Ep 66: Secret Service (Part 5)

We’ve covered most of the main points of the Secret Service as the organization relates to the JFK Assassination. But, we’ve got one story left to cover. You can’t talk about the Secret Service without covering, Abraham Bolden.

In this episode, we review Bolden’s claim that, on November 2, 1963, in addition to a potential threat from lone gunman, Thomas Arthur Vallee, there was also a failed plot against President Kennedy in Chicago by four men who had rifles . Bolden says that the Secret Service covered up the Chicago plot, and then, when he tried to come forward to the Warren Commission, he was framed for a crime, which resulted in him serving time in prison.

What is the evidence in support of Abraham Bolden’s claim, and what are the implications if Bolden is telling the truth?

Background

In April of 1961, Illinois State Highway Patrolman, Abraham Bolden, was working the security detail for President Kennedy.[1] Bolden had an opportunity to meet the President and when he did, Kennedy personally hired Bolden to be the first black agent on the White House Security Detail.[2] JFK even introduced Bolden to every member of his cabinet and said QUOTE “This is Mr. Bolden. I brought him here to make history and to open a door for his people.”[3]

While the president was fond of Agent Bolden, his fellow White House Detail agents were not. Once Bolden was on the job, racist Secret Service agents bullied him viciously.[4] So, it's no surprise then that just thirty days after joining the White House Detail, Agent Bolden returned to Chicago to continue his work with the Secret Service.[5]

Aside from being remembered as the Jackie Robinson of the Secret Service (a nickname given to him by the President), Bolden is best known as the Chicago Secret Service agent who tried to expose a potential assassination plot against President Kennedy in Chicago, just a few weeks before the president was murdered in Dallas. But, there are others who don’t believe Bolden’s story and view him as an attention seeking criminal who was highly influenced by conspiracy theorists.

On November 2, 1963, President Kennedy planned to attend the Army-Air Force football game at Soldier Field in Chicago. As a local Secret Service agent, Abraham Bolden was part of that security detail. Ultimately, at the last possible moment before Air Force One was scheduled to take off from Washington, President Kennedy’s trip to Chicago was canceled.[6] The real reason for the president calling off the trip is unknown. This is because the president told his press secretary, Pierre Salinger, that he had a cold. But, it’s also true that the Diem brothers had both just been assassinated in Vietnam, sparking a geopolitical incident.[7] And, as you’ll hear, there was potentially also a threat against President Kennedy’s life in Chicago.

4 Gunman Threat From the FBI

Agent Bolden says that before the president arrived, Secret Service Chief James Rowley called Chicago Special Agent in Charge Maurice Martineau to let him know about a specific threat that the FBI had shared, involving a four man team of gunmen who planned to kill President Kennedy with high-powered rifles.[8]Martineau relayed that threat to Chicago Secret Service agents on Wednesday, October 30th, 1963.[9] Bolden claims that the FBI found out about the shooting from an informant named Lee.[10] The FBI did not provide any additional information about this “Lee” informant. Of course, it’s easy to speculate that it was Lee Harvey Oswald, but there is no way to know for sure that it was.

According to Agent Bolden, on Thursday, October 31st, the day after he learned of the potential four man threat, a landlady at a boarding house on the North Side of Chicago called the FBI to tell them that four men were renting rooms from her - and that she was alarmed because she had seen four rifles with telescopic sights in one of the rooms. She also saw a newspaper sketch of the president’s motorcade route.[11] Special Agent in Charge Martineau then ordered 24-hour surveillance on this boarding house.[12]

Bolden says Agent Jay Stocks led the steakout. Stocks had been given photos of the four men. And when he saw two of them leaving the boarding house in a car, he followed those men into a dead-end alleyway. This made the 2 men realize that they were being followed, which caused them to flee. Eventually those two menwere taken into custody and questioned by Secret Service agents. But they refused to answer any questions. The other two men from the boarding house got away.[13]

According to Agent Bolden, Special Agent in Charge Martineau ordered all of the Chicago Secret Service agents to use special procedures when it came to the investigation of this potential assassination attempt. They were told to not prepare any documents, and instead, to provide only oral reports and written notes directly to Martineau’s secretary.[14] Bolden said that Martineau used a special Central Office Secret file number for the Chicago assassination attempt at the direction of Secret Service Chief Rowley. Bolden says he never saw the final report.[15]

Agent Bolden was in Washington from November 8 through the 11th of 1963. He had been ordered there to be offered an undercover role with the IRS for a special investigation into the tax crimes of Congressmen.[16]This IRS undercover role would require Bolden to change his identity, to the point of the IRS destroying his birth records.

