AGENTS: THEN AND NOW (WITH LINKS)
by Vince Palamara
John R. Simpson, involved with limo security the night of 11/22/63 and later Director
of the Secret Service (1981-1992), is now head of the U.S. Parole Commission.
Gerald W. Bechtle, a member of Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson's's detail who was stationed at the LBJ Ranch
when JFK was killed, is now on the Board of Governors for the Federal Reserve System,
reporting directly to Chairman Alan Greenspan.
Robert R. Burke, WHD advance agent for JFK's proposed Austin trip, is now Chief of
Security for the State Department & Monsanto.
Gerald S. Blaine, a member of JFK's WHD on the Texas trip, went on to
become the Director of International Security Company for ARCO
International Oil & Gas (like Burke, Blaine is part of The Overseas
Security Advisory Council and the U.S. Department of State):
http://www.state.gov/www/about_state/security/security_osac.html
Wilson "Bill" Livingood, a member of the White House Secret Service Detail from November 1963 until 1972 , is now the Sgt. at Arms of the House of Representatives---it was his voice that cries out, "Mr. Speaker, The President of the United States" before President Clinton's State of the Union speeches (he appeared on television with his own caption)! Livingood also appeared
on CBS after the bizarre1994 machine gun incident at the White House. [Livingood letter to Palamara dated 11/19/97] See http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/document091698.htm
Scroll down to the middle of this page and find out what ol' Newt Gingrich has to
say about Mr. Livingood:
http://www.wolfe.net/~danfs/newtmar.html
Livingood and Ken
Starr?:
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/Sept1998/becarefulsept10.htm
Donald J. Lawton, a member of Kennedy's White House Secret Service Detail who rode
on the rear of JFK's limousine on 11/18/63 but was relegated to Love Field on 11/22/63,
is STILL a member of the Secret Service [Lawton letter to Palamara dated 11/22/97].
A. Dale Wunderlich, a PRS agent who went to Dallas after the assassination re: investigation,
and William L. Duncan, the WHD advance agent for the Fort Worth stop, now are leaders
of an established executive protection firm: See
http://www.careerlab.com/safeteam.htm
Thomas H. Wells, a member of the "Kiddie" detail that guarded John and Caroline Kennedy,
is now a police chief in the southern United States.
http://www.wsnet.com/~aldps/directors.html
Charles T. "Chuck" Zboril, a
member of Kennedy's WHD who was on the 11/18/63 Florida trip, is now the Acting Director of Security for McCormick Place in Chicago, IL.
J. Walter Coughlin, a member of Kennedy's WHD who took part in the San Antonio leg
of the Texas tour, is now president of J. Walter Coughlin &
Associates, an international security consulting firm, headquartered in
Dallas. See
http://www.dematha.org/alum/hof/dmwaltcoughlin.htm
(His photo also at this site):
Joseph Paolella, one of the agents who talked trash on JFK to author Seymour Hersh, is now a detective (scroll about three-quarters of the way down):
http://www.wcdetective.com/academy.htm
"Tony Sherman, one of the JFK agents who talked to Hersh, is demanding an apology
from [Clinton SS director Lewis Merletti. Sherman told the Associated Press that
Merletti's letter "implies that our First Amendment rights are limited, but there's no oath [of silence] and no law, no 'Official Secrets Act'" that muzzles former Secret Service agents.
When asked about the Secret Service shush letter issued in the wake of his book,
Hersh suggested that by outing a dead president's secrets he might have put the present
administration on guard. "Why would the current head of the detail want to put his
nose in the tent?" Hersh said (before the latest Clinton sex scandal broke). "Is he
condoning coverup? Why would the Clinton White House care what happened 35 years
ago?" Two and two is always four and there are certain things that are obvious."
http://www.parascope.com/ds/papertrail/papertrail0298.htm#secret
"In private Kennedy was apparently consumed with his almost daily sexual liaisons and libertine partying,
to a degree that shocked many members of his personal Secret Service detail. The
sheer number of Kennedy's sexual partners, and the recklessness of his use of them,
escalated throughout his presidency. The women -- sometimes paid prostitutes located
by Powers and other members of the so-called Irish Mafia, who embraced and protected
the president -- would be brought to Kennedy's office or his private quarters without
any prior Secret Service knowledge... "Seventy to eighty percent of the agents thought
it was nuts,"recalled Tony Sherman, a former member of Kennedy's White House Secret
Service detail, in a 1995 interview for this book.
"Some of us were brought up the right way," Sherman added. "Our mothers and fathers
didn't do it. We lived in another world. Suddenly, I'm Joe Agent here. I'm looking
at the president of
the United States and telling myself, 'This is the White House and we protect the
White House.'"
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/bookauth/nov22.htm
Seymour Hersh's controversial book The Dark Side of Camelot ,and the December 4, 1997, ABC-TV special entitled "Dangerous World- The Kennedy Years" (based on Hersh's book) included interviews with former
Secret Service agents Joseph Paolella, Tony Sherman, Larry Newman, and Tim McIntyre (the
latter rode in the follow-up car in Dallas on 11/22/63). All four former WHD agents
expressed concern and dismay over Kennedy s dalliances with women. Tony Sherman: "I wanted out; I didn't want a part of it. I got mad I got angry at any president who doesn't treat the White House like I think he should ; Larry Newman: "It [JFK s behavior]
caused a lot of morale problems with the Secret Service, you felt impotent and you couldn't
do your job. It was frustrating" ; Joseph Paolella: [He] that the Secret Service's
socializing intensified each year of the Kennedy administration, to a point where,
by late 1963, a few members of the presidential detail were regularly remaining in
bars until the early morning hours. What about Tim McIntyre? His account is devastating
and must be read at length: His shift supervisor, the highly respected Emory Roberts,
took him aside and warned that 'you re going to see a lot of s--t around here. Stuff with the president. Just forget about it. Keep it to yourself. Don t even talk to
your wife. Roberts was nervous about it. Emory would say, McIntyre recalled with
a laugh, 'How in the hell do you know what's going on? He could be hurt in there.
