Sunday, May 6, 2012

Secret Service 'Hookergate' scandal--shades of November 22, 1963

The scandal from early April involving an advance team of Secret Service agents of the Protective Research Section (PRS) that has the duty of protecting the President of the United States, the Vice-President and other members of the government and presidential candidates, is not the first time misconduct by PRS agents has brought scandal to the agency. Initially it involved 11 agents who brought prostitutes to their rooms and drank heavily when their mission there was to scout out advance security arrangements for a state visit by President Obama. Then it was learned that 5 members of the U.S. Army, "special operations forces", who down there for the same purpose, where also involved. All 11 were sent back to the states, and as bureaucracies do, the Secret Service downplayed the severity of this breach of regulations and total disregard for the important nature of their assigned mission by calling it "misconduct", and downplaying the role of these agents, saying that they were "special agents and Uniformed Division Officers" and that "none were directly assigned to protect Obama". Really? None of these guys were part of the PRS? No PRS people were part of the advance team? This is deliberately worded ambiguously, so it could mean that no member of the president's personal body guards was involved in 'Hookergate' or it could mean none of the Protective Research Section members were in the Hotel Caribe, that would seem to fly in the face of this from the SS's own website:

"In general, for protective visits, teams of Secret Service personnel travel in advance and conduct site surveys, which assess needs for manpower, equipment, hospitals and evacuation routes for emergencies. Fire, rescue and other public service personnel in the community are alerted.

Before a protectee arrives at any site, a lead advance agent coordinates all law enforcement representatives participating in the visit. Intelligence information is discussed and emergency options are outlined. Prior to the arrival of the protectee, checkpoints are established and access to the secured area is limited.

The assistance of the military, federal, state, county and local law enforcement, and the public safety organizations is a vital part of the entire security operation..."

The Secret Service as an agency was part of the Treasury Department, it's main function is to fight counterfeiting of paper currency, or at least it was. The Protective Research Section is the area with the Secret Service (SS) that has responsibility for protection the president, vice-president and other government VIPs.. After the 9/11 "terrorist attacks", Congress created the Committee for State Security, oops, I mean Department of Homeland Security or DHS (always get those two mixed up) the Secret Service was moved to DHS, along with Immigration and Naturalization ServiceCustoms Bureau and Border Patrol (which were all part of the Department of Justice) to create a super police/intelligence agency.

Representative Dan Issa (R-CA), a right-wing reactionary who said Barack Obama was the most corrupt president in U.S. history (I guess he never heard of Ulysses Grant, Warren G. Harding, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton or the Bush family) said a few days after news of 'Hookergate' broke that this probably wasn't the first time something like this (Secret Service misconduct on a protection assignment) had happened:

""The investigation will not be about the 11 to 20 or more involved, it will be about how did this happen and how often has this happened before," Issa told CBS. "Things like this don't happen once if they didn't happen before."

Issa was more right than he knew. Before a dozen SS men and (at first reported to be 5, now apparently 12) U.S. military members were implicated in dereliction of duty bringing prostitutes to their rooms in Cartegena, Columbia where they were supposed to be preparing security for the President of the United States visit (to a country that is host to a variety of murderous cocaine cartels), and drinking heavilythey were doing it as far back as the Clinton Administration:

"The agency is looking into whether agents and White House staffers went to a Moscow night club 'known for its sexually charged atmosphere' prior to Clinton's trip to Russia in 2000, and whether personnel travelling with Clinton in 2009 partied at a strip club in Buenos Aires, Argentina, CBS News reports.

This comes after yesterday's news that agents may have visited a strip club in El Salvador before a presidential trip in March 2011. The scandal began earlier this month with allegations that agents had paid for prostitutes in Cartegena, Columbia, during President Barack Obama's recent visit there.

Reacting to the new reports of misconduct Friday morning, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) told CBS's 'This Morning', ' This culture can't persist. Not only for the reputation of the United States but also for the protection of the president'".


