JFK & the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters (121 page)

“b) After this brief encounter, the man in the plaid shirt turned and walked back around the east side of the fence and out of Ed’s view (solid black line on Photo 23).

“c) The police officer ‘F’ (Photo 23), who had been standing at the east end of the fence, followed the man in the plaid shirt as he walked around the east side of the fence” (
Beyond the Fence Line,
p. 32).

The “suit man” walked over to the “railroad man” a final time, spoke with him briefly, and returned to the fence where he bent over, picked something up, and looked over the fence. Hoffman then saw a puff of smoke by the “suit man,” after which the “suit man” turned suddenly with a rifle in his hands. The “suit man” ran to the “railroad man,” tossed the rifle to him, then walked casually back alongside the fence until a police officer came quickly around the fence and confronted him with a revolver. (This is not the officer who was at the east end of the fence before who, unlike the officer coming around the fence, had not been wearing a hat [
Beyond the Fence Line,
p. 33].)

To return to the question, how could the man Officer Joe Marshall Smith confronted, who he said “had on a sports shirt and sports pants,” have been the “suit man” Ed Hoffman was watching?

After the shooting, Officer Smith came around the fence at the same point where Hoffman’s “man in a plaid shirt” had been just moments before. “The man in a plaid shirt” may be the man in “a sports shirt and sports pants” who Smith said showed him Secret Service credentials. Officer Smith may have then confronted a moment later “the suit man,” merging the two men in his memory in an interview fifteen years later (
Conspiracy,
p. 50).

Other witnesses said they encountered plainclothesmen behind the fence who showed them Secret Service identification. “The man in a plaid/sports shirt,” like “the suit man,” would likely have had such Secret Service credentials as cover in case he was challenged.

[
270
]. CIA Memorandum from Sidney Gottlieb, Chief, TSD [Technical Services Division], to Carl E. Duckett, DDS&T [Director, Directorate of Science and Technology], May 8, 1973. CIA’s “Family Jewels,” pp. 215, 218. Available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/ NSAEBB/NSAEBB222/family_jewels_full_ocr.pdf. I am grateful to Peter Dale Scott for alerting me to this item in the “Family Jewels.”

[
271
]. Author’s interview of Abraham Bolden, July 13, 2003.

[
272
]. For the preceding analysis, as well as this book as a whole, I am especially grateful for the work and inspiration of Vincent Salandria, who has long emphasized the importance of the government’s ignoring the evidence of phony Secret Service agents in Dealey Plaza. In his landmark speech to the Coalition on Political Assassinations (COPA), given on November 20, 1998, Salandria stated: “We know from the evidence that at the time of and immediately after the assassination, there were persons in Dealey Plaza who were impersonating Secret Service agents. This was clear evidence of both the existence of a conspiracy and the commission of the crime of impersonating federal officers. But our government showed no interest in pursuing this compelling evidence of the existence of a conspiracy nor in prosecuting the criminals who were impersonating federal officers. In refusing to pursue the evidence of conspiracy and in failing to pursue the criminals who were impersonating federal officers, the Warren Commissioners, their staff, the Attorney General’s Office, and the FBI became accessories after the fact and abetted the killers.” Vincent J. Salandria,
False Mystery: An Anthology of Essays on the Assassination of JFK
, edited and published by John Kelin (1999), p. 114.

[
273
].
Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1961-1963, Volume VI: Kennedy-Khrushchev Exchanges
(Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1996), pp. 309-11.

[
274
]. Schlesinger,
Robert Kennedy,
p. 501.

[
275
]. Guthman and Shulman,
Robert Kennedy in His Own Words
, p. 338. JFK had even suggested to RFK that he, rather than Foy Kohler, should consider becoming ambassador to the Soviet Union—after first learning Russian. RFK said no, explaining later to an interviewer: “In the first place I couldn’t possibly learn Russian, because I spent ten years learning second-year French. And secondly, for the first couple of months I might have done something; but after that I don’t think it’s my forte.” Ibid., p. 339. The larger problem was that JFK needed RFK, the one person he could totally trust, almost everywhere in a government that was increasingly resistant to the president’s policies.

[
276
]. Kohler to Secretary of State, from Moscow, October 10, 1963, 6:00 p.m. National Security Files, Box 184, JFK Library. USSR: Khrushchev Correspondence, Vol. IV-0, 6/7/63—12/9/63. I am grateful to Stephen Plotkin, Senior Archivist at the JFK Library, and his staff for finding, copying, and sending to me the entire file covering the paper trail of the State Department’s ending of the Kennedy-Khrushchev correspondence.

