He studied electrical engineering at Michigan State University for two years, then switched to police administration and interned with the Michigan State Police. He received a bachelor's degree in police administration in 1939.
He entered the Secret Service on Sept. 5, 1939, as one of the first two agents with college degrees in police administration. He was rejected for active-duty service in the Army during World War II because of high blood pressure, but that condition did not prevent him from providing physical protection for presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Richard M. Nixon.
Mr. Bouck also held positions as director of personnel, supervisor of the counterfeit division, director of training and inspector of the inspection and audit division.
When he retired in 1969, Mr. Bouck was special-agent-in-charge of the special investigations and security division.
After leaving the Secret Service, Mr. Bouck was a security consultant to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. For nearly 20 years, he advised the board and individual Federal Reserve banks on security issues, including the design, installation and performance of security systems, the review of construction and renovation proposals and selection of contractors.
After completing his work with the Federal Reserve, Mr. Bouck was a consultant to the central banks of several nations, including Bolivia, Singapore and the Netherlands.
Mr. Bouck was a founding member and president of the Association of Retired Secret Service Agents.
He was a deacon and elder of Falls Church Presbyterian Church since 1953. He also served as president of the men's council and chairman of the property and maintenance, Christian education and personnel committees.
Survivors include his wife, Marjorie Dinan Bouck of Falls Church; three children, Judy Porter of New York City, Robert Bouck of Richmond and James Bouck of Chantilly; four grandchildren; and a great-grandson
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,908156,00.html
New Boss for a Troubled Team
Monday, Nov. 26, 1973
When a Communist-led mob attacked the car of Richard Nixon in Caracas in 1958, smashing its windows and battering its doors and roof with rocks and lengths of pipe, one of the dozen Secret Service agents who risked his life to save the then Vice President was an erect, athletic man named H. Stuart Knight. Last week President Nixon installed Knight, 52, as head of Secret Service, a job that will require courage and initiative of another sort. Knight's job will be to re-establish the reputation of the 1,230-agent organization, which has been badly tarnished by minor roles in some of the Watergate scandals and on occasion by being used to serve the President's political image as well as his security.
An agency of the Treasury Department, the Secret Service was actually founded in 1865 to chase down counterfeiters, an activity it still pursues, but since the assassination of William Mc-Kinley in 1901 the Service has also been responsible for protecting the President. The agents assigned to the White House (average annual salary: $17,000) suffer through long periods of boredom when the President is not on display. But when he goes on a trip, whether to San Clemente or Peking, they work under acute tension, always braced, like sprinters on their starting blocks, for the sound of a shot. On a tour the agents are immediately recognizable: trim young men with short hair and conservative suits who watch the people while the people watch the President. Often they must struggle to hold back the crowds, and sometimes—as in Caracas in 1958 —they are in danger of losing their own lives.
Under these conditions, Secret Service agents have frequently become so much a part of presidential families that they have acted like so many understanding bachelor uncles—carrying out the garbage for Jackie Kennedy while she was vacationing in Ireland, baby-sitting with little David Eisenhower, and collecting shopping packages for a long line of First Ladies and their daughters.
No one ever grudged these small, valet-style acts, but in the past couple of years Secret Service agents have been pressed into performing quite different chores. "They've gotten their responsibilities out of perspective," says one former White House aide who worked closely with the agency. "Sometimes they're overprotective." Some examples of their work:
> Tapping the phone of F. Donald Nixon, the President's trouble-prone brother, who has a record of entering into embarrassing business deals. "They wanted to keep track of what he was doing," one agent admits. "We have to protect the image of the President."
> Opening the White House safe of Howard Hunt after the Watergate burglary.
> Operating—none too efficiently, it turned out—the secret White House taping systems. As the custodians of the tapes, the agents revealed themselves to be sloppy bookkeepers, letting White House aides borrow them casually.
The Secret Service agents have also acted to tidy up the President's political landscape. During the protest demonstrations over Viet Nam, when the White House felt it was under siege, agents were summoned to chase away a solitary demonstrator who had caught —and offended—the eye of the President by appearing in Lafayette Park across the street from the White House.
The Service has also been accused of acting to prevent protests at the President's public appearances. Two years ago, when Billy Graham and the President appeared together in Charlotte, N.C., Secret Service agents helped screen the spectators, barring persons in T shirts and jeans, men with long hair, and other "suspicious" characters. Among those thrown out or denied admittance was a group of children from a Quaker Sunday school class.
The Secret Service also allowed its good name to be used to justify in the name of security some curious alterations to the presidential houses in Key Biscayne and San Clemente.
No Poisoned Ice. Offering a rationale for the $600 icemaker installed in a staff house at the Key Biscayne compound, one agent huffily insisted: "That icemaker was for the President—that way we knew that the President was not using poisoned ice."
So far the agency has refused to answer a letter sent by Senator Joseph Montoya in September asking it to justify the tapping of Donald Nixon's phone—and Montoya is chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that controls the Service's purse strings. Montoya later warned the White House: "The people of this nation must be able to believe that their law enforcement agencies act in a legal and responsible manner. Without that trust, respect for the law will surely disappear, and we risk the return to an age of barbarism."
As he takes over as top agent, replacing James J. Rowley who retired at 65, Stu Knight knows full well the problems of the organization. A 25-year man, he also knows how difficult it is for an agent to refuse to do an extracurricular job in the White House when, as one says, "you are approached on a one-to-one basis—and if the Boss wants it done, you do it."
Although an articulate man, Knight, following tradition, refuses to discuss the Service's affairs in detail, but he does say, significantly, that he hopes "to close the gap between the actual and the ideal" in the way the Service operates. Ideally, of course, the Secret Service guards the President, stays out of politics—and maybe does a little baby-sitting on the side.
One thing is certain: Knight has the solid backing of his fellow agents. Says one veteran agent: "This appointment is different from the past Nixon track record; he's not a former Nixon advance man. He's his own man—and he doesn't owe anybody anything."
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/obituaries/articles/2008/08/03/vincent_mroz_86_and_elroy_sites_77_were_witnesses_to_attack_on_truman/
Vincent Mroz, 86, and Elroy Sites, 77, were witnesses to attack on Truman
Email|Print|Single Page| Text size – + By Patricia Sullivan
Washington Post / August 3, 2008
WASHINGTON - Secret Service Special Agent Vincent Mroz and apprentice electrician Elroy Sites met Nov. 1, 1950, just moments after two Puerto Rican nationalists attempted to storm Blair House in Washington and assassinate President Truman.
Mr. Mroz had just fired a well-considered shot at one of the attempted assassins from a second-floor window while his colleagues were in hot pursuit. He then ran through a basement and out, ready to continue the fight, only to find a fatally injured colleague nearby. Mr. Sites, the electrician, was knotting up a jacket as a makeshift pillow for the dying man.
The violence made headlines around the world and foreshadowed a 1954 attack by Puerto Rican nationalists on the US Capitol. Except for a 2005 book on the attack, the Blair House assassination attempt is nearly forgotten.
Mr. Mroz, the last surviving officer involved in the 1950 shoot-out, died July 22 at his home in Adrian, Mich., of lung cancer. He was 86.
Mr. Sites, one of the last significant witnesses of that day, died July 26 of coronary artery disease at his home in Westminster, Md. He was 77.
In 1950, hundreds immediately gathered at the scene, including swarms of photographers, nearby office workers, tourists, and streetcar passengers. But few were close to the action, and all of them are now dead: The only remaining Secret Service agent from that case, Floyd Boring, died in February.
Mr. Mroz had been in the Secret Service for just over two years at the time, working the presidential protective detail. The White House was being renovated, so Truman was living at Blair House. The president was napping at 2:20 p.m. when the two would-be assassins approached from opposite directions, with a hazy but firm intent to kill him.
The sequence of events is laid out in "American Gunfight: The Plot to Kill Harry Truman" by Stephen Hunter (a former Washington Post film critic) and John Bainbridge Jr. Mr. Mroz, who had just rotated into the service's office, right over the eastern entrance to Blair House, heard gunshots and looked out the window. He spotted two colleagues and Oscar Collazo, one of the gunmen, running and shooting. Mr. Mroz fired at Collazo, who seemed to disappear. Mr. Mroz then dashed out through a basement corridor and up a set of stairs to approach the scene from a better angle.
When he came out the side door to the adjoining Lee House, he found, to his shock, that "There was nobody to shoot. Everybody was down," Hunter and Bainbridge wrote. What he did see was a civilian pulling a seriously injured White House policeman, Leslie Coffelt, out of a guardhouse.
The civilian was a 19-year-old Elroy Sites, who had been fixing an outdoor sign at a furniture company about 480 feet away. At the sound of gunshots, he ran toward Blair House, arriving before the shooting had ended, and spotted the White House police officer slumped in the phone booth-size guardhouse.Continued...
"I heard Coffelt moaning, and I went over and he looked up at me and raised his pistol," Mr. Sites told Bainbridge. "I just took my foot and pushed the pistol over. . . . I had just lifted him up, and I was trying not to hurt him. . . .
"This guy came up and told him to roll up his coat," he said. "I made a pillow, somebody came out the door. . . . I helped put him on the stretcher, and I gave the police captain his gun. They put him in the ambulance. Then I went around and worked on the sign."
He testified in the murder trial of Oscar Collazo (whose partner, Griselio Torresola, had died at the scene), and then went on about his life. Collazo was sentenced to death, but Truman commuted his sentence. Collazo died in 1994.
Elroy Reynolds Sites, a native of Altoona, Pa., moved to Washington as a boy but spent enough time hunting that he became an expert marksman. He graduated from Cardozo High School in Washington, D.C., where he was on the swim team and the shooting team. He also served in the Army. He was a member of the National Rifle Association.
He worked for himself most of his life as a master electrician, and then went into the construction, heating and air-conditioning trades. He also worked as a deputy sheriff in Montgomery County for seven years. His wife, Mary Louise Sites, died in 1989.
He leaves eight children, Kathleen Horan of Gaithersburg, Md., Anne Vane of Frederick, Md., Ronald Sites of Silver Spring, Md., Lauren Chaffin of Annapolis, Md., David Sites of Fulton, Md., Christine Ryman of Kearneysville, W.Va., Carolyn Arensmeyer of Germantown, Md., and Mark Sites of Tucker, Ga.; a sister; 25 grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.
His family said Mr. Sites, who liked to talk about his years as a deputy sheriff, rarely talked about the Truman assassination incident until the Hunter-Bainbridge book was published.
Mr. Mroz was more than 6 feet tall, physically imposing but a graceful dancer with large hands and a level gaze. He looked like a Secret Service agent, someone in the higher ranks noted, and he had a college degree, not a given for agents in those days.
He spent 26 years in the Secret Service, and he had been a Marine in World War II, so he knew how to handle guns and a crime scene. After Coffelt was loaded into an ambulance, Mr. Mroz noticed a little man curled up in a fetal position in the hedges. It was the body of Torresola, who had shot three men that afternoon and whom Truman might have seen when he rose from his nap and looked out the window.
When Mr. Mroz removed the Luger pistol from Torresola's body and searched his pockets, he found two magazines of unused ammunition.
Vincent Peter Mroz was born in Stanley, Wis., and grew up in East Chicago, Ind. He attended Michigan State University on a football scholarship but interrupted his college life to enlist in the Marine Corps during World War II. Before he went to war in the Pacific, he was sent to the University of Michigan by the corps, and he became one of the few football players to get an athletic letter from both schools. After the war ended, Mr. Mroz graduated from Michigan State and went directly into the Secret Service.
He worked in Chicago before coming to Washington in 1950. Assigned to the permanent protection detail for Presidents Truman and Eisenhower, Mr. Mroz later rose through the ranks. He ended his career with the Secret Service in 1974 as deputy assistant director of the uniformed division.
The Treasury Department gave Mr. Mroz a certificate of meritorious civilian service for his actions during the Truman assassination attempt.
He leaves his wife of 63 years, Shirley Gamm Mroz of Adrian, Mich.; two children, Barbara Mroz of Adrian and Gregory Mroz of Washington; four grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE7D7163EF930A35752C1A964958260
James Rowley, 84, Who Headed Secret Service and Reorganized It
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By WOLFGANG SAXON
Published: November 3, 1992
James J. Rowley, the former head of the United States Secret Service who reorganized the agency after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, died Sunday at his home in Leisure World, Md. He was 84 years old.
The cause of death was congestive heart failure, his family said.
Mr. Rowley served as director of the Secret Service from 1961 to 1973. Following recommendations from the Warren Commission and others after Kennedy's assassination, he modernized the agency's law-enforcement and training procedures, expanding the use of electronic technology, and bolstered its protective intelligence operations.
The Secret Service was set up within the Department of the Treasury in 1865 to thwart counterfeiters. While remaining part of the department, the 2,000 agents of the Service now also protect the President, Vice President, their families, major-party political candidates and foreign dignitaries in addition to guarding against counterfeiting and fraud involving securities, computers and credit cards.
Mr. Rowley, a native of the Bronx, was educated at St. John's University, where he received two law degrees, studying at night and working as a bank investigator by day. He started his career with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1937 but accepted a position with the Secret Service the next year. He was assigned to the New York field office.
In 1939, he became special agent in charge of the Presidential Protective Division. That gave him a role in advance security arrangements for President Franklin D. Roosevelt's trips to wartime conferences in Casablanca, Morocco; Tunis; Cairo; Teheran, Iran, and Yalta, U.S.S.R.
On Nov. 1, 1950, he directed special agents and officers of the White House Police as they foiled an attempt on President Harry S. Truman's life, when Puerto Rican nationalists tried to shoot their way into Blair House, where Truman was staying while the White House was being remodeled.
In tribute to him, the Secret Service created the James J. Rowley Training Center in Beltsville, Md., in 1983.
Mr. Rowley is survived by his wife of 52 years, the former Mabel Rita Cluen; three daughters, Claudia Dailey of Columbia, Md., Linda Graham of Chevy Chase, Md., and Donna Ryan of Alexandria, Va.; a brother, the Rev. Francis P. Rowley of Blauvelt, N.Y.; a sister, Marge Borise of Greenwich, Conn., and eight grandchildren.
http://www.goleader.com/99mar25/7.htm
Secret Service Agent to Speak At Two Hundred Club Event
SCOTCH PLAINSGerald Bechtle, former White House Secret Service Agent, will be the keynote speaker at The Two Hundred Club of Union County’s Valor Award Luncheon.
Mr. Bechtle, a Union County native now residing in Virginia, is married with three sons. He is a
graduate of the University of Maryland, and was appointed to the U.S. Secret Service in the Washington
Field Office upon his graduation.
Assigned to the White House detail in the 1970s, he guarded Vice Presidents Lyndon Baines Johnson, Spiro Agnew and Gerald Ford. Upon retiring from the Secret Service, Mr. Bechtle was appointed Director of Security
for the Federal Reserve Bank, where he acted as a consultant on all security matters.
http://www.themclub.org/about/newsletter/Mclub_News_Spring04.pdf
President Jerry Bechtle (basketball ‘60), as expected, is providing firm leadership. After
all, Jerry was the Assistant Director of the U.S. Secret Service and, later, was Alan Greenspan’s top
security guy. Incidentally, did you know that actor Jack Nicholson is Jerry’s cousin?
Harry Anheier 1950 Time conterfeiter article:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,934873-1,00.html
Said Secret Service Supervising Agent Harry Anheier: "I have never seen anyone who could rival him. His greens were wonderful."
Pay Articles from August 1958 Part 3 - Site Map - The New York Times
I Service Set for Marine Piloti ... HARRY PERLSTEIN ... HARRY D. ANHEIER DEAD; Ex-Secret Service Agent Had Guarded Three Presidents
http://www.hotchkiss.org/Alumni/Accomplishments.asp
Gaspard D’Andelot Belin ’35 *
General Counsel, the U.S. Treasury Department
http://www.spinnakermedical.com/id17.htm
GERALD S. “JERRY” BLAINE
Mr. Blaine has over 35 years experience as a senior security executive for IBM and ARCO International Oil & Gas. Prior to entering the private sector Jerry served in the US Navy during the Korean War and later as a special agent in the U.S. Secret Service assigned to the White House during the term of three presidents. Mr. Blaine joined IBM as a marketing representative later specialized as an Industry Consultant in Law Enforcement and Intelligence. During this period he assisted in the design of the National Crime Information Center (FBI) and “Walnut” the CIA information center. He designed and created the specifications for a mobile terminal and a fingerprint scanner, and was a worldwide lecturer and author on the use of computers in Criminal Justice and Intelligence. Mr. Blaine became the IBM Security Director in 1974 when IBM was faced with trade secret thefts. Later he became a Government Relations Officer for IBM to lobby for a Federal Trade Secret Law.
Following his retirement from IBM, Mr. Blaine joined ARCO International Oil and Gas in Dallas as Director - International Security, Government Relations and Foreign affairs in 1991. Responsibilities included personal, physical and intellectual security, country start-up planning, personnel protection, investigations, crisis management and establishing liaison with foreign governments. In April of 1999 Jerry again tried to retire, but his undying interest in crisis management and personal security issues pushed him to become a private consultant in these areas.
Mr. Blaine holds a Bachelor of Science Degree from the University of Colorado. He is the past President of Former Agents of US Secret Service Association. He served as Chairman of the Computer Security Committee for the American Society of Industrial Security and served on the terrorism committee. He was also on the Private Sector Advisory Council of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. He is a member of ISMA (International Security Managers Association). He was a representative for ARCO and IBM on the Overseas Security Advisory Council at the US Department of State and continues to be involved with security issues of business.
Re: John Campion
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/11/monalisa_excerpt200811?currentPage=5
It was the only Mona Lisa reporters would get to see that day.
Under direct orders from President Kennedy, Secret Service agent John E. Campion was locked inside the back of the van with the painting. Campion was heavily armed under his loose-fitting, dark-gray wool overcoat. New York City police cleared traffic from the city’s tunnels along the route before the van carrying the masterpiece passed through. According to one report, several sharpshooters were stationed on rooftops in a few strategic locations. With sirens screaming and red lights flashing, the eight-car convoy made up of police and Secret Service agents proceeded to the Lincoln Tunnel. The motorcade was escorted by state troopers in New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland. During the entire route, the entourage never stopped for a single red light.
http://www.ufocrashbook.com/eisenhower.html
The Feb 1955 supervisors and agents were: Jim Rowley, head of Eisenhower's Secret Service; Gerald Behn, head of White House Secret Service; John Campion, Head of Secret Service on specific trips; Agents John A. Walters, Secret Service linguist (spoke 6 languages); Agent Chavrins, Stewart and Stout. Also along were Agents Arnold Lau, William F. Shields, and Roy Kellerman. From press reports, we know of several other agents on the press plane.
http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/L-0147/L-0147.html
But that set off a line of events which then culminated in an invitation to John Kennedy to come to Chapel Hill to speak on University Day. I believe it was 1961. He accepted. And this event we decided to hold in Kenan Stadium. It's an experience to go through a visit of the President of the United States, where you are the other end of the decision on it. But the first thing that happens is that the Secret Service descends upon you. And the signal corp and everybody else comes with all their entourage. So I decided that the easiest way to handle them was to put them in a space next door where I could keep in touch. And they wouldn't be doing things that I could handle another way, or a better way. It was there that I learned of the thoroughness of this kind of operation. A man named John Campion, who was head of the delegation of agents, at that time. And he had a map of Kenan Stadium. And a literal map of everything about it. The creeks. The ravines. Trees. Seats. And he had to know every single seat design pattern we intended to follow. And he asked me—well, they got down here two weeks before the President came. You know, they were here all the time. They just took up residence. And every day they'd come in for a briefing, and they'd say what they'd been doing and then ask a lot of questions. And one morning he asked me, "Was there a drainage ditch that ran the length of Kenan Stadium underground?" And I said, "No. I'm sure there was not." The next morning he came in and said, "Oh yes there is. And we crawled through it all night last night. And we've locked it up." The day before the President came, he called me into the office, and had this big wall map. And he said, "I want to show you this." And he had handful of letters that were all death threats to the President. And up there he showed me where they had armed guards, in every square of seating throughout Kenan Stadium, on both sides. Dozens and dozens of people, under arms—you didn't
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know it, but they were. And he said, "I just wanted to show you this, because you'll be up there standing by President Kennedy, and they might miss. And I wanted you to know what we're doing to protect you, too." Well, Campion and I got into a big discussion about what kind of crowd was coming. I said, "We're going to fill it up." He said, "Oh, no. Never draw that many people." So I said, "Alright John, I'll make a wager with you. Before I get up to start the exercise you walk up to the front of the lectern, to check out and say you're ready from the Secret Service point of view. And if there are 30,000 people in here, you do this—thumbs-up. If I loose—thumbs down." Well, he didn't know that I had called every high school around here. Because I wanted the children to have the experience I had sitting on the corner in Kings' Mountain, thirty years earlier with my brother. So, Lose Grove School, all of them on the way in, I called the Superintendent to tell him he'd be coming by at such-and-such a time, have all your children out if you want to bring them. They did. We invited all the faculty here. And everybody in town. And they filled the place up. It was a glorious day of sunshine. I never will forget, the plan was for the car to drive up at the north end of the stadium. And Chancellor Aycock and I were to be there to welcome him. And then we'd walk the length of the field in a faculty procession. Well, the big limousine rolled up, and Governor Sanford got out, and President Kennedy walked up to me and said, "Happy Columbus Day." October 12 was Columbus Day also.
http://www.sistersosf.org/newsletters/Sylvania%20Franciscan%20February%202008.pdf
Stanley B. Galup
September 15, 1915 - July 25, 2007
Stanley B. Galup of Hamtramck, MI died on July 25th. Stanley served as a Detroit Police Officer,
Capuchin Monk and retired from the U.S. Secret Service having protected Vice President Humphrey,
Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Ford, Reagan and Bush Sr. and finished his career in the
Secret Service Detroit Field Office. “Stan” as he was known by his friends was a Eucharistic Minister
and devoted parishioner at St. Ladislaus Catholic Church in Hamtramck. Stan was also an Associate
Member of the Sisters of St. Francis in Sylvania, OH where he was a beloved benefactor and
volunteer for many years. A Mass was held at St. Bonaventure Monastery on Monday, July 30.
http://www.shadesvalleyrotary.org/uploadedFiles/image/4410-09-17.pdf
LEM JOHNS
Thomas "Lem" Johns was born in 1925
here in Birmingham. After graduation from
Woodlawn High School in 1943, he
immediately joined the United States Naval
Air Corps.
After his discharge in 1945, Lem
attended The University of Alabama in
Tuscaloosa, and then to Howard College
(now Samford University), where he
graduated with a B.S. degree.
Lem entered Federal law enforcement with U.S. Treasury
Department Alcohol & Tobacco Tax Division and spent two years
chasing "moonshiners," mostly here in Jefferson County. In 1954, he
began his career with the U. S. Secret Service, starting in the
Birmingham office, then on to Chicago, and followed by White House
Detail, serving the last two years of President Eisenhower’s term and
was on the protection team during the inauguration of President John
F. Kennedy.
In 1960, he was transferred to the Atlanta Office, but received
several temporary assignments for the President and Mrs. Kennedy's
estate in Middleburg, Virginia, Hyannis Port, as well as Mrs.
Kennedy's trip to Europe, India, Paris, Rome, Frankfurt, and London.
After two years, Lem was transferred as a supervisor of the Vice
Presidential Detail in Washington, during Lyndon B. Johnson’s term
as Vice President.
It was during this stint in 1963 that he was assigned to the Vice
Presidential Detail with LBJ in Dallas, November 22, and was on the
White House Detail with him on the Presidential Protective Division.
Lem became Special Agent in Charge of the Presidential Detail,
and in 1965, was promoted to Assistant Director of all Protective
Forces, U. S. Secret Service. In 1967, he transferred back to
Birmingham as Special Agent in Charge of the Birmingham Office
covering all of Alabama, and retired in 1976.
Married to Nita Jean Parker, of Birmingham, they have one son,
Jeff Johns, who has also had a career in the U. S. Secret Service, and
is now retired. Lem’s oldest grandson, Michael, is currently in the U.S Secret Service
I Was There: November 22, 1963 – Dallas, Texas
On November 22, 1963, Lem Johns was assigned to the Vice
Presidential Detail protecting Vice President Lyndon Johnson. During
a political tour in Texas, he traveled with the Vice President and
President Kennedy. He was present during the visit to Dallas and in
the motorcade when the shooting occurred. He accompanied the
entourage to Parkland Hospital, to Air Force One where Vice
President Johnson was sworn in as President, and then returned with
the new President to Washington, D.C.
Parnell confirms my Posner e-mail
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/parnell/cc5.htm
Researcher Vince Palamara says that while you thank Hamilton Brown who is President of the association of retired Secret Service agents in the acknowledgements of CC, you cite no interviews of SS agents. He implies that you may have interviewed SS agents but their responses were not useful in supporting the thesis of CC. How do you respond to this and how many SS agents did you actually interview?
I thanked Hamilton Brown because he was very nice when I dealt with him on the phone. I'm trying to think back nine years. He might have even provided some names or contacts, but I did not interview any Secret Service agents that I can recall. I certainly NEVER had an interview with ANYONE that was not used because it did not fit the thesis of Case Closed – that is because Case Closed didn't have a thesis, so I could go wherever the evidence pointed. That was a great advantage over having to shoehorn "evidence" into a theory like the buffs have to.
http://www.jfklancer.com/pdf/secret.pdf
http://www.jfklancer.com/pdf/words.pdf
Darwin Horn's website (re: book)
http://www.darwinhorn.com/
http://graphic.pepperdine.edu/living/2002/2002-11-14-secret-agent.htm
http://www.dailybreeze.com/ci_9442921
On RFK's last journey
A retired Secret Service agent, now of Rolling Hills, recalls the drama after Kennedy slaying
By Larry Altman, Staff Writer
Posted: 05/31/2008 11:07:43 PM PDT
Click photo to enlargeFormer Secret Service agent Darwin Horn of Rolling Hills was... (Steve McCrank/Staff Photographer)«1»The body of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy is placed on Air Force One before onlookers, including local politicians and celebrities, on June 6, 1968. (File photo)It was hot and humid inside the 21-car train carrying the body of Robert F. Kennedy from New York City to Washington, D.C.
The air conditioning had failed and the 226-mile journey that should have taken three hours lasted a sweltering five, with the trip slowed by mourners lining the tracks to pay their respects to the presidential candidate assassinated in Los Angeles.
Darwin Horn remembers the trip like it was yesterday.
"There were millions of people alongside," recalled the Rolling Hills resident, a retired Secret Service agent who supervised protection for Ethel Kennedy and her family after her husband died on June 6, 1968 - 40 years ago this week.
"They were throwing flowers and genuflecting."
larry.altman@dailybreeze.com
Horn, who watched over presidents and world dignitaries from Presidents Truman to Reagan, traveled with the Kennedy family from Los Angeles to New York and on to the nation's capital.
He looked after the 42-year-old Kennedy as he lay dying in a hospital, rode with his casket in a motorcade to Los Angeles International Airport, and helped transport his body to the East Coast for burial.
Until Kennedy's death, presidential candidates did not receive Secret Service protection.
Kennedy, at odds with the Los Angeles Police Department, had declined LAPD protection and kept Rafer Johnson and Rosey Grier - two former athletes -
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at his side. He had no high-level security, Horn sid.
"None of them had any official experience," Horn recalled. "If Robert F. Kennedy had a couple of good people there, he probably would have survived that night."
Horn, working in the Secret Service's bureau in Los Angeles, watched the election results June 4, 1968, until about 11 p.m. He and his wife went to bed.
The telephone rang at 12:20 a.m. It was his sister-in-law.
"She said, `Dar, are you watching?"' he recalled. "`You are not going to believe it."'
Assassin Sirhan Sirhan shot Kennedy with a .22-caliber pistol shortly after Kennedy had finished addressing supporters at an election rally in the Ambassador Hotel. Five others were wounded.
Horn watched the coverage for a while before going back to bed, saddened at the thought Kennedy was a husband and father of 10 with another child on the way.
The telephone rang again at 5 a.m. President Lyndon Johnson decreed that the Secret Service would provide protection for all presidential and vice presidential candidates.
Horn, assistant to the special agent in charge of the Los Angeles office, was ordered to go to Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles, where Kennedy was undergoing surgery. He arrived in time to watch over Kennedy as doctors wheeled him on a gurney from the operating room to a fifth-floor hospital bed.
Bandages covered Kennedy's head. Six or seven lines were attached to help him breathe.
"It was pretty apparent he was not going to make it," Horn said. "It looked pretty bad. He was a fighter. He really fought for his life."
Entries in Horn's log tracked the names of those who visited: Sen. Edward Kennedy, Ethel Kennedy, singer Andy Williams.
Horn stayed until 6 a.m. June 6 and went home. Shortly thereafter, another agent who had relieved him called with the news that Kennedy was dead.
Horn knew he wouldn't be returning home soon. He was told to put together a detail of six men to return Kennedy's remains to New York and for burial at Arlington National Cemetery outside of Washington.