Senator Grassley spoke to the heart of the matter, about the protection of the president. Congressman Issa didn't talk about the most important instance of "something like this" happening before; that is the late night of November 21st and early morning of November 22, 1963.

President John F. Kennedy was on a political swing through Texas on those two days, lured there by his former Secretary of the Navy, John B. Connally (the man who had placed LBJ's name in nomination at the 1960 Democratic Convention in Los Angeles and Lyndon B. Johnson ally) who had resigned in December 1961 to run for governor of Texas in 1962. It was Connally who controlled the routes and destinations in each city JFK visited and laid out the route in Dallas.On the 9th of November (9/11 or 11/9) 1963, a conversation was recorded in the apartment of one Willie Somersett in Miami, Florida, who was a union organizer and informant for the police, with a man named Joseph Milteer who was an out and out fascist, a member of the Minutemen, the National States Rights Party and the White Citizens Council. Milteer  discussed how a plan to murder President Kennedy was "in the works", and how it would be done from an office building by a sniper and how someone would be caught quickly to throw the public off. This tape was immediately given by Miami PD to both the Secret Service and the FBI. President Kennedy drove in a motorcade through Tampa, Florida the morning of Monday, November 18, 1963 and then flew to Miami for an afternoon speech. The motorcade through Miami was cancelled and JFK flew by helicopter from the airport directly to his speaking engagement at the Americana Hotel in Bal Harbor. While the motorcade went through Tampa, SS agents were riding on the rear bumper of the 1961 Lincoln convertible presidential limousine, code named Lancer. You see in that link that one is to the right of JFK's left elbow, in sunglasses, and the other is crouched, in the photo he appears to be in the middle of the SS follow up car but is actually on the step on the left rear of the car holding onto the handhold on the trunk. This was not done in Dallas.

The Miami Plot to kill JFK was not the first one of that time period that was plotted or known about; nor was the drinking and carousing in Fort Worth November 21/22 1963 the first instances reported about JFK's "protection" detail. A Secret Service agent named Abraham Bolden tried to tell the Warren Commission (WC) of a plot to murder President Kennedy in Chicago on November 2, 1963 while JFK was scheduled to attend the Army vs. Air Force academies game at Soldier Field. Bolden said the Chicago SS office received a teletype from the FBI about a plot by a four man hit squad "from a Cuban dissident group" (Alpha 66?) armed with high-powered rifles. According investigative journalist Edwin Black the SS arrested two men, but they were released. When Bolden telephoned WC chief counsel J. Lee Rankin, he was arrested by the SS and sent back to Chicago, tried on trumped up charges of discussing a bribe with known counterfeiters, convicted and sent to prison. Bolden had been an Illinois State trooper whom President Eisenhower had selected for the Secret Service. He had been instrumental in busting two counterfeiting rings. JFK had personally selected him to be part of the White House detail, to try to integrate the all-white detail and Bolden was resented for it, and for his complaining about segregated housing accommodations on trips and for the "heavy drinking by agents assigned to protect the president" (sounds like the guys on advance trips for Obama's security, who bragged about it). The teletype disappeared from files, the FBI (no doubt on Hoover's orders) denied one was ever sent, and like so much other evidence in the murder of John F. Kennedy, it just disappeared. The president's trip to Chicago was cancelled, and various reasons were given, the "cold" excuse of October 1962, the assassination of South Vietnam's president Diem and his brother on November 1st in a CIA backed coup, ect.

The fact is, there was a plot to murder President Kennedy in Chicago, and they had an "Oswald" like patsy set up for it named Thomas Arthur Vallee who was as carefully framed as Harvey Oswald was in Dallas (and New Orleans). If the assassination had happened there, we'd be talking about Thomas Arthur Vallee like we do about "Lee Harvey Oswald" today. There was a patsy ready for the Tampa/Miami plot (scroll down to November 2) against JFK too:

"Officials from Florida law enforcement and the Secret Service, supported by newspaper files and declassified CIA and FBI documents, reveal that the Tampa  attempt to kill JFK shares a dozen striking parallels to what happened in Dallas four days later. They include a young male suspect was a former defector with links to both the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and Russia, just like Lee Harvey Oswald. As in Dallas, JFK's Tampa motorcade also included a hard left turn in front of a tall red-brick building with many unguarded windows--a key site that officials feared might be used by snipers to target JFK.