[
277
].
FRUS, 1961-1963,
vol. VI, p. 310.

[
278
]. Ibid.

[
279
]. Memorandum to Mr. Bundy from Mr. Klein. National Security Files, Box 184, JFK Library. USSR: Khrushchev Correspondence, Vol. IV-0, 6/7/63—12/9/63.

[
280
]. “Memo for Record,” The White House, December 9, 1963, with the typed initials “BKS.” National Security Files, Box 184, JFK Library. USSR: Khrushchev Correspondence, Vol. IV-0, 6/7/63—12/9/63.

[
281
]. Ibid.

[
282
]. Beschloss,
Crisis Years
, p. 663.

[
283
]. Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali,
“One Hell of a Gamble”: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy
,
1958-1964
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), p. 339.

[
284
]. Vladimir Semichastny to Nikita S. Khrushchev, October 2, 1963, SVR [Archive of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service]. Cited by Fursenko and Naftali,
“One Hell of a Gamble,”
pp. 339, 401.

[
285
]. Fursenko and Naftali,
“One Hell of a Gamble,”
pp. 339, 401.

[
286
]. From their research in the Soviet archives for their book
“One Hell of a Gamble”
, Fursenko and Naftali reported no further messages after Kennedy initiated, and Khrushchev approved, the early fall 1963 reopening of their back channel. Are there perhaps more Kennedy–Khrushchev exchanges buried in the Soviet archives that would add still another chapter to this story?

[
287
]. Penn Jones, Jr.,
Forgive My Grief III
(Midlothian, Tex.: Midlothian Mirror, 1969), p. 37.

[
288
]. Roger Craig,
When They Kill a President
(unpublished manuscript, 1971), p. 5 (emphasis in original).

[
289
]. Jones,
Forgive My Grief III
, p. 37.

[
290
]. Ibid.

[
291
]. William Manchester,
The Death of a President
(New York: Harper & Row, Popular Library, 1967), p. 37.

[
292
]. Jesse Curry,
JFK Assassination File
(Dallas: American Poster and Printing Company, 1969), p. 21. In spite of the Secret Service orders he had said he was following, Chief Jesse Curry still tried to explain away the lack of security in Dealey Plaza as “a freak of history”: “Security was comparatively light along the short stretch of Elm Street where the President was shot. In the midst of comprehensive security it seems a freak of history that this short stretch of Elm Street would be the assassination site, and that the Texas Book Depository Building was virtually ignored in the security plans for the motorcade.” Ibid.

[
293
].
Appendix to Hearings before the HSCA
, vol. 11, p. 525.

[
294
]. Ibid., p. 527.
WCH
, vol. 7, p. 579.

[
295
]. “The Secret Service’s alteration of the original Dallas Police Department motorcycle deployment plan prevented the use of maximum possible security precautions.”
Appendix to Hearings before the HSCA
, vol. 11, p. 529.

[
296
]. Ibid.
WCH
, Vol. 7, pp. 580-81.

[
297
].
WCH
, vol. 4, pp. 338-39. Winston G. Lawson stated a decade later, to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, that he had “no recall of changing plans” (for the motorcycles) at the November 21, 1963, meeting with the Dallas Police.
Appendix to Hearings before the HSCA
, vol. 11, p. 528.

[
298
]. Secret Service Final Survey Report for the November 21, 1963, visit by President Kennedy to Houston, cited in
Appendix to Hearings before the HSCA,
vol. 11, p. 529.

[
299
]. Ibid.

[
300
]. Vincent Michael Palamara,
The Third Alternative—Survivor’s Guilt: The Secret Service and the JFK Murder
(self-published, 1993), 7.
WCH
, vol. 18, pp. 734-35, 749-50. Special Agent in Charge Roberts “attempted to defend his strange actions by noting the speed of the limousine, which was actually
decelerating
from an already slow speed of 11.2 miles per hour, and the distance between his car and the limousine, which was merely a scant five feet at the most, not the ‘20 to 25 feet’ he noted in his report.”
Third Alternative
, p. 7 (emphasis in original).

[
301
]. Ibid.

[
302
]. Secret Service agent Gerald A. Behn in
WCH
, vol. 18, p. 805. The Warren Commission documents claiming Kennedy wanted no agents on his limousine then became the source for books on JFK’s death making the same claim. See, for example, Jim Bishop,
The Day Kennedy Was Shot
(New York: Bantam Books, 1975), pp. 34-35; drawing on
WCH
, vol. 18, pp. 804-5.