Horn packed enough for two or three weeks and was back at the hospital by 7 a.m. The autopsy was completed by 8:30 a.m.
"They wheeled him out and they put him in a casket," Horn said. "The hearse came in. Somewhere around noontime, the hearse left Good Samaritan."
Ethel Kennedy rode up front in the hearse, which did not have enough room for the agent. Assigned to protect her, he rode behind in another vehicle.
"It was a very difficult type of assignment. You had to give them more leeway," Horn said. "I didn't want to crowd her and still needed to be close enough to help if she needed help. Here was a young lady, her husband has just been shot."
Thousands of people gathered at LAX. Notables watching the coffin be carried to the plane included Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty, county Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, airport commission President Louis Warschaw, former White House Press Secretary Pierre Salinger, Williams and his wife, Claudine Longet.
The Daily Breeze article put it this way:
"Tears streamed from some eyes as the blue, white and silver United States of America plane slowly moved onto the taxiway followed by two Los Angeles International Airport security station wagons.
"Women wept profusely, men had tears in their eyes and members of all races stood slowly waving again until the American flag painted on the tail of the jet was out of sight and over the ocean."
Horn had been the last person to board the plane.
"It gets very emotional, even for a cop," he said.
On board, Horn stayed clear of Ethel Kennedy, who was accompanied by Ted Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy, Patricia Kennedy Lawford, George Plimpton, Williams and Coretta Scott King.
Kennedy campaign manager Frank Mankiewicz, newsman Sander Vanocur and Rafer Johnson were among the 71 people on board.
They arrived at LaGuardia Airport hours later.
"It was hot and humid as only New York can be," Horn recalled.
They removed the coffin and prepared to drive it to St.Patrick's Cathedral for a brief family service. When the ceremony was complete, they took Ethel Kennedy to the Plaza Hotel.
The agents' work was not done. They stayed up until 2 a.m., preparing for the next day, when they would carry the coffin by train to Washington for burial near the grave of President John F. Kennedy.
"That was a long, long day," Horn said.
He remembers the heat and humidity as the train began its journey. Some people were killed when they wandered onto the tracks. Another man standing on a boxcar to watch was electrocuted when he touched a high-tension wire.
"I remember his lying there and his clothing was burning," Horn said.
Along the way, Cardinal Richard Cushing of Boston suffered a heart attack. Horn suggested they stop the train so he could be taken to a hospital, but Cushing refused and remained in pain throughout the journey.
As they entered New Jersey, some people along the route complained they could not see the coffin through the windows.
The agents decided to rest it on three chairs. They lifted it up, two at the foot and one at the head.
"That worked well until we got to the first curve," Horn said. "The coffin fell. I'll never forget the thud that produced."
Four men stood next to the casket the rest of the journey, holding onto it at every bend.
At one point, agents received a report that terrorists might strike. About 100 agents protected the train from the outside.
"The thought was (terrorists) were going to shoot," Horn said. "Guys who didn't like Bobby Kennedy."
Nothing happened.
In Washington, they delivered the coffin to Arlington National Cemetery about 11 p.m.
Kennedy was buried quietly after agents left, with a simple cross to mark his grave, about 60 feet from his brother, assassinated in 1963.
"We took Ethel out to Hickory Hill," Horn said. "Talk about the Irish wakes. It was a celebration. It was a very boisterous Irish wake."
Horn and his fellow agents stayed for another two weeks to protect the Kennedy home. At times, they took Ethel Kennedy to visit the graveside and to church.
When they weren't working, they played football with the Kennedy children.
"People say, `You were a part of history,"' said Horn, who told the story of his career in the autobiography "Dar's Story." "We were just doing our job."
ON THE WEB
To learn more about Darwin Horn, visit his Web site, www.darwinhorn.com.
http://www.specialforces.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1023&view=next
Secret Service agent recalls his time with former President
Man once charged with protecting American leaders thinks history will judge No. 38 well.
By John Bogert
I was pleased to hear from Darwin Horn. He had been on my mind since news of President Ford's death made me recall the veteran Secret Service agent saying that this was the chief executive he knew best and held in highest regard.
That was saying something because the longtime Rolling Hills resident has known and protected every president from Eisenhower to George H.W. Bush. But while he always maintained a respectful remove from the men in power -- still carefully placing the word "president" before each name -- I could see where the two big men found common ground.
Ford was 12 years older than Horn, but both had been top college football players. The difference being that the former agent was taller, at 6-foot-3, and an All-American in baseball and football at Pepperdine. Horn had even signed to play pro ball with the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1951 but gave up the $4,500 annual salary when his Secret Service appointment came through.
"I could see where my future was," said this fit and talkative 81-year-old who has hands the size of Virginia hams. "I've never been sorry about my decision. The Secret Service was the best job in the world. It's like being part of a great athletic team with fantastic camaraderie and spirit."
His 2002 book, Dar's Story (available by calling 310-377-9964) covers all that and includes photos of him growing up in Inglewood, pictures of him from his World War II Navy days and images of him walking beside Eisenhower's open-top car. There are also shots of him working the service's counterfeit currency unit and plenty of pictures of Dar with the famous people he helped protect over a long career that later veered into private security work for the Simon Wiesenthal Center and many international firms.
"I met Winston Churchill," he said, giving me an excited by-golly smack on the leg with one of those huge hands. "One of the greatest men to ever live, can you believe that? I even helped guard Herbert Hoover. When he came to the Eisenhower White House to run the Hoover Commission, when we saw his name on the agenda, we decided to treat him like a president. We thought that he deserved that."
There's an awful lot to tell here. For two years he served in the Paris field office, doing international police work with Interpol. And, no, he wasn't in Dallas when President Kennedy was killed but he did examine the limousine afterward, noting that a bullet fragment had nicked the windshield between the two agents riding in the limo's front seat. He also mentioned -- and this might interest conspiracy theorists -- that Oswald, with one round already in his rifle's chamber, would only have had to work the bolt twice to get off those three deadly shots.
But that's not the point. On this sunny Wednesday morning we met to talk about Ford, a man he knew as vice president, then president, then as a former president still entitled to Secret Service protection. Fresh off his Paris assignment, Dar volunteered for the detail in August 1979, spending two years at Ford's side, taking red-eye flights to New York for numerous board meetings, accompanying him around the world and to the barber shop. Dar and his wife also lived in a home once owned by Ginger Rogers, which was adjacent the house built for the former president by Leonard Firestone.
"I was really excited to work on the Ford detail," he said. "You can generally tell what type of people the protectees are by how the agents feel about them. Ford's agents always spoke well of them."
Fact is, you might be able to fool a nation. But you can't fool the people you live with, especially those pledged to protect your life with theirs in a job that can quickly veer from easy to beyond-belief-frightening.
"I spent three years with Eisenhower and never had a meaningful conversation with him," he said. "But I'd talk to President Ford quite often. For starters, he wasn't the klutz he was made out to be. In fact, he was a good golfer and a fine athlete who swam every morning. Nor was he the dim bulb some portrayed him to be. The man had been a naval commander and he graduated from Yale Law School where he stayed on to coach football. As a former Michigan football player I think that he liked the team spirit of our detail. He liked to talk. He was friendly, inquisitive, congenial, knowledgeable about sports, a good bridge player and just a fine man. He was also one of the most punctual people I've ever worked with."
More than once on some of those long flights the former president spoke to him about the wild days following his elevation to the presidency.
"He told me that during his first month in office the only subject that came up was Richard Nixon. 'What are you going to do about Nixon?' was the constant refrain. He told me that it got to the point where he knew that he had to make a decision right or wrong to get rid of the problem. So he made the decision and it probably cost him the election. Yet he seemed to have no regrets."
But all that was over by 1981 when he accompanied former presidents Ford, Nixon and Carter to Cairo for the funeral of the just-murdered Anwar Sadat. Dar has a picture taken in the cabin of Air Force Two showing him happily standing with Ford and Carter and you'd never guess that he had just finished a post-assassination assignment so dangerous that they all had to wear bulletproof vests.
Darwin Horn
"You never really get used to the hysteria that surrounds the coming of a U.S. president," said the man who still follows his signature with the initials, USSS. "In a crowd people are so out of it with excitement they don't even notice us hitting away their hands or patting down their pockets. In the end, our only response is doing the right thing."
Sure, the "right thing" business is cryptic, but in keeping with so many anecdotes told off the record because he's still operating under some ancient code of honor. So let it suffice to say that Ford sits at the very top of an exclusive power pyramid known collectively to very few.
"I think that history will judge President Ford well," he said of the man who enjoyed a good joke, a man who called Dar when he published his book to remind him that he had written two. This was the same plain-spoken president who referred to other past chiefs as "the other guys," a man who laughed heartily when Dar mentioned that it was he and not the "most powerful man in the world" who was once an All-American.
"I was invited to the funeral," the former agent said while gazing at an old photo of his former boss. "But it involved assembling at a shopping mall and being shuttled to the church. I didn't go, figuring that I said my real goodbyes to this kind man, to this friend long ago."
Source: John Bogert, CBS2
http://www.politicalassassinations.com/LosAngeles.html
The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy: Killing Hope"
National Coalition on Political Assassinations in Los Angeles
40th Anniversary of Robert F. Kennedy Assassination
Important New Forensic Evidence
June 6-8, 2008, Los Angeles, CA
Darwin Horn, Former secret service agent
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29254
Lyndon B. Johnson
Remarks to the Secret Service and Presentation of an Award to James J. Rowley
November 23, 1968
Mr. Secretary, Director Rowley, members of the Secret Service, ladies and gentlemen:
I asked you to take a few moments this morning to come out here so I could say something to you that I have thought for 8 years and have rarely expressed.
That is the feeling that the President and the members of his family have, for their associates under the laws of the United States--the Secret Service.
President Harry Truman once said that the Secret Service is the only boss the President really has. I think he meant in addition to Mrs. Truman.
But I think all the Presidents that have worked with the Secret Service have shared that same feeling. Implicit in that statement is the great respect that we all have for the quality and the character and the dedicated service that this particular breed of men brings to their country and to the Presidency.
For more than 8 years now my life and the life of my family have been entrusted to you. I have never made a secret of my admiration for you. But the means by which you protect the President and his family, and the Nation's highest officials, are something I think that the country doesn't fully recognize or appreciate. Your protection is given by preparation and weary, backbreaking hours of hard work. I have seen it all around the world. There is no greater testimony to your efficiency than the recent trip we took when we were in the air 59 hours and on the ground 53 hours, and conferred with more than a dozen heads of state in that many countries.
Several of those men speaking for those countries said to me, "Mr. President, what an extraordinary group of men accompany you."
As long as I live I am going to have a very special memory of this extraordinary group of men and a sentimental, affectionate feeling for each of them.
This may be a surprise to most of you because I don't express that sentiment through the days. I know that sometimes you are surprised at the way I react to your orders and sometimes I am surprised at the way you react to mine.
I will never forget that day in Dallas when a great big, husky roughneck from Georgia threw 185 pounds of human weight on me, and said, "down." And there wasn't any place to go but down because he was on top of me.
His life was being offered to protect mine.
At least he thought so.
I will never forget the daily knowledge that my wife and my family--no matter how frequently they are drawn into public--were protected by the finest professionals in the world. And if there is anyone that we love outside of our family, it is the Secret Service.
Mrs. Johnson said to me just this week that one thing she was blessed with that other mothers weren't blessed with was that Luci and Lynda had, in the absence of their husbands, in their general vicinity, the finest protective care that this Nation could produce.
A lot of things you have had to live through with me. If I could rewrite them, I would change a lot of them because I have abused you, I have criticized you, I have been inconsiderate of you, and all of those things that you know better than I do.
I have spent more of my time telling you what you did wrong than what you have done right. But Luci, Lynda, and Mrs. Johnson remind me every day of how blessed you have been to them.
As I stand here on this lawn this morning, I think about the sunsets and the sunrises we have seen together in the hills of home. I also think about the occasions that we have grieved together--in Dallas; and I remember in Australia when I just couldn't keep back the tears when I looked in the face of Jerry Kivett, Dick Johnsen, Jerry McKinney, Lem Johns, and Bob Heyn, and the dearest of all, Rufus Youngblood, with that paint streaming down their faces, splattered all over them, but their chins up and their President safe.
I remember Bob Taylor standing there and letting the Cadillac run over his foot in order to protect his President from harm.
I will never forget the great integrity that each man in this Service has shown, and I don't except any of them--I mean every one of them. And I think that is unusual.
You hear a lot about the FBI. I admire them and I applaud them. But I don't yield to them a bit in integrity and competency when you talk about the Secret Service. We are thankful that we have both of these services.
Night before last, I was giving Tom Johnson the dickens for a mishap when I was going to drop in on a group of directors of the Urban League. One of the directors invited me there.
I said, "Notify them we are coming?' Tom passed on the instruction and Clint Hill executed it in his usually intelligent way by code.
The fellow on the other end just didn't understand all of the code. He came back and said, "I can't find that party here out of 300 or 400 in 3 or 4 seconds."
So Hill said, "I am not sure they have arrived yet, Tom," and we had to drive around the block a time or two. By that time, I became impatient. I realized that Tom was in a new capacity since Jim Jones was out honeymooning.
I felt a little sorry for myself that late in the evening and I said, "Tom, why do you do this to me?" Then characteristically, Clint Hill, before Tom could answer, said, "Mr. President, that is my mistake--my error."
I said, "Well, why did you make it? What is wrong with you?" He said, "I communicated a code and we didn't understand it."
So before any more time passed, I started feeling sorry for Clint instead of myself. I was grateful that I had a man who had integrity enough to step up and face the music and say it was his fault, because that is the kind of a man that we all admire.
I want to close by saying that I don't think that there has ever been a burden placed on any agency that was more heavy or more spontaneous or more sudden than the burden placed upon you to guard the presidential and vice presidential candidates this summer, as well as the three Presidents and their families.
Overnight, you received this assignment in, oh as I recall, 3 o'clock in the morning-you took up your posts of duty. You shifted your assignments. You left your families. You adapted yourselves to unprecedented demands and as usual you carried out your job with quiet heroism and with the dedication for which you have become very famous.
I think you ought to know this: I think every single candidate, including the President-elect and the Vice President-elect, took time out of their busy schedule during that campaign and afterwards to write the President and say how they appreciated the courtesy and the quality of service that you had given.
But no one could be more grateful to you than I am. I am most appreciative that my withdrawal from the Presidency, I am sure, will be made a good deal easier by the knowledge that you are around me still and in the general vicinity as long as I live.
As a very great character said here one time, I think rather nonchalantly--an expression that grew into one of our most memorable phrases due to the cooperation of the fourth estate--"I know I am going to sleep a little better each night knowing you are around."
Now, I am sure the press with their usual objectivity will wonder why I have mentioned agents like Rufus Youngblood, Clint Hill, Lem Johns, and Bob Taylor without saying anything about Director Rowley.
Well, I have a lot to say about Director Rowley because he symbolizes all of them. And what I say about him applies to each of them. We have a little surprise for Director Rowley this morning. At least I hope it is a surprise. Most of the surprises I plan don't turn out that way, because I learned a long, long time ago it is hard to keep a secret from the Secret Service.
I didn't tell anybody but George Christian yesterday that I was going to have an examination-some X-rays made before I left. And in 15 minutes, the doctor came up and said, "Is it true you are going to the hospital today?" And I said, "No. How did you get that information? Did George Christian tell you that?" He said, "No, sir." I said, "Who said it?" He said, "the Secret Service."
Well, Jim, although the citation I am about to read is directed to you, I hope that each of your agents throughout this land in some 60 or 70 offices will recognize that it is for them, too.
To you, and Emory Roberts, who I am sorry can't be here today--he greets me every morning and tells me goodby every night-to all the members of your family, I want to say that I believe of all the employees that I have known in the Federal Government in 38 years that I have worked, from a doorkeeper, to secretary, to Congressman, Senator, and Vice President, I don't believe that I have ever seen any collective group that is possessed with as much integrity, as much character, as much selflessness, and as much courage as your men.
So, if you will bring me that citation, I will read it. The President's Federal Civilian Service Board, made up of Mr. Macy, Mr. Nitze, and other distinguished members, on the recommendations of Secretary Fowler and others, has recommended to the president, and the President has approved, this award.
There will be several that will come later in the year for outstanding civil servants as we do each year. But this is a very special one. And I want to present It now while all of you are here.
I am so happy that Mr. Rowley's family can be here because they have sacrificed so many years to make something like this possible.
[At this point the President read the text of the award.]
THE PRESIDENT'S AWARD FOR DISTINGUISHED FEDERAL CIVILIAN SERVICE IS GIVEN TO
JAMES J. ROWLEY
To honor James J. Rowley is to honor the United States Secret Service, which he directs with unsurpassed skill and devotion.
In more than 30 years of distinguished duty, he has come to personify the Service's noble tradition of courage and loyalty.
The Secret Service protected America's electoral process itself in the recent political campaign, when violence and controversy were stronger than in any Presidential election of our time. Despite the tides of turbulence and tension, the Service enabled all the major candidates for the Presidency and Vice Presidency to meet safely with the American people, in every part of our land.
But Director Rowley has left his mark on more than the Secret Service.
He symbolizes the strength of the American government.
I am proud to commend him, in the name of all our people, as the guardian of our democracy.
LYNDON B. JOHNSON
The White House
November 23, 1968
Now, if that citation could be made better, someone else will have to do it because it is the best I could do. I worked hard on it myself.
[At this point, the President presented the medal, reading from its inscription, as follows.]
"Award of the President of the United States [to James J. Rowley] for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service."
[Director Rowley responded briefly (4 Weekly Comp. Pres. Docs., p. 1641). The President then resumed speaking.]
Now, if I didn't mention some of the agents' names this morning, just remember, it is because you never did get your foot run over.
I did say, though, to President Nixon the other day: "You will have many problems. Of course, you will have a lot of friends when you come in. But the best friend you will have when you come in and when you go out will be an organization--that will be the Secret Service of the United States."
Note: The President spoke at 12:22 p.m. on the South Lawn at the White House. In his opening words he referred to Henry H. Fowler, Secretary of the Treasury, and James J. Rowley, Director of the United States Secret Service.
During his remarks he referred to his daughters, Mrs. Patrick J. (Luci) Nugent and Mrs. Charles S. (Lynda) Robb; the following Secret Servicemen: Jerry D. Kivett, Richard E. Johnsen, Jerry E. McKinney, Thomas L. Johns, Robert N. Heyn, Deputy Director Rufus W. Youngblood, Robert H. Taylor, Clinton J. Hill, and Emory P. Roberts; Wyatt Thomas Johnson, Jr., Assistant Press Secretary to the President; James R. Jones, Special Assistant to the President; George E. Christian, Special Assistant to the President; John W. Macy, Jr., Chairman of the Civil Service Commission; and Paul H. Nitze, Deputy Secretary of Defense.
The President also referred to the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas (see "Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, John F. Kennedy, 1963," Editor's Note, page 890). At that time the Vice President, Lyndon B. Johnson, was protected by Secret Serviceman Rufus W. Youngblood.
The President also mentioned his 1967 visit to Sydney, Australia, when antiwar demonstrators threw paint
Radford W. "Rad" Jones:
http://www1.cj.msu.edu/~career/alumni/wall/inductees/2005/jones-2005.html
http://www.msualum.com/evecoll/preview.cfm?id=13
http://www.jfk.org/go/collections/oral-histories/interviews-by-name?letter=J
Radford W. Jones
A U.S. Secret Service agent assigned to the White House detail during the Kennedy years, Jones guarded the Kennedys at Hyannis Port during the summer of 1963. At the time of the assassination, he was guarding young John F. Kennedy Jr. in Washington, D.C. In 1964, Jones spent several months guarding Jackie Kennedy and her children in New York. Recorded October 15, 2005.
What's My Line? (12/27/1959)
Sponsor: Kellogg's
Arlene Francis, Martin Gabel, Dorothy Kilgallen, Bennett Cerf
Game 1: Gerald Behn, Secret Service agent, guarded President Dwight David Eisenhower on trip in 1959; AF guessed - $25 ($50)
Game 2: Hazel Williams, Sardine taster; ($50)
Game 3: Mystery Guest: Maureen O'Hara; AF guessed - $35
Game 4: Sal Russo, Complaint adjuster for department store; ($50)
Announcer: Hal Simms
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-07-13-secservice-johnson_N.htm
Ex-agents stand guard one last time
Posted 7/13/2007 7:43 PM | Comments 2 | Recommend 1 E-mail | Save | Print |
By Liz Austin Peterson, Associated Press Writer
AUSTIN, Texas — At Lady Bird Johnson's side, retired Secret Service agent Jim Hardin toured the Louvre museum, floated along the Nile River and visited archaeological digs in Africa.
On Friday, he stood next to the former first lady for the last time, watching over her casket as she lay in repose inside the LBJ Library and Museum at the University of Texas at Austin.
Hardin and about 50 to 75 former members of Johnson's Secret Service detail were gathering in Austin to say goodbye to a woman they considered a friend and an inspiration. Like Hardin, many volunteered to take turns standing by her casket for half an hour as honorary guards while visitors paid their respects.
"It's like losing a member of your own family," said Hardin, 71, who led Johnson's detail for nearly 22 years. "She was family to all the agents."
The Secret Service guarded Johnson for more than 44 years, longer than any other person. Scores of agents were assigned to her detail over the years, and most remained close to the first lady long after they left her team, said Jerry Kivett, who led her Secret Service detail when President Johnson was in the White House.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: White House | Italy | Africa | Austin | University of Texas | United States Secret Service | Queen Elizabeth II | Louvre | President Johnson | Nile River | Lady Bird Johnson | Hill Country | LBJ Library | LBJ Ranch | Jim Hardin
Kivett and his family visited her several times at the LBJ Ranch in the Hill Country, and he called her every year on her birthday. Retired agents Dale Lovell and Carter Eustace said they visited her about every three months, sharing chuckles about stories from their trips around the world.
"It enhanced our lives just to be with her, to be around her," said Eustace, 59, of Austin.
An avid traveler, Johnson got private tours of museums and historical sites from curators and other experts, asking many questions and making sure her guards could hear the answers, Hardin said. Before they left each site, she asked the agents if they'd like more time to look around, and she took the whole detail to a fancy dinner at the end of each trip.
When Princess Margaret, the younger sister of Queen Elizabeth II, came to tea in Italy, Johnson called Hardin to her side and introduced them.
"We would try to stay back a little because we didn't want to interfere, but she would always introduce you if it was appropriate," Hardin said.
After Hardin retired in 1995, Johnson asked him to work a few hours a week overseeing her staff at the LBJ Ranch.
When Hardin's wife died, Johnson and her daughters attended the funeral. And she attended a surprise 70th birthday party for him last year despite her declining health.
"She had had the stroke, she couldn't speak and stuff, but she was all dressed up and posed for pictures with all the people that were there, just smiling," he said. "It didn't bother her at all. She just would not tell anybody no."
repeated:
http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_wires/2007Jul13/0,4675,JohnsonSecretService,00.html
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/20070713-1630-johnson-secretservice.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-07-13-4008298387_x.htm
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/07/13/ex_agents_guard_johnson_one_last_time/
http://www.590klbj.com/News/Story.aspx?ID=71109
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/13/AR2007071301696.html
http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/national_world&id=5478362
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D8QBVRCO0.html
http://jfk.org/go/collections/oral-histories/interviews-by-name?letter=K
VIDEO:
http://www.news8austin.com/shared/video/video_pop.asp?destlist=44444
Jerry D. Kivett
A U.S. Secret Service agent in 1963, Kivett was assigned to Vice President Johnson's detail and was riding in his follow-up car in the Dallas motorcade. Kivett remained with the Johnsons until the swearing-in ceremony aboard Air Force One and was later assigned to the White House detail. Recorded October 14, 2005.
http://jfk.org/go/collections/oral-histories/interviews-by-name?letter=L
Winston Lawson
A U.S. Secret Service agent assigned to the White House detail during the Kennedy years, Lawson was in charge of security in Dallas and did 10 days of advance work before the presidential party's arrival. In the motorcade, he rode in the lead car with Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry. Recorded September 5, 2003.
http://jfk.org/go/collections/oral-histories/interviews-by-name?letter=T
Warren W. Taylor
A U.S. Secret Service agent in 1963, Taylor was assigned to Vice President Johnson's detail and was riding in his follow-up car in the Dallas motorcade. After the assassination, Taylor was assigned to protect Lady Bird Johnson. Recorded October 14, 2005.
Dale Wunderlich
A U.S. Secret Service agent assigned to the Protective Research Division in 1963, Wunderlich did an intelligence advance in Fort Worth prior to the presidential visit, coordinating sweeps of the Hotel Texas and conducting background checks on all employees. Following the assassination, he was part of a team that provided security for Marina Oswald for several months prior to her Warren Commission testimony. Recorded October 15, 2005.
Mike Howard
A U. S. Secret Service agent assigned to the Dallas field office, Howard served on the detail for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. For the 1963 Texas trip, Howard was part of the advance team in Fort Worth and spent the evening of the assassination at Dallas police headquarters. Immediately thereafter he was assigned to protect the family of Lee Harvey Oswald at a secure location. Recorded November 18, 2005.
Victor J. Gonzalez
A U.S. Secret Service agent in 1963, Gonzalez was assigned to guard duty for President Kennedy's limousine after its arrival in Washington, D.C., on the evening of the assassination. Recorded October 15, 2005.
William L. Duncan
A U.S. Secret Service agent assigned to the White House detail during the Kennedy years, Duncan served as the advance agent for Fort Worth during the Texas visit in November 1963. Recorded October 15, 2005.
http://www.news8austin.com/content/top_stories/default.asp?ArID=188131
Lady Bird's former secret agents share grief
7/14/2007 12:10 PM
By: Bob Robuck
Former secret service agents of Lady Bird Johnson at the LBJ Library.
People from all over the nation, young and old, are saying their goodbyes to Lady Bird Johnson. That includes those bound by duty to protect her.
Former secret service agents are the members of the other family in Lady Bird Johnson's life. Three men who served in the White House under the Johnson administration and one on the ranch afterward shared their memories of Mrs. Johnson.
Each one had his own fond memory of Mrs. Johnson. The common theme was her unpretentious grace.
"We'd walk the ranch, we'd walk the river. She was just an everyday lady. You'd have never thought she was who she was," former secret service agent Jim Hardin said.
WATCH THE VIDEO
Protecting Lady Bird
Four former Secret Service agents have their own fond memories of Mrs. Johnson.
"She was in constant motion. Yet you always knew that there was a lady of generosity and thoughtfulness there," agent Jerry McKinney said.
Saying goodbye and shedding a tear isn't something that comes to mind when you think of the Secret Service, but they pledge their lives to protect another. There's always emotion underneath.
"A sense of loss. Sadness. I think of it as losing a member of my family," agent Jerry Kivett said.
"She was truly loved by us guys, the three of us who were with her in the White House. She was a gracious, gracious lady," agent Woody Taylor said.
The gentlemen said Mrs. Johnson was truly a lady when it came to making them feel special. Even now, decades later, as they said goodbye to her, they promised to protect Lady Bird Johnson even in death.
http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,540034492,00.html
Those who rode by Kennedy remember
By Michael Granberry
The Dallas Morning News
Published: November 22, 2003
DALLAS — For retired Secret Service agent Winston G. Lawson, the memory of Nov. 22, 1963, is an endless stream of windows. "From Love Field to Dealey Plaza," he says, "there were 20,000 windows. How could we possibly check them all?"
For TV cameraman Mal Couch, then a precocious 25, seeing the rifle that he believes killed President John F. Kennedy — its barrel sticking out of one of those windows — marked "the beginning of the end of the world."
Lawson, 75, and Couch, 65, are survivors of a presidential motorcade that began in splendor and ended in horror.
Forty years have passed — a span of two generations, a lifetime for some — since JFK's assassination. But for the people caught in the maelstrom of the motorcade, the horrific day comes to life not only in the passages of a textbook or the images of a documentary.
It lives within them because it transformed them.
For Nellie Connally, 84, the only surviving passenger of the Lincoln convertible that carried the president and his dazzling first lady, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, the 40 years since have made her circumspect and fearful, something she never was before.
"Since that day, I have never fully stopped looking over my shoulder at the horror that might be behind me," says the widow of former Texas Gov. John Connally, who was critically wounded in the shooting that killed the president.
Bobby Hargis, 72, then a Dallas police officer whose motorcycle flanked the left rear bumper of the president's car, has a recurring dream in which he chases but never quite catches Lee Harvey Oswald.
For Hargis, the ensuing years have taken him on his own spiritual journey. "It makes you think about life," he says, sitting at his breakfast table in Cleburne, Texas. "The shortness of it, the preciousness of it, every breath we take. And what did I learn that day? That we're never that far away from being nothing."
For Jim Wright, 80, former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, the events of that day cut short the life of a president he loved — a friend — and in their own crude way, reshaped the course of history.
"I was in such an ebullient mood that day. Cloud nine!" said Wright, who teaches at Texas Christian University. "Wow! And then, in such a short time, I would be plunged to the pit of despondency, numbing sadness, pathos. In many respects, none of us has ever been the same since that moment.