"Robert Kennedy kept it secret until his death in 1968. The Secret Service, FBI, CIA, and other agencies have similarly maintained silence about it".

And the Secret Service went so far to cover up that fact (and their agents excessive drinking habits to boot) that they framed a fellow agent who tried to blow the whistle on this scam. Nothing about the Chicago plot was passed to any authority in Dallas, not the SS office there, not to the FBI, not to the Dallas Police Department nor the Dallas County Sheriff's Office. For that matter, it appears that nothing about the Miami plot was passed on, and the hard drinking White House Detail didn't pass on any info about even the Miami plot. SS Chief James J. Rowley would later tell the Warren Commission that they didn't keep Joseph Milteer under constant surveillance because they didn't have the manpower. Really? A guy that's on tape with foreknowledge of a plot against the president's life, and you couldn't call in regular SS agents off counterfeiting duty, or ask the FBI for men, or the military, or the Miami PD or county sheriff's office? They interview Ted Nugent for public comments but can't follow these guys?

When President Kennedy's plane landed in Fort Worth on Thursday, November 21, 1963 he had already been in San Antonio (the only major Texas city to vote a majority from him in the 1960 election) and Houston. While in Houston, the president attended a dinner in honor of Rep. Albert R. Thomas, which was the reason for a trip to Texas to begin with, discussed in April 1963. JFK arrived at the Hotel Texas in Fort Worth at 11:50 p.m. that night, November 21st. According to Madeleine Brown the mistress of then Vice-President (and back to when he was "elected" U.S. Senator in 1948) Lyndon Baines Johnson, there was a party thrown at the Dallas residence of oil multi-millionaire Clint Murchison (who owned the Dallas Cowboys NFL franchise) that same night. Around approximately 1 a.m. on November 22nd LBJ arrived. Also in attendance were oil multi-millionaire H.L. Hunt (who owned the AFL franchise Kansas City Chiefs, who until that year had been the Dallas Texans-unlike Murchison the team is still owned by his family), John J. McCloy (Rockefeller front man and future Warren Commission member), LBJ aide Cliff Carter, George R. Brown (of the infamous Brown & Root, later Kellogg, Brown &Root Halliburton subsidiary) who was Rep. Albert Thomas' college roommate at Rice University, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (flown in and out of Dallas that night by FBI plane), Richard M. Nixon (in Dallas as a lawyer forced by his boss to attend a bottler's convention on behalf of their firm's client, PepsiCo), Charles Cabell (a former general and former CIA deputy director for covert ops fired by JFK two years before along with CIA Director Allen Dulles and D.D. Richard Bissell for the failed Bay of Pigs invasion), Earle Cabell brother of Charles who happened to be mayor of Dallas at the time, John Connally, Bill Decker who was Sheriff of Dallas County, W.O. Bankston who was a partner of Decker in illegal slot machines, Malcom "Mac" Wallace who was a killer for LBJ (see murders of John Kinser and Henry Marshall), Carlos Marcello the Louisiana and Texas mafia boss (for whom David Ferrie worked and who would be with Marcello in a New Orleans court room the next day), Joe Civello the Dallas underboss for Marcello. Quite a rogues gallery. According to Madeleine Brown, H.L. Hunt and Lyndon Johnson "controlled what happened to Kennedy that day".