What if one bites him in a sensitive area?' Roberts talked about it a lot , McIntyre said.
In McIntyre's view, a public scandal about Kennedy s incessant womanizing was inevitable.
"It would have had to come out in the next year or so. In the campaign, maybe."
McIntyre said he and some of his colleagues felt abused by their service on behalf
of President Kennedy. McIntyre said he eventually realized that he had compromised
his law enforcement beliefs to the point where he wondered whether it was "time to
get out of there. I was disappointed by what I saw" McIntyre felt this way after
having only spent a VERY brief time with JFK before the assassination (he joined the WHD in
the Fall of 1963). In addition, these feelings of anger and impotence-- especially
by Roberts (and McIntyre)-- loom large in the context of the actions and inactions of
the Secret Service on the day of the assassination.
George W. Hickey, Jr., a member of JFK's White House Secret Service Detail who rode in the follow-up car on 11/22/63, is now (as of this writing, October 1999) is reportedly quite ill. Hickey: too late in retrieving the AR-15 and in filing lawsuits--- (remember the "Mortal Error" book?)
http://www.parascope.com/articles/cnews/970930.htm
"The former Secret Service agents in charge of protecting every president from Dwight
D. Eisenhower to George Bush have asked an appeals court to block independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr from questioning current officers, warning flatly that it would lead to the death of a president, lawyers said yesterday. The dire prediction, included in a friend-of-the-court brief filed under seal on Friday, echoed the views of Secret Service Director Lewis C.Merletti, who is appealing a decision by Chief U.S. District Judge Norma Holloway Johnson ordering two officers and a Secret Service lawyer to testify in the Monica Lewinsky investigation.The arguments were much the same as made in the Justice Department brief also filed under seal on Friday on behalf of the Secret Service, but the agents hope they carry extra power because they were the ones charged with taking a bullet to protect the nation's leaders. Signing the brief were all nine living former special agents in charge of the presidential protection division,
including Clint Hill, the agent who leaped onto President John F. Kennedy's car moments after the first shot rang out in Dallas in 1963, and agentJerry Parr, who quickly shoved President Reagan into his car to escape John Hinckley Jr.'s bullets in 1981."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/service061698.htm
"This is a total embarrassment. We are all red faced about this," says Hamilton Brown,
president of the 1,400-strong Association of Former Agents of the United States
Secret Service. Mr. Brown, who also protected Kennedy, says code of silence or not,
he would have turned down Mr. Hersh's request for an interview based on the poor quality
of Hersh's information. "He kept reporting things to me that were patently false.
He keptsaying he had documentation. I told him the information was false because
I was there. At the end of our conversation, I told him never to call again," Brown says of
his conversation with Hersh.
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/1997/12/31/us/us.1.html
Rufus W. Youngblood, famous for shielding LBJ with his body after shots rang out in Dallas, passed away October 2, 1996, but gave an interesting interview back in
1992 See this link:
http://www.alumni.gatech.edu/news/alummag/spr92/rufus.html
SAIC of WHD Gerald A. "Jerry" Behn, who passed away in April 1993, and SAIC of PRS Robert I.
Bouck, as they appeared upon graduating Michigan State University. See
http://www.cj.msu.edu/~history/scrap/mscollge.html
More re: Bouck----While Air Force One was still in the air, a senior Secret Service
agent named Robert I. Bouck began disassembling yet another of the Kennedy brothers'
deep secrets -- Tandberg tape-recording systems in the Oval Office, Cabinet Room,
and the president's living quarters on the second floor of the White House. There was also
a separate Dictabelt recording system for use on the telephone lines in the president's
office and his upstairs bedroom. In the summer of 1962, John Kennedy had summoned Bouck and instructed him to install the devices and be responsible for changing the
tapes. Apparently Bouck told only two people of the system -- his immediate superior,
James J. Rowley, chief of the Secret Service, and a subordinate who
helped him monitor the equipment. It was Bouck's understanding that only two others
knew of the system while JFK was alive -- Bobby Kennedy and Evelyn Lincoln, the
president's longtime personal secretary.
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/bookauth/nov22.htm
SAIC of WHD, later Director (1973-1981), H. Stuart "Stu" Knight: http://www.cj.msu.edu/~history/scrap/knight.html
ATSAIC (Shift Leader) of the WHD Arthur L. "Art" Godfrey (Fort Worth, Austin part of Texas trip) and SA Robert A. Mampel: http://www.cj.msu.edu/~people/alumni/1949list.html
SA's Rex W. Scouten, Vincent P. Mroz, and Robert R. Lapham:
http://www.cj.msu.edu/~history/scrap/5ssmen.html
SA Kenneth S. Giannoules, on JFK's Texas trip only in Fort Worth and Austin, later became Domestic
Chief of Interpol during the Nixon era: http://www.cj.msu.edu/~history/sleuths.html
ASAIC Floyd M. Boring retired