"And it won't leave our minds, no matter how hard we try."
Win Lawson grew up in western New York, where his father was an accountant, his mother a teacher. He worked in counterintelligence in the Army and developed an interest in law enforcement. So he applied to the Secret Service when he and his wife, Barbara, were living in Syracuse. He did so just in time: In those days, applicants could not be over 30, his age when he applied.
Prized for being a stickler for detail, he became one of the agency's most valuable "advance" men, the job he held when President Kennedy came to Texas.
It was his job to check out the host city — in this case, Dallas, where citizens had recently heckled both Vice President Lyndon Johnson and U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson.
"The city was absolutely going out of its way to be cordial," said Lawson, who lives in Virginia Beach, Va.
As the motorcade left Love Field, en route to downtown Dallas, Lawson and the other agents — all of whom were in the procession — were staggered by the number of people who lined the streets, the thousands who waved and cheered.
As the motorcade began the last leg of its journey, heading down Elm, the feeling was one of triumph and vindication for Dallas.
And then came the first shot.
Like most witnesses, Win Lawson recalls two more, though puzzled by the quicker pace between the second and the third, which all but tore the president's head off.
The madness that ensued found him and other agents racing to Parkland Hospital, where he was among the first to see the president's body, crumpled in the Lincoln.
"You could see the damage to the head, which was devastating," he says. "You could see the color of the skin, which was gray, but not gray, really. I knew it had to be a fatal wound. I never saw the president alive again or his body again."
Instead, he embarked on a 40-year trial of re-examination. "I must have thought a million times, what could I have done to prevent it?" he said. "And what could I have done about 20,000 windows?"
He says he believes fervently that Oswald acted alone. Conspiracy buffs, he says, neglect to consider the 10 miles of the motorcade's route, stretching from Love Field, to Lemmon Avenue, to Turtle Creek, to Cedar Springs, to Harwood, to Main, to Elm, to history. The trip was to take 35 minutes before arriving at the Trade Mart.
"There were a million better places from which to have fired a weapon," said Lawson.
He did not let the assassination derail him. Rather than go to a field office, as most agents eventually do, he remained at Secret Service headquarters until he retired. He also chose to remain in the agency's protective division, a decision he admits was influenced by Dallas.
Whenever he returned home from work, he would drive past the eternal flame at President Kennedy's grave at Arlington National Cemetery. "So it never left me. It's something you want to remember, because you don't want it to happen again. But you want to forget it because it happened. It's a paradox."
One he would not have been able to weather, he says, without the love and support of fellow agents.
"They would say to me, and it's hard for me to say without breaking down or tears coming to my eyes, 'Win, if it had to happen to anyone, we're glad it happened to you.' Because I was known for doing the best, most thorough advance in the entire agency. They know I would have done everything and more" to prevent what happened, he says.
"And I can't tell you how much that support has meant over the years." Lawson's desire to protect continues, even at 75. He handles security for a high-profile client whose name he declines to reveal. But nothing in the present can stop the litany of what-ifs involving the past.
When the president's day began at the Hotel Texas in Fort Worth, a persistent drizzle had forced the Secret Service to consider covering the motorcade's cars in Dallas with protective bubbletops. (Hours later, Dallas would end up sunny.)
Though the bubbletops were not bulletproof, the metal and the contour of the covering, says Lawson, would have made it difficult for a bullet to do much damage, and might have kept a gunman from even firing in the first place. So he's asked himself a million times:
Why couldn't it keep raining?
"I've spent years puzzling over thousands of what-if scenarios," he says. "Was there anything else I could have done? I guess I'll never have all the answers."
Idanell "Nellie" Brill grew up in Austin, where her father owned a leather-goods business. She enrolled at the University of Texas and met her college sweetheart, John Bowden Connally, whom she married on Dec. 21, 1940.
Connally became the first lady of Texas when her husband was elected governor in 1962. She holds the distinction of having said the last words President Kennedy ever heard.
As the president's car prepared to turn left onto Elm, she felt dazzled by the cheering throng and turned to share her enthusiasm, feeling like "a proud parent."
"Mr. President," she said, "you sure can't say Dallas doesn't love you."
He responded with a dazzling smile, followed only seconds later by gunfire.
"His hands flew up to his neck," she said, "and he sank down in his seat. He didn't say a word. John, who was seated in front of him and was a hunter, knew it was a gunshot. He turned to his right and couldn't see him, so he flips to his left, and he still can't see him. And he says, 'No, no, no ' And when he was trying to turn back, the second shot came. John said, 'My God, they're trying to kill us all!' Meaning the four of us in the car. Then he collapsed, and the front of his shirt was covered in blood. He fell forward.
"My only thought then was, I've got to do something for John. I've got to get him out of the line of fire so they won't hurt him anymore. I reached over and pulled him over into my lap. He was looking up, and he was bloody all over. He had his Stetson in his hand like he always did. So I leaned over and put my hand on that spot, on the wound. Later, the doctors said by closing the wound I may have saved his life, that he probably would have died before we got to the hospital."
The Warren Commission concluded there were three shots, with one striking both the president and Gov. Connally — the so-called "magic bullet" theory — and one missing altogether before the third shot hit the president.
But Connally contends that all three bullets reached their intended targets. She believes the first struck only the president, the second only the governor.
"They were wrong," she says of the Warren Commission.
Then came the third, most damaging shot.
"I'm sitting with John on my lap, and suddenly, brain matter has covered the car. It's like tiny, bloody buckshot," she said.
Soon, Mrs. Kennedy was trying to climb out of the back of the car, her pink pillbox hat clinging to the top of her hair. "She said later she was going after a piece of his skull," said Connally, whose book about the assassination, "From Love Field: Our Final Hours With President John F. Kennedy," was released earlier this month. "I don't know but I will say this. You don't know what you would have done had you been in that car. She may have been trying to get out of the car — and you would not blame her one bit if you had been in that car. And that is not a derogatory remark about Jackie. Had I not been pinned down, I would have tried to get out of the car, too."
Clint Hill, a Secret Service agent riding in the car behind the president's, rushed forward to force Kennedy back in. He shoved her and the president to the floor and kept them pinned until the motorcade reached Parkland Hospital.
In the tense moments that followed the transport from bloody car to operating room, Connally and the first lady were left to stare at each other while sitting outside the trauma rooms. Neither said a word. Soon, the first lady would leave the hospital, to return to Washington with her husband's body and the new president, Lyndon Johnson.
She and Nellie Connally would exchange a pair of heartfelt letters but never again see or speak to one another. The governor's wife had to deal with her own demons.
"It kept going through my mind like a phonograph record playing over and over and over. But for John, it was even worse. His first night home, he cried out in his sleep. I would just pat him on the shoulder, and he'd go back to sleep. Ten days after, I asked him, 'What is it you dream, dear?' And he said, 'Nellie, somebody's always after me. With a gun.' So I just let him cry out. He did that for a month or six weeks and they were always after him."
Her own waking nightmare "has us all in the car. Everyone's having a wonderful time. Everyone's being so good, and then all of a sudden the horror starts. There is never anything good after that happening in that car. The car is filled with yellow roses, red roses and blood. And pieces of the president's brain."
Connally regrets that President Kennedy's legacy — and, by extension, the nation's — could have been so much brighter in the years ahead. "We were all in our 40s," she says of the passengers in the top car of VIP's. "We all had so much to give."
But Dealey Plaza would come to dictate an entirely different reality.
"For the first time in my life, I feared for my family," she said. "And I never had before. Mark, our youngest, was 11 at the time. There was this wall at the governor's mansion (in Austin) that he loved to walk around. Well, he could no longer walk around that wall. We were afraid somebody would snatch him off of it. Sharon, 14 at the time, could no longer go anywhere without someone going with her. It became, in some ways, a difficult life for us, and for me. And even to this day, I still take a glance behind me, just to make sure."
Gov. Connally, who survived his wounds, went on to serve as Treasury secretary in the Nixon administration and ran unsuccessfully for president in 1980. He died in 1993.
Mrs. Connally, who lives in Houston, says Nov. 22 will always be a part of her.
"I push it to the back of my head. I can bring it out any time I want, but I know it's not constructive. It was such a sad day. We all wanted to be there to begin with, but if you'd been in that car, believe me, you would never ever want to be there again."
Jim Wright was born in Fort Worth, Texas, the son of a chamber of commerce manager, who moved his family across Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas.
After serving as mayor of Weatherford, Texas, he ran for Congress in 1954, launching a 35-year career on Capitol Hill. He flew with President Kennedy on Air Force One to Texas, where, among several stops, the president would be speaking in Wright's beloved Fort Worth.
Historians contend that President Kennedy had come to Texas to repair a widening rift between the liberal and conservative wings of the Democratic Party, which at the time enjoyed a one-party stranglehold on Texas. The rift had worsened relations between liberal Sen. Ralph Yarborough and his longtime rivals, Vice President Johnson and Gov. Connally. The president felt compelled to repair the rift before his 1964 re-election bid.
What better way than by coming to Texas, accompanied by the world's most glamorous woman, Jackie Kennedy? Stopping in San Antonio and Houston, the president had engineered a perfect political strategy. It wasn't that Yarborough and his adversaries were getting along any better, but who could tell?
"I know the cynical wisdom says he wanted to repair rifts in the party, but part of his motivation was he wanted to come to Texas to say thank you to the people of Texas for their support," said Wright. "He had carried the state in the 1960 election. So I saw the overriding motivation as one of good will."
When the motorcade began its journey from Love Field to downtown, Wright could not have been more pleased. He and fellow Rep. Jack Brooks, riding 11 cars behind the president were "blown away" by the "warmest reception of any Texas city."
And then came the carnage. Not until the third shot did Wright believe it was someone trying to kill the president, whose death brought grief and, yes, even shame.
"I was horrified that it happened at all," he said, "but could never get over the fact that it happened in my state, in the city where I went to high school."
Wright became Democratic majority leader in 1976 and was elected speaker of the House in 1986.
"The assassination affected my whole approach to life and was easily the most shocking day of my career," he says. The night after the president's death, someone told him, "We'll never laugh again."
But Larry O'Brien, one of the president's top aides, said, "Oh, sure, we'll laugh again. We'll just never be young again."
At one point during the 1980s, he asked longtime friend and ally Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts to consider a trip to Dallas, if only for the sake of closure — his and the city's.
"Sorry, Jim," said the president's brother. "I'm just not ready yet."
"And he still isn't," said Wright.
Bobby Hargis was born in Rio Vista, Texas, 37 miles south of Fort Worth. He took a job as a Dallas police officer because it paid better than being the manager of an auto parts store. His father was a barber, his mother a beautician. He loved police work, which, on Nov. 22, brought him face to face with a world leader.
One of four motorcycle officers assigned to the president's car, he began the day by meeting the president at Love Field. He and his colleagues got a handshake and the famous Kennedy smile.
"It was like meeting a movie star," said Hargis. "He said, 'I'm glad you're here. Thank you for being here.' "
On Cedar Springs, the president startled Hargis by leaping out of the car to shake hands with some of the hundreds who pushed forward for a closer look.
"The Secret Service liked to had a conniption fit when he did that," says Hargis. At that moment, he felt an eerie sense of dread wash over him. "They was hoppin' around like cats on a hot roof. It freaked 'em out big time. You could tell how nervous they were."
But once the procession reached Houston Street, preparing for the final turn onto Elm, Hargis began to relax. "I thought, 'Well, we've got it made now,' " he says. "And then bam! It happens."
Hargis differs with the Warren Commission and most eyewitnesses, insisting that only two shots were fired. With the first, "a thousand million things went through my mind," he says. After the last, "there was a plume of blood and brains and plasma. It was just like a fog, and I ran right through it."
Photographs taken in the seconds that followed show Hargis racing up the grassy knoll in pursuit of a sniper. He thought the shots came from there. But like most motorcade survivors, he believes Oswald acted alone, saying he saw "nothing" behind the knoll's picket fence to indicate anything suspicious — much less a second gunman.
"When I reached the School Book Depository, someone said, 'Bob, you've got something on your lip.' It turned out to be a piece of brain, mixed with bone from the president's skull."
Within seconds, a man approached Hargis, vowing, in the officer's words, "to get his hands on $17,000 if I'd agree to sell him my helmet. I couldn't sell it anyway. It belonged to the city of Dallas."
After the assassination, "the whole country changed," he says. Before then, "everything was so naive. ... We believed that everything was going to be fine, even if things didn't go right. But now, you can't believe that."
Two years after the president died, Hargis suffered his own near-fatal injury while patrolling on a police motorcycle. The accident crushed his leg and shattered his ribs. He took medical leave from 1974 to 1980, when he returned to the force. He held an administrative job until 1999, when he retired.
"The assassination made me more cautious and careful about every aspect of life," he says. And it continues to haunt him even now, even when he's asleep.
In dreams, he still chases the killer, spending what seems like hours racing up and down the stairways of the School Book Depository, almost touching the fabric of Oswald's shirt but never quite pulling him in.
"It starts out a normal dream and ends up a nightmare. Every single time," he says.
Mal Couch grew up in Dallas, where his father worked for Braniff Airlines and his mother was a housewife. Even as a Woodrow Wilson High School student, he got a job working as a part-time cameraman for WFAA-TV (Channel 8), for which he was still shooting film in 1963.
As part of the motorcade, he found himself riding in the "media" car, next to Bob Jackson, a photographerfor The Dallas Times Herald; Tom Dillard, a photographer for The Dallas Morning News; and a Channel 4 cameraman whose name he can't recall.
Jackson had taken his last picture and handed his film to Jim Featherston, a reporter waiting to receive it at the corner of Main and Houston. When the heavyset reporter fumbled it and began to chase after it, the men in the car found themselves laughing.
And then came the first shot.
Couch remembers someone shouting: "Look at the window — there's the rifle!" By the time the third shot rang out, Couch had spotted about eight inches of the rifle protruding from the sixth-floor window, and being pulled back in. He says he never saw a face, though some witnesses did.
Moments later, Couch and his fellow passengers scrambled out of the car to descend on the madness of Dealey Plaza.
"'God, don't let them do this!' I screamed. 'They can't kill the president!' And I'm running like crazy. In the plaza, it's mass confusion, total mayhem." So much so that the events began to feel overwhelm his instincts as a photographer.
"I didn't film the window," he said. "It was happening too fast. I did raise my camera to take black and white footage of a policeman pulling his pistol and people falling, which everyone has seen for years. But then I stopped filming. Why? Mercy, goodness, gracious, I don't know. When I ran back, I didn't film anything. I guess I was just too dazed to figure out what was going on. So nothing was filmed until I got to Parkland Hospital, where I saw Jackie getting into a hearse. So I filmed the hearse and people crying all over the place."
For him, the Kennedy assassination continues to be "a devastating marker." It was, he contends, the opening of a 1960s Pandora's box, leading to Vietnam and two more assassinations, which claimed the lives of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the president's brother Robert F. Kennedy, in 1968.
"That little piece of metal sticking out the window started it all," said Couch, who teaches at Tyndale Theological Seminary in Fort Worth and who believes in the prophecies from the Book of Revelations.
"I count that as the change in America, from that point forward," he says. "But for me, it cuts even deeper. The Bible speaks of the end of days. So I see it as the beginning piece of the train of the last days.
"And I was there when it happened."
Bill Livingood:
http://www1.cj.msu.edu/~career/alumni/wall/inductees/2000/livingood-2000.html
http://www.pacificu.edu/magazine/2008/fall/alumni/meredith.cfm
Remembering Lynn Meredith '44
by Rachel Burbank '09
Lynn Meredith '44 passed away on April 17, 2008 at the age of 84 in Great Falls, Mont. He was a Secret Service agent for eight administrations, including the thousand days of President John F. Kennedy's time in office. Although his job was to protect and take a bullet for the president and their families, if necessary, Meredith was not in Dallas, Texas during JFK's assassination. Instead, he was with the Kennedy children, Caroline and John Jr. Once the news hit the White House, Meredith took them to a park to shield them from the chaos. Meredith, a WWII Navy veteran, also took a lead role in teaching John Jr. how to salute for the famous picture during his father's funeral. Meredith said in an interview with the Missoulian newspaper that he found it ironic the two presidents who most tolerated and believed in protection were the only two shot — a reference to Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. The 32 years he served in the Secret Service went by fast, he said. "It was an interesting job. In a way you lead somebody else's life. Your life is dictated by the people you protect. You are on the edge of history as it is made. And sometimes, keeping a 3-year-old boy occupied before his father is buried, you inadvertently make history."
— Rachael Burbank ‘09
http://www.missoula.com/news/node/223
http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2007/04/29/news/mtregional/news03.txt
Former Secret Service agent kept watch over presidents and their families
By VINCE DEVLIN of the Missoulian
GREAT FALLS - The boy spent his third birthday at his father's funeral, and left the world with one of its most famous images: As his father's flag-draped casket passed by, John F. Kennedy Jr. raised his right arm and saluted.
You probably know the photograph, but you may not know the story behind the salute. It involves a substitute teacher in Great Falls named Lynn Meredith.
Meredith is 83 years old now, and lives with his wife of 54 years, Rose, in a modest home on the west side of Great Falls. You can hardly make a move in their living room without knocking over a picture of one of their 13 grandchildren.
But one wall is reserved for photographs of American presidents and vice presidents. Long before he filled in in the classroom, you see, Lynn Meredith's job was to protect - to take a bullet for, if necessary - presidents and their families.
A Secret Service agent for 28 years and an employee of the agency for 32, Meredith's career spanned eight administrations, from Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan, and for a decade he was assigned to the White House Protective Detail.
He traveled the world with President Dwight D. Eisenhower, “lucked out” and was assigned to Vice President Hubert Humphrey during the Johnson administration, and guarded then President-elect Richard M. Nixon in 1968.
For the 1,000 days of President John F. Kennedy's administration - and 10 months after the assassination - Meredith was special agent in charge of the Kennedy children.
He wasn't in Dallas when Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963. On that horrific day, he gathered up Caroline and John Jr., who didn't know their father was dead, and ushered them out of a shell-shocked White House and to a Washington, D.C.-area park to play.
Three days later, before the president's funeral at St. Matthew's Cathedral, Jacqueline Kennedy pulled Meredith aside.
“Mrs. Kennedy told me John would never last through the whole funeral,” Meredith says. “He was only 3 years old. She asked me to take John and keep him entertained.”
Meredith led the young boy to a room elsewhere in the church, where members of the military, who had helped escort the president's body to the cathedral, waited to take it on to Arlington National Cemetery for burial.
How to keep the boy occupied? Meredith, a World War II Navy veteran, had an idea.
With help from the servicemen in the room, “we taught him how to salute,” Meredith says. “He kept wanting to do it with his left hand and we had a heck of a time getting him to use his right.”
After the funeral, John Jr. rejoined his mother and sister Caroline. As the casket passed by them, Jacqueline Kennedy bent over and whispered something in her son's ear. The children would not be going on to Arlington for the burial, and it was their last chance to say goodbye to their father.
As Mrs. Kennedy straightened up, John Jr. stepped forward, raised his right hand, and delivered his famous salute that Meredith had taught him minutes earlier.
Kennedy was his favorite president, and Meredith admits he didn't vote for him.
“I don't really have a very good voting record,” he says with a laugh. “I did vote for Ronald Reagan both times, but I've usually been on the losing side.”
He voted for Nixon, then vice president, over the young senator from Massachusetts in 1960, Humphrey in '68, Gerald Ford in '72, Al Gore in 2000.
Meredith prefers his presidents come with experience, and figures vice presidents come with the most.
“The office ages people, it really does,” he says. “I figure if they've been around the White House, they have an idea of what they're getting into.”
Meredith was a schoolteacher in Tillamook, Ore., in 1950 when he decided he wanted to try something else.
“I was still in my 20s, and figured if I was going to, now was the time,” he says.
He drove to Portland, visited a job service, and spied an opening at the Portland Secret Service field office.
“I didn't even know what the Secret Service was,” he says. “I thought it was the FBI.”
The opening was for a clerk-stenographer - a secretary, basically - but it sounded interesting.
Plus, “at my interview, they told me the current chief of the Secret Service had started as a clerk,” he says. “So I figured there were opportunities to move up the ladder.”
There were. Within two months, his bosses told him there was a need for clerk-stenographers in the Washington, D.C., office. Was he interested?
“I'd been around the world in the Navy,” Meredith says. “But I'd never been there. After just five months in Portland, I transferred to D.C. and was assigned to headquarters in the Treasury Building.”
The Secret Service was created by Congress in 1865 to deal with counterfeiters, and became a part of the U.S. Treasury Department. After the assassination of William McKinley in 1901 - the third American president assassinated in 36 years - Congress asked the Secret Service to add presidential protection to its duties.
Over the years, it has come to include presidents, vice presidents, their families, former presidents and first ladies, visiting foreign heads of state, and prominent presidential and vice presidential candidates.
In Washington in the 1950s, the Secret Service offered on-the-job training for employees interested in becoming agents, and Meredith signed up. It was during this period that Meredith got his first taste of life on the White House Protective Detail, and he spent five months there during Truman's last year in office.
Meredith was sworn in as a special agent in 1955, and in 1958 returned to the White House for the final years of Eisenhower's presidency.
“The thing I remember most about Eisenhower was his fondness for golf,” Meredith says. “I think he'd have rather played golf than be president. Every year after the Masters golf tournament, the president would go to Augusta (Ga.) to play, and every time I see the Masters on TV, I remember walking that course with the president.”
The exposure on golf courses always worried the agents, some of whom dressed as golfers, loaded rifles into golf bags and prowled the course while the president played.
The Eisenhower years took Meredith to New Delhi, London, Tokyo, Paris and Moscow. He visited Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Scotland and Germany with the president.
Meredith spent a week in Leningrad in the spring of 1960 setting up security for an Eisenhower visit that never took place. Just before the president was set to leave for the Soviet Union, the Russians shot down an American U-2 plane piloted by Gary Powers, heightening Cold War tensions.
Eisenhower, Meredith says, was “friendly, tolerant of the Secret Service, and knew the agents by name. But he was very much the military type, and probably regarded us as corporals or privates.”
He often told Meredith and the other agents, “Don't worry about me, but don't let anything happen to my grandchildren.”
During the 1960 presidential election, Richard Nixon had Secret Service protection because he was vice president, but John Kennedy did not. The agency's role did not spread to cover presidential candidates until the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968.
It was only fate that had Meredith assigned to the Secret Service team that traveled to Hyannis Port, Mass., that election night to await the outcome. If JFK won, they would immediately take charge of protecting the president-elect and his family.
If Nixon won, they would head home without even seeing Kennedy.
In the closest election since 1916, there was no clear-cut winner until 4 a.m., “when that Chicago mayor (Richard Daley) got the election weighted toward Kennedy,” Meredith says.
The agents immediately left their hotel, headed for the Kennedy compound and knocked on the door.
Joseph P. Kennedy, the president-elect's father, answered the door and said, “We're sure glad to see you; we've been inundated by tourists.”
Presidents accept Secret Service protection with varying degrees of appreciation, Meredith says.
“It's ironic that the two presidents who most tolerated and believed in protection while I was in the Secret Service are the only two who were shot,” Meredith says, referring to Kennedy and Reagan.
Lyndon Johnson, on the other hand, was openly hostile toward his Secret Service detail. As vice president, Meredith says, LBJ tried to get agent Bill Duncan fired when a helicopter didn't appear at the precise time to whisk him away from Eleanor Roosevelt's funeral.
“President Kennedy called Johnson and told him to lay off the Secret Service agent, that it had not been an intentional error,” Meredith says. “Kennedy always told us, ‘You guys don't want anything to ever happen to me, because then you'd have to work for Johnson.' ”
To Diane Leslie Meredith, with very best wishes.
John Kennedy, Nov. 1963
The autographed engraving of the White House hangs in the Great Falls home of Diane “Dee Dee” Burke. It is one of the last things President Kennedy signed before his death.
On Nov. 11, 1963 - Veterans Day - Meredith accompanied the president to Arlington National Cemetery, where Kennedy placed a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. JFK then walked around the cemetery grounds, commenting at one point, “This would be a nice location for a presidential grave.”
That afternoon, after he got off duty, Meredith roamed the White House halls, passing out cigars to staffers and agents. Rose had given birth a few days earlier to a daughter they had named Diane Leslie but called “Dee Dee.”
He had decided against seeking out the president to offer one - the Kennedys had lost a 3-day-old son named Patrick Bouvier Kennedy just three months earlier, and Meredith knew how hard JFK had taken the baby's death.
But as he passed the White House swimming pool, between the West Wing and the presidential living quarters, the president climbed out of the water, wrapped a towel around himself and said hello to the Secret Service agent.
There stood Meredith, cigars in hand.
“Mr. President, I would be honored if you would accept a cigar to celebrate the birth of my new daughter,” Meredith told him.
“It was a 10-cent Roy Tan,” Meredith says with a laugh. “He told me, ‘I didn't know you and your wife were expecting,' and congratulated me and thanked me for the cigar. I'm sure he never smoked it. He liked Cubans, which you could still get back then. I can still see him getting on the elevator in that towel, holding the cigar. It was the last time I saw him alive.”
The day after the funeral, Evelyn Lincoln, Kennedy's secretary, called Meredith and told him, “I think I have something here you would be pleased to receive.”
Sometime between the chance encounter at the swimming pool, and Kennedy's departure on Nov. 19 on the fateful trip that would take him to Dallas, the president had autographed an engraving of the White House for the Merediths' new baby girl.
“It was just the kind of thing he did,” Meredith says. “When the Kennedys would go to Palm Beach for Christmas, they made sure all the Secret Service agents got to bring their families along.”
The Kennedys would also host a Christmas party for the staff and agents who had to spend the holiday wherever the first family did. Rose Meredith remembers one where their oldest daughter, Linda, got upset because Caroline Kennedy kept holding Meredith's hand.
“Linda kept shooting Caroline these looks that said, ‘Hey, that's MY dad,' ” Rose says.
The Meredith children actually wore hand-me-downs from the Kennedys. Maud Shaw, nanny to Caroline and John Jr., would send the clothes home with the special agent.
“You became a part of the family,” Meredith says. “You were around them all the time.”
He remembers Kennedy always borrowing money from the agents when the collection plate was passed on Sundays at church, because presidents never carry money on them.
“But we were always reimbursed,” Meredith says.
One of his favorite stories came one summer when the first family was vacationing at Hyannis Port, and out on Nantucket Sound in the Kennedy yacht, called the Marlin.
“The president had this beautiful miniature sailboat that was his pride and joy,” Meredith says. “He'd put it in the water behind the Marlin and tow it along.”
Meredith was several hundred yards from the yacht, alone in a Navy jet boat, when two would-be pirates in a motorboat shot up behind the yacht, grabbed the sailboat out of the water and took off for shore.
“I took off in hot pursuit,” Meredith says, “but they probably had a half-mile head-start on me.”
He watched the two men land on shore. When Meredith got there, they were nowhere to be seen, but a tourist told him the two had headed toward a nearby motel.
The agent took off running and the men, aware they were being pursued by the Secret Service, ducked into the motel. When he arrived the men were nowhere to be found - but the sailboat was sitting, unharmed, on the front porch.
Meredith returned to his jet boat and radioed senior agent Floyd Boring on the president's yacht: The sailboat was safe.
“The president was very grateful, and asked that I be commended,” Meredith says.
Much has changed since he served in the Secret Service, Meredith says. On his last full-time protective assignment, with President-elect Richard Nixon, Nixon would walk between his office and apartment in New York City every day at lunchtime - something that would never be allowed now.
Presidential motorcade routes are no longer published until the day of an event, unlike 1963, when Kennedy's route through Dallas was publicized days in advance. No windows can be open in buildings along the route. Presidents don't enter and exit their limousine on streets, as Reagan did, when there is access through an indoor or underground parking garage available.
After Nixon was sworn in, Meredith returned to the Washington, D.C., field office - the Secret Service has offices in every state and many more around the world - to work counterfeiting and other cases. In 1970, he was transferred to head the Montana office, now in Billings but then in Great Falls.
“I think they figured since I was from Oregon, I could find my way around Montana,” Meredith says. “I'd never been here before. I expected more trees.”
He continued to work protective details when presidents and others visited the area. After he retired in 1983, he returned to his original career, and has been a popular substitute teacher in the Great Falls school system.
“I can't believe how fast 32 years went by,” he says of his Secret Service days. “It was an interesting job. In a way, you lead somebody else's life. Your life is dictated by the people you protect.”
You are on the edge of history as it is made.
And sometimes, in a room of a church, keeping a 3-year-old boy occupied before his father is buried, you inadvertently help make history.
http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2008/04/19/bnews//br69.txt
Longtime Secret Service agent with Montana connections dies in Great Falls
Posted on April 19
By the Associated Press
GREAT FALLS - Lynn Meredith, a retired Secret Service agent who guarded presidents from Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan, has died. He was 84.
Meredith appeared to be in good health, but his heart stopped beating properly Tuesday and he died at a Great Falls hospital on Thursday, his eldest son Tom Meredith said.