When Vice President Johnson arrived, he Murchison and several others went into a conference room, and when they emerged Madeleine Brown said Johnson told her "after tomorrow those goddamn Kennedy's will never embarrass me again-that's not a threat, that's a promise". According to author Russ Baker in his book "Family of Secrets" George Herbert Walker Bush, who was running for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate against incumbent Democrat Ralph Yarborough (a liberal, he and LBJ hated each other) and whom Yarborough would defeat by 12.5%; was in Dallas the evening of November 21st, 1963 . Yarborough was riding in the V.P.'s car with Claudia "Lady Bird" Johnson between he and LBJ in the Dallas motorcade. Bush was giving a speech at the Dallas Sheraton Hotel to the American Association of Oil Drilling Contractors, he was with millionaire Joe Zeppa, who founded Tyler, Texas based Delta Drilling Company, one of the world's largest contract drillers, with operations around the world. Baker makes a convincing case that Bush and Zeppa stayed the night of November 21st at the Sheraton. Zeppa had a private plane that according to a self-serving "letter" that appears only in Barbara Bush's "memoir", he let them use. There is some speculation that a photograph in Dealey Plaza taken moments after the shots were fired is of George Herbert Walker Bush in front of the Texas School Book Depository. In any event, G.H.W. Bush was a lifelong CIA case officer, and he lied to the Senate in his confirmation hearings when Gerald Ford appointed him CIA Director, and he was mentioned in an FBI memo by none other than J. Edgar Hoover. The only other George Bush in the CIA then was a George Wilson Bush who was basically a clerk and filer, and left the agency shortly after to go to work for the Social Security Administration. He said he was never briefed about Cubans or any other subject by the FBI, nor would be any reason for him to be.

While the party broke up after the big shots in Murchison's house in Dallas left the conference room, a dozen Secret Service agents were out drinking, first at the Fort Worth Press Club and then at a dive called The Cellar owned by one Pat Kirkwood. One stayed out as late as 5 a.m. According to the Secret Service manuel as it existed in November 1963, drinking while in travel status was grounds for "removal" (i.e. being fired) from the Service. According to Kirkwood:

"About 3:30 in the morning, these Secret Service men were sitting around giggling about how the firemen were guarding the president over at the Hotel Texas...those guys were bombed. They were drinking pure Everclear (alcohol)."  (quoted from Vincent Palamara's book "Survivors Guilt")


Sounds like the guys who were supposed to be  President Obama's advance security arrangement. They'd hit the bars and the whorehouses bragging "we work for Obama, we're here to protect him". Yeah, right.

These 12 men out drinking the early morning hours of November 22, 1963, while they left Fort Worth firemen to do their job and protect the President of the United States are listed here under III. Three of them denied doing an drinking while they were out (sure they didn't), and four (Glenn A. Bennett, John D. Ready, Clint Hill--Jackie Kennedy's personal bodyguard and Paul E. Landis--the one who was out until 5 a.m. who was also part of the First Lady's detail) had, as Palamara says "critical duties in the Secret Service follow up car, directly behind JFK's limousine". Two agents who were sent there as "advance men", like the agents in Cartegena, Columbia, were out drinking late: Winston G. Lawson who arrived on Tuesday, November 12 and rode in the lead car in the motorcade with Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry; and David B. Grant who arrived Monday November 18 after President Kennedy's plane left Miami to return to Washington. None of the Vice President's detail was out drinking. In this famous photograph by Associated Press photographer James W. Altgens, you see the agents on the running board of the 1956 Cadillac SS followup car doing nothing as JFK clenches his hands and his arms fly up after being shot. There is a through-and-through bullet hole in the windshield from a frontal shot visible just under the cuff of his left shirt sleeve. Two agents are staring behind them, one is looking off to his right, and agent Hill (in sunglasses) is looking into JFK's limo. The police motorcycle riders are looking at JFK, knowing something is wrong, but Agent Roy Kellerman in the front passenger seat of Lancer sits on his ass doing nothing to protect "The Client" as they refer to the president. Between the two motorcycle officers you see the Lincoln convertible carrying the Johnsons and Senator Yarborough, what is notable is that behind their car the doors are opening as the V.P.'s SS detail is getting out of the closed car to hustle to Johnson's car and cover him, recognizing that shots are being fired. Again, none of Lyndon Johnson's protection detail were out drinking that morning. The men trusted to protect John F. Kennedy's life had been out drinking, and joking about it; and it shows in their lack of response (except Kellerman and William Greer hadn't been drinking either).

