by Mark Lane
In his statement Lyndon Johnson wrote:
I was startled by the sharp report or explosion, but I had no time to speculate as to its origin because Agent Youngblood turned in a flash, immediately after the first explosion, hitting me on the shoulder, and shouted to all of us in the back seat to get down.
I was pushed down by Agent Youngblood. Almost in the same moment in which he hit or pushed me, he vaulted over the back seat and sat on me. I was bent over under the weight of Agent Youngblood’s body toward Mrs. Johnson and Senator Yarborough.
I remember attempting to turn my head to make sure that Mrs. Johnson had bent down. Both she and Senator Yarborough had crouched down at Agent Youngblood’s command.
Johnson said that he also “heard other explosions.”
Mrs. Johnson stated that “suddenly there was a sharp loud report—a shot.” She said that “our Secret Service man who was with us, Ruf Youngblood, I believe it was, vaulted over the front seat on top of Lyndon, threw him to the floor and said ‘Get down.’” She added, “The car accelerated terrifically fast—faster and faster.”
Evaluating how the Secret Service White House detail should have reacted, as the Warren Commission did and as critics, including myself, have done, has a somewhat limited value. A far better analysis is found in examining the conduct of another Secret Service agent, similarly trained, in a similar moment of great stress.
The two agents in the presidential limousine said in retrospect and perhaps for the purpose of excusing their own lack of response, that they thought they heard firecrackers or the sound of a motorcycle backfire. In the vice presidential car Youngblood heard a shot. Vice President Johnson heard a “report” (a term used to describe the sound of a shot) or an “explosion.” Mrs. Johnson heard “a sharp loud report—a shot.” All five witnesses were describing the first shot.
In the vice presidential vehicle the agent who was not driving took immediate action, vaulting over the seat, shouting at those in the back seat to “get down” and covering the vice president’s body with his own. Clifton Carter, an assistant to the vice president, was in the vice presidential Secret Service follow-up car. The Warren Commission conceded that Carter stated that Youngblood was using his body to shield the vice president before the second shot was fired.108 In the presidential limousine, the agent who was not driving took no action, never moved, and did not even tell the president or his wife to take cover.
The driver of the presidential limousine slowed down to almost a stop, (some witnesses said the vehicle actually stopped) after the first shot was fired and did not accelerate until the president was fatally wounded. The driver of the vice presidential car accelerated as quickly as possible.
It seems that had Youngblood been in the presidential limousine, President Kennedy might have survived. Youngblood was assigned to protect the vice president. Hill was assigned to protect Mrs. Kennedy. The driver of the vice president’s car sped from the scene. Each acted correctly and promptly. The record discloses that not one Secret Service member of the elite White House detail assigned to protect President Kennedy acted appropriately, whether their assignment was to drive the limousine, ride in the limousine, or ride in the president’s follow-up car.
Actions of Secret Service Agents in the Follow-Up Car
It is undisputed that the follow-up car, that is, a vehicle transporting eight Secret Service agents, was immediately behind the limousine. “Directly behind the presidential limousine was an open ‘follow-up’ car with eight Secret Service agents, two in the front seat, two in the rear, and two on each running board.”109
Each agent had been specially trained to react to any possible threat to the president. That was the only purpose for their presence there. From the moment the first shot was fired until the president was killed by the last shot, not one agent in the limousine or in the follow-up car assigned to protect the president took any action.
The driver of the following car participated in yet another similar lapse or misconduct. Upon hearing the first shot, the driver was required to place his vehicle in the line of fire. He took no action. Even when it became clear to the majority of those in Dealey Plaza that a shot had come from behind the wooden fence, he made no attempt to pass the limousine on the right to afford protection to those in the presidential car.
Those in the open vehicle or on the running board remained uninvolved, except for Hill. They were all armed and automatic weapons had been assigned for the purpose of preventing rifle fire. U. E. Baughman had been the chief of the United States Secret Service from 1948 until 1961. He held that position under presidents Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy. After the assassination he said that he could not understand why Mrs. Kennedy had to climb over the back of the vehicle, “to get help,” or how it was possible that with the entire Secret Service detail on hand why the only shots that day had been fired at the president and no fire was returned. Surely, if the agents were concerned about firing into a location in the general vicinity of innocent spectators there was no reason why they could not at least level their weapons at the source of fire. That action, for which they had been trained, might have caused the person firing from the targeted location to seek cover. Baughman might have offered some valuable insight to the Warren Commission since the commission had assumed the responsibility of evaluating the actions of the White House detail on that tragic day. However, his name does not even appear in the Warren Commission Report.
Can so many failures, the voluntary loss of eleven experienced White House detail members in two months before the assassination, the sudden vacation of the chief of the White House detail, the absolute refusal of any agent assigned to protect the president to take any action to protect him, or even drive from the scene until he had been fatally shot, and bringing the limousine to an almost complete stop as soon as the first shot was fired instead of speeding from the scene, all be coincidental? If so those charged with the responsibility for examining that misconduct should have sought real answers to explain each such almost inexplicable act.