Meredith, a native of Rainier, Ore., served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He joined the Secret Service in 1951 when Truman was president and guarded Dwight Eisenhower’s children during that administration. He also guarded Vice President Hubert Humphrey during President Lyndon Johnson’s administration in the 1960s.
Meredith served the Kennedy family from the early days of the administration to the aftermath of John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. On that day, Meredith took John Jr. and Caroline Kennedy to a park in the Washington, D.C., area.
Toward the end of his career, Meredith ran the Montana Secret Service field office in Great Falls. By the time he retired in 1983 at the mandatory retirement age of 60, he was the most senior member of the Secret Service. He served in Montana for more than a dozen years, logging a total of 32 years with the federal protective agency.
Funeral services are scheduled for 2 p.m. Friday at the Central Assembly of God Church in Great Falls. A burial with military honors will follow in Highland Cemetery.
From
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,913508-5,00.html
FORD'S SECOND CLOSE CALL
Monday, Oct. 06, 1975
re: Sara Jane Moore attempt
Ford stared straight at the attacker.
He looked startled, almost dazed.
Instantly he crouched, then was shoved to the sidewalk by Secret Service Agents Ron Pontius and Jack Merchant. This placed the car between Ford and the gun-wielding woman. An agent opened the rear door of the limousine, and other agents almost threw Ford inside and to the floor. Agents Pontius and Merchant leaped into the vehicle, followed by Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld. All three shielded Ford's prone body as the car sped away.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE6DE133FF934A25751C1A961958260
December 17, 1997
Secret Service Tells Its Agents To Keep Quiet About the Past
By TIM WEINER
The director of the Secret Service has sternly reminded his agents to shield the secrets of the people they protect -- particularly Presidents.
In a message sent on Dec. 5, the director, Lewis C. Merletti, said statements by four former Secret Service agents regarding President John F. Kennedy's philandering with prostitutes were ''very troubling and counterproductive to the mission of the Secret Service.''
The former agents described their embarrassment and anger at Kennedy's womanizing in ''The Dark Side of Camelot,'' a new book by Seymour M. Hersh. In a typical passage, one former agent, Larry Newman, told Mr. Hersh: ''You were on the most elite assignment in the Secret Service, and you were there watching an elevator or a door because the President was inside with two hookers.''
Mr. Merletti's message, which also went out to the members of the Association of Former Agents of the United States Secret Service, warned against ''providing information to any source regarding any aspect of the personal lives of our protectees.''
He asked all agents, present and former, ''to refrain from discussing any information or activity associated with our protectees regardless of its content or significance.'' The job, he said, carries ''a confidence that should continue forever.''
One former agent quoted in the book, Tony Sherman, said in an interview today: ''The director of the Secret Service, a taxpayer-funded agency, has sent out a letter that suppresses and attacks my right of free speech. He implies that perhaps the four of us are not worthy of trust and confidence. This is a slap at us. What we said, I think, contributed to the history of the United States.''
''I liked J.F.K.,'' Mr. Sherman said. ''He was one of the nicest guys I ever met. But he was reckless, morally. And for 35 years I kept my mouth shut.''
A spokesman for the Secret Service, Arnette Heintze, said Mr. Merletti did not intended to personally attack the four former agents who discussed their experiences of protecting Kennedy.
Mr. Heintze also said Secret Service agents were law-enforcement agents, and hypothetically duty-bound to report a crime committed by a person they protect. But, he said, the agents are sworn to be ''worthy of trust and confidence,'' and that maintaining that trust requires confidentiality and discretion.
''This is a very critical issue for the Secret Service,'' Mr. Heintze said. ''This goes to the core of our mission. This has to do with trust. Most of us take this with us to the grave.''
The Secret Service employs 2,100 agents, 1,100 of them uniformed. Established in 1865, it has protected Presidents since 1901, after the assassination of President William McKinley.
http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2003/Nov/22/ln/ln13a.html
Posted on: Saturday, November 22, 2003
Tragedy still sore spot for ex-agent
By Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writer
November never fails to stir up Frank Slocum's worst memories. Even after 40 years, he can't escape them.
Frank Slocum, a former Secret Service agent, displays "The White House," which President Kennedy and his wife autographed.
Gregory Yamamoto • The Honolulu Advertiser
They don't bother him as much as they do other retired U.S. Secret Service agents. But they can set his upper lip to quivering, and if he doesn't stomp them back, he'll cry.
Such is the legacy of President John F. Kennedy, assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald four decades ago today. With pinpoint precision, it reaches through time to jar Slocum, a 77-year-old Makaha resident.
Slocum, who once headed up the Honolulu office of the Secret Service, protected five presidents during his 20-year career. And while Slocum wasn't in the doomed presidential motorcade in Dallas that morning — he was in Los Angeles working criminal cases — he was there that afternoon, standing on the sixth floor of the Texas school book depository.
He remembers looking out the window and thinking how easy it would be for a sniper to make a good, clean shot. There were so many questions, he says, so much confusion.
"We didn't know what to think," he says. "There were so many things being said. The only thing we knew for sure was that the president had been shot."
For Slocum, it doesn't matter that he wasn't there. He knew everyone who was and shared their angst and anger at what happened. Slocum had protected Kennedy on other assignments. He liked him. All the agents liked him.
"He was very personable," Slocum says.
There was no finer example of that than the previous Christmas Eve, when Slocum was in Palm Beach, Fla., on a detail to protect the president and Mrs. Kennedy. Over the objections of several agents, Kennedy called them all into a room to thank them.
"He said, I am with my family tonight and because I am with mine, you are not with yours and Mrs. Kennedy and I want you to know how much this means to us," Slocum says.
As a memento, the president gave them a signed edition of "The White House," a history book edited by Mrs. Kennedy. Slocum still has the book, its spine a bit tattered, but the couple's autographs still clear.
The emotional measure of their loss could not really be weighed by the Secret Service agents until days later. Those agents assigned to remain in Texas, Slocum among them, huddled around a television set in a Johnson City motel to watch the Kennedy funeral.
"We had lost a popular president," he says. "We were feeling maybe it could have been avoided. Did we do something wrong?"
That funeral, with all its enduring images, was well-done, he says. And this is where it gets tough for Slocum, where he has to stomp on his feelings.
"We started to cry," he says.
To be sure, there were moments the Secret Service was proud of, high among them that one of their own, agent Clint Hill, had rushed up from the trailing limo to protect Mrs. Kennedy from being shot. Hill did not share that pride, Slocum says, because the president was dead.
"It really bothered him," Slocum says. "Could he have done something else? He was seen pounding his fist on the car. It was a horrible time. A horrible time."
Much has been said and written about the assassination and Slocum rejects most of it. Tell it straight, he says.
"This other stuff — more assassins and cover-ups — that's just unfortunate," Slocum says. "When will they let it go?"
The assassination changed a lot about the way the Secret Service did its job, Slocum says. Protecting the president had always been a priority, but the agency often worked without adequate money, equipment and personnel, he says.
"Prior to the assassination, we had hand-me down equipment," he says. "After the assassination, everyone wanted to make sure it never happened again. We got equipment, cars, anything. We got more agents. We got more authority."
In the aftermath, Slocum and another agent wrote a thick manual on presidential route security. Among their suggestions: no open windows.
Four years after the assassination, Slocum was sent to Honolulu as the special agent in charge of the Secret Service office in Hawai'i. Pages and pages of his thick scrapbook detail his time here, many of them with photographs. He is the man in the background looking the other way, looking for another presidential assassin.
There have been none. One was enough.
"Was there something we could have done?" Slocum says again, and not for the last time. "I don't know if there was."
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October 4, 1996
Rufus W. Youngblood, 72, Agent Who Guarded Johnson
By ROBERT MCG. THOMAS JR.
Rufus W. Youngblood, the Secret Service agent who flung himself over the front seat and used his body to shield Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson during the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, died on Wednesday at a hospice near his home in Savannah, Ga. He was 72 and was deputy director of the Secret Service when he retired in 1971.
His family said the cause was cancer.
For Mr. Youngblood it was no more than a reflex action, an instinctive act of professional duty in the face of apparent danger to the man he was sworn to protect. But on a day when a bereft nation seemed suddenly short of heroes, Mr. Youngblood seemed hero enough, a man who had clearly been ready to sacrifice his life to save the Vice President's.
As it turned out, Mr. Johnson was never in real danger from the gunfire trained on the President two cars ahead in the motorcade through Dallas. But at the time Mr. Youngblood, who was riding in the front seat of the Vice President's limousine, did not now that.
Indeed, as he recalled it in his 1973 book, ''20 Years in the Secret Service. My Life with Five Presidents,'' he had not known whether the sound he heard was a firecracker, a bomb or a gunshot. He knew only that something was wrong and that some action had to be taken.
And so, as the President's car sped ahead and the words, ''Let's get out of here,'' rang out over the radio, Mr. Youngblood scrambled over the seat, pushed Mr. Johnson to the floor and spread his own body protectively on top of the Vice President's.
For his action, Mr. Youngblood was awarded the Treasury Department's highest honor, but felt the fuss was somewhat excessive. After all, he was part of a generation for which heroism had been a matter of patriotic routine.
Born in Macon, Ga., Mr. Youngblood was the son of a railroad man who was killed in a train wreck when his son was 2. He needed his mother's permission to join the Army Air Forces shortly after Pearl Harbor but signed up in time to serve as a navigator on some of the earliest bombing raids over Germany.
After the war Mr. Youngblood obtained a degree in electrical engineering from Georgia Tech in 1950.
After working for a struggling company, Mr. Youngblood, who by then had a wife and child, learned through the Georgia Tech placement office of an opening in the Secret Service's Atlanta office investigating counterfeiting and check fraud.
''There were 35 applicants, and he was the one they hired,'' his wife, Peggy, said yesterday, noting that her husband was forever being singled out from the crowd.
Indeed, when he was sent to Washington for periodic special assignments on Presidential trips, he impressed his superior so much that by the time Dwight D. Eisenhower succeeded Harry S. Truman in 1953, Mr. Youngblood had been assigned to the White House detail full time.
After Mr. Kennedy took office in 1961, Mr. Youngblood was made chief of the Vice-Presidential detail, in part because Mr. Johnson had taken a proprietary interest in the agent who could match him drawl for drawl.
As Mrs. Youngblood recalled it, when Mr. Johnson went to the White House one day and saw Mr. Youngblood on duty, the Vice President complained that the White House had stolen ''my agent.''
Shortly after Mr. Johnson took office, Mr. Youngblood was made chief of the White House detail. As a former colleague, Lem Johns, recalled yesterday, the Secret Service was generally delighted to have a high official who had the ear of a President. ''He was instrumental in getting us increased appropriations,'' Mr. Johns said, noting that Congress had been especially amenable to such appeals in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination.
During the Johnson Presidency, Mr. Youngblood had only one scary moment, albeit one with comic overtones. When Australian anti-war protesters threw what turned out to be balloons filled with red and green paint at the President's car during a visit to Melbourne, Australia, in 1966, Mr. Youngblood, who had been walking beside the car, was covered with red paint and Mr. Johns was drenched in green paint.
Mr. Youngblood, who was promoted to deputy director before Mr. Johnson left office in 1969, retired two years later but continued to visit Mr. Johnson at his ranch in Texas.
Settling in Savannah, Mr. Youngblood sold real estate for a while and then made a new name for himself: as a master gardener whose profusion of colorful day lillies drew visitors from all over the country.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by a son, Mark, of Wallingford, Conn; three daughters, Joy Rumpf of Windham, N.H., Candy Hughes of Savannah, and Dr. Rebecca Vaughn of Acworth, Ga.; a sister, Ann Jones Shephard of Atlanta, and eight grandchildren.
-------------
"vindication" for Vince :)
In his book, Lost Honor, John Dean made a list of 30 possible candidates [for "Deep Throat"]: White House Staff (Stephen Bull, Alexander P. Butterfield, Kenneth Clawson, Charles Colson, Leonard Garment, David Gergen, Alexander Haig, Richard Moore and Jonathan Rose); FBI (Thomas E. Bishop, Charles Bowles, Mark Felt, L. Patrick Gray and David Kinley), Justice Department (Carl Belcher, Richard Burke, John Keeney, Laurence McWhorter, Henry Peterson and Harold Shapiro); Secret Service (Lilburn Boggs, Charles Bretz, Roger Schwalm, ****Alfred Wong*** and Raymond Zumwalt).
--------------
http://www.uga.edu/gm/1298/Notes2.html
Fred Lawrence (BS '67) of Marietta, who protected Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan during his 23-year career with the Secret Service, died Feb. 24, 1997.
----------------
http://www.adwinc.com/PERSONNE.HTM
A. Dale Wunderlich
Mr. Wunderlich received his Bachelor of Science degree from Washington State University in Police Science and Administration. He was a police officer for the City of Pullman, Washington Police Department in 1958 and 1959. He was with the Los Angeles Police Department from 1959 to 1963 and was a Special Agent with the United States Secret Service for approximately thirteen and one-half years. While with the Los Angeles Police Department, Mr. Wunderlich was assigned to the Patrol Division and was later promoted to detective and was assigned to the Crime Laboratory Division, Comparative Analysis Section and was qualified as an expert in firearms identification (ballistics), number restoration, bomb disposal and crime scene reconstruction.
While in the U.S. Secret Service, Mr. Wunderlich was assigned at the White House in Washington, D.C. and at several field offices. Mr. Wunderlich conducted several thousand complex fraud investigations while in the U.S. Secret Service.
http://www.kcfr.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=94&Itemid=234&target_pg=com_day&date=07/30/2008
Wednesday, Jul. 30 2008
Former Secret Service Agent On Convention Security, History
Dale Wunderlich, of Castle Rock, was on duty at national Conventions in 1964 and 1972. He also protected several former presidents and candidates. He speaks with host Ryan Warner.
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OBITUARY- Washington Post, 10/19/94: Lilburn E. "Pat" Boggs; deceased 10/16/94; retired Deputy Director; served 30 years in Secret Service- retired 1978; WHD- Truman, Ike; with Ike during his retirement in Gettysburg, PA.; SAIC of Los Angeles and Albuquerque, New Mexico offices, as well as the Chicago office during the 1968 Democratic National Conventions [replaced Martineau?]; 1969- returned to D.C. as Asst. Dir. for Protective Forces- presided over its reorganization and expansion from 250 to 800 officers, inc. 5 women who eventually became the first 5 female Secret Service agents ; also directed the establishment of the Foreign Dignitary Protective Division ; accompanied Nixon to China in 1972 and to the Soviet Union in 1973; awarded the Treasury Department's Meritorious Service Award and the Albert Gallatin Medal; also- a WWII vet., inc. 12/7/41: assigned to Pearl Harbor.
OBITUARY- Washington Post, 4/23/93: Gerald A. Behn; age-76; died of cancer 4/21/93 at his home in McLean, VA-lived in the D.C. area since 1939; SAIC of WHD from [Sept.] 1961 to [ Jan.] 1965; retired in 1967 as SAIC of Special Investigations after 28 years in the Secret Service; an Inspector [?!?!-Behn denied he was one to me and he didn't mention becoming one in his JFK Library Oral History]; was a charter member and president of the Assoc. of Former Agents of the U.S. Secret Service; born in Forest Park, IL ; raised in Flint, MI; a graduate of Michigan State University; worked for U.S. Postal Service for 4 years after leaving the service; wife- Jean Brownell Behn; two daughters- Sandra Lee Kane of Springfield[I spoke to her 8/95] and Barbara Jean Shipley of Vienna; 4 grandchildren.
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/editorials/stories/2008/06/21/BobFoster.ART_ART_06-21-08_A10_KIAHF67.html?sid=101
Robert W. Foster
Retired Secret Service agent will be remembered for protecting Kennedy children
Saturday, June 21, 2008 6:46 AM
A life spent protecting others, including the president's family, suited Robert W. Foster. His death in Columbus on Tuesday left a void for family, friends and others who admired his service as a Secret Service agent, a U.S. marshal for the Southern District of Ohio and sergeant-at-arms of the General Assembly.
Foster, 78, was best remembered as protector of President Kennedy's two children. He enjoyed being with the first family, saying in a 1992 Dispatch interview that the Kennedys were "wonderful people who treated us well."
He was with Caroline and John Jr. when their father was assassinated in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, and held Caroline's hand at John F. Kennedy's funeral. But that was far from the only time Foster was on duty as history was being made. One of his Secret Service assignments was the raucous Democratic National Convention in 1968.
Andrew Foster described his dad as a farm boy at heart, and Bob retained a love of gardening, but public service was always paramount. After retiring from the Secret Service in 1981, he worked as a U.S. marshal until 1994, supervising deputies in Cincinnati, Columbus and Dayton, and then as the state legislature's sergeant-at-arms through 2001.
The Worthington native joined the Secret Service in 1956 after a stint in the Army's 82{+n}{+d} Airborne Division and graduation from Ohio State University.
Secret Service agents are quiet and ever watchful, able to eliminate distractions. That somber work demeanor didn't reflect the warmth and sense of humor that his family and friends enjoyed so much. He will be missed.
Robert W. Foster: 1930-2008
Agent who protected Kennedy's children dies at 78
Friday, June 20, 2008 3:08 AM
By Nicquel Terry
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Courtesy of John F. Kennedy Presidential Library
Secret Service agent Robert W. Foster holds Caroline Kennedy's hand during the funeral procession for her father, President John F. Kennedy. Foster, 78, died Tuesday in Columbus.
Holding back his own tears, the man comforted Caroline Kennedy, holding her hand at her father's funeral in 1963.
Decades later, when the plane carrying Caroline's brother crashed into the ocean, it was difficult for the man to watch the news reports. He preferred to remember John Jr. as the little boy he held on outings to the park or who laughed at his made-up stories.
He was Robert W. Foster, one of the Secret Service agents charged with protecting the children of President John F. Kennedy.
Foster, who also served as a U.S. marshal for southern Ohio and sergeant-at-arms for the Ohio General Assembly, died Tuesday at First Community Village in Columbus of congestive heart failure. He was 78.
The Worthington native served in the Army from 1948 to 1953 and attended Ohio State University, where he earned a degree in education in 1955.
Foster guarded the Kennedy children from 1961 until 1964. Kennedy's assassination hit him hard, as it did others who worked closely with the family.
"All of us shed tears," said Thomas Wells, also a former Secret Service agent. "The trauma was severe to everyone."
Wells, 74, of Saint Augustine, Fla., said he and Foster were among five agents assigned to Kennedy's family.
He recalled Foster had a "dry wit and was fun to be around."
Foster's ex-wife, Peggy, who lives in Worthington, recalled a comment by the president's father, Joseph Kennedy: "Mr. Foster, how does a Republican from Columbus, Ohio, wind up guarding my son -- a Democrat from Massachusetts?"
Andrew Foster said his father never let politics interfere with his duties, a hallmark of the Secret Service.
"It was the most meaningful service that he rendered to the country," Andrew Foster, 44, of Princeton Junction, N.J., said. "He took an enormous amount of pride in his affiliation to the Secret Service."
After Jacqueline Kennedy and her children moved to New York in 1964, Robert Foster took on other Secret Service assignments, including the Democratic convention in 1968 in Chicago.
He retired from the agency in 1978 after serving as the special-agent-in-charge of the Columbus office.
He was a marshal from 1981 to 1994 and sergeant-at-arms through 2001.
Family members said it was difficult for Foster to draw the line between his work and his love for gardening. Andrew Foster recalled his father caring for his garden in his suit and tie.
"He was still at heart kind of a farm boy," the son said. "He was kind of like a little kid."
Peggy Foster remembers Robert Foster for his exuberance, his passion for traveling across the country, and their "Camelot time" during the Kennedy administration.
"He had a gift for telling jokes and stories," she said, "a genuine sense of humor. Everyone would agree with that."
The couple had three children: Andrew Foster, Katherine Foster Parramore of Virginia, and Robert Foster Jr. of Dallas.
A memorial service will be held at 3 p.m. July 8 at Rutherford-Corbin Funeral home, 515 High St., in Worthington. Friends may call one hour before the service.
nterry@dispatch.com
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Charlotte Observer | 11/16/2003 | To serve a president - [Cached Version]
Published on: 11/16/2003 Last Visited: 11/16/2003
Dolly Berger visits with her husband Andy, who suffers from Alzheimer's disease, at the Lawyer's Glen Retirement Living Center in Charlotte, North Carolina.
...
Andy Berger is a retired Secret Service agent who was in Dallas, Texas, as part of President Kennedy's security detail when Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963.
...
Except Andy Berger.And he was there.
Berger, of Charlotte, was a member of the Secret Service for 20 years, trusted by presidents and their families.
...
On Nov. 22, 1963, Andy Berger had already arrived at the Trade Mart in Dallas, where tables were set for a presidential luncheon.Berger heard that the president had been shot from a Dallas policeman and rushed to the hospital in a police cruiser with Dr. George Burkley, Kennedy's physician.
...
"Nurse Doris Nelson was just passing through it when a tall man in a light gray speckled suit shouldered his way past her, shouting, `I'm FBI!' He appeared violent, and Andy Berger, the closest agent, knocked him down.
...
Berger was right."
`He cried and cried'
The 26-year-old Andy Berger could stand up to the FBI, but his wife, Dolly, remembers how he crumbled when he finally returned to their Hyattsville, Md., apartment between 1 and 2 the next morning.
Andy walked in, dressed in his dark suit, with his trench coat wrapped over his arm.He sat down in the living room, where the husbands of Dolly's college friends had waited so she would not be alone.
In just over two hours, Andy Berger had witnessed the death of one president and the inauguration of his successor.Closer than most, he had seen the widow in the bloodied pink suit who had insisted on sitting beside her husband during that hearse ride.
Andy Berger didn't say a word.
...
Andy caught a few hours sleep before resuming his place in a history that he seldom spoke of.
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To Andy, the kid from the Bronx, the job was a dream.
Dolly knew life with Andy would be different.
...
Andy came to a dance at the Larchmont Shore Club in Larchmont, N.Y., with Dolly's friend Sheila.
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Andy apologized."Can we talk?"
They did, for hours and hours.
Andy charmed her skeptical parents as well as everyone he met.He was drop-dead gorgeous and had a take-charge gait that drew stares.
...
Dolly visits Andy, 66, regularly, and most often on Sundays and Mondays, her days off.
"Who loves you more than anybody?"she asks.
"You do," he answers.
...
When they were first married, Andy brought a yellow rose home with each week's paycheck.When he could afford it, the single flower became a bouquet.Sometimes, he would make her cover her eyes until he arranged the flowers in a plastic cup.
"I know it isn't as nice as you could do it," he would say.
Andy never let a day go by without telling Dolly he loved her, even if it meant a call from the other side of the world over a band radio: "I love you, over and out."
The agents who worked for Andy still call to check on Dolly.
...
At Lawyers Glen, Andy is getting tired.
She asks: "Who am I?"
He answers: "Love of my life."
`A provocateur'
In 1961, the Secret Service called John Brady as a reference."They asked me if Andy was patriotic.
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No one was more patriotic than Andy.
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Andy was as competitive as a person could get."
In eighth grade, the sports editor of the St. John's Eagle named Andy Berger the school's best athlete.The sports editor was Andy Berger, who assured his buddies he won the title in a fair election.
Andy, John and Richie O'Rourke, who lived around the corner, formed the core of "The Purple Gang," a street-smart variation of "The Lavender Hill Mob."
...
But Andy, the charismatic leader, had little in common with the reluctant Alec Guinness in that 1951 film.
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Andy wasn't a troublemaker, exactly.
...
As a walk-on, Andy made Fordham's freshman basketball team.The third baseman also played varsity baseball as a sophomore.
While attending New York Law School at night, Andy heard other students talking about the Secret Service, something else to compete over.He left law school after a year for the challenge of government service.
The gang stayed together, and through the years, Andy organized trips to Kiawah Island and fishing at Cape Hatteras.
...
On the way to a fall football game last month in Mississippi, John and Richie stopped by Lawyers Glen to take Andy out for lunch and tall tales.
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"Andy was our leader."
One baby dies, one survives
Andy Berger loved Jack Kennedy.
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But there were plenty of stories Andy could tell.
At the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, Mass., Andy and several other agents stood watch as Kennedy and a few friends took out a sailboat.
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It didn't take long for Andy and the agents -- city kids all -- to capsize.
The president was laughing so hard he had tears in his eyes.
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Something didn't feel right and Andy was still away in Massachusetts.
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"He had baptized him during the night: Andrew Paul Berger."
Dolly's mom and the doctor called Andy in the middle of the night.Once Andy heard the news, he told Ken O'Donnell, special assistant to the president, who told Kennedy.The president made sure Andy was flown immediately to New York in a private plane, with a police escort to the hospital.
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Not long after, Kennedy's secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, approached Andy Berger on his 4-to-midnight shift.
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Kennedy presented Andy with a framed etching of the White House -- signed by JFK and Jackie -- for newborn Andrew.
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Kennedy presented Andy with a framed etching of the White House -- signed by JFK and Jackie -- for newborn Andrew.
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Daughter Kathleen -- called Katie -- thought she'd try one more time to pry a secret from Andy.
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Andy smiled."To my grave.
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In a picture that captures a visit to Kennedy's grave at Arlington Cemetery -- with a pint-sized Katie in a fur-collared wool coat with a double row of buttons -- Andy holds onto his 5-year-old daughter's tiny right hand with both of his.
Last Christmas, Katie had the picture blown up and wrapped it up for her dad.
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Photos from Parkland Hospital, Love Field and Andrews Air Force Base show Andy Berger calm in the chaos.
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At parties, friends would sit close to Andy and try, after a couple of drinks, to get him to reveal presidential secrets.All struck out, as the phrase "to the grave" became his trademark.
Andy's Secret Service years were on future son-in-law Boyd Higgins' mind when he nervously walked into a lunch meeting at Carmel Country Club to ask for Katie's hand in 1989.
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Before Boyd could get a word out, Andy told him: "I think I know what you're going to say.
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For Frank Sinatra, only Andy Berger would do for security.
...
Life now for Andy and Dolly Berger was going to be about children and grandchildren and deep-sea fishing trips.
...
Andy, who liked to join his son John on the golf course, left a game early one day.
...
Dolly noticed Andy kept missing the turn for their church, St. Gabriel.
...
In August 2002, Andy wandered into a house in the neighborhood.
...
During the day, she'd take Andy to the Adult Care & Share Center on Idlewild Road.
...
You've reached Dolly and Andy Berger...."
...
Andy is there in the pictures on the family room wall: with Lyndon Johnson and his daughter Luci, with Frank Sinatra, with Dolly and the kids all wearing the polyester prints of the 1970s.
...
Dolly is snuggled on a chair beside Andy, rubbing his back.
...
Andrew is there, smiling, blowing softly on his dad's sweet potatoes to cool them, calling him "Pop-Pop," the name the grandkids gave him.
Dolly whispers: "Mary wants to ask you about the Secret Service."
She warns me not to expect much.She says Andy hasn't spoken in sentences for months.
Then, Andy's hand stops shaking.He turns
[snipped online]
http://home.rochester.rr.com/tbouck/rib1.htm
The Sagacity to Uncover Secrets And the Integrity to Keep Them
By Patricia Sullivan, Washington Post
Robert Inman Bouck epitomized discretion.
He knew the ins and outs of the White House like few people do. He kept secrets, personal and political, without a qualm. It was the code of the Secret Service, Bouck's employer for 30 years.
"A lot of things he did, I didn't know he was doing," said his wife of 67 years, Marjorie Bouck.
"Some things he would talk about, but he would not talk about the private lives of the presidents at all, he really didn't. He didn't even tell us," said James Bouck, one of his sons.
He protected six presidents, from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Richard M. Nixon, but he had a special affection for President John F. Kennedy and his family, and the assassination "just devastated him," said his wife. The subsequent years were "the worst couple years of his life," she added.
Bouck, who died of congestive heart failure April 27 at age 89, was the special agent in charge of the protective research division at the time and was in Washington on Nov. 22, 1963. Upon hearing the news, he immediately removed a secret reel-to-reel tape recording system that he had installed at Kennedy's request in July 1962.
Kennedy left the machine running when he left the room during the Cuban missile crisis. The tapes, a television documentary later reported, recorded members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff cursing what they considered the president's weak-minded proposal to blockade Cuba without invading it.
Bouck also oversaw the chain of evidence from Kennedy's assassination after it arrived in Washington. He testified before the Warren Commission and a congressional investigative committee that he turned over boxes of evidence to Kennedy's personal secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, at the National Archives. At the time, he said that one of the containers held remains of Kennedy's brain.
The brain was discovered to be missing some years later, and because of this discrepancy, Bouck's name still turns up on conspiracy-theory Web sites.
As important as the Kennedys were to him, Bouck had an enviable career before 1960. A Michigan farm boy, he studied police science at Michigan State, married his college sweetheart and joined the Secret Service in 1939. He was rejected for active duty in the Army during World War II because of high blood pressure.
Yet he traveled the world as an advance man for President Dwight D. Eisenhower and then accompanied him on the official trips to Europe, China, India, Pakistan, Africa and South America. He was a member of the U.S. delegation to the Potsdam Conference in 1945, where Allied leaders determined the future of postwar Europe. He was at the Allied Commission on Reparations in Europe in 1945 and was at the Geneva Convention in 1955.