Greer actually comes to a stop on Elm Street, right about where the concrete steps lead up to the top of what would become known as the "Grassy Knoll", and turns the front wheels to the left. Witnesses and pictures capture the brake lights. Greer looks back over his right shoulder not once, but twice, and only after seeing JFK's head hit in the right temple and a baseball size hole blown out the back of his skull does he accelerate and get the car and it's occupants out of the ambush zone. Clint Hill has finally gotten off the running board of the follow up car and climbs onto the back of Lancer as Jackie is frantically scooping brain tissue and bone off of the trunk lid and trying to hold her husbands head together as his body lays on her lap. She would later hand these fragments to a doctor in the ER at Parkland hospital. Kellerman would testify that he said "we're hit, let's get out of here" but still never got off his ass to scramble over the seats and cover the president. No one but Hill moved, and he moved too late. Jackie Kennedy said "I don't know what was the matter with that driver".

Emory Roberts was the agent who was in charge of those in the SS follow up car. At Love Field airport he ordered agent Don Lawton away from JFK's car much to Lawton's disgust (Vincent Palamara, the foremost authority on the United States Secret Service, had for some time thought this was Henry Rybka, came to realize that it was Lawton as he states in this video). He also ordered the agents on the SS followup car not to move while shots were being fired at the President of the United States in Dealey Plaza. This raises the question of why agents, whose sworn duty, whose whole reason for being in the Protective Research Section and being with JFK was to protect his life at all costs, including the cost of their own, would obey such an illegal, immoral and treasonous order. Yet they did. It goes to the heart of the matter, why would these agents violate SS rules that were grounds for dismissal by going out and drinking (heavily, contrary to their self-serving statements and the lies of SS chief James J. Rowley who said they were able to fully carry out their duties)? Why would they laugh about their dereliction of duty and the fact that Fort Worth firemen were doing their job? And why did Rowley not punish any of them, the men who broke rules that should have gotten them fired, the men who were responsible for letting President Kennedy be murdered by their dereliction of duty? Rowley said he did not punish them "for fear it would place an undeserved stigma on them". Huh? Undeserved? This is the kind of bullshit that has been pedaled by the government and Warren Commission apologists since the shots were fired on November 22, 1963. Now a self-serving book that puts out the same lies that the PRS agents in Dallas at first refuted, that President Kennedy was contemptuous of the agents, that he ordered them off the back of the car, that he ordered motorcycle police to stay back, etc, is out by retired SS agent Gerald Blaine called The Kennedy Detail. Retired agent Clint Hill put another self-serving book called Mrs. Kennedy and Me. If you want to read a truthful book by a former Secret Service agent, read The Echo from Dealey Plaza by Abraham Bolden.

In the current scandal, at least 8 agents have been fired from the service for their misconduct (to put it mildly) while on advance work to establish security for President Obama. Not after the murder of President Kennedy though. It is my opinion that at least 3 of the PRS agents that were in Dealey Plaza were part of the conspiracy to murder JFK: Emory Roberts, William Greer and Roy Kellerman (Palamara calls Kellerman a buffoon and lists a quote from Lyndon Johnson saying that Kellerman was "dumb as an ox" while questioning the intelligence of other PRS agents (the prostitute who got the SS caught in "Hookergate" said the guy she "slept" with was a fool); I take it a step further and say Kellerman sat on his ass because it was his role to). Lack of character is one thing, as the agents in Columbia (and El Salvador, and Russia) showed, but treason is another. The Secret Service allowed a plan laid out by the Governor of Texas, John Connally, to remain in place, even though it violated all Secret Service rules about speed of the car and the slow down for the crazy dog leg through Dealey Plaza and did so after a plot was uncovered to murder JFK in Chicago and Miami weeks and even days before this; and allowed open windows all along the route, not just in Dealey Plaza. The agents in Dallas committed treason; and received no punishment whatsoever. What a surprise.