JFK & the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters by James W. Douglass

Author:James W. Douglass [Douglass, James W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orbis Books
Published: 2011-09-30T12:00:00+00:00

Bolden wondered why he had been singled out for such a special assignment. The IRS had its own black agents. Was he so brilliant that they had to recruit him from the Secret Service? He thought there was something suspicious about it all. He declined the offer.[227]

As I visited with Abraham Bolden one sunny morning in 2001 in his backyard in South Side Chicago, he straightened up from his gardening and said quietly that he thought he had been set up in mid-November 1963 to be killed.[228] As was the case for thousands of Latin American activists when they were about to be abducted and murdered, he was being positioned for his disappearance. Abe Bolden knew far too much in the days after the failed Chicago plot to kill Kennedy. Although Bolden managed to escape a Washington setup on November 17, when he returned to Chicago he was filled with apprehension. He felt something terrible was about to happen. He told both his wife and a secretary at the Secret Service office that he thought the president was going to be assassinated.[229]

On the following Friday afternoon, November 22, he went to a tavern in Chicago to interview a man about a forged check. A television set suddenly flashed the news that Kennedy had been shot. Bolden’s legs seemed to collapse. It had happened, just as he feared.[230]

When Bolden returned to his office, he raised the question with his fellow Secret Service agents about the obvious connections between the Chicago plot and the president’s murder that afternoon in Dallas only three weeks later. Most of the agents agreed that they were connected.[231] However, Special Agent In Charge Martineau was quick to shut down any office discussion linking Chicago on November 2 and Dallas on November 22. He told his staff what to believe: Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone gunman. There was no connection with Chicago. Forget November 2 in Chicago.[232]

In January 1964, the Secret Service took the extraordinary step of ordering all its agents to turn in their identification booklets for replacements. Secret Service agents carried small, passport-size booklets holding their identification, known as “commission books.” When the order came down requiring each agent to be re-photographed and provided with a newly engraved commission book, Bolden suspected that Secret Service credentials had been used as a cover device in the assassination of President Kennedy.[233] As we shall see, his suspicions would be confirmed.

Bolden continued to reflect on the president’s poor security that he had witnessed on the White House detail. He also thought about the connections between Chicago and Dallas, wondering if that information shouldn’t be shared with the Warren Commission. He bided his time, waiting for a chance to speak up on forbidden subjects. An opportunity presented itself the following spring.

On May 17, 1964, Bolden arrived in Washington, D.C., for a month-long training program at the Secret Service School. He took advantage of his first afternoon in Washington to try to contact the Warren Commission. His Secret Service superiors had anticipated his initiative.

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