Bouck also completed the advance trip to arrange for Eisenhower's 1960 trip to the Soviet Union, which was canceled after an American U-2 spy plane was shot down over Russia.
In 1957, he was described as the "electronics ace" of the Secret Service in an article in The Washington Post, a description that a former colleague endorses.
"He knew the mechanical gadgets, the electronic devices you use to supplement human intelligence," said H. Stuart Knight, the director of the Secret Service from 1972 to 1982, who called Bouck a mentor whom he admired for his character, professionalism and integrity. "He was head of training when I went there. He was an example you aspire to emulate. That's part of the culture of the Secret Service.
"He was a leader."
Bouck was on a presidential trip to Moscow when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev greeted a throng of visitors. Bouck did not want to shake Khrushchev's hand, so he kept moving to the back of the crowd.
Khrushchev spotted him, pursued him, and finally thrust his hand between two people, forcing Bouck to acknowledge the host.
Another time, Bouck was at a meeting at Winston Churchill's home when the British prime minister and famous amateur painter interrupted the proceedings to call for his paints and a ladder. He climbed up to one of his pieces and dabbed a bit of paint on a hanging painting.
Bouck also told his family about a time in Bermuda when Churchill, worried that the ocean was too chilly for swimming, asked a well-known aide to dip his top hat to test the water's temperature.
After 30 years of protecting presidents, Bouck retired in 1969. He had a second and third career with the Federal Reserve and with central banks of several foreign countries. But there's little doubt how Bouck defined himself.
One of the few mementos that Bouck kept, his son said, was a receipt, signed by Robert Kennedy, for the president's Cartier watch that he returned to the family after the assassination.
http://home.rochester.rr.com/tbouck/rib2.htm
Robert I. Bouck, 89; Protected Presidents
By Patricia Sullivan, Washington Post
Robert Inman Bouck, 89, a retired Secret Service agent who protected six presidents, rose to administrative positions in several divisions of the agency and later provided security services for the Federal Reserve System, died of congestive heart failure April 27 at the Powhatan Nursing Home in Falls Church.
Mr. Bouck was born on a farm near Elkton, Mich. He studied electrical engineering at Michigan State University for two years, then switched to police administration and interned with the Michigan State Police. He received a bachelor's degree in police administration in 1939.
He entered the Secret Service on Sept. 5, 1939, as one of the first two agents with college degrees in police administration. He was rejected for active-duty service in the Army during World War II because of high blood pressure, but that condition did not prevent him from providing physical protection for presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Richard M. Nixon.
Mr. Bouck also held positions as director of personnel, supervisor of the counterfeit division, director of training and inspector of the inspection and audit division.
When he retired in 1969, Mr. Bouck was special-agent-in-charge of the special investigations and security division.
After leaving the Secret Service, Mr. Bouck was a security consultant to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. For nearly 20 years, he advised the board and individual Federal Reserve banks on security issues, including the design, installation and performance of security systems, the review of construction and renovation proposals and selection of contractors.
After completing his work with the Federal Reserve, Mr. Bouck was a consultant to the central banks of several nations, including Bolivia, Singapore and the Netherlands.
Mr. Bouck was a founding member and president of the Association of Retired Secret Service Agents.
He was a deacon and elder of Falls Church Presbyterian Church since 1953. He also served as president of the men's council and chairman of the property and maintenance, Christian education and personnel committees.
Survivors include his wife, Marjorie Dinan Bouck of Falls Church; three children, Judy Porter of New York City, Robert Bouck of Richmond and James Bouck of Chantilly; four grandchildren; and a great-grandson
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,908156,00.html
New Boss for a Troubled Team
Monday, Nov. 26, 1973
When a Communist-led mob attacked the car of Richard Nixon in Caracas in 1958, smashing its windows and battering its doors and roof with rocks and lengths of pipe, one of the dozen Secret Service agents who risked his life to save the then Vice President was an erect, athletic man named H. Stuart Knight. Last week President Nixon installed Knight, 52, as head of Secret Service, a job that will require courage and initiative of another sort. Knight's job will be to re-establish the reputation of the 1,230-agent organization, which has been badly tarnished by minor roles in some of the Watergate scandals and on occasion by being used to serve the President's political image as well as his security.
An agency of the Treasury Department, the Secret Service was actually founded in 1865 to chase down counterfeiters, an activity it still pursues, but since the assassination of William Mc-Kinley in 1901 the Service has also been responsible for protecting the President. The agents assigned to the White House (average annual salary: $17,000) suffer through long periods of boredom when the President is not on display. But when he goes on a trip, whether to San Clemente or Peking, they work under acute tension, always braced, like sprinters on their starting blocks, for the sound of a shot. On a tour the agents are immediately recognizable: trim young men with short hair and conservative suits who watch the people while the people watch the President. Often they must struggle to hold back the crowds, and sometimes—as in Caracas in 1958 —they are in danger of losing their own lives.
Under these conditions, Secret Service agents have frequently become so much a part of presidential families that they have acted like so many understanding bachelor uncles—carrying out the garbage for Jackie Kennedy while she was vacationing in Ireland, baby-sitting with little David Eisenhower, and collecting shopping packages for a long line of First Ladies and their daughters.
No one ever grudged these small, valet-style acts, but in the past couple of years Secret Service agents have been pressed into performing quite different chores. "They've gotten their responsibilities out of perspective," says one former White House aide who worked closely with the agency. "Sometimes they're overprotective." Some examples of their work:
> Tapping the phone of F. Donald Nixon, the President's trouble-prone brother, who has a record of entering into embarrassing business deals. "They wanted to keep track of what he was doing," one agent admits. "We have to protect the image of the President."
> Opening the White House safe of Howard Hunt after the Watergate burglary.
> Operating—none too efficiently, it turned out—the secret White House taping systems. As the custodians of the tapes, the agents revealed themselves to be sloppy bookkeepers, letting White House aides borrow them casually.
The Secret Service agents have also acted to tidy up the President's political landscape. During the protest demonstrations over Viet Nam, when the White House felt it was under siege, agents were summoned to chase away a solitary demonstrator who had caught —and offended—the eye of the President by appearing in Lafayette Park across the street from the White House.
The Service has also been accused of acting to prevent protests at the President's public appearances. Two years ago, when Billy Graham and the President appeared together in Charlotte, N.C., Secret Service agents helped screen the spectators, barring persons in T shirts and jeans, men with long hair, and other "suspicious" characters. Among those thrown out or denied admittance was a group of children from a Quaker Sunday school class.
The Secret Service also allowed its good name to be used to justify in the name of security some curious alterations to the presidential houses in Key Biscayne and San Clemente.
No Poisoned Ice. Offering a rationale for the $600 icemaker installed in a staff house at the Key Biscayne compound, one agent huffily insisted: "That icemaker was for the President—that way we knew that the President was not using poisoned ice."
So far the agency has refused to answer a letter sent by Senator Joseph Montoya in September asking it to justify the tapping of Donald Nixon's phone—and Montoya is chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that controls the Service's purse strings. Montoya later warned the White House: "The people of this nation must be able to believe that their law enforcement agencies act in a legal and responsible manner. Without that trust, respect for the law will surely disappear, and we risk the return to an age of barbarism."
As he takes over as top agent, replacing James J. Rowley who retired at 65, Stu Knight knows full well the problems of the organization. A 25-year man, he also knows how difficult it is for an agent to refuse to do an extracurricular job in the White House when, as one says, "you are approached on a one-to-one basis—and if the Boss wants it done, you do it."
Although an articulate man, Knight, following tradition, refuses to discuss the Service's affairs in detail, but he does say, significantly, that he hopes "to close the gap between the actual and the ideal" in the way the Service operates. Ideally, of course, the Secret Service guards the President, stays out of politics—and maybe does a little baby-sitting on the side.
One thing is certain: Knight has the solid backing of his fellow agents. Says one veteran agent: "This appointment is different from the past Nixon track record; he's not a former Nixon advance man. He's his own man—and he doesn't owe anybody anything."
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/obituaries/articles/2008/08/03/vincent_mroz_86_and_elroy_sites_77_were_witnesses_to_attack_on_truman/
Vincent Mroz, 86, and Elroy Sites, 77, were witnesses to attack on Truman
Email|Print|Single Page| Text size – + By Patricia Sullivan
Washington Post / August 3, 2008
WASHINGTON - Secret Service Special Agent Vincent Mroz and apprentice electrician Elroy Sites met Nov. 1, 1950, just moments after two Puerto Rican nationalists attempted to storm Blair House in Washington and assassinate President Truman.
Mr. Mroz had just fired a well-considered shot at one of the attempted assassins from a second-floor window while his colleagues were in hot pursuit. He then ran through a basement and out, ready to continue the fight, only to find a fatally injured colleague nearby. Mr. Sites, the electrician, was knotting up a jacket as a makeshift pillow for the dying man.
The violence made headlines around the world and foreshadowed a 1954 attack by Puerto Rican nationalists on the US Capitol. Except for a 2005 book on the attack, the Blair House assassination attempt is nearly forgotten.
Mr. Mroz, the last surviving officer involved in the 1950 shoot-out, died July 22 at his home in Adrian, Mich., of lung cancer. He was 86.
Mr. Sites, one of the last significant witnesses of that day, died July 26 of coronary artery disease at his home in Westminster, Md. He was 77.
In 1950, hundreds immediately gathered at the scene, including swarms of photographers, nearby office workers, tourists, and streetcar passengers. But few were close to the action, and all of them are now dead: The only remaining Secret Service agent from that case, Floyd Boring, died in February.
Mr. Mroz had been in the Secret Service for just over two years at the time, working the presidential protective detail. The White House was being renovated, so Truman was living at Blair House. The president was napping at 2:20 p.m. when the two would-be assassins approached from opposite directions, with a hazy but firm intent to kill him.
The sequence of events is laid out in "American Gunfight: The Plot to Kill Harry Truman" by Stephen Hunter (a former Washington Post film critic) and John Bainbridge Jr. Mr. Mroz, who had just rotated into the service's office, right over the eastern entrance to Blair House, heard gunshots and looked out the window. He spotted two colleagues and Oscar Collazo, one of the gunmen, running and shooting. Mr. Mroz fired at Collazo, who seemed to disappear. Mr. Mroz then dashed out through a basement corridor and up a set of stairs to approach the scene from a better angle.
When he came out the side door to the adjoining Lee House, he found, to his shock, that "There was nobody to shoot. Everybody was down," Hunter and Bainbridge wrote. What he did see was a civilian pulling a seriously injured White House policeman, Leslie Coffelt, out of a guardhouse.
The civilian was a 19-year-old Elroy Sites, who had been fixing an outdoor sign at a furniture company about 480 feet away. At the sound of gunshots, he ran toward Blair House, arriving before the shooting had ended, and spotted the White House police officer slumped in the phone booth-size guardhouse.Continued...
"I heard Coffelt moaning, and I went over and he looked up at me and raised his pistol," Mr. Sites told Bainbridge. "I just took my foot and pushed the pistol over. . . . I had just lifted him up, and I was trying not to hurt him. . . .
"This guy came up and told him to roll up his coat," he said. "I made a pillow, somebody came out the door. . . . I helped put him on the stretcher, and I gave the police captain his gun. They put him in the ambulance. Then I went around and worked on the sign."
He testified in the murder trial of Oscar Collazo (whose partner, Griselio Torresola, had died at the scene), and then went on about his life. Collazo was sentenced to death, but Truman commuted his sentence. Collazo died in 1994.
Elroy Reynolds Sites, a native of Altoona, Pa., moved to Washington as a boy but spent enough time hunting that he became an expert marksman. He graduated from Cardozo High School in Washington, D.C., where he was on the swim team and the shooting team. He also served in the Army. He was a member of the National Rifle Association.
He worked for himself most of his life as a master electrician, and then went into the construction, heating and air-conditioning trades. He also worked as a deputy sheriff in Montgomery County for seven years. His wife, Mary Louise Sites, died in 1989.
He leaves eight children, Kathleen Horan of Gaithersburg, Md., Anne Vane of Frederick, Md., Ronald Sites of Silver Spring, Md., Lauren Chaffin of Annapolis, Md., David Sites of Fulton, Md., Christine Ryman of Kearneysville, W.Va., Carolyn Arensmeyer of Germantown, Md., and Mark Sites of Tucker, Ga.; a sister; 25 grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.
His family said Mr. Sites, who liked to talk about his years as a deputy sheriff, rarely talked about the Truman assassination incident until the Hunter-Bainbridge book was published.
Mr. Mroz was more than 6 feet tall, physically imposing but a graceful dancer with large hands and a level gaze. He looked like a Secret Service agent, someone in the higher ranks noted, and he had a college degree, not a given for agents in those days.
He spent 26 years in the Secret Service, and he had been a Marine in World War II, so he knew how to handle guns and a crime scene. After Coffelt was loaded into an ambulance, Mr. Mroz noticed a little man curled up in a fetal position in the hedges. It was the body of Torresola, who had shot three men that afternoon and whom Truman might have seen when he rose from his nap and looked out the window.
When Mr. Mroz removed the Luger pistol from Torresola's body and searched his pockets, he found two magazines of unused ammunition.
Vincent Peter Mroz was born in Stanley, Wis., and grew up in East Chicago, Ind. He attended Michigan State University on a football scholarship but interrupted his college life to enlist in the Marine Corps during World War II. Before he went to war in the Pacific, he was sent to the University of Michigan by the corps, and he became one of the few football players to get an athletic letter from both schools. After the war ended, Mr. Mroz graduated from Michigan State and went directly into the Secret Service.
He worked in Chicago before coming to Washington in 1950. Assigned to the permanent protection detail for Presidents Truman and Eisenhower, Mr. Mroz later rose through the ranks. He ended his career with the Secret Service in 1974 as deputy assistant director of the uniformed division.
The Treasury Department gave Mr. Mroz a certificate of meritorious civilian service for his actions during the Truman assassination attempt.
He leaves his wife of 63 years, Shirley Gamm Mroz of Adrian, Mich.; two children, Barbara Mroz of Adrian and Gregory Mroz of Washington; four grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE7D7163EF930A35752C1A964958260
James Rowley, 84, Who Headed Secret Service and Reorganized It
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By WOLFGANG SAXON
Published: November 3, 1992
James J. Rowley, the former head of the United States Secret Service who reorganized the agency after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, died Sunday at his home in Leisure World, Md. He was 84 years old.
The cause of death was congestive heart failure, his family said.
Mr. Rowley served as director of the Secret Service from 1961 to 1973. Following recommendations from the Warren Commission and others after Kennedy's assassination, he modernized the agency's law-enforcement and training procedures, expanding the use of electronic technology, and bolstered its protective intelligence operations.
The Secret Service was set up within the Department of the Treasury in 1865 to thwart counterfeiters. While remaining part of the department, the 2,000 agents of the Service now also protect the President, Vice President, their families, major-party political candidates and foreign dignitaries in addition to guarding against counterfeiting and fraud involving securities, computers and credit cards.
Mr. Rowley, a native of the Bronx, was educated at St. John's University, where he received two law degrees, studying at night and working as a bank investigator by day. He started his career with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1937 but accepted a position with the Secret Service the next year. He was assigned to the New York field office.
In 1939, he became special agent in charge of the Presidential Protective Division. That gave him a role in advance security arrangements for President Franklin D. Roosevelt's trips to wartime conferences in Casablanca, Morocco; Tunis; Cairo; Teheran, Iran, and Yalta, U.S.S.R.
On Nov. 1, 1950, he directed special agents and officers of the White House Police as they foiled an attempt on President Harry S. Truman's life, when Puerto Rican nationalists tried to shoot their way into Blair House, where Truman was staying while the White House was being remodeled.
In tribute to him, the Secret Service created the James J. Rowley Training Center in Beltsville, Md., in 1983.
Mr. Rowley is survived by his wife of 52 years, the former Mabel Rita Cluen; three daughters, Claudia Dailey of Columbia, Md., Linda Graham of Chevy Chase, Md., and Donna Ryan of Alexandria, Va.; a brother, the Rev. Francis P. Rowley of Blauvelt, N.Y.; a sister, Marge Borise of Greenwich, Conn., and eight grandchildren.
http://www.goleader.com/99mar25/7.htm
Secret Service Agent to Speak At Two Hundred Club Event
SCOTCH PLAINSGerald Bechtle, former White House Secret Service Agent, will be the keynote speaker at The Two Hundred Club of Union County’s Valor Award Luncheon.
Mr. Bechtle, a Union County native now residing in Virginia, is married with three sons. He is a
graduate of the University of Maryland, and was appointed to the U.S. Secret Service in the Washington
Field Office upon his graduation.
Assigned to the White House detail in the 1970s, he guarded Vice Presidents Lyndon Baines Johnson, Spiro Agnew and Gerald Ford. Upon retiring from the Secret Service, Mr. Bechtle was appointed Director of Security
for the Federal Reserve Bank, where he acted as a consultant on all security matters.
http://www.themclub.org/about/newsletter/Mclub_News_Spring04.pdf
President Jerry Bechtle (basketball ‘60), as expected, is providing firm leadership. After
all, Jerry was the Assistant Director of the U.S. Secret Service and, later, was Alan Greenspan’s top
security guy. Incidentally, did you know that actor Jack Nicholson is Jerry’s cousin?
Harry Anheier 1950 Time conterfeiter article:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,934873-1,00.html
Said Secret Service Supervising Agent Harry Anheier: "I have never seen anyone who could rival him. His greens were wonderful."
Pay Articles from August 1958 Part 3 - Site Map - The New York Times
I Service Set for Marine Piloti ... HARRY PERLSTEIN ... HARRY D. ANHEIER DEAD; Ex-Secret Service Agent Had Guarded Three Presidents
http://www.hotchkiss.org/Alumni/Accomplishments.asp
Gaspard D’Andelot Belin ’35 *
General Counsel, the U.S. Treasury Department
http://www.spinnakermedical.com/id17.htm
GERALD S. “JERRY” BLAINE
Mr. Blaine has over 35 years experience as a senior security executive for IBM and ARCO International Oil & Gas. Prior to entering the private sector Jerry served in the US Navy during the Korean War and later as a special agent in the U.S. Secret Service assigned to the White House during the term of three presidents. Mr. Blaine joined IBM as a marketing representative later specialized as an Industry Consultant in Law Enforcement and Intelligence. During this period he assisted in the design of the National Crime Information Center (FBI) and “Walnut” the CIA information center. He designed and created the specifications for a mobile terminal and a fingerprint scanner, and was a worldwide lecturer and author on the use of computers in Criminal Justice and Intelligence. Mr. Blaine became the IBM Security Director in 1974 when IBM was faced with trade secret thefts. Later he became a Government Relations Officer for IBM to lobby for a Federal Trade Secret Law.
Following his retirement from IBM, Mr. Blaine joined ARCO International Oil and Gas in Dallas as Director - International Security, Government Relations and Foreign affairs in 1991. Responsibilities included personal, physical and intellectual security, country start-up planning, personnel protection, investigations, crisis management and establishing liaison with foreign governments. In April of 1999 Jerry again tried to retire, but his undying interest in crisis management and personal security issues pushed him to become a private consultant in these areas.
Mr. Blaine holds a Bachelor of Science Degree from the University of Colorado. He is the past President of Former Agents of US Secret Service Association. He served as Chairman of the Computer Security Committee for the American Society of Industrial Security and served on the terrorism committee. He was also on the Private Sector Advisory Council of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. He is a member of ISMA (International Security Managers Association). He was a representative for ARCO and IBM on the Overseas Security Advisory Council at the US Department of State and continues to be involved with security issues of business.
Re: John Campion
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/11/monalisa_excerpt200811?currentPage=5
It was the only Mona Lisa reporters would get to see that day.
Under direct orders from President Kennedy, Secret Service agent John E. Campion was locked inside the back of the van with the painting. Campion was heavily armed under his loose-fitting, dark-gray wool overcoat. New York City police cleared traffic from the city’s tunnels along the route before the van carrying the masterpiece passed through. According to one report, several sharpshooters were stationed on rooftops in a few strategic locations. With sirens screaming and red lights flashing, the eight-car convoy made up of police and Secret Service agents proceeded to the Lincoln Tunnel. The motorcade was escorted by state troopers in New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland. During the entire route, the entourage never stopped for a single red light.
http://www.ufocrashbook.com/eisenhower.html
The Feb 1955 supervisors and agents were: Jim Rowley, head of Eisenhower's Secret Service; Gerald Behn, head of White House Secret Service; John Campion, Head of Secret Service on specific trips; Agents John A. Walters, Secret Service linguist (spoke 6 languages); Agent Chavrins, Stewart and Stout. Also along were Agents Arnold Lau, William F. Shields, and Roy Kellerman. From press reports, we know of several other agents on the press plane.
http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/L-0147/L-0147.html
But that set off a line of events which then culminated in an invitation to John Kennedy to come to Chapel Hill to speak on University Day. I believe it was 1961. He accepted. And this event we decided to hold in Kenan Stadium. It's an experience to go through a visit of the President of the United States, where you are the other end of the decision on it. But the first thing that happens is that the Secret Service descends upon you. And the signal corp and everybody else comes with all their entourage. So I decided that the easiest way to handle them was to put them in a space next door where I could keep in touch. And they wouldn't be doing things that I could handle another way, or a better way. It was there that I learned of the thoroughness of this kind of operation. A man named John Campion, who was head of the delegation of agents, at that time. And he had a map of Kenan Stadium. And a literal map of everything about it. The creeks. The ravines. Trees. Seats. And he had to know every single seat design pattern we intended to follow. And he asked me—well, they got down here two weeks before the President came. You know, they were here all the time. They just took up residence. And every day they'd come in for a briefing, and they'd say what they'd been doing and then ask a lot of questions. And one morning he asked me, "Was there a drainage ditch that ran the length of Kenan Stadium underground?" And I said, "No. I'm sure there was not." The next morning he came in and said, "Oh yes there is. And we crawled through it all night last night. And we've locked it up." The day before the President came, he called me into the office, and had this big wall map. And he said, "I want to show you this." And he had handful of letters that were all death threats to the President. And up there he showed me where they had armed guards, in every square of seating throughout Kenan Stadium, on both sides. Dozens and dozens of people, under arms—you didn't
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Page 4
know it, but they were. And he said, "I just wanted to show you this, because you'll be up there standing by President Kennedy, and they might miss. And I wanted you to know what we're doing to protect you, too." Well, Campion and I got into a big discussion about what kind of crowd was coming. I said, "We're going to fill it up." He said, "Oh, no. Never draw that many people." So I said, "Alright John, I'll make a wager with you. Before I get up to start the exercise you walk up to the front of the lectern, to check out and say you're ready from the Secret Service point of view. And if there are 30,000 people in here, you do this—thumbs-up. If I loose—thumbs down." Well, he didn't know that I had called every high school around here. Because I wanted the children to have the experience I had sitting on the corner in Kings' Mountain, thirty years earlier with my brother. So, Lose Grove School, all of them on the way in, I called the Superintendent to tell him he'd be coming by at such-and-such a time, have all your children out if you want to bring them. They did. We invited all the faculty here. And everybody in town. And they filled the place up. It was a glorious day of sunshine. I never will forget, the plan was for the car to drive up at the north end of the stadium. And Chancellor Aycock and I were to be there to welcome him. And then we'd walk the length of the field in a faculty procession. Well, the big limousine rolled up, and Governor Sanford got out, and President Kennedy walked up to me and said, "Happy Columbus Day." October 12 was Columbus Day also.
http://www.sistersosf.org/newsletters/Sylvania%20Franciscan%20February%202008.pdf
Stanley B. Galup
September 15, 1915 - July 25, 2007
Stanley B. Galup of Hamtramck, MI died on July 25th. Stanley served as a Detroit Police Officer,
Capuchin Monk and retired from the U.S. Secret Service having protected Vice President Humphrey,
Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Ford, Reagan and Bush Sr. and finished his career in the
Secret Service Detroit Field Office. “Stan” as he was known by his friends was a Eucharistic Minister
and devoted parishioner at St. Ladislaus Catholic Church in Hamtramck. Stan was also an Associate
Member of the Sisters of St. Francis in Sylvania, OH where he was a beloved benefactor and
volunteer for many years. A Mass was held at St. Bonaventure Monastery on Monday, July 30.
http://www.shadesvalleyrotary.org/uploadedFiles/image/4410-09-17.pdf
LEM JOHNS
Thomas "Lem" Johns was born in 1925
here in Birmingham. After graduation from
Woodlawn High School in 1943, he
immediately joined the United States Naval
Air Corps.
After his discharge in 1945, Lem
attended The University of Alabama in
Tuscaloosa, and then to Howard College
(now Samford University), where he
graduated with a B.S. degree.
Lem entered Federal law enforcement with U.S. Treasury
Department Alcohol & Tobacco Tax Division and spent two years
chasing "moonshiners," mostly here in Jefferson County. In 1954, he
began his career with the U. S. Secret Service, starting in the
Birmingham office, then on to Chicago, and followed by White House
Detail, serving the last two years of President Eisenhower’s term and
was on the protection team during the inauguration of President John
F. Kennedy.
In 1960, he was transferred to the Atlanta Office, but received
several temporary assignments for the President and Mrs. Kennedy's
estate in Middleburg, Virginia, Hyannis Port, as well as Mrs.
Kennedy's trip to Europe, India, Paris, Rome, Frankfurt, and London.
After two years, Lem was transferred as a supervisor of the Vice
Presidential Detail in Washington, during Lyndon B. Johnson’s term
as Vice President.
It was during this stint in 1963 that he was assigned to the Vice
Presidential Detail with LBJ in Dallas, November 22, and was on the
White House Detail with him on the Presidential Protective Division.
Lem became Special Agent in Charge of the Presidential Detail,
and in 1965, was promoted to Assistant Director of all Protective
Forces, U. S. Secret Service. In 1967, he transferred back to
Birmingham as Special Agent in Charge of the Birmingham Office
covering all of Alabama, and retired in 1976.
Married to Nita Jean Parker, of Birmingham, they have one son,
Jeff Johns, who has also had a career in the U. S. Secret Service, and
is now retired. Lem’s oldest grandson, Michael, is currently in the U.S Secret Service
I Was There: November 22, 1963 – Dallas, Texas
On November 22, 1963, Lem Johns was assigned to the Vice
Presidential Detail protecting Vice President Lyndon Johnson. During
a political tour in Texas, he traveled with the Vice President and
President Kennedy. He was present during the visit to Dallas and in
the motorcade when the shooting occurred. He accompanied the
entourage to Parkland Hospital, to Air Force One where Vice
President Johnson was sworn in as President, and then returned with
the new President to Washington, D.C.
Parnell confirms my Posner e-mail
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/parnell/cc5.htm
Researcher Vince Palamara says that while you thank Hamilton Brown who is President of the association of retired Secret Service agents in the acknowledgements of CC, you cite no interviews of SS agents. He implies that you may have interviewed SS agents but their responses were not useful in supporting the thesis of CC. How do you respond to this and how many SS agents did you actually interview?
I thanked Hamilton Brown because he was very nice when I dealt with him on the phone. I'm trying to think back nine years. He might have even provided some names or contacts, but I did not interview any Secret Service agents that I can recall. I certainly NEVER had an interview with ANYONE that was not used because it did not fit the thesis of Case Closed – that is because Case Closed didn't have a thesis, so I could go wherever the evidence pointed. That was a great advantage over having to shoehorn "evidence" into a theory like the buffs have to.
http://www.jfklancer.com/pdf/secret.pdf
http://www.jfklancer.com/pdf/words.pdf
Darwin Horn's website (re: book)
http://www.darwinhorn.com/
http://graphic.pepperdine.edu/living/2002/2002-11-14-secret-agent.htm
http://www.dailybreeze.com/ci_9442921
On RFK's last journey
A retired Secret Service agent, now of Rolling Hills, recalls the drama after Kennedy slaying
By Larry Altman, Staff Writer
Posted: 05/31/2008 11:07:43 PM PDT
Click photo to enlargeFormer Secret Service agent Darwin Horn of Rolling Hills was... (Steve McCrank/Staff Photographer)«1»The body of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy is placed on Air Force One before onlookers, including local politicians and celebrities, on June 6, 1968. (File photo)It was hot and humid inside the 21-car train carrying the body of Robert F. Kennedy from New York City to Washington, D.C.
The air conditioning had failed and the 226-mile journey that should have taken three hours lasted a sweltering five, with the trip slowed by mourners lining the tracks to pay their respects to the presidential candidate assassinated in Los Angeles.
Darwin Horn remembers the trip like it was yesterday.
"There were millions of people alongside," recalled the Rolling Hills resident, a retired Secret Service agent who supervised protection for Ethel Kennedy and her family after her husband died on June 6, 1968 - 40 years ago this week.
"They were throwing flowers and genuflecting."
larry.altman@dailybreeze.com
Horn, who watched over presidents and world dignitaries from Presidents Truman to Reagan, traveled with the Kennedy family from Los Angeles to New York and on to the nation's capital.