The question of CIA participation regarding the actions of men claiming that they were Secret Service agents, when they were not, is even more challenging. That matter is discussed later, in the chapter entitled “The CIA and Mind Control,” for it is only after learning of the crimes committed by the CIA, many through the auspices of one of its most secret committees, the Technical Services Division, that one can begin to comprehend the mindset of those responsible for the events of November 22.
The Secret Service Speaks
After Forty-Seven Years of Silence
Two years after the publication of Abraham Bolden’s book in 2008, a former Secret Service agent responded, on behalf of all of them he stated, with a book entitled The Kennedy Detail. 110 It was promoted as a book “fifty years in coming.” Actually it was at most forty-seven years, but if you are a stickler for accuracy this is not the work for you.
The author, Gerald Blaine, endorses the Warren Commission Report although there is no evidence that he has read it or the evidence it stated it relied upon. He refers to the “twenty-six volumes of the hearings.” He got the number right, but only the first fifteen volumes are transcripts of the hearings. The remaining volumes, many more than 900 pages each, are made up of documents, reports, photographs and other material, most of it irrelevant.
Blaine began by stating, “While I am the author” but even that assertion is in doubt. It was purportedly written by him “with Lisa McCubbin,” but Blaine is always referred to in the third person, as if someone else has written it with the exception of a six-page prologue that states that it was written by Gerald Blaine, a claim not made for the rest of the book. For example, Blaine, who was in Arlington, Virginia, when the assassination took place in Dallas, Texas, although one gets the impression that he has been holding himself out to be an eyewitness, states, or someone does, that he quit the Secret Service after a great deal of time spent with his fellow agents, having been there less than five y
ears. “It was the hardest decision Blaine had ever had to make.” Blaine “never cared much about money.” Blaine “needed to do what felt right.” Blaine resigned to take a much more lucrative job selling IBM products dealing with “high-level corporate security.” He had used his relatively short time with the Secret Service to advance his lifestyle. He was neither the first nor the last to do so, but one of the few who offered himself as a martyr for having made that decision.
The book is a screed with a mission, in fact several missions. It attempts to prove that rumors that Secret Service agents had consumed alcoholic beverages on the very morning before the assassination took place were both malicious and false; it attempts through character assassination to demean Abraham Bolden; and it suggests that the Secret Service agents were flawless in their efforts to protect the president and that President Kennedy, in large measure, was responsible for his own death by imposing restrictions upon the agents and refusing to use the protective bubble top. Each of those efforts fails for each is based upon demonstrably false assertions made by either Gerald or Lisa.
Did the agents drink in violation of their regulations? The author writes:
SUNDAY, DECEMBER1, 1963: San Francisco Chronicle columnist Drew Pearson was a muckraking ‘journalist’ whose forte was digging up dirt on various government and political organizations. He knew members of the White House press corps and was well acquainted with the Kennedy Detail Secret Service agents and their stellar reputations. On December 1, 1963, Pearson wrote a scathing editorial in the San Francisco Chronicledemanding an investigation into the Secret Service and the role they may have played in the assassination of the president.
“Six Secret Service men,” he wrote, “charged with protecting the President, were in the Fort Worth Press Club the early morning of Friday, Nov. 22, some of them remaining until nearly 3 o’clock. This was earlier in the same day President Kennedy was assassinated. They were drinking. One of them was reported to have been inebriated. When they departed, three were reported en route to an all-night beatnik rendezvous, The Cellar.
“Obviously men who have been drinking until nearly 3 AM are in no condition to be trigger-alert or in the best physical shape to protect anyone.”
It has been stated that it was an impossibility for the Secret Service to check the occupancy of every building along the route. While this is true, it is also true that warehouse type buildings, such as that in which the assassin hid, should be searched, and the extra time spent by Secret Service men at the Fort Worth Press Club could have been spent in so doing.111
The allegations, we are told by Blaine/McCubbin, were false and the agents were very upset. The authors asserted:
The article sent immediate shock waves through the Secret Service, and the Kennedy Detail supervisors—Emory Roberts, Art Godfrey, and Stewart Stout—were called into Chief Rowley’s office and told to have every agent write a memo giving their whereabouts during the evening of November 21 and the early morning hours of November 22. The agents were to state if they consumed alcoholic beverages and what time they retired that morning.
For the agents still crippled by a guilt that had no words, it was as if Drew Pearson had ripped out their broken hearts; any semblance of healing that might have begun was instantly shattered.
Questions were asked about who was involved and who was inebriated. Nobody could remember anybody being drunk or slightly inebriated, but questions began to arise among the agents about who the culprit might be, despite the fact that the claims seemed preposterous. If any detail agent had been drinking heavily or had been intoxicated, the other agents would have heard about it because the agent would have been immediately dismissed and removed from the detail.
