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Does it address the question of why these Secret Service Agents were odered off the car? Here's a site that offers some new information: "HISTORY" CORRECTED 35 YEARS LATER BY PRIMARY SOURCES
by Vincent M. Palamara
(EDITOR'S NOTE: The following news story, by historian and researcher Vincent M. Palamara, sets the record straight regarding the long-repeated falsehood that President John F. Kennedy was somehow responsible for his own assassination because he ordered Secret Service agents off his open car and otherwise fatally undermined the performance of his bodyguards. Palamara, widely recognized as the preeminent expert on Secret Service personnel and procedures during the Kennedy era, has secured the first on-the-record comments from agents in the presidential detail of November 22, 1963 and other primary sources.)
These mutually corroborating stories shed important new light on the conspiracy to murder the president, and put an end to groundless, designed-to-mislead speculation that has plagued the assassination investigation from its inception and otherwise contributed to the obstruction of justice. C.R.D.)
The following former Secret Service agents told me in on-the-record interviews, and in no uncertain terms, that JFK never ordered the agents off the rear of his car, was not difficult to protect and was in fact extremely cooperative with the Secret Service:
Gerald A. Behn (chief of JFK's detail),
Floyd M. Boring (#2 JFK detail agent),
Arthur L. Godfrey (one of three shift leaders on the Texas trip),
Donald J. Lawton (on the Dallas JFK detail),
Rufus W. Youngblood (#2 agent on Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson's detail),
Samuel A. Kinney (driver of the Secret Service follow-up car in Dallas),
Robert I. Bouck (head of the Protective Research Section),
Robert Lilley (a member of JFK's detail from election night until one month before Dallas),
Maurice G. Martineau (agent in charge of the Chicago office) and
John Norris (a member of the Uniformed Division)
Agents off the rear of limo
Representative responses by former Secret Service agents and others to my question, "Did JFK ever 'order agents around', including having them dismount the rear area of the limousine?" were as follows:
Kinney (interviewed on 10/19/92, 3/5/94, 4/15/94) -- "Absolutely, positively no. He (JFK) had nothing to do with that, no, never ... President Kennedy was one of the easiest presidents to protect ... ninety nine percent of the agents would agree."
Lilley (interviewed 9/27/92, 9/21/93, 6/7/96) -- "I'm sure he did not. He was very cooperative with us once he became president. Basically, (his attitude was) 'whatever you guys want is the way it will be.'"
Godfrey (interviewed 5/30/96, 6/7/96; correspondence 11/24/97) -- (JFK) never ordered us to do anything. He was a very nice man ... cooperative. He never asked me to have my shift leave the limo when we were working it."
Behn (interviewed three times on 9/27/92) -- "I don't remember Kennedy ever saying that he didn't want anybody on the back of his car. I think if you watch the newsreel pictures and whatnot, you'll find agents on there from time to time."
A photo from the Tampa Tribune of November 19, 1963 -- three days before the assassination -- clearly supports Behn's contention. It depicts agents Donald Lawton and Charles Zboril on the rear of JFK's limousine in both urban and suburban areas, during a politically significant, high-visibility presidential visit to Florida.
One of the earliest and arguably most influential (to this day) misrepresentation of JFK's relationship to the Secret Service, and in particular to agents on his various details, can be found in "Death of a President," by William Manchester. One passage in particular exemplifies the lengths to which "respected" historians such as Manchester have gone, knowingly or otherwise, to falsify the record.
"Kennedy grew weary of seeing bodyguards roosting behind him every time he turned around, and in Tampa on November 18 (1963), just four days before his death, he dryly asked Agent Floyd Boring to 'keep those Ivy League charlatans off the back of the car.' Boring wasn't offended. There had been no animosity in the remark." (1988 Harper & Row/Perennial Library edition, pp. 37-38)
When asked to comment on the record about that portion of "Death of a President," Boring said that the statement attributed to him by Manchester is, to say the least, inaccurate. "He quotes me?" Boring asked incredulously. "I never told him (that JFK ordered agents off the limousine). (JFK) was a very nice man, never interfered with us at all." Indeed, Boring stated that he was not interviewed by Manchester-- a fact that is confirmed by the book's source notes.
Until publication of this article and its correction of the record by first-person sources, the Manchester-originating falsehoods, among others relating to the assassination in general and Secret Service in Dallas in particular, have been accepted and repeated as fact by a mainstream media bereft of alternative testimony.
The assessments of JFK as a "security-friendly" chief executive were confirmed during on-the-record interviews with JFK aide Dave Powers and White House photographer Cecil Stoughton (both in the Dallas motorcade), and with June Kellerman, widow of Roy H. Kellerman, the #3 agent on the JFK detail.JFK Lancer(It hasn't been updated for over 7 years and I can't vouch for its authenticity) It still doesn't answer the question of who ordered the SS Agents off the car... |
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