The person John F. Kennedy referred to as “the Jackie Robinson” of the Secret Service lastly received to testify earlier than a Congressional committee Tuesday — alleging fellow brokers had been usually drunk on the job and there was a so-called “Chicago plot” to kill the president earlier than his 1963 assassination in Dallas.
His head bowed, Abraham Bolden, 90, spoke with issue right into a microphone when he addressed the Committee on Oversight and Authorities Reform by Zoom from his dwelling in Chicago. The committee is probing the assassination of the president.
However the audio minimize off instantly as Bolden started to talk, successfully muting his testimony on the reside stream.
“On June 6, 1961, I walked into history,” stated Bolden, based on a transcript obtained by The Put up. “I was assigned to the White House detail in Washington, DC to assist in protecting the life of the president. And I never met a more human and fair-minded person than President Kennedy.”
The Trump administration launched tens of hundreds of beforehand categorized paperwork with respect to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, his youthful brother Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
Previously, Bolden claimed authorities brokers discredited him by arresting him on trumped up expenses of bribery with a purpose to forestall him from chatting with the federal Warren Fee, headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren to analyze the taking pictures in Dallas on November 22, 1963.
Along with Bolden, the committee heard from Don Curtis, a doctor at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas who was on the crew that attempted to save lots of the president’s life.
In his opening assertion he stated that the Warren Fee didn’t interview him or the opposite docs, and that the bullet wounds he noticed on Kennedy weren’t in step with the model of a lone gunman that the Warren Fee reported.
4 different witnesses additionally gave testimony throughout the second listening to of the Activity Drive on the Declassification of Federal Secrets and techniques, chaired by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), which begins Tuesday.
Douglas Horne, a former Assassination Information Overview employees member, stated medical data and post-mortem pictures are lacking as are different key paperwork.
Bolden, a former freeway patrolman and Chicago-based Secret Service agent, was the primary black member of the Secret Service, personally employed by Kennedy to be a part of his presidential element.
He met the previous president throughout the former president’s cease in Chicago in 1961 whereas he was guarding a basement restroom on the McCormick Place banquet corridor.
“He was serious about giving everyone equal opportunity,” Bolden stated of Kennedy in a 2008 TV interview. “He never walked by me once that he didn’t strike up a conversation.”
In his 2008 e-book, “The Echo from Dealey Plaza: The True Story of the First African American on the White House Secret Service Detail and His Quest for Justice After the Assassination of JFK,” Bolden wrote in regards to the racism he encountered from different brokers on the president’s crew, claiming they had been usually drunk on the job.
In his testimony Tuesday, he spoke about overhearing an offended 1963 assembly between Kennedy and his vice chairman Lyndon Johnson within the Oval Workplace by which Johnson accused Kennedy of dropping him from his run for president the next yr, warning the president to “‘better stop f—king with me.’”
“He was redder than a sack of beets,” Bolden stated, referring to Johnson when he stormed out of the Oval Workplace.
He additionally outlined a report he heard at a employees assembly about threats to kill Kennedy with “a high-powered rifle” at an Military-Air Drive footbal sport in Chicago on November 2, almost three weeks earlier than he was killed.
“Information that I had revealed was that some Cuban exiles were trying to assassinate the president when he came to Chicago,” Bolden stated, including that he knew from one of many company’s weekly conferences that there had been threats towards the president on the marketing campaign cease in Dallas the place was shot useless.
“That information came to me every Wednesday morning when we got a rundown in what was happening in all the other districts,” stated Bolden within the interview.
In 1964, Bolden was fired from the Secret Service after being charged with making an attempt to promote authorities secrets and techniques for a $50,000 bribe. He denied the allegations, saying that he was framed for making an attempt to show corruption inside the company.
Though his first trial resulted in a hung jury, Bolden was convicted at his second trial and sentenced to fifteen years, even after some witnesses had stated that they had been pressured into mendacity to prosecutors. On the time, the daddy of three gave piano recitals to lift cash for his authorized protection
Bolden served 39 months in federal jail, with a two-and-a-half yr probation. Throughout his time in jail, Mark Lane, an legal professional who wrote a bombshell e-book in 1966 –“Rush to Judgment” — that alleged that Kennedy’s murderer, Lee Harvey Oswald, couldn’t have acted alone, came around him in jail, he stated.
Bolden stated that whereas he was in jail, he was drugged by guards and transferred to the “psychiatry division” in order that he wouldn’t speak. “They tried to fill me with drugs,” he stated.
He was pardoned by President Biden in 2022.
“Very often, as you people know, justice takes a long time,” he advised the committee, including that he was grateful to Biden for the pardon. “Carry on, my brothers and sisters. Carry on this investigation. I truly thank you for giving me a chance to tell my story day because not too many years from now, the only thing in my pockets will be dirt. But the truth cannot die.”