Bolden turned down that undercover role with the IRS[17], but while he was in Washington, he made time to speak in person to Secret Service Chief, James Rowley. Bolden told Rowley his concerns about the poor security currently being offered to the president.[18] Bolden did not mention anything about the November 2 Chicago incident because the President was still alive and he did not realize the significance of what happened in Chicago. Chief Rowley even corroborated the fact that Bolden had spoken to him about security concerns in Washington when he testified before the Warren Commission.[19]

On the day of the assassination, Bolden began to ask questions within the Chicago Secret Service about whether the plot that was stopped on November 2nd had anything to do with what happened in Dallas. Bolden said that in response to his questions, Special Agent in Charge Martineau told all of the Chicago agents QUOTE “Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone gunman. There was no connection with Chicago. Forget November 2nd in Chicago.”[20]

In May of 1964, when the Warren Commission was in session, Agent Bolden was once again required to travel to Washington – this time for Secret Service School. While he was there, he used a White House phone to call J. Lee Rankin, the Chief Counsel of the Warren Commission. Bolden said that he wanted to tell Rankin about the plot against President Kennedy in Chicago on November 2nd. The very next day after he called J. Lee Rankin, Abraham Bolden was charged with attempting to sell a government report to a counterfeiter. Bolden pled not guilty and consistently maintained his innocence.[21]

On July 12, Bolden’s criminal jury trial concluded with a deadlock which resulted in a mistrial. But, when the prosecutor brought the case again a month later, Bolden was found guilty based on the testimony of counterfeiter, Joseph Spagnoli.[22] But, Spagnoli would later confess during his own criminal trial that he had lied about Abraham Bolden because the prosecutor, Richard Sikes, told him to.[23] Despite Spagnoli’s confession, Bolden went on to serve 3 years and 9 months in federal prison.[24]

In April of 2022, President Joe Biden pardoned Abraham Bolden, probably because of the confession by Spagnoli that he had lied about Bolden at trial.[25]

Thomas Arthur Vallee

In addition to Abraham Bolden, another name that is forever tied to the alleged November 2nd Chicago plot is ex-Marine and apparent firearms enthusiast, Thomas Arthur Vallee. The Secret Service became aware of Vallee on October 30, 1963 after the Chicago police learned that Vallee QUOTE “had made extreme comments regarding the [Kennedy] Administration”. The police also suspected that Vallee owned guns and later learned that he called off of his job on the day President Kennedy was scheduled to be in Chicago.[26]

Thomas Vallee was arrested at 9:10 in the morning on November 2nd – the day that President Kennedy had been slated to come to Chicago. The stated reason for the arrest was a traffic stop.[27] James Douglass, author of JFK and the Unspeakable, argues that the time of Vallee’s arrest as compared to the time of the announcement that president Kennedy’s trip was cancelled is important.

At 9:15 am local time, Pierre Salinger announced that the Chicago trip was canceled. Douglas argues that it is quite possible, though not proven, that the Chicago Police made the decision to arrest Vallee, who they had been following for hours overnight, after they found out that the President was not coming to Chicago.[28] The implication that Douglass is making is that the two officers shadowing Vallee were assisting a larger plot to make Vallee the patsy in Chicago, with the four gunmen noted by Bolden as the actual killers.

The two police officers who had been shadowing Vallee were intelligence officers Dan Groth and Peter Schurla.[29] Official Story critic James DiEugenio notes that Dan Groth, one of the officers who was in on the arrest of Vallee, was later part of the SWAT team that assassinated Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in 1969. Groth never had a regular police assignment, but he would travel to Washington for large blocks of time for training with the FBI and CIA. Groth always worked counter-intelligence, with an early focus on the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.[30]

After Vallee was arrested, police found a M1 rifle and 2,500 rounds of rifle ammunition at Vallee’s home.[31]He was eventually let go after being charged for carrying a concealed knife.[32]

The most notable claim about Thomas Vallee came from what Vallee told author Edwin Black in 1975 – that he had been assigned by the CIA to train Cuban Exiles to kill Fidel Castro. Vallee said that this training happened in and around Levittown, Long, Island. Notably, Vallee was discharged from the military in 1956, because he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia.[33]

Bolden Counterpoints

We covered the basics of the November 2nd Chicago plot as relayed by Abraham Bolden. But, doubters of Bolden’s story make several arguments as to why he should not be believed.