He looked after the 42-year-old Kennedy as he lay dying in a hospital, rode with his casket in a motorcade to Los Angeles International Airport, and helped transport his body to the East Coast for burial.
Until Kennedy's death, presidential candidates did not receive Secret Service protection.
Kennedy, at odds with the Los Angeles Police Department, had declined LAPD protection and kept Rafer Johnson and Rosey Grier - two former athletes -
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at his side. He had no high-level security, Horn sid.
"None of them had any official experience," Horn recalled. "If Robert F. Kennedy had a couple of good people there, he probably would have survived that night."
Horn, working in the Secret Service's bureau in Los Angeles, watched the election results June 4, 1968, until about 11 p.m. He and his wife went to bed.
The telephone rang at 12:20 a.m. It was his sister-in-law.
"She said, `Dar, are you watching?"' he recalled. "`You are not going to believe it."'
Assassin Sirhan Sirhan shot Kennedy with a .22-caliber pistol shortly after Kennedy had finished addressing supporters at an election rally in the Ambassador Hotel. Five others were wounded.
Horn watched the coverage for a while before going back to bed, saddened at the thought Kennedy was a husband and father of 10 with another child on the way.
The telephone rang again at 5 a.m. President Lyndon Johnson decreed that the Secret Service would provide protection for all presidential and vice presidential candidates.
Horn, assistant to the special agent in charge of the Los Angeles office, was ordered to go to Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles, where Kennedy was undergoing surgery. He arrived in time to watch over Kennedy as doctors wheeled him on a gurney from the operating room to a fifth-floor hospital bed.
Bandages covered Kennedy's head. Six or seven lines were attached to help him breathe.
"It was pretty apparent he was not going to make it," Horn said. "It looked pretty bad. He was a fighter. He really fought for his life."
Entries in Horn's log tracked the names of those who visited: Sen. Edward Kennedy, Ethel Kennedy, singer Andy Williams.
Horn stayed until 6 a.m. June 6 and went home. Shortly thereafter, another agent who had relieved him called with the news that Kennedy was dead.
Horn knew he wouldn't be returning home soon. He was told to put together a detail of six men to return Kennedy's remains to New York and for burial at Arlington National Cemetery outside of Washington.
Horn packed enough for two or three weeks and was back at the hospital by 7 a.m. The autopsy was completed by 8:30 a.m.
"They wheeled him out and they put him in a casket," Horn said. "The hearse came in. Somewhere around noontime, the hearse left Good Samaritan."
Ethel Kennedy rode up front in the hearse, which did not have enough room for the agent. Assigned to protect her, he rode behind in another vehicle.
"It was a very difficult type of assignment. You had to give them more leeway," Horn said. "I didn't want to crowd her and still needed to be close enough to help if she needed help. Here was a young lady, her husband has just been shot."
Thousands of people gathered at LAX. Notables watching the coffin be carried to the plane included Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty, county Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, airport commission President Louis Warschaw, former White House Press Secretary Pierre Salinger, Williams and his wife, Claudine Longet.
The Daily Breeze article put it this way:
"Tears streamed from some eyes as the blue, white and silver United States of America plane slowly moved onto the taxiway followed by two Los Angeles International Airport security station wagons.
"Women wept profusely, men had tears in their eyes and members of all races stood slowly waving again until the American flag painted on the tail of the jet was out of sight and over the ocean."
Horn had been the last person to board the plane.
"It gets very emotional, even for a cop," he said.
On board, Horn stayed clear of Ethel Kennedy, who was accompanied by Ted Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy, Patricia Kennedy Lawford, George Plimpton, Williams and Coretta Scott King.
Kennedy campaign manager Frank Mankiewicz, newsman Sander Vanocur and Rafer Johnson were among the 71 people on board.
They arrived at LaGuardia Airport hours later.
"It was hot and humid as only New York can be," Horn recalled.
They removed the coffin and prepared to drive it to St.Patrick's Cathedral for a brief family service. When the ceremony was complete, they took Ethel Kennedy to the Plaza Hotel.
The agents' work was not done. They stayed up until 2 a.m., preparing for the next day, when they would carry the coffin by train to Washington for burial near the grave of President John F. Kennedy.
"That was a long, long day," Horn said.
He remembers the heat and humidity as the train began its journey. Some people were killed when they wandered onto the tracks. Another man standing on a boxcar to watch was electrocuted when he touched a high-tension wire.
"I remember his lying there and his clothing was burning," Horn said.
Along the way, Cardinal Richard Cushing of Boston suffered a heart attack. Horn suggested they stop the train so he could be taken to a hospital, but Cushing refused and remained in pain throughout the journey.
As they entered New Jersey, some people along the route complained they could not see the coffin through the windows.
The agents decided to rest it on three chairs. They lifted it up, two at the foot and one at the head.
"That worked well until we got to the first curve," Horn said. "The coffin fell. I'll never forget the thud that produced."
Four men stood next to the casket the rest of the journey, holding onto it at every bend.
At one point, agents received a report that terrorists might strike. About 100 agents protected the train from the outside.
"The thought was (terrorists) were going to shoot," Horn said. "Guys who didn't like Bobby Kennedy."
Nothing happened.
In Washington, they delivered the coffin to Arlington National Cemetery about 11 p.m.
Kennedy was buried quietly after agents left, with a simple cross to mark his grave, about 60 feet from his brother, assassinated in 1963.
"We took Ethel out to Hickory Hill," Horn said. "Talk about the Irish wakes. It was a celebration. It was a very boisterous Irish wake."
Horn and his fellow agents stayed for another two weeks to protect the Kennedy home. At times, they took Ethel Kennedy to visit the graveside and to church.
When they weren't working, they played football with the Kennedy children.
"People say, `You were a part of history,"' said Horn, who told the story of his career in the autobiography "Dar's Story." "We were just doing our job."
ON THE WEB
To learn more about Darwin Horn, visit his Web site, www.darwinhorn.com.
http://www.specialforces.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1023&view=next
Secret Service agent recalls his time with former President
Man once charged with protecting American leaders thinks history will judge No. 38 well.
By John Bogert
I was pleased to hear from Darwin Horn. He had been on my mind since news of President Ford's death made me recall the veteran Secret Service agent saying that this was the chief executive he knew best and held in highest regard.
That was saying something because the longtime Rolling Hills resident has known and protected every president from Eisenhower to George H.W. Bush. But while he always maintained a respectful remove from the men in power -- still carefully placing the word "president" before each name -- I could see where the two big men found common ground.
Ford was 12 years older than Horn, but both had been top college football players. The difference being that the former agent was taller, at 6-foot-3, and an All-American in baseball and football at Pepperdine. Horn had even signed to play pro ball with the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1951 but gave up the $4,500 annual salary when his Secret Service appointment came through.
"I could see where my future was," said this fit and talkative 81-year-old who has hands the size of Virginia hams. "I've never been sorry about my decision. The Secret Service was the best job in the world. It's like being part of a great athletic team with fantastic camaraderie and spirit."
His 2002 book, Dar's Story (available by calling 310-377-9964) covers all that and includes photos of him growing up in Inglewood, pictures of him from his World War II Navy days and images of him walking beside Eisenhower's open-top car. There are also shots of him working the service's counterfeit currency unit and plenty of pictures of Dar with the famous people he helped protect over a long career that later veered into private security work for the Simon Wiesenthal Center and many international firms.
"I met Winston Churchill," he said, giving me an excited by-golly smack on the leg with one of those huge hands. "One of the greatest men to ever live, can you believe that? I even helped guard Herbert Hoover. When he came to the Eisenhower White House to run the Hoover Commission, when we saw his name on the agenda, we decided to treat him like a president. We thought that he deserved that."
There's an awful lot to tell here. For two years he served in the Paris field office, doing international police work with Interpol. And, no, he wasn't in Dallas when President Kennedy was killed but he did examine the limousine afterward, noting that a bullet fragment had nicked the windshield between the two agents riding in the limo's front seat. He also mentioned -- and this might interest conspiracy theorists -- that Oswald, with one round already in his rifle's chamber, would only have had to work the bolt twice to get off those three deadly shots.
But that's not the point. On this sunny Wednesday morning we met to talk about Ford, a man he knew as vice president, then president, then as a former president still entitled to Secret Service protection. Fresh off his Paris assignment, Dar volunteered for the detail in August 1979, spending two years at Ford's side, taking red-eye flights to New York for numerous board meetings, accompanying him around the world and to the barber shop. Dar and his wife also lived in a home once owned by Ginger Rogers, which was adjacent the house built for the former president by Leonard Firestone.
"I was really excited to work on the Ford detail," he said. "You can generally tell what type of people the protectees are by how the agents feel about them. Ford's agents always spoke well of them."
Fact is, you might be able to fool a nation. But you can't fool the people you live with, especially those pledged to protect your life with theirs in a job that can quickly veer from easy to beyond-belief-frightening.
"I spent three years with Eisenhower and never had a meaningful conversation with him," he said. "But I'd talk to President Ford quite often. For starters, he wasn't the klutz he was made out to be. In fact, he was a good golfer and a fine athlete who swam every morning. Nor was he the dim bulb some portrayed him to be. The man had been a naval commander and he graduated from Yale Law School where he stayed on to coach football. As a former Michigan football player I think that he liked the team spirit of our detail. He liked to talk. He was friendly, inquisitive, congenial, knowledgeable about sports, a good bridge player and just a fine man. He was also one of the most punctual people I've ever worked with."
More than once on some of those long flights the former president spoke to him about the wild days following his elevation to the presidency.
"He told me that during his first month in office the only subject that came up was Richard Nixon. 'What are you going to do about Nixon?' was the constant refrain. He told me that it got to the point where he knew that he had to make a decision right or wrong to get rid of the problem. So he made the decision and it probably cost him the election. Yet he seemed to have no regrets."
But all that was over by 1981 when he accompanied former presidents Ford, Nixon and Carter to Cairo for the funeral of the just-murdered Anwar Sadat. Dar has a picture taken in the cabin of Air Force Two showing him happily standing with Ford and Carter and you'd never guess that he had just finished a post-assassination assignment so dangerous that they all had to wear bulletproof vests.
Darwin Horn
"You never really get used to the hysteria that surrounds the coming of a U.S. president," said the man who still follows his signature with the initials, USSS. "In a crowd people are so out of it with excitement they don't even notice us hitting away their hands or patting down their pockets. In the end, our only response is doing the right thing."
Sure, the "right thing" business is cryptic, but in keeping with so many anecdotes told off the record because he's still operating under some ancient code of honor. So let it suffice to say that Ford sits at the very top of an exclusive power pyramid known collectively to very few.
"I think that history will judge President Ford well," he said of the man who enjoyed a good joke, a man who called Dar when he published his book to remind him that he had written two. This was the same plain-spoken president who referred to other past chiefs as "the other guys," a man who laughed heartily when Dar mentioned that it was he and not the "most powerful man in the world" who was once an All-American.
"I was invited to the funeral," the former agent said while gazing at an old photo of his former boss. "But it involved assembling at a shopping mall and being shuttled to the church. I didn't go, figuring that I said my real goodbyes to this kind man, to this friend long ago."
Source: John Bogert, CBS2
http://www.politicalassassinations.com/LosAngeles.html
The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy: Killing Hope"
National Coalition on Political Assassinations in Los Angeles
40th Anniversary of Robert F. Kennedy Assassination
Important New Forensic Evidence
June 6-8, 2008, Los Angeles, CA
Darwin Horn, Former secret service agent
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29254
Lyndon B. Johnson
Remarks to the Secret Service and Presentation of an Award to James J. Rowley
November 23, 1968
Mr. Secretary, Director Rowley, members of the Secret Service, ladies and gentlemen:
I asked you to take a few moments this morning to come out here so I could say something to you that I have thought for 8 years and have rarely expressed.
That is the feeling that the President and the members of his family have, for their associates under the laws of the United States--the Secret Service.
President Harry Truman once said that the Secret Service is the only boss the President really has. I think he meant in addition to Mrs. Truman.
But I think all the Presidents that have worked with the Secret Service have shared that same feeling. Implicit in that statement is the great respect that we all have for the quality and the character and the dedicated service that this particular breed of men brings to their country and to the Presidency.
For more than 8 years now my life and the life of my family have been entrusted to you. I have never made a secret of my admiration for you. But the means by which you protect the President and his family, and the Nation's highest officials, are something I think that the country doesn't fully recognize or appreciate. Your protection is given by preparation and weary, backbreaking hours of hard work. I have seen it all around the world. There is no greater testimony to your efficiency than the recent trip we took when we were in the air 59 hours and on the ground 53 hours, and conferred with more than a dozen heads of state in that many countries.
Several of those men speaking for those countries said to me, "Mr. President, what an extraordinary group of men accompany you."
As long as I live I am going to have a very special memory of this extraordinary group of men and a sentimental, affectionate feeling for each of them.
This may be a surprise to most of you because I don't express that sentiment through the days. I know that sometimes you are surprised at the way I react to your orders and sometimes I am surprised at the way you react to mine.
I will never forget that day in Dallas when a great big, husky roughneck from Georgia threw 185 pounds of human weight on me, and said, "down." And there wasn't any place to go but down because he was on top of me.
His life was being offered to protect mine.
At least he thought so.
I will never forget the daily knowledge that my wife and my family--no matter how frequently they are drawn into public--were protected by the finest professionals in the world. And if there is anyone that we love outside of our family, it is the Secret Service.
Mrs. Johnson said to me just this week that one thing she was blessed with that other mothers weren't blessed with was that Luci and Lynda had, in the absence of their husbands, in their general vicinity, the finest protective care that this Nation could produce.
A lot of things you have had to live through with me. If I could rewrite them, I would change a lot of them because I have abused you, I have criticized you, I have been inconsiderate of you, and all of those things that you know better than I do.
I have spent more of my time telling you what you did wrong than what you have done right. But Luci, Lynda, and Mrs. Johnson remind me every day of how blessed you have been to them.
As I stand here on this lawn this morning, I think about the sunsets and the sunrises we have seen together in the hills of home. I also think about the occasions that we have grieved together--in Dallas; and I remember in Australia when I just couldn't keep back the tears when I looked in the face of Jerry Kivett, Dick Johnsen, Jerry McKinney, Lem Johns, and Bob Heyn, and the dearest of all, Rufus Youngblood, with that paint streaming down their faces, splattered all over them, but their chins up and their President safe.
I remember Bob Taylor standing there and letting the Cadillac run over his foot in order to protect his President from harm.
I will never forget the great integrity that each man in this Service has shown, and I don't except any of them--I mean every one of them. And I think that is unusual.
You hear a lot about the FBI. I admire them and I applaud them. But I don't yield to them a bit in integrity and competency when you talk about the Secret Service. We are thankful that we have both of these services.
Night before last, I was giving Tom Johnson the dickens for a mishap when I was going to drop in on a group of directors of the Urban League. One of the directors invited me there.
I said, "Notify them we are coming?' Tom passed on the instruction and Clint Hill executed it in his usually intelligent way by code.
The fellow on the other end just didn't understand all of the code. He came back and said, "I can't find that party here out of 300 or 400 in 3 or 4 seconds."
So Hill said, "I am not sure they have arrived yet, Tom," and we had to drive around the block a time or two. By that time, I became impatient. I realized that Tom was in a new capacity since Jim Jones was out honeymooning.
I felt a little sorry for myself that late in the evening and I said, "Tom, why do you do this to me?" Then characteristically, Clint Hill, before Tom could answer, said, "Mr. President, that is my mistake--my error."
I said, "Well, why did you make it? What is wrong with you?" He said, "I communicated a code and we didn't understand it."
So before any more time passed, I started feeling sorry for Clint instead of myself. I was grateful that I had a man who had integrity enough to step up and face the music and say it was his fault, because that is the kind of a man that we all admire.
I want to close by saying that I don't think that there has ever been a burden placed on any agency that was more heavy or more spontaneous or more sudden than the burden placed upon you to guard the presidential and vice presidential candidates this summer, as well as the three Presidents and their families.
Overnight, you received this assignment in, oh as I recall, 3 o'clock in the morning-you took up your posts of duty. You shifted your assignments. You left your families. You adapted yourselves to unprecedented demands and as usual you carried out your job with quiet heroism and with the dedication for which you have become very famous.
I think you ought to know this: I think every single candidate, including the President-elect and the Vice President-elect, took time out of their busy schedule during that campaign and afterwards to write the President and say how they appreciated the courtesy and the quality of service that you had given.
But no one could be more grateful to you than I am. I am most appreciative that my withdrawal from the Presidency, I am sure, will be made a good deal easier by the knowledge that you are around me still and in the general vicinity as long as I live.
As a very great character said here one time, I think rather nonchalantly--an expression that grew into one of our most memorable phrases due to the cooperation of the fourth estate--"I know I am going to sleep a little better each night knowing you are around."
Now, I am sure the press with their usual objectivity will wonder why I have mentioned agents like Rufus Youngblood, Clint Hill, Lem Johns, and Bob Taylor without saying anything about Director Rowley.
Well, I have a lot to say about Director Rowley because he symbolizes all of them. And what I say about him applies to each of them. We have a little surprise for Director Rowley this morning. At least I hope it is a surprise. Most of the surprises I plan don't turn out that way, because I learned a long, long time ago it is hard to keep a secret from the Secret Service.
I didn't tell anybody but George Christian yesterday that I was going to have an examination-some X-rays made before I left. And in 15 minutes, the doctor came up and said, "Is it true you are going to the hospital today?" And I said, "No. How did you get that information? Did George Christian tell you that?" He said, "No, sir." I said, "Who said it?" He said, "the Secret Service."
Well, Jim, although the citation I am about to read is directed to you, I hope that each of your agents throughout this land in some 60 or 70 offices will recognize that it is for them, too.
To you, and Emory Roberts, who I am sorry can't be here today--he greets me every morning and tells me goodby every night-to all the members of your family, I want to say that I believe of all the employees that I have known in the Federal Government in 38 years that I have worked, from a doorkeeper, to secretary, to Congressman, Senator, and Vice President, I don't believe that I have ever seen any collective group that is possessed with as much integrity, as much character, as much selflessness, and as much courage as your men.
So, if you will bring me that citation, I will read it. The President's Federal Civilian Service Board, made up of Mr. Macy, Mr. Nitze, and other distinguished members, on the recommendations of Secretary Fowler and others, has recommended to the president, and the President has approved, this award.
There will be several that will come later in the year for outstanding civil servants as we do each year. But this is a very special one. And I want to present It now while all of you are here.
I am so happy that Mr. Rowley's family can be here because they have sacrificed so many years to make something like this possible.
[At this point the President read the text of the award.]
THE PRESIDENT'S AWARD FOR DISTINGUISHED FEDERAL CIVILIAN SERVICE IS GIVEN TO
JAMES J. ROWLEY
To honor James J. Rowley is to honor the United States Secret Service, which he directs with unsurpassed skill and devotion.
In more than 30 years of distinguished duty, he has come to personify the Service's noble tradition of courage and loyalty.
The Secret Service protected America's electoral process itself in the recent political campaign, when violence and controversy were stronger than in any Presidential election of our time. Despite the tides of turbulence and tension, the Service enabled all the major candidates for the Presidency and Vice Presidency to meet safely with the American people, in every part of our land.
But Director Rowley has left his mark on more than the Secret Service.
He symbolizes the strength of the American government.
I am proud to commend him, in the name of all our people, as the guardian of our democracy.
LYNDON B. JOHNSON
The White House
November 23, 1968
Now, if that citation could be made better, someone else will have to do it because it is the best I could do. I worked hard on it myself.
[At this point, the President presented the medal, reading from its inscription, as follows.]
"Award of the President of the United States [to James J. Rowley] for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service."
[Director Rowley responded briefly (4 Weekly Comp. Pres. Docs., p. 1641). The President then resumed speaking.]
Now, if I didn't mention some of the agents' names this morning, just remember, it is because you never did get your foot run over.
I did say, though, to President Nixon the other day: "You will have many problems. Of course, you will have a lot of friends when you come in. But the best friend you will have when you come in and when you go out will be an organization--that will be the Secret Service of the United States."
Note: The President spoke at 12:22 p.m. on the South Lawn at the White House. In his opening words he referred to Henry H. Fowler, Secretary of the Treasury, and James J. Rowley, Director of the United States Secret Service.
During his remarks he referred to his daughters, Mrs. Patrick J. (Luci) Nugent and Mrs. Charles S. (Lynda) Robb; the following Secret Servicemen: Jerry D. Kivett, Richard E. Johnsen, Jerry E. McKinney, Thomas L. Johns, Robert N. Heyn, Deputy Director Rufus W. Youngblood, Robert H. Taylor, Clinton J. Hill, and Emory P. Roberts; Wyatt Thomas Johnson, Jr., Assistant Press Secretary to the President; James R. Jones, Special Assistant to the President; George E. Christian, Special Assistant to the President; John W. Macy, Jr., Chairman of the Civil Service Commission; and Paul H. Nitze, Deputy Secretary of Defense.
The President also referred to the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas (see "Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, John F. Kennedy, 1963," Editor's Note, page 890). At that time the Vice President, Lyndon B. Johnson, was protected by Secret Serviceman Rufus W. Youngblood.
The President also mentioned his 1967 visit to Sydney, Australia, when antiwar demonstrators threw paint
Radford W. "Rad" Jones:
http://www1.cj.msu.edu/~career/alumni/wall/inductees/2005/jones-2005.html
http://www.msualum.com/evecoll/preview.cfm?id=13
http://www.jfk.org/go/collections/oral-histories/interviews-by-name?letter=J
Radford W. Jones
A U.S. Secret Service agent assigned to the White House detail during the Kennedy years, Jones guarded the Kennedys at Hyannis Port during the summer of 1963. At the time of the assassination, he was guarding young John F. Kennedy Jr. in Washington, D.C. In 1964, Jones spent several months guarding Jackie Kennedy and her children in New York. Recorded October 15, 2005.
What's My Line? (12/27/1959)
Sponsor: Kellogg's
Arlene Francis, Martin Gabel, Dorothy Kilgallen, Bennett Cerf
Game 1: Gerald Behn, Secret Service agent, guarded President Dwight David Eisenhower on trip in 1959; AF guessed - $25 ($50)
Game 2: Hazel Williams, Sardine taster; ($50)
Game 3: Mystery Guest: Maureen O'Hara; AF guessed - $35
Game 4: Sal Russo, Complaint adjuster for department store; ($50)
Announcer: Hal Simms
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-07-13-secservice-johnson_N.htm
Ex-agents stand guard one last time
Posted 7/13/2007 7:43 PM | Comments 2 | Recommend 1 E-mail | Save | Print |
By Liz Austin Peterson, Associated Press Writer
AUSTIN, Texas — At Lady Bird Johnson's side, retired Secret Service agent Jim Hardin toured the Louvre museum, floated along the Nile River and visited archaeological digs in Africa.
On Friday, he stood next to the former first lady for the last time, watching over her casket as she lay in repose inside the LBJ Library and Museum at the University of Texas at Austin.
Hardin and about 50 to 75 former members of Johnson's Secret Service detail were gathering in Austin to say goodbye to a woman they considered a friend and an inspiration. Like Hardin, many volunteered to take turns standing by her casket for half an hour as honorary guards while visitors paid their respects.
"It's like losing a member of your own family," said Hardin, 71, who led Johnson's detail for nearly 22 years. "She was family to all the agents."
The Secret Service guarded Johnson for more than 44 years, longer than any other person. Scores of agents were assigned to her detail over the years, and most remained close to the first lady long after they left her team, said Jerry Kivett, who led her Secret Service detail when President Johnson was in the White House.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: White House | Italy | Africa | Austin | University of Texas | United States Secret Service | Queen Elizabeth II | Louvre | President Johnson | Nile River | Lady Bird Johnson | Hill Country | LBJ Library | LBJ Ranch | Jim Hardin
Kivett and his family visited her several times at the LBJ Ranch in the Hill Country, and he called her every year on her birthday. Retired agents Dale Lovell and Carter Eustace said they visited her about every three months, sharing chuckles about stories from their trips around the world.
"It enhanced our lives just to be with her, to be around her," said Eustace, 59, of Austin.
An avid traveler, Johnson got private tours of museums and historical sites from curators and other experts, asking many questions and making sure her guards could hear the answers, Hardin said. Before they left each site, she asked the agents if they'd like more time to look around, and she took the whole detail to a fancy dinner at the end of each trip.
When Princess Margaret, the younger sister of Queen Elizabeth II, came to tea in Italy, Johnson called Hardin to her side and introduced them.
"We would try to stay back a little because we didn't want to interfere, but she would always introduce you if it was appropriate," Hardin said.
After Hardin retired in 1995, Johnson asked him to work a few hours a week overseeing her staff at the LBJ Ranch.
When Hardin's wife died, Johnson and her daughters attended the funeral. And she attended a surprise 70th birthday party for him last year despite her declining health.
"She had had the stroke, she couldn't speak and stuff, but she was all dressed up and posed for pictures with all the people that were there, just smiling," he said. "It didn't bother her at all. She just would not tell anybody no."
repeated:
http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_wires/2007Jul13/0,4675,JohnsonSecretService,00.html
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/20070713-1630-johnson-secretservice.html
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-07-13-4008298387_x.htm
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/07/13/ex_agents_guard_johnson_one_last_time/
http://www.590klbj.com/News/Story.aspx?ID=71109
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/13/AR2007071301696.html
http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/national_world&id=5478362
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D8QBVRCO0.html
http://jfk.org/go/collections/oral-histories/interviews-by-name?letter=K
VIDEO:
http://www.news8austin.com/shared/video/video_pop.asp?destlist=44444
Jerry D. Kivett
A U.S. Secret Service agent in 1963, Kivett was assigned to Vice President Johnson's detail and was riding in his follow-up car in the Dallas motorcade. Kivett remained with the Johnsons until the swearing-in ceremony aboard Air Force One and was later assigned to the White House detail. Recorded October 14, 2005.
http://jfk.org/go/collections/oral-histories/interviews-by-name?letter=L
Winston Lawson
A U.S. Secret Service agent assigned to the White House detail during the Kennedy years, Lawson was in charge of security in Dallas and did 10 days of advance work before the presidential party's arrival. In the motorcade, he rode in the lead car with Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry. Recorded September 5, 2003.
http://jfk.org/go/collections/oral-histories/interviews-by-name?letter=T
Warren W. Taylor
A U.S. Secret Service agent in 1963, Taylor was assigned to Vice President Johnson's detail and was riding in his follow-up car in the Dallas motorcade. After the assassination, Taylor was assigned to protect Lady Bird Johnson. Recorded October 14, 2005.
Dale Wunderlich
A U.S. Secret Service agent assigned to the Protective Research Division in 1963, Wunderlich did an intelligence advance in Fort Worth prior to the presidential visit, coordinating sweeps of the Hotel Texas and conducting background checks on all employees. Following the assassination, he was part of a team that provided security for Marina Oswald for several months prior to her Warren Commission testimony. Recorded October 15, 2005.
Mike Howard
A U. S. Secret Service agent assigned to the Dallas field office, Howard served on the detail for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. For the 1963 Texas trip, Howard was part of the advance team in Fort Worth and spent the evening of the assassination at Dallas police headquarters. Immediately thereafter he was assigned to protect the family of Lee Harvey Oswald at a secure location. Recorded November 18, 2005.
Victor J. Gonzalez
A U.S. Secret Service agent in 1963, Gonzalez was assigned to guard duty for President Kennedy's limousine after its arrival in Washington, D.C., on the evening of the assassination. Recorded October 15, 2005.
William L. Duncan
A U.S. Secret Service agent assigned to the White House detail during the Kennedy years, Duncan served as the advance agent for Fort Worth during the Texas visit in November 1963. Recorded October 15, 2005.
http://www.news8austin.com/content/top_stories/default.asp?ArID=188131
Lady Bird's former secret agents share grief
7/14/2007 12:10 PM
By: Bob Robuck
Former secret service agents of Lady Bird Johnson at the LBJ Library.
People from all over the nation, young and old, are saying their goodbyes to Lady Bird Johnson. That includes those bound by duty to protect her.
Former secret service agents are the members of the other family in Lady Bird Johnson's life. Three men who served in the White House under the Johnson administration and one on the ranch afterward shared their memories of Mrs. Johnson.
Each one had his own fond memory of Mrs. Johnson. The common theme was her unpretentious grace.
"We'd walk the ranch, we'd walk the river. She was just an everyday lady. You'd have never thought she was who she was," former secret service agent Jim Hardin said.
WATCH THE VIDEO
Protecting Lady Bird
Four former Secret Service agents have their own fond memories of Mrs. Johnson.
"She was in constant motion. Yet you always knew that there was a lady of generosity and thoughtfulness there," agent Jerry McKinney said.
Saying goodbye and shedding a tear isn't something that comes to mind when you think of the Secret Service, but they pledge their lives to protect another. There's always emotion underneath.
"A sense of loss. Sadness. I think of it as losing a member of my family," agent Jerry Kivett said.
"She was truly loved by us guys, the three of us who were with her in the White House. She was a gracious, gracious lady," agent Woody Taylor said.