The author asserts that “the damage had been done.”112 He, or she, added, “The agents felt like they’d been stamped with guilt by an outsider, a muckraking journalist so intent on making a name for himself … that he never bothered to check the facts.” But the author did and he concluded that the stories were false but that the claims “would haunt these already broken men for the rest of their lives.”113
What was wrong with the effort to rewrite the history of this sordid episode? Shall we count the ways? Drew Pearson was not a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. He had not written an editorial for the Chronicle. He already had a name and was not in need of making another one. A Harris poll commissioned by TIME sought to discover the relative popularity of newspaper columnists. It determined that Pearson was the best-known writer in the United States at that time. That was hardly surprising since Pearson had created a column, “Washington Merry-Go-Round,” which was published by The Washington Post beginning in 1941. He later hired a young writer named Jack Anderson to assist him. The column was syndicated with more than 650 newspapers publishing it daily, more than twice as many as the next competitor. It was determined that 60 million Americans read the Pearson column each day. It remains the longest-running column in the history of the United States.
In his investigative column Pearson expressed his political views. He supported the civil rights movement and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; he opposed McCarthyism and the excesses of the House Un-American Committee.
In his early years Pearson served with the American Friends Service Committee directing post–World War I efforts at rebuilding Serbia. After World War II he was primarily responsible for the creation of the “Friendship Train,” a program that raised many millions of dollars for food and medicine for war-ravaged European countries. For his humanitarian efforts Pearson was awarded the French Legion of Honour, the Medal of St. Olav by Norway, and the Star of Italian Solidarity.
Coauthor Ms. McCubbin spends a great deal of time in Saudi Arabia where her husband is employed, perhaps explaining why she was so ignorant of Mr. Pearson’s remarkable accomplishments. Mr. Blaine has less excuse; surely one may assume that he actually read the book before it was published. But the fact checkers at the publisher, if there were any, have much to answer for.
The author’s dismissal of Pearson, while quite extraordinary, is outdone by the assertion that Pearson was incorrect about the conduct of the Secret Service agents. On June 18, 1964, James J. Rowley, the chief of the United States Secret Service, testified before the Warren Commission. That was forty-six years before The Kennedy Detailwas published, allowing a good period of time to review the record. The transcript of that testimony appears in Volume V of the twenty-six volumes that Blaine claimed he was familiar with.114
J. Lee Rankin, counsel to the Warren Commission, began the questioning regarding the drinking agents:
Mr. Rankin: Did you learn in connection with the trip when the assassination occurred that certain of the Secret Service agents had been in the press club and what is called the Cellar, at Fort Worth, the night before? Mr. Rowley: Well, that came to my attention through a broadcast that Mr. Pearson made, that the agents were inebriated the night before at the Fort Worth Press Club. I immediately dispatched Inspector McCann to Fort Worth to investigate the report, and to interview the agents.
Neither the authors nor Rowley had gotten it right. Pearson’s article was syndicated, not broadcast, and he reported as fact that the agents had been drinking and added that “one of them” had been said to have been inebriated.
Rankin asked Rowley what he had discovered; Rowley replied:
“I learned that there were nine agents involved at the Press Club. And I might say this—the agents on duty throughout that day had no opportunity to eat. When they arrived at Fort Worth, they were informed that there was a buffet to be served at the Fort Worth Club. This is what I ascertained in personal interviews. Upon going over there, they learned there was no buffet, and some of them stayed for a drink. Three, I think, had one scotch, and others had two or three beers. They were in and out—from the time they arrived, I would say roughly around 12:30, until the place closed at 2 o’clock.”
They went to a bar after midnight in search of a buffet, stayed for one and one half hours at t
he bar drinking, and truthfully told their supervisor how little they drank, and their supervisor accepted their statements.
Rowley continued:
“Now, after that some of them went to the Cellar. This is a place that does not serve alcoholic beverages. They went there primarily, I think, out of curiosity, because this was some kind of a beatnik place where someone gets up and recites, or plays guitar.”
Perhaps the agents thought it appropriate to drink in violation of the rules of their service until two o’clock in the morning, when they had crucial roles starting in a few hours to protect the president in a very charged environment. The context here is relevant. Adlai Stevenson, having recently been attacked in Dallas, had cautioned the president about visiting that city; newspaper advertisements had condemned the president and posters stating that he was “Wanted for Treason” were being circulated.
The Cellar originally opened as a speakeasy during Prohibition, is listed as a bar in directories in Fort Worth, and publishes the price of beer and well drinks on the Internet. Perhaps Rowley was correct and that no drinks were served at the Cellar that morning, and the agents, forced to leave the bar where they had been drinking until it closed, had sought to listen to folk music.
Rankin then asked if the agents had violated any Secret Service regulations.
Mr. Rowley: Yes, there was a violation. At that time there was a section in our manual in effect that said that during—
Mr. Rankin: Will you give us first the number?
Mr. Rowley: Section 10.
Mr. Rankin: Is that chapter 1, page 7?