Bolden has made inconsistent statements over the years, especially about the precise flow of information into the Secret Service office about the November 2nd plot. In 1968, he told researcher Bud Fensterwald that Secret Service Chief James Rowley called Special Agent in Charge Martineau on the phone.[34] When speaking to Edwin Black in 1975, Bolden said that a call came in from the FBI in Washington to Agent Jay Stocks. In 1978, Bolden told the HSCA that a tel-ex came in from the FBI, which was followed by a call from the FBI.[35] Then, in Bolden’s 2008 book, he says that the Chicago FBI called Agent Martineau.[36] These statements are largely overlapping, but the differences in the details is not confidence inspiring.

Bolden told Bud Fensterwald that he remembered the names of the two arrested men as Bradley and Gonzalez. Both of those names are consistent with names that were also being investigated by Jim Garrison. The argument is that Bolden is just telling JFK researchers what they want to hear.[37]

On May 20, 1964, after Bolden had been charged with a crime, he gave a press conference where he claimed that he was framed, and he talks about wanting to speak to the Warren Commission. But, there is no mention of any Chicago plot from the prior November. Instead, the newspaper article only mentions how Bolden noticed excessive drinking by Secret Service agents on the White House Detail.[38] It’s not a guarantee that Bolden didn’t mention it just because it wasn’t in the story. Still, we would think that if Bolden brought up a Chicagoplot against the president, a Chicago reporter would have covered it.

There is a Warren Commission document that talks about attorney Howard Willens attempting to interview Bolden through the FBI after Bolden’s arrest. Bolden’s lawyer turned down the FBI’s request to interview Bolden out of concerns that the testimony could have a negative impact on the charges pending against Bolden at the time. The document says QUOTE “Mr. Howard (Bolden’s attorney) advised that his client, Mr. Bolden, had no specific information whatsoever concerning the actual assassination of President Kennedy. Mr. Bolden expressed agreement with his attorney’s statement on this point.”[39]

Bolden doubters point to this statement as evidence that Bolden knew nothing about a plot. But, as an attorney, I read this as Bolden’s lawyer not wanting him to talk. And, after he said he wasn’t going to talk, the Warren Commission then added in a statement in this report that Bolden endorsed the idea that he knew nothing about a Chicago plot. So much for Bolden not talking to the authorities when they still indicate that Bolden QUOTE “express[ed] agreement.”

Finally, Bolden skeptics point out that the sole evidence for the Chicago plot comes from Abraham Bolden. Special Agent in Charge Martineau denied that it happened.[40] So did Bolden’s immediate superior at Secret Service, Agent Jay Stocks.[41] Charlotte Klapowski, Agent Martineau’s secretary, told the HSCA that she had no recall about anything related to the November 2nd plot or even Thomas Valee.[42] But, to be fair, if Bolden is telling the truth, we would expect all of those people to deny it.

The closest support I could find for independent corroboration of Bolden’s story is from people who don’t remember the details. FBI agent, Thomas Coll, told author, Edwin Black, that he remembered some people being picked up related to the “Soldier Field affair,” but he said he couldn’t talk more about it.[43] Secret Service Agent Robert Motto told the HSCA that he vaguely recalled threats related to the President’s planned November 2nd visit, but he couldn’t remember the details.[44]

BOLDEN CONCLUSION

Here's what the HSCA had to say about Abraham Bolden: QUOTE

He alleged that shortly before November 2, the FBI sent a teletype message to the Chicago Secret Service office stating that an attempt to assassinate the President would be made on November 2 by a four man team using high-powered rifles, and that at least one member of the team had a Spanish sounding name. Bolden claimed that while he did not personally participate in surveillance of the subjects, he learned about [it] by monitoring Secret Service radio channels in his automobile and by observing one of the subjects being detained in his Chicago office…

The committee was unable to document the existence of the alleged assassination team. Specifically, no agent who had been assigned to Chicago confirmed any aspect of Bolden’s version. One agent did state there had been a threat in Chicago during that period, but he was unable to recall the details.[45]

The HSCA just underlined the core issue with Abraham Bolden’s story: which is that there are no other Chicago agents to clearly corroborate it. Nor are there any written reports. And Bolden wasn’t personally working on the case, he just overheard information about it. So, you can see why some people look at the Bolden claims and have their doubts. Still, it’s pretty clear at this point that Bolden was framed by Spagnoli for the crime of selling a government document. So, the question is, if the evidence shows that Abraham Bolden really was framed, for what reason would he be framed if not for the reasons he says.