The gentlemen said Mrs. Johnson was truly a lady when it came to making them feel special. Even now, decades later, as they said goodbye to her, they promised to protect Lady Bird Johnson even in death.
http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,540034492,00.html
Those who rode by Kennedy remember
By Michael Granberry
The Dallas Morning News
Published: November 22, 2003
DALLAS — For retired Secret Service agent Winston G. Lawson, the memory of Nov. 22, 1963, is an endless stream of windows. "From Love Field to Dealey Plaza," he says, "there were 20,000 windows. How could we possibly check them all?"
For TV cameraman Mal Couch, then a precocious 25, seeing the rifle that he believes killed President John F. Kennedy — its barrel sticking out of one of those windows — marked "the beginning of the end of the world."
Lawson, 75, and Couch, 65, are survivors of a presidential motorcade that began in splendor and ended in horror.
Forty years have passed — a span of two generations, a lifetime for some — since JFK's assassination. But for the people caught in the maelstrom of the motorcade, the horrific day comes to life not only in the passages of a textbook or the images of a documentary.
It lives within them because it transformed them.
For Nellie Connally, 84, the only surviving passenger of the Lincoln convertible that carried the president and his dazzling first lady, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, the 40 years since have made her circumspect and fearful, something she never was before.
"Since that day, I have never fully stopped looking over my shoulder at the horror that might be behind me," says the widow of former Texas Gov. John Connally, who was critically wounded in the shooting that killed the president.
Bobby Hargis, 72, then a Dallas police officer whose motorcycle flanked the left rear bumper of the president's car, has a recurring dream in which he chases but never quite catches Lee Harvey Oswald.
For Hargis, the ensuing years have taken him on his own spiritual journey. "It makes you think about life," he says, sitting at his breakfast table in Cleburne, Texas. "The shortness of it, the preciousness of it, every breath we take. And what did I learn that day? That we're never that far away from being nothing."
For Jim Wright, 80, former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, the events of that day cut short the life of a president he loved — a friend — and in their own crude way, reshaped the course of history.
"I was in such an ebullient mood that day. Cloud nine!" said Wright, who teaches at Texas Christian University. "Wow! And then, in such a short time, I would be plunged to the pit of despondency, numbing sadness, pathos. In many respects, none of us has ever been the same since that moment.
"And it won't leave our minds, no matter how hard we try."
Win Lawson grew up in western New York, where his father was an accountant, his mother a teacher. He worked in counterintelligence in the Army and developed an interest in law enforcement. So he applied to the Secret Service when he and his wife, Barbara, were living in Syracuse. He did so just in time: In those days, applicants could not be over 30, his age when he applied.
Prized for being a stickler for detail, he became one of the agency's most valuable "advance" men, the job he held when President Kennedy came to Texas.
It was his job to check out the host city — in this case, Dallas, where citizens had recently heckled both Vice President Lyndon Johnson and U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson.
"The city was absolutely going out of its way to be cordial," said Lawson, who lives in Virginia Beach, Va.
As the motorcade left Love Field, en route to downtown Dallas, Lawson and the other agents — all of whom were in the procession — were staggered by the number of people who lined the streets, the thousands who waved and cheered.
As the motorcade began the last leg of its journey, heading down Elm, the feeling was one of triumph and vindication for Dallas.
And then came the first shot.
Like most witnesses, Win Lawson recalls two more, though puzzled by the quicker pace between the second and the third, which all but tore the president's head off.
The madness that ensued found him and other agents racing to Parkland Hospital, where he was among the first to see the president's body, crumpled in the Lincoln.
"You could see the damage to the head, which was devastating," he says. "You could see the color of the skin, which was gray, but not gray, really. I knew it had to be a fatal wound. I never saw the president alive again or his body again."
Instead, he embarked on a 40-year trial of re-examination. "I must have thought a million times, what could I have done to prevent it?" he said. "And what could I have done about 20,000 windows?"
He says he believes fervently that Oswald acted alone. Conspiracy buffs, he says, neglect to consider the 10 miles of the motorcade's route, stretching from Love Field, to Lemmon Avenue, to Turtle Creek, to Cedar Springs, to Harwood, to Main, to Elm, to history. The trip was to take 35 minutes before arriving at the Trade Mart.
"There were a million better places from which to have fired a weapon," said Lawson.
He did not let the assassination derail him. Rather than go to a field office, as most agents eventually do, he remained at Secret Service headquarters until he retired. He also chose to remain in the agency's protective division, a decision he admits was influenced by Dallas.
Whenever he returned home from work, he would drive past the eternal flame at President Kennedy's grave at Arlington National Cemetery. "So it never left me. It's something you want to remember, because you don't want it to happen again. But you want to forget it because it happened. It's a paradox."
One he would not have been able to weather, he says, without the love and support of fellow agents.
"They would say to me, and it's hard for me to say without breaking down or tears coming to my eyes, 'Win, if it had to happen to anyone, we're glad it happened to you.' Because I was known for doing the best, most thorough advance in the entire agency. They know I would have done everything and more" to prevent what happened, he says.
"And I can't tell you how much that support has meant over the years." Lawson's desire to protect continues, even at 75. He handles security for a high-profile client whose name he declines to reveal. But nothing in the present can stop the litany of what-ifs involving the past.
When the president's day began at the Hotel Texas in Fort Worth, a persistent drizzle had forced the Secret Service to consider covering the motorcade's cars in Dallas with protective bubbletops. (Hours later, Dallas would end up sunny.)
Though the bubbletops were not bulletproof, the metal and the contour of the covering, says Lawson, would have made it difficult for a bullet to do much damage, and might have kept a gunman from even firing in the first place. So he's asked himself a million times:
Why couldn't it keep raining?
"I've spent years puzzling over thousands of what-if scenarios," he says. "Was there anything else I could have done? I guess I'll never have all the answers."
Idanell "Nellie" Brill grew up in Austin, where her father owned a leather-goods business. She enrolled at the University of Texas and met her college sweetheart, John Bowden Connally, whom she married on Dec. 21, 1940.
Connally became the first lady of Texas when her husband was elected governor in 1962. She holds the distinction of having said the last words President Kennedy ever heard.
As the president's car prepared to turn left onto Elm, she felt dazzled by the cheering throng and turned to share her enthusiasm, feeling like "a proud parent."
"Mr. President," she said, "you sure can't say Dallas doesn't love you."
He responded with a dazzling smile, followed only seconds later by gunfire.
"His hands flew up to his neck," she said, "and he sank down in his seat. He didn't say a word. John, who was seated in front of him and was a hunter, knew it was a gunshot. He turned to his right and couldn't see him, so he flips to his left, and he still can't see him. And he says, 'No, no, no ' And when he was trying to turn back, the second shot came. John said, 'My God, they're trying to kill us all!' Meaning the four of us in the car. Then he collapsed, and the front of his shirt was covered in blood. He fell forward.
"My only thought then was, I've got to do something for John. I've got to get him out of the line of fire so they won't hurt him anymore. I reached over and pulled him over into my lap. He was looking up, and he was bloody all over. He had his Stetson in his hand like he always did. So I leaned over and put my hand on that spot, on the wound. Later, the doctors said by closing the wound I may have saved his life, that he probably would have died before we got to the hospital."
The Warren Commission concluded there were three shots, with one striking both the president and Gov. Connally — the so-called "magic bullet" theory — and one missing altogether before the third shot hit the president.
But Connally contends that all three bullets reached their intended targets. She believes the first struck only the president, the second only the governor.
"They were wrong," she says of the Warren Commission.
Then came the third, most damaging shot.
"I'm sitting with John on my lap, and suddenly, brain matter has covered the car. It's like tiny, bloody buckshot," she said.
Soon, Mrs. Kennedy was trying to climb out of the back of the car, her pink pillbox hat clinging to the top of her hair. "She said later she was going after a piece of his skull," said Connally, whose book about the assassination, "From Love Field: Our Final Hours With President John F. Kennedy," was released earlier this month. "I don't know but I will say this. You don't know what you would have done had you been in that car. She may have been trying to get out of the car — and you would not blame her one bit if you had been in that car. And that is not a derogatory remark about Jackie. Had I not been pinned down, I would have tried to get out of the car, too."
Clint Hill, a Secret Service agent riding in the car behind the president's, rushed forward to force Kennedy back in. He shoved her and the president to the floor and kept them pinned until the motorcade reached Parkland Hospital.
In the tense moments that followed the transport from bloody car to operating room, Connally and the first lady were left to stare at each other while sitting outside the trauma rooms. Neither said a word. Soon, the first lady would leave the hospital, to return to Washington with her husband's body and the new president, Lyndon Johnson.
She and Nellie Connally would exchange a pair of heartfelt letters but never again see or speak to one another. The governor's wife had to deal with her own demons.
"It kept going through my mind like a phonograph record playing over and over and over. But for John, it was even worse. His first night home, he cried out in his sleep. I would just pat him on the shoulder, and he'd go back to sleep. Ten days after, I asked him, 'What is it you dream, dear?' And he said, 'Nellie, somebody's always after me. With a gun.' So I just let him cry out. He did that for a month or six weeks and they were always after him."
Her own waking nightmare "has us all in the car. Everyone's having a wonderful time. Everyone's being so good, and then all of a sudden the horror starts. There is never anything good after that happening in that car. The car is filled with yellow roses, red roses and blood. And pieces of the president's brain."
Connally regrets that President Kennedy's legacy — and, by extension, the nation's — could have been so much brighter in the years ahead. "We were all in our 40s," she says of the passengers in the top car of VIP's. "We all had so much to give."
But Dealey Plaza would come to dictate an entirely different reality.
"For the first time in my life, I feared for my family," she said. "And I never had before. Mark, our youngest, was 11 at the time. There was this wall at the governor's mansion (in Austin) that he loved to walk around. Well, he could no longer walk around that wall. We were afraid somebody would snatch him off of it. Sharon, 14 at the time, could no longer go anywhere without someone going with her. It became, in some ways, a difficult life for us, and for me. And even to this day, I still take a glance behind me, just to make sure."
Gov. Connally, who survived his wounds, went on to serve as Treasury secretary in the Nixon administration and ran unsuccessfully for president in 1980. He died in 1993.
Mrs. Connally, who lives in Houston, says Nov. 22 will always be a part of her.
"I push it to the back of my head. I can bring it out any time I want, but I know it's not constructive. It was such a sad day. We all wanted to be there to begin with, but if you'd been in that car, believe me, you would never ever want to be there again."
Jim Wright was born in Fort Worth, Texas, the son of a chamber of commerce manager, who moved his family across Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas.
After serving as mayor of Weatherford, Texas, he ran for Congress in 1954, launching a 35-year career on Capitol Hill. He flew with President Kennedy on Air Force One to Texas, where, among several stops, the president would be speaking in Wright's beloved Fort Worth.
Historians contend that President Kennedy had come to Texas to repair a widening rift between the liberal and conservative wings of the Democratic Party, which at the time enjoyed a one-party stranglehold on Texas. The rift had worsened relations between liberal Sen. Ralph Yarborough and his longtime rivals, Vice President Johnson and Gov. Connally. The president felt compelled to repair the rift before his 1964 re-election bid.
What better way than by coming to Texas, accompanied by the world's most glamorous woman, Jackie Kennedy? Stopping in San Antonio and Houston, the president had engineered a perfect political strategy. It wasn't that Yarborough and his adversaries were getting along any better, but who could tell?
"I know the cynical wisdom says he wanted to repair rifts in the party, but part of his motivation was he wanted to come to Texas to say thank you to the people of Texas for their support," said Wright. "He had carried the state in the 1960 election. So I saw the overriding motivation as one of good will."
When the motorcade began its journey from Love Field to downtown, Wright could not have been more pleased. He and fellow Rep. Jack Brooks, riding 11 cars behind the president were "blown away" by the "warmest reception of any Texas city."
And then came the carnage. Not until the third shot did Wright believe it was someone trying to kill the president, whose death brought grief and, yes, even shame.
"I was horrified that it happened at all," he said, "but could never get over the fact that it happened in my state, in the city where I went to high school."
Wright became Democratic majority leader in 1976 and was elected speaker of the House in 1986.
"The assassination affected my whole approach to life and was easily the most shocking day of my career," he says. The night after the president's death, someone told him, "We'll never laugh again."
But Larry O'Brien, one of the president's top aides, said, "Oh, sure, we'll laugh again. We'll just never be young again."
At one point during the 1980s, he asked longtime friend and ally Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts to consider a trip to Dallas, if only for the sake of closure — his and the city's.
"Sorry, Jim," said the president's brother. "I'm just not ready yet."
"And he still isn't," said Wright.
Bobby Hargis was born in Rio Vista, Texas, 37 miles south of Fort Worth. He took a job as a Dallas police officer because it paid better than being the manager of an auto parts store. His father was a barber, his mother a beautician. He loved police work, which, on Nov. 22, brought him face to face with a world leader.
One of four motorcycle officers assigned to the president's car, he began the day by meeting the president at Love Field. He and his colleagues got a handshake and the famous Kennedy smile.
"It was like meeting a movie star," said Hargis. "He said, 'I'm glad you're here. Thank you for being here.' "
On Cedar Springs, the president startled Hargis by leaping out of the car to shake hands with some of the hundreds who pushed forward for a closer look.
"The Secret Service liked to had a conniption fit when he did that," says Hargis. At that moment, he felt an eerie sense of dread wash over him. "They was hoppin' around like cats on a hot roof. It freaked 'em out big time. You could tell how nervous they were."
But once the procession reached Houston Street, preparing for the final turn onto Elm, Hargis began to relax. "I thought, 'Well, we've got it made now,' " he says. "And then bam! It happens."
Hargis differs with the Warren Commission and most eyewitnesses, insisting that only two shots were fired. With the first, "a thousand million things went through my mind," he says. After the last, "there was a plume of blood and brains and plasma. It was just like a fog, and I ran right through it."
Photographs taken in the seconds that followed show Hargis racing up the grassy knoll in pursuit of a sniper. He thought the shots came from there. But like most motorcade survivors, he believes Oswald acted alone, saying he saw "nothing" behind the knoll's picket fence to indicate anything suspicious — much less a second gunman.
"When I reached the School Book Depository, someone said, 'Bob, you've got something on your lip.' It turned out to be a piece of brain, mixed with bone from the president's skull."
Within seconds, a man approached Hargis, vowing, in the officer's words, "to get his hands on $17,000 if I'd agree to sell him my helmet. I couldn't sell it anyway. It belonged to the city of Dallas."
After the assassination, "the whole country changed," he says. Before then, "everything was so naive. ... We believed that everything was going to be fine, even if things didn't go right. But now, you can't believe that."
Two years after the president died, Hargis suffered his own near-fatal injury while patrolling on a police motorcycle. The accident crushed his leg and shattered his ribs. He took medical leave from 1974 to 1980, when he returned to the force. He held an administrative job until 1999, when he retired.
"The assassination made me more cautious and careful about every aspect of life," he says. And it continues to haunt him even now, even when he's asleep.
In dreams, he still chases the killer, spending what seems like hours racing up and down the stairways of the School Book Depository, almost touching the fabric of Oswald's shirt but never quite pulling him in.
"It starts out a normal dream and ends up a nightmare. Every single time," he says.
Mal Couch grew up in Dallas, where his father worked for Braniff Airlines and his mother was a housewife. Even as a Woodrow Wilson High School student, he got a job working as a part-time cameraman for WFAA-TV (Channel 8), for which he was still shooting film in 1963.
As part of the motorcade, he found himself riding in the "media" car, next to Bob Jackson, a photographerfor The Dallas Times Herald; Tom Dillard, a photographer for The Dallas Morning News; and a Channel 4 cameraman whose name he can't recall.
Jackson had taken his last picture and handed his film to Jim Featherston, a reporter waiting to receive it at the corner of Main and Houston. When the heavyset reporter fumbled it and began to chase after it, the men in the car found themselves laughing.
And then came the first shot.
Couch remembers someone shouting: "Look at the window — there's the rifle!" By the time the third shot rang out, Couch had spotted about eight inches of the rifle protruding from the sixth-floor window, and being pulled back in. He says he never saw a face, though some witnesses did.
Moments later, Couch and his fellow passengers scrambled out of the car to descend on the madness of Dealey Plaza.
"'God, don't let them do this!' I screamed. 'They can't kill the president!' And I'm running like crazy. In the plaza, it's mass confusion, total mayhem." So much so that the events began to feel overwhelm his instincts as a photographer.
"I didn't film the window," he said. "It was happening too fast. I did raise my camera to take black and white footage of a policeman pulling his pistol and people falling, which everyone has seen for years. But then I stopped filming. Why? Mercy, goodness, gracious, I don't know. When I ran back, I didn't film anything. I guess I was just too dazed to figure out what was going on. So nothing was filmed until I got to Parkland Hospital, where I saw Jackie getting into a hearse. So I filmed the hearse and people crying all over the place."
For him, the Kennedy assassination continues to be "a devastating marker." It was, he contends, the opening of a 1960s Pandora's box, leading to Vietnam and two more assassinations, which claimed the lives of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the president's brother Robert F. Kennedy, in 1968.
"That little piece of metal sticking out the window started it all," said Couch, who teaches at Tyndale Theological Seminary in Fort Worth and who believes in the prophecies from the Book of Revelations.
"I count that as the change in America, from that point forward," he says. "But for me, it cuts even deeper. The Bible speaks of the end of days. So I see it as the beginning piece of the train of the last days.
"And I was there when it happened."
Bill Livingood:
http://www1.cj.msu.edu/~career/alumni/wall/inductees/2000/livingood-2000.html
http://www.pacificu.edu/magazine/2008/fall/alumni/meredith.cfm
Remembering Lynn Meredith '44
by Rachel Burbank '09
Lynn Meredith '44 passed away on April 17, 2008 at the age of 84 in Great Falls, Mont. He was a Secret Service agent for eight administrations, including the thousand days of President John F. Kennedy's time in office. Although his job was to protect and take a bullet for the president and their families, if necessary, Meredith was not in Dallas, Texas during JFK's assassination. Instead, he was with the Kennedy children, Caroline and John Jr. Once the news hit the White House, Meredith took them to a park to shield them from the chaos. Meredith, a WWII Navy veteran, also took a lead role in teaching John Jr. how to salute for the famous picture during his father's funeral. Meredith said in an interview with the Missoulian newspaper that he found it ironic the two presidents who most tolerated and believed in protection were the only two shot — a reference to Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. The 32 years he served in the Secret Service went by fast, he said. "It was an interesting job. In a way you lead somebody else's life. Your life is dictated by the people you protect. You are on the edge of history as it is made. And sometimes, keeping a 3-year-old boy occupied before his father is buried, you inadvertently make history."
— Rachael Burbank ‘09
http://www.missoula.com/news/node/223
http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2007/04/29/news/mtregional/news03.txt
Former Secret Service agent kept watch over presidents and their families
By VINCE DEVLIN of the Missoulian
GREAT FALLS - The boy spent his third birthday at his father's funeral, and left the world with one of its most famous images: As his father's flag-draped casket passed by, John F. Kennedy Jr. raised his right arm and saluted.
You probably know the photograph, but you may not know the story behind the salute. It involves a substitute teacher in Great Falls named Lynn Meredith.
Meredith is 83 years old now, and lives with his wife of 54 years, Rose, in a modest home on the west side of Great Falls. You can hardly make a move in their living room without knocking over a picture of one of their 13 grandchildren.
But one wall is reserved for photographs of American presidents and vice presidents. Long before he filled in in the classroom, you see, Lynn Meredith's job was to protect - to take a bullet for, if necessary - presidents and their families.
A Secret Service agent for 28 years and an employee of the agency for 32, Meredith's career spanned eight administrations, from Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan, and for a decade he was assigned to the White House Protective Detail.
He traveled the world with President Dwight D. Eisenhower, “lucked out” and was assigned to Vice President Hubert Humphrey during the Johnson administration, and guarded then President-elect Richard M. Nixon in 1968.
For the 1,000 days of President John F. Kennedy's administration - and 10 months after the assassination - Meredith was special agent in charge of the Kennedy children.
He wasn't in Dallas when Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963. On that horrific day, he gathered up Caroline and John Jr., who didn't know their father was dead, and ushered them out of a shell-shocked White House and to a Washington, D.C.-area park to play.
Three days later, before the president's funeral at St. Matthew's Cathedral, Jacqueline Kennedy pulled Meredith aside.
“Mrs. Kennedy told me John would never last through the whole funeral,” Meredith says. “He was only 3 years old. She asked me to take John and keep him entertained.”
Meredith led the young boy to a room elsewhere in the church, where members of the military, who had helped escort the president's body to the cathedral, waited to take it on to Arlington National Cemetery for burial.
How to keep the boy occupied? Meredith, a World War II Navy veteran, had an idea.
With help from the servicemen in the room, “we taught him how to salute,” Meredith says. “He kept wanting to do it with his left hand and we had a heck of a time getting him to use his right.”
After the funeral, John Jr. rejoined his mother and sister Caroline. As the casket passed by them, Jacqueline Kennedy bent over and whispered something in her son's ear. The children would not be going on to Arlington for the burial, and it was their last chance to say goodbye to their father.
As Mrs. Kennedy straightened up, John Jr. stepped forward, raised his right hand, and delivered his famous salute that Meredith had taught him minutes earlier.
Kennedy was his favorite president, and Meredith admits he didn't vote for him.
“I don't really have a very good voting record,” he says with a laugh. “I did vote for Ronald Reagan both times, but I've usually been on the losing side.”
He voted for Nixon, then vice president, over the young senator from Massachusetts in 1960, Humphrey in '68, Gerald Ford in '72, Al Gore in 2000.
Meredith prefers his presidents come with experience, and figures vice presidents come with the most.
“The office ages people, it really does,” he says. “I figure if they've been around the White House, they have an idea of what they're getting into.”
Meredith was a schoolteacher in Tillamook, Ore., in 1950 when he decided he wanted to try something else.
“I was still in my 20s, and figured if I was going to, now was the time,” he says.
He drove to Portland, visited a job service, and spied an opening at the Portland Secret Service field office.
“I didn't even know what the Secret Service was,” he says. “I thought it was the FBI.”
The opening was for a clerk-stenographer - a secretary, basically - but it sounded interesting.
Plus, “at my interview, they told me the current chief of the Secret Service had started as a clerk,” he says. “So I figured there were opportunities to move up the ladder.”
There were. Within two months, his bosses told him there was a need for clerk-stenographers in the Washington, D.C., office. Was he interested?
“I'd been around the world in the Navy,” Meredith says. “But I'd never been there. After just five months in Portland, I transferred to D.C. and was assigned to headquarters in the Treasury Building.”
The Secret Service was created by Congress in 1865 to deal with counterfeiters, and became a part of the U.S. Treasury Department. After the assassination of William McKinley in 1901 - the third American president assassinated in 36 years - Congress asked the Secret Service to add presidential protection to its duties.
Over the years, it has come to include presidents, vice presidents, their families, former presidents and first ladies, visiting foreign heads of state, and prominent presidential and vice presidential candidates.
In Washington in the 1950s, the Secret Service offered on-the-job training for employees interested in becoming agents, and Meredith signed up. It was during this period that Meredith got his first taste of life on the White House Protective Detail, and he spent five months there during Truman's last year in office.
Meredith was sworn in as a special agent in 1955, and in 1958 returned to the White House for the final years of Eisenhower's presidency.
“The thing I remember most about Eisenhower was his fondness for golf,” Meredith says. “I think he'd have rather played golf than be president. Every year after the Masters golf tournament, the president would go to Augusta (Ga.) to play, and every time I see the Masters on TV, I remember walking that course with the president.”
The exposure on golf courses always worried the agents, some of whom dressed as golfers, loaded rifles into golf bags and prowled the course while the president played.
The Eisenhower years took Meredith to New Delhi, London, Tokyo, Paris and Moscow. He visited Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Scotland and Germany with the president.
Meredith spent a week in Leningrad in the spring of 1960 setting up security for an Eisenhower visit that never took place. Just before the president was set to leave for the Soviet Union, the Russians shot down an American U-2 plane piloted by Gary Powers, heightening Cold War tensions.
Eisenhower, Meredith says, was “friendly, tolerant of the Secret Service, and knew the agents by name. But he was very much the military type, and probably regarded us as corporals or privates.”
He often told Meredith and the other agents, “Don't worry about me, but don't let anything happen to my grandchildren.”
During the 1960 presidential election, Richard Nixon had Secret Service protection because he was vice president, but John Kennedy did not. The agency's role did not spread to cover presidential candidates until the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968.
It was only fate that had Meredith assigned to the Secret Service team that traveled to Hyannis Port, Mass., that election night to await the outcome. If JFK won, they would immediately take charge of protecting the president-elect and his family.
If Nixon won, they would head home without even seeing Kennedy.
In the closest election since 1916, there was no clear-cut winner until 4 a.m., “when that Chicago mayor (Richard Daley) got the election weighted toward Kennedy,” Meredith says.
The agents immediately left their hotel, headed for the Kennedy compound and knocked on the door.
Joseph P. Kennedy, the president-elect's father, answered the door and said, “We're sure glad to see you; we've been inundated by tourists.”
Presidents accept Secret Service protection with varying degrees of appreciation, Meredith says.
“It's ironic that the two presidents who most tolerated and believed in protection while I was in the Secret Service are the only two who were shot,” Meredith says, referring to Kennedy and Reagan.
Lyndon Johnson, on the other hand, was openly hostile toward his Secret Service detail. As vice president, Meredith says, LBJ tried to get agent Bill Duncan fired when a helicopter didn't appear at the precise time to whisk him away from Eleanor Roosevelt's funeral.
“President Kennedy called Johnson and told him to lay off the Secret Service agent, that it had not been an intentional error,” Meredith says. “Kennedy always told us, ‘You guys don't want anything to ever happen to me, because then you'd have to work for Johnson.' ”
To Diane Leslie Meredith, with very best wishes.
John Kennedy, Nov. 1963
The autographed engraving of the White House hangs in the Great Falls home of Diane “Dee Dee” Burke. It is one of the last things President Kennedy signed before his death.
On Nov. 11, 1963 - Veterans Day - Meredith accompanied the president to Arlington National Cemetery, where Kennedy placed a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. JFK then walked around the cemetery grounds, commenting at one point, “This would be a nice location for a presidential grave.”
That afternoon, after he got off duty, Meredith roamed the White House halls, passing out cigars to staffers and agents. Rose had given birth a few days earlier to a daughter they had named Diane Leslie but called “Dee Dee.”
He had decided against seeking out the president to offer one - the Kennedys had lost a 3-day-old son named Patrick Bouvier Kennedy just three months earlier, and Meredith knew how hard JFK had taken the baby's death.
But as he passed the White House swimming pool, between the West Wing and the presidential living quarters, the president climbed out of the water, wrapped a towel around himself and said hello to the Secret Service agent.
There stood Meredith, cigars in hand.
“Mr. President, I would be honored if you would accept a cigar to celebrate the birth of my new daughter,” Meredith told him.
“It was a 10-cent Roy Tan,” Meredith says with a laugh. “He told me, ‘I didn't know you and your wife were expecting,' and congratulated me and thanked me for the cigar. I'm sure he never smoked it. He liked Cubans, which you could still get back then. I can still see him getting on the elevator in that towel, holding the cigar. It was the last time I saw him alive.”
The day after the funeral, Evelyn Lincoln, Kennedy's secretary, called Meredith and told him, “I think I have something here you would be pleased to receive.”
Sometime between the chance encounter at the swimming pool, and Kennedy's departure on Nov. 19 on the fateful trip that would take him to Dallas, the president had autographed an engraving of the White House for the Merediths' new baby girl.
“It was just the kind of thing he did,” Meredith says. “When the Kennedys would go to Palm Beach for Christmas, they made sure all the Secret Service agents got to bring their families along.”
The Kennedys would also host a Christmas party for the staff and agents who had to spend the holiday wherever the first family did. Rose Meredith remembers one where their oldest daughter, Linda, got upset because Caroline Kennedy kept holding Meredith's hand.
“Linda kept shooting Caroline these looks that said, ‘Hey, that's MY dad,' ” Rose says.
The Meredith children actually wore hand-me-downs from the Kennedys. Maud Shaw, nanny to Caroline and John Jr., would send the clothes home with the special agent.
“You became a part of the family,” Meredith says. “You were around them all the time.”
He remembers Kennedy always borrowing money from the agents when the collection plate was passed on Sundays at church, because presidents never carry money on them.
“But we were always reimbursed,” Meredith says.
One of his favorite stories came one summer when the first family was vacationing at Hyannis Port, and out on Nantucket Sound in the Kennedy yacht, called the Marlin.
“The president had this beautiful miniature sailboat that was his pride and joy,” Meredith says. “He'd put it in the water behind the Marlin and tow it along.”
Meredith was several hundred yards from the yacht, alone in a Navy jet boat, when two would-be pirates in a motorboat shot up behind the yacht, grabbed the sailboat out of the water and took off for shore.
“I took off in hot pursuit,” Meredith says, “but they probably had a half-mile head-start on me.”
He watched the two men land on shore. When Meredith got there, they were nowhere to be seen, but a tourist told him the two had headed toward a nearby motel.
The agent took off running and the men, aware they were being pursued by the Secret Service, ducked into the motel. When he arrived the men were nowhere to be found - but the sailboat was sitting, unharmed, on the front porch.
Meredith returned to his jet boat and radioed senior agent Floyd Boring on the president's yacht: The sailboat was safe.
“The president was very grateful, and asked that I be commended,” Meredith says.
Much has changed since he served in the Secret Service, Meredith says. On his last full-time protective assignment, with President-elect Richard Nixon, Nixon would walk between his office and apartment in New York City every day at lunchtime - something that would never be allowed now.
Presidential motorcade routes are no longer published until the day of an event, unlike 1963, when Kennedy's route through Dallas was publicized days in advance. No windows can be open in buildings along the route. Presidents don't enter and exit their limousine on streets, as Reagan did, when there is access through an indoor or underground parking garage available.
After Nixon was sworn in, Meredith returned to the Washington, D.C., field office - the Secret Service has offices in every state and many more around the world - to work counterfeiting and other cases. In 1970, he was transferred to head the Montana office, now in Billings but then in Great Falls.
“I think they figured since I was from Oregon, I could find my way around Montana,” Meredith says. “I'd never been here before. I expected more trees.”
He continued to work protective details when presidents and others visited the area. After he retired in 1983, he returned to his original career, and has been a popular substitute teacher in the Great Falls school system.
“I can't believe how fast 32 years went by,” he says of his Secret Service days. “It was an interesting job. In a way, you lead somebody else's life. Your life is dictated by the people you protect.”
You are on the edge of history as it is made.
And sometimes, in a room of a church, keeping a 3-year-old boy occupied before his father is buried, you inadvertently help make history.
http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2008/04/19/bnews//br69.txt
Longtime Secret Service agent with Montana connections dies in Great Falls
Posted on April 19
By the Associated Press
GREAT FALLS - Lynn Meredith, a retired Secret Service agent who guarded presidents from Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan, has died. He was 84.
Meredith appeared to be in good health, but his heart stopped beating properly Tuesday and he died at a Great Falls hospital on Thursday, his eldest son Tom Meredith said.
Meredith, a native of Rainier, Ore., served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He joined the Secret Service in 1951 when Truman was president and guarded Dwight Eisenhower’s children during that administration. He also guarded Vice President Hubert Humphrey during President Lyndon Johnson’s administration in the 1960s.
Meredith served the Kennedy family from the early days of the administration to the aftermath of John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. On that day, Meredith took John Jr. and Caroline Kennedy to a park in the Washington, D.C., area.
Toward the end of his career, Meredith ran the Montana Secret Service field office in Great Falls. By the time he retired in 1983 at the mandatory retirement age of 60, he was the most senior member of the Secret Service. He served in Montana for more than a dozen years, logging a total of 32 years with the federal protective agency.
Funeral services are scheduled for 2 p.m. Friday at the Central Assembly of God Church in Great Falls. A burial with military honors will follow in Highland Cemetery.
From
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,913508-5,00.html
FORD'S SECOND CLOSE CALL
Monday, Oct. 06, 1975
re: Sara Jane Moore attempt
Ford stared straight at the attacker.
He looked startled, almost dazed.
Instantly he crouched, then was shoved to the sidewalk by Secret Service Agents Ron Pontius and Jack Merchant. This placed the car between Ford and the gun-wielding woman. An agent opened the rear door of the limousine, and other agents almost threw Ford inside and to the floor. Agents Pontius and Merchant leaped into the vehicle, followed by Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld. All three shielded Ford's prone body as the car sped away.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE6DE133FF934A25751C1A961958260
December 17, 1997
Secret Service Tells Its Agents To Keep Quiet About the Past
By TIM WEINER
The director of the Secret Service has sternly reminded his agents to shield the secrets of the people they protect -- particularly Presidents.
In a message sent on Dec. 5, the director, Lewis C. Merletti, said statements by four former Secret Service agents regarding President John F. Kennedy's philandering with prostitutes were ''very troubling and counterproductive to the mission of the Secret Service.''
The former agents described their embarrassment and anger at Kennedy's womanizing in ''The Dark Side of Camelot,'' a new book by Seymour M. Hersh. In a typical passage, one former agent, Larry Newman, told Mr. Hersh: ''You were on the most elite assignment in the Secret Service, and you were there watching an elevator or a door because the President was inside with two hookers.''
Mr. Merletti's message, which also went out to the members of the Association of Former Agents of the United States Secret Service, warned against ''providing information to any source regarding any aspect of the personal lives of our protectees.''
He asked all agents, present and former, ''to refrain from discussing any information or activity associated with our protectees regardless of its content or significance.'' The job, he said, carries ''a confidence that should continue forever.''
One former agent quoted in the book, Tony Sherman, said in an interview today: ''The director of the Secret Service, a taxpayer-funded agency, has sent out a letter that suppresses and attacks my right of free speech. He implies that perhaps the four of us are not worthy of trust and confidence. This is a slap at us. What we said, I think, contributed to the history of the United States.''
''I liked J.F.K.,'' Mr. Sherman said. ''He was one of the nicest guys I ever met. But he was reckless, morally. And for 35 years I kept my mouth shut.''
A spokesman for the Secret Service, Arnette Heintze, said Mr. Merletti did not intended to personally attack the four former agents who discussed their experiences of protecting Kennedy.
Mr. Heintze also said Secret Service agents were law-enforcement agents, and hypothetically duty-bound to report a crime committed by a person they protect. But, he said, the agents are sworn to be ''worthy of trust and confidence,'' and that maintaining that trust requires confidentiality and discretion.
''This is a very critical issue for the Secret Service,'' Mr. Heintze said. ''This goes to the core of our mission. This has to do with trust. Most of us take this with us to the grave.''
The Secret Service employs 2,100 agents, 1,100 of them uniformed. Established in 1865, it has protected Presidents since 1901, after the assassination of President William McKinley.
http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2003/Nov/22/ln/ln13a.html
Posted on: Saturday, November 22, 2003
Tragedy still sore spot for ex-agent
By Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writer
November never fails to stir up Frank Slocum's worst memories. Even after 40 years, he can't escape them.
Frank Slocum, a former Secret Service agent, displays "The White House," which President Kennedy and his wife autographed.
Gregory Yamamoto • The Honolulu Advertiser
They don't bother him as much as they do other retired U.S. Secret Service agents. But they can set his upper lip to quivering, and if he doesn't stomp them back, he'll cry.
Such is the legacy of President John F. Kennedy, assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald four decades ago today. With pinpoint precision, it reaches through time to jar Slocum, a 77-year-old Makaha resident.
Slocum, who once headed up the Honolulu office of the Secret Service, protected five presidents during his 20-year career. And while Slocum wasn't in the doomed presidential motorcade in Dallas that morning — he was in Los Angeles working criminal cases — he was there that afternoon, standing on the sixth floor of the Texas school book depository.
He remembers looking out the window and thinking how easy it would be for a sniper to make a good, clean shot. There were so many questions, he says, so much confusion.
"We didn't know what to think," he says. "There were so many things being said. The only thing we knew for sure was that the president had been shot."
For Slocum, it doesn't matter that he wasn't there. He knew everyone who was and shared their angst and anger at what happened. Slocum had protected Kennedy on other assignments. He liked him. All the agents liked him.
"He was very personable," Slocum says.
There was no finer example of that than the previous Christmas Eve, when Slocum was in Palm Beach, Fla., on a detail to protect the president and Mrs. Kennedy. Over the objections of several agents, Kennedy called them all into a room to thank them.
"He said, I am with my family tonight and because I am with mine, you are not with yours and Mrs. Kennedy and I want you to know how much this means to us," Slocum says.
As a memento, the president gave them a signed edition of "The White House," a history book edited by Mrs. Kennedy. Slocum still has the book, its spine a bit tattered, but the couple's autographs still clear.
The emotional measure of their loss could not really be weighed by the Secret Service agents until days later. Those agents assigned to remain in Texas, Slocum among them, huddled around a television set in a Johnson City motel to watch the Kennedy funeral.
"We had lost a popular president," he says. "We were feeling maybe it could have been avoided. Did we do something wrong?"
That funeral, with all its enduring images, was well-done, he says. And this is where it gets tough for Slocum, where he has to stomp on his feelings.
"We started to cry," he says.
To be sure, there were moments the Secret Service was proud of, high among them that one of their own, agent Clint Hill, had rushed up from the trailing limo to protect Mrs. Kennedy from being shot. Hill did not share that pride, Slocum says, because the president was dead.
"It really bothered him," Slocum says. "Could he have done something else? He was seen pounding his fist on the car. It was a horrible time. A horrible time."
Much has been said and written about the assassination and Slocum rejects most of it. Tell it straight, he says.
"This other stuff — more assassins and cover-ups — that's just unfortunate," Slocum says. "When will they let it go?"
The assassination changed a lot about the way the Secret Service did its job, Slocum says. Protecting the president had always been a priority, but the agency often worked without adequate money, equipment and personnel, he says.
"Prior to the assassination, we had hand-me down equipment," he says. "After the assassination, everyone wanted to make sure it never happened again. We got equipment, cars, anything. We got more agents. We got more authority."
In the aftermath, Slocum and another agent wrote a thick manual on presidential route security. Among their suggestions: no open windows.
Four years after the assassination, Slocum was sent to Honolulu as the special agent in charge of the Secret Service office in Hawai'i. Pages and pages of his thick scrapbook detail his time here, many of them with photographs. He is the man in the background looking the other way, looking for another presidential assassin.
There have been none. One was enough.
"Was there something we could have done?" Slocum says again, and not for the last time. "I don't know if there was."
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October 4, 1996
Rufus W. Youngblood, 72, Agent Who Guarded Johnson
By ROBERT MCG. THOMAS JR.
Rufus W. Youngblood, the Secret Service agent who flung himself over the front seat and used his body to shield Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson during the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, died on Wednesday at a hospice near his home in Savannah, Ga. He was 72 and was deputy director of the Secret Service when he retired in 1971.
His family said the cause was cancer.
For Mr. Youngblood it was no more than a reflex action, an instinctive act of professional duty in the face of apparent danger to the man he was sworn to protect. But on a day when a bereft nation seemed suddenly short of heroes, Mr. Youngblood seemed hero enough, a man who had clearly been ready to sacrifice his life to save the Vice President's.
As it turned out, Mr. Johnson was never in real danger from the gunfire trained on the President two cars ahead in the motorcade through Dallas. But at the time Mr. Youngblood, who was riding in the front seat of the Vice President's limousine, did not now that.
Indeed, as he recalled it in his 1973 book, ''20 Years in the Secret Service. My Life with Five Presidents,'' he had not known whether the sound he heard was a firecracker, a bomb or a gunshot. He knew only that something was wrong and that some action had to be taken.
And so, as the President's car sped ahead and the words, ''Let's get out of here,'' rang out over the radio, Mr. Youngblood scrambled over the seat, pushed Mr. Johnson to the floor and spread his own body protectively on top of the Vice President's.
For his action, Mr. Youngblood was awarded the Treasury Department's highest honor, but felt the fuss was somewhat excessive. After all, he was part of a generation for which heroism had been a matter of patriotic routine.
Born in Macon, Ga., Mr. Youngblood was the son of a railroad man who was killed in a train wreck when his son was 2. He needed his mother's permission to join the Army Air Forces shortly after Pearl Harbor but signed up in time to serve as a navigator on some of the earliest bombing raids over Germany.
After the war Mr. Youngblood obtained a degree in electrical engineering from Georgia Tech in 1950.
After working for a struggling company, Mr. Youngblood, who by then had a wife and child, learned through the Georgia Tech placement office of an opening in the Secret Service's Atlanta office investigating counterfeiting and check fraud.
''There were 35 applicants, and he was the one they hired,'' his wife, Peggy, said yesterday, noting that her husband was forever being singled out from the crowd.
Indeed, when he was sent to Washington for periodic special assignments on Presidential trips, he impressed his superior so much that by the time Dwight D. Eisenhower succeeded Harry S. Truman in 1953, Mr. Youngblood had been assigned to the White House detail full time.
After Mr. Kennedy took office in 1961, Mr. Youngblood was made chief of the Vice-Presidential detail, in part because Mr. Johnson had taken a proprietary interest in the agent who could match him drawl for drawl.
As Mrs. Youngblood recalled it, when Mr. Johnson went to the White House one day and saw Mr. Youngblood on duty, the Vice President complained that the White House had stolen ''my agent.''
Shortly after Mr. Johnson took office, Mr. Youngblood was made chief of the White House detail. As a former colleague, Lem Johns, recalled yesterday, the Secret Service was generally delighted to have a high official who had the ear of a President. ''He was instrumental in getting us increased appropriations,'' Mr. Johns said, noting that Congress had been especially amenable to such appeals in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination.
During the Johnson Presidency, Mr. Youngblood had only one scary moment, albeit one with comic overtones. When Australian anti-war protesters threw what turned out to be balloons filled with red and green paint at the President's car during a visit to Melbourne, Australia, in 1966, Mr. Youngblood, who had been walking beside the car, was covered with red paint and Mr. Johns was drenched in green paint.
Mr. Youngblood, who was promoted to deputy director before Mr. Johnson left office in 1969, retired two years later but continued to visit Mr. Johnson at his ranch in Texas.
Settling in Savannah, Mr. Youngblood sold real estate for a while and then made a new name for himself: as a master gardener whose profusion of colorful day lillies drew visitors from all over the country.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by a son, Mark, of Wallingford, Conn; three daughters, Joy Rumpf of Windham, N.H., Candy Hughes of Savannah, and Dr. Rebecca Vaughn of Acworth, Ga.; a sister, Ann Jones Shephard of Atlanta, and eight grandchildren.
-------------
"vindication" for Vince :)
In his book, Lost Honor, John Dean made a list of 30 possible candidates [for "Deep Throat"]: White House Staff (Stephen Bull, Alexander P. Butterfield, Kenneth Clawson, Charles Colson, Leonard Garment, David Gergen, Alexander Haig, Richard Moore and Jonathan Rose); FBI (Thomas E. Bishop, Charles Bowles, Mark Felt, L. Patrick Gray and David Kinley), Justice Department (Carl Belcher, Richard Burke, John Keeney, Laurence McWhorter, Henry Peterson and Harold Shapiro); Secret Service (Lilburn Boggs, Charles Bretz, Roger Schwalm, ****Alfred Wong*** and Raymond Zumwalt).
--------------
http://www.uga.edu/gm/1298/Notes2.html
Fred Lawrence (BS '67) of Marietta, who protected Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan during his 23-year career with the Secret Service, died Feb. 24, 1997.
----------------
http://www.adwinc.com/PERSONNE.HTM
A. Dale Wunderlich
Mr. Wunderlich received his Bachelor of Science degree from Washington State University in Police Science and Administration. He was a police officer for the City of Pullman, Washington Police Department in 1958 and 1959. He was with the Los Angeles Police Department from 1959 to 1963 and was a Special Agent with the United States Secret Service for approximately thirteen and one-half years. While with the Los Angeles Police Department, Mr. Wunderlich was assigned to the Patrol Division and was later promoted to detective and was assigned to the Crime Laboratory Division, Comparative Analysis Section and was qualified as an expert in firearms identification (ballistics), number restoration, bomb disposal and crime scene reconstruction.
While in the U.S. Secret Service, Mr. Wunderlich was assigned at the White House in Washington, D.C. and at several field offices. Mr. Wunderlich conducted several thousand complex fraud investigations while in the U.S. Secret Service.
http://www.kcfr.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=94&Itemid=234&target_pg=com_day&date=07/30/2008
Wednesday, Jul. 30 2008
Former Secret Service Agent On Convention Security, History
Dale Wunderlich, of Castle Rock, was on duty at national Conventions in 1964 and 1972. He also protected several former presidents and candidates. He speaks with host Ryan Warner.
----------
OBITUARY- Washington Post, 10/19/94: Lilburn E. "Pat" Boggs; deceased 10/16/94; retired Deputy Director; served 30 years in Secret Service- retired 1978; WHD- Truman, Ike; with Ike during his retirement in Gettysburg, PA.; SAIC of Los Angeles and Albuquerque, New Mexico offices, as well as the Chicago office during the 1968 Democratic National Conventions [replaced Martineau?]; 1969- returned to D.C. as Asst. Dir. for Protective Forces- presided over its reorganization and expansion from 250 to 800 officers, inc. 5 women who eventually became the first 5 female Secret Service agents ; also directed the establishment of the Foreign Dignitary Protective Division ; accompanied Nixon to China in 1972 and to the Soviet Union in 1973; awarded the Treasury Department's Meritorious Service Award and the Albert Gallatin Medal; also- a WWII vet., inc. 12/7/41: assigned to Pearl Harbor.
OBITUARY- Washington Post, 4/23/93: Gerald A. Behn; age-76; died of cancer 4/21/93 at his home in McLean, VA-lived in the D.C. area since 1939; SAIC of WHD from [Sept.] 1961 to [ Jan.] 1965; retired in 1967 as SAIC of Special Investigations after 28 years in the Secret Service; an Inspector [?!?!-Behn denied he was one to me and he didn't mention becoming one in his JFK Library Oral History]; was a charter member and president of the Assoc. of Former Agents of the U.S. Secret Service; born in Forest Park, IL ; raised in Flint, MI; a graduate of Michigan State University; worked for U.S. Postal Service for 4 years after leaving the service; wife- Jean Brownell Behn; two daughters- Sandra Lee Kane of Springfield[I spoke to her 8/95] and Barbara Jean Shipley of Vienna; 4 grandchildren.
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/editorials/stories/2008/06/21/BobFoster.ART_ART_06-21-08_A10_KIAHF67.html?sid=101
Robert W. Foster
Retired Secret Service agent will be remembered for protecting Kennedy children
Saturday, June 21, 2008 6:46 AM
A life spent protecting others, including the president's family, suited Robert W. Foster. His death in Columbus on Tuesday left a void for family, friends and others who admired his service as a Secret Service agent, a U.S. marshal for the Southern District of Ohio and sergeant-at-arms of the General Assembly.
Foster, 78, was best remembered as protector of President Kennedy's two children. He enjoyed being with the first family, saying in a 1992 Dispatch interview that the Kennedys were "wonderful people who treated us well."
He was with Caroline and John Jr. when their father was assassinated in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, and held Caroline's hand at John F. Kennedy's funeral. But that was far from the only time Foster was on duty as history was being made. One of his Secret Service assignments was the raucous Democratic National Convention in 1968.
Andrew Foster described his dad as a farm boy at heart, and Bob retained a love of gardening, but public service was always paramount. After retiring from the Secret Service in 1981, he worked as a U.S. marshal until 1994, supervising deputies in Cincinnati, Columbus and Dayton, and then as the state legislature's sergeant-at-arms through 2001.
The Worthington native joined the Secret Service in 1956 after a stint in the Army's 82{+n}{+d} Airborne Division and graduation from Ohio State University.
Secret Service agents are quiet and ever watchful, able to eliminate distractions. That somber work demeanor didn't reflect the warmth and sense of humor that his family and friends enjoyed so much. He will be missed.
Robert W. Foster: 1930-2008
Agent who protected Kennedy's children dies at 78
Friday, June 20, 2008 3:08 AM
By Nicquel Terry
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Courtesy of John F. Kennedy Presidential Library
Secret Service agent Robert W. Foster holds Caroline Kennedy's hand during the funeral procession for her father, President John F. Kennedy. Foster, 78, died Tuesday in Columbus.
Holding back his own tears, the man comforted Caroline Kennedy, holding her hand at her father's funeral in 1963.
Decades later, when the plane carrying Caroline's brother crashed into the ocean, it was difficult for the man to watch the news reports. He preferred to remember John Jr. as the little boy he held on outings to the park or who laughed at his made-up stories.
He was Robert W. Foster, one of the Secret Service agents charged with protecting the children of President John F. Kennedy.
Foster, who also served as a U.S. marshal for southern Ohio and sergeant-at-arms for the Ohio General Assembly, died Tuesday at First Community Village in Columbus of congestive heart failure. He was 78.
The Worthington native served in the Army from 1948 to 1953 and attended Ohio State University, where he earned a degree in education in 1955.
Foster guarded the Kennedy children from 1961 until 1964. Kennedy's assassination hit him hard, as it did others who worked closely with the family.
"All of us shed tears," said Thomas Wells, also a former Secret Service agent. "The trauma was severe to everyone."
Wells, 74, of Saint Augustine, Fla., said he and Foster were among five agents assigned to Kennedy's family.
He recalled Foster had a "dry wit and was fun to be around."
Foster's ex-wife, Peggy, who lives in Worthington, recalled a comment by the president's father, Joseph Kennedy: "Mr. Foster, how does a Republican from Columbus, Ohio, wind up guarding my son -- a Democrat from Massachusetts?"
Andrew Foster said his father never let politics interfere with his duties, a hallmark of the Secret Service.
"It was the most meaningful service that he rendered to the country," Andrew Foster, 44, of Princeton Junction, N.J., said. "He took an enormous amount of pride in his affiliation to the Secret Service."
After Jacqueline Kennedy and her children moved to New York in 1964, Robert Foster took on other Secret Service assignments, including the Democratic convention in 1968 in Chicago.
He retired from the agency in 1978 after serving as the special-agent-in-charge of the Columbus office.
He was a marshal from 1981 to 1994 and sergeant-at-arms through 2001.
Family members said it was difficult for Foster to draw the line between his work and his love for gardening. Andrew Foster recalled his father caring for his garden in his suit and tie.
"He was still at heart kind of a farm boy," the son said. "He was kind of like a little kid."
Peggy Foster remembers Robert Foster for his exuberance, his passion for traveling across the country, and their "Camelot time" during the Kennedy administration.
"He had a gift for telling jokes and stories," she said, "a genuine sense of humor. Everyone would agree with that."
The couple had three children: Andrew Foster, Katherine Foster Parramore of Virginia, and Robert Foster Jr. of Dallas.
A memorial service will be held at 3 p.m. July 8 at Rutherford-Corbin Funeral home, 515 High St., in Worthington. Friends may call one hour before the service.
nterry@dispatch.com
------------
Charlotte Observer | 11/16/2003 | To serve a president - [Cached Version]
Published on: 11/16/2003 Last Visited: 11/16/2003
Dolly Berger visits with her husband Andy, who suffers from Alzheimer's disease, at the Lawyer's Glen Retirement Living Center in Charlotte, North Carolina.
...
Andy Berger is a retired Secret Service agent who was in Dallas, Texas, as part of President Kennedy's security detail when Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963.
...
Except Andy Berger.And he was there.
Berger, of Charlotte, was a member of the Secret Service for 20 years, trusted by presidents and their families.
...
On Nov. 22, 1963, Andy Berger had already arrived at the Trade Mart in Dallas, where tables were set for a presidential luncheon.Berger heard that the president had been shot from a Dallas policeman and rushed to the hospital in a police cruiser with Dr. George Burkley, Kennedy's physician.
...
"Nurse Doris Nelson was just passing through it when a tall man in a light gray speckled suit shouldered his way past her, shouting, `I'm FBI!' He appeared violent, and Andy Berger, the closest agent, knocked him down.
...
Berger was right."
`He cried and cried'
The 26-year-old Andy Berger could stand up to the FBI, but his wife, Dolly, remembers how he crumbled when he finally returned to their Hyattsville, Md., apartment between 1 and 2 the next morning.
Andy walked in, dressed in his dark suit, with his trench coat wrapped over his arm.He sat down in the living room, where the husbands of Dolly's college friends had waited so she would not be alone.
In just over two hours, Andy Berger had witnessed the death of one president and the inauguration of his successor.Closer than most, he had seen the widow in the bloodied pink suit who had insisted on sitting beside her husband during that hearse ride.
Andy Berger didn't say a word.
...
Andy caught a few hours sleep before resuming his place in a history that he seldom spoke of.
...
To Andy, the kid from the Bronx, the job was a dream.
Dolly knew life with Andy would be different.
...
Andy came to a dance at the Larchmont Shore Club in Larchmont, N.Y., with Dolly's friend Sheila.
...
Andy apologized."Can we talk?"
They did, for hours and hours.
Andy charmed her skeptical parents as well as everyone he met.He was drop-dead gorgeous and had a take-charge gait that drew stares.
...
Dolly visits Andy, 66, regularly, and most often on Sundays and Mondays, her days off.
"Who loves you more than anybody?"she asks.
"You do," he answers.
...
When they were first married, Andy brought a yellow rose home with each week's paycheck.When he could afford it, the single flower became a bouquet.Sometimes, he would make her cover her eyes until he arranged the flowers in a plastic cup.
"I know it isn't as nice as you could do it," he would say.
Andy never let a day go by without telling Dolly he loved her, even if it meant a call from the other side of the world over a band radio: "I love you, over and out."
The agents who worked for Andy still call to check on Dolly.
...
At Lawyers Glen, Andy is getting tired.
She asks: "Who am I?"
He answers: "Love of my life."
`A provocateur'
In 1961, the Secret Service called John Brady as a reference."They asked me if Andy was patriotic.
...
No one was more patriotic than Andy.
...
Andy was as competitive as a person could get."
In eighth grade, the sports editor of the St. John's Eagle named Andy Berger the school's best athlete.The sports editor was Andy Berger, who assured his buddies he won the title in a fair election.
Andy, John and Richie O'Rourke, who lived around the corner, formed the core of "The Purple Gang," a street-smart variation of "The Lavender Hill Mob."
...
But Andy, the charismatic leader, had little in common with the reluctant Alec Guinness in that 1951 film.
...
Andy wasn't a troublemaker, exactly.
...
As a walk-on, Andy made Fordham's freshman basketball team.The third baseman also played varsity baseball as a sophomore.
While attending New York Law School at night, Andy heard other students talking about the Secret Service, something else to compete over.He left law school after a year for the challenge of government service.
The gang stayed together, and through the years, Andy organized trips to Kiawah Island and fishing at Cape Hatteras.
...
On the way to a fall football game last month in Mississippi, John and Richie stopped by Lawyers Glen to take Andy out for lunch and tall tales.
...
"Andy was our leader."
One baby dies, one survives
Andy Berger loved Jack Kennedy.
...
But there were plenty of stories Andy could tell.
At the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, Mass., Andy and several other agents stood watch as Kennedy and a few friends took out a sailboat.
...
It didn't take long for Andy and the agents -- city kids all -- to capsize.
The president was laughing so hard he had tears in his eyes.
...
Something didn't feel right and Andy was still away in Massachusetts.
...
"He had baptized him during the night: Andrew Paul Berger."
Dolly's mom and the doctor called Andy in the middle of the night.Once Andy heard the news, he told Ken O'Donnell, special assistant to the president, who told Kennedy.The president made sure Andy was flown immediately to New York in a private plane, with a police escort to the hospital.
...
Not long after, Kennedy's secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, approached Andy Berger on his 4-to-midnight shift.
...
Kennedy presented Andy with a framed etching of the White House -- signed by JFK and Jackie -- for newborn Andrew.
...
Kennedy presented Andy with a framed etching of the White House -- signed by JFK and Jackie -- for newborn Andrew.
...
Daughter Kathleen -- called Katie -- thought she'd try one more time to pry a secret from Andy.
...
Andy smiled."To my grave.
...
In a picture that captures a visit to Kennedy's grave at Arlington Cemetery -- with a pint-sized Katie in a fur-collared wool coat with a double row of buttons -- Andy holds onto his 5-year-old daughter's tiny right hand with both of his.
Last Christmas, Katie had the picture blown up and wrapped it up for her dad.
...
Photos from Parkland Hospital, Love Field and Andrews Air Force Base show Andy Berger calm in the chaos.
...
At parties, friends would sit close to Andy and try, after a couple of drinks, to get him to reveal presidential secrets.All struck out, as the phrase "to the grave" became his trademark.
Andy's Secret Service years were on future son-in-law Boyd Higgins' mind when he nervously walked into a lunch meeting at Carmel Country Club to ask for Katie's hand in 1989.
...
Before Boyd could get a word out, Andy told him: "I think I know what you're going to say.
...
For Frank Sinatra, only Andy Berger would do for security.
...
Life now for Andy and Dolly Berger was going to be about children and grandchildren and deep-sea fishing trips.
...
Andy, who liked to join his son John on the golf course, left a game early one day.
...
Dolly noticed Andy kept missing the turn for their church, St. Gabriel.
...
In August 2002, Andy wandered into a house in the neighborhood.
...
During the day, she'd take Andy to the Adult Care & Share Center on Idlewild Road.
...
You've reached Dolly and Andy Berger...."
...
Andy is there in the pictures on the family room wall: with Lyndon Johnson and his daughter Luci, with Frank Sinatra, with Dolly and the kids all wearing the polyester prints of the 1970s.
...
Dolly is snuggled on a chair beside Andy, rubbing his back.
...
Andrew is there, smiling, blowing softly on his dad's sweet potatoes to cool them, calling him "Pop-Pop," the name the grandkids gave him.
Dolly whispers: "Mary wants to ask you about the Secret Service."
She warns me not to expect much.She says Andy hasn't spoken in sentences for months.
Then, Andy's hand stops shaking.He turns
[snipped online]
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