Forty-four years after it happened, details continue to come to light about the assassination and the presidency of John F. Kennedy.
World Net Daily has a story of more intrigue: an attempted whistle-blower in the form of a secret service agent; the agent's imprisonment; the recanting of the testimony of a key witness against the agent; and, the story of another November plot to assassinate JFK.
From JFK assassination plot uncovered in Chicago?:
Ex-Secret Service agent reveals tip caused president to change travel plans 3 weeks before Dallas shootingMore food for thought for both those interested in full disclosure of the JFK story's details and JFK conspiracy theorists.
Former agent Abraham Bolden, 72, told Chicago ABC affiliate, WLS-TV, Kennedy was waved off from a much-publicized visit to Chicago on Nov. 2, 1963, to attend the Army-Air Force football game at Soldier Field and ride in a parade after the Secret Service received a report from a motel manager who told of seeing several automatic weapons with telescopic sights on the bed of a room rented to several Cuban nationals. They had an outline of the route Kennedy was to follow from O'Hare airport that would take his motorcade past the motel. The route had been printed in Chicago newspapers.
Bolden, a former Illinois state trooper, was the first black agent to protect a president.
The Secret Service was already uneasy about the presidential visit because an outspoken critic of the president, Thomas Vallee, had arranged to take off work for Kennedy's visit. Vallee was arrested before the planned visit with an M1 rifle, a handgun and 3,000 rounds of ammunition in his possession.
News of the Cuban nationals triggered an investigation but, Bolden charges, the surveillance was mishandled and the Cuban suspects disappeared and were never identified.
"No one was sent to the room to fingerprint it or get an ID. The case was lost and that was the end of it," he said.
The day of the planned flight from Washington, D.C., with a suspected Cuban hit team somewhere in Chicago, the Secret Service urged a change of plans.Bolden tried to come forward at the time, but his story about the assassination attempt and the bungling by officials was overshadowed by another story: that of a secret service agent arrest for bribery.
"The morning of the game, the special agent in charge of the Chicago office called the White House and recommended the president cancel his trip to Chicago," Bolden said.
News reports at the time blamed the change in plans on illness and a diplomatic crisis. South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem was assassinated in Saigon on that same day.
But Bolden told WLS-TV neither illness nor crisis were the reason plans were changed – JFK stayed away from Chicago because of the suspected assassination plot.
It was hard for Bolden to make much noise from a prison cell.
Following Kennedy's murder in Dallas three weeks later, Bolden said he tried to inform the Warren Commission of the Chicago plot and misconduct by Secret Service agents, including on-duty drunkenness, but his efforts were thwarted when he was arrested, prosecuted and sentenced to prison for soliciting a bribe from a counterfeiter.This story is an illustration of the times: with so many sources of media available to people--the Internet and blogosphereare bit two--it's hard to imagine the story staying out of the public eye today.
Bolden, who served six years, claims he was set up to silence his criticism of agents' behavior and is hoping to clear his name after the main witness against him recanted his testimony.
The same media voices who chastise the blogosphere as some sort of irresponsible "Wild West" environment are the same ones who left this story unreported for years.
There's a difference between the media of 1963 and the media of 2007.
It's the difference between having 5 or 6 points of view and having a choice of thousands.
Given his choice between the sanctimonious gatekeepers of Traditional Media and today's Internet news resources, Abraham Bolden would probably cast his vote for the "Wild West".
by Mondoreb
[hat tip: pat]
[image:prisonplanet]
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