The challenge with Abraham Bolden is that he does seem to be credible, but there is almost no independent evidence to support the specifics of his story. I did say almost. We do have Commission Document 460, which is a February 5, 1964 internal FBI report from Agent Dennis Shanahan about what an informant told him about what sounds like the same plot that Bolden described. The report says QUOTE

“Larry Fanning, Executive Editor, of Chicago Daily News, had previously advised that on November 2, 1963, four men were reportedly arrested in Chicago, Illinois and charged with carrying a concealed weapon. One of these individuals according to Fanning’s source, was believed to be the subject, Oswald.”[46]

The report goes on to say that the FBI had maintained a relationship with Fanning, with a goal of trying to identify his source for this story about four men being arrested in Chicago on November 2nd. It says QUOTE “On January 22nd, Fanning advised Agent Marlin Johnson that he looked into the matter thoroughly and there was no truth whatsoever in the story. He stated that he could not tell Agent Johnson exactly how the story originated.”[47]

So, the editor of a major Chicago newspaper was telling the FBI about a 4 person Chicago plot ON November 2nd, but the editor then follows up and says that there was no truth to what he said. And they throw Oswald into the mix for good measure. Even though this report expressly refutes what Bolden said about the 4 person plot, it says that the Editor of the Chicago Daily News came across this information and previously relayed it. So, someone must have told him this. But Fanning won’t say who told him about it and why he no longer believes it to be true.

The reason all of this matters is that if Bolden is telling the truth, it points to a similar blueprint of the assassination in Dallas: a crossfire of rifles, in a downtown area out of an office building, with a ready-made Patsy who was an ex-marine. And, if you believe Vallee, he even trained anti-castro Cubans to kill Castro.

I find the story of Abraham Bolden to be inconclusive. I don’t see why he would make it up, and it seems clear that he really was framed. Still, in my view, there is not enough other evidence to conclude with certainty that the Chicago plot happened.

NEXT TIME ON SOLVING JFK: Secret Service expert Vince Palamara joins us for a recap and rebuttals episode. And, after that, we move on to J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI.

[1] https://www.onthetrailofdelusion.com/post/paul-bleau-and-the-supposed-chicago-plot-against-jfk

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Bolden

[3] Palamara at 404 (citing letter written to him by Abraham Bolden).

[4] Palamara at 403 (citing letter written to him by Abraham Bolden). Chief among the racist bullies was agent Harvey Henderson, who was Bolden’s shift boss. Henderson told Bolden QUOTE “You’re a n_____. You were born a n______. You’re going to die a n______. So, act like a n_____.”

[5] Palamara at 404(citing letter written to him by Abraham Bolden).

[6] Douglass at 213.

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ngo_Dinh_Diem

[8] Bernard Fensterwald’s Memo of 3/29/68 re: Abraham Bolden’s Interview.

[9] James W. Douglass, JFK & the Unspeakable, at 200.

[10] Id.

[11] James W. Douglass Interview with Abraham Bolden on July 13, 2003; Douglass at 200.

[12] Id.

[13] Douglass at 201.

[14] Id. at 214; Douglass interview with Abraham Bolden, July 13, 2003;

[15] Id. at 214.

[16] Palamara at 405.

[17] Douglass at 214.

[18] Palamara at 405 ((citing letter written to him by Abraham Bolden).

[19] Warren Commission Testimony of James Rowley, 5H 454-455.

[20] Douglass interview with Abraham Bolden, July 13, 2003; Douglass at 215.

[21] Douglass at 215.

[22] Bernard Fensterwald, The Case of Secret Service Agent Abraham W. Bolden – Who Wanted to Tell the Warren Commission About a Chicago Plot to Kill President Kennedy and Was Jailed Six Years for Trying, Computers and Automation (June 1971), at 43.

[23] Testimony by Joseph Spagnoli on January 20, 1965. Appendix in Bolden Appeal, at 4-9; see also Douglass at 216.

[24] Douglass at 216.

[25] https://www.chicagotribune.com/2022/04/26/chicagoan-abraham-bolden-first-black-secret-service-agent-on-a-presidential-detail-pardoned-by-biden-nearly-60-years-after-conviction/

[26] https://www.onthetrailofdelusion.com/post/jfk-revisited-misleads-on-the-supposed-chicago-plot;https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/docid-32248573.pdf

[27] https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10448#relPageId=14&search=thomas_arthur%20vallee

[28] Id. at 213.

[29] Id.

[30] https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-reviews/jfk-and-the-unspeakable-by-james-w-douglass

[31] https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10448#relPageId=14&search=thomas_arthur%20vallee

[32] https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10448#relPageId=14&search=thomas_arthur%20vallee

[33] https://www.onthetrailofdelusion.com/post/jfk-revisited-misleads-on-the-supposed-chicago-plot

[34] https://www.onthetrailofdelusion.com/post/paul-bleau-and-the-supposed-chicago-plot-against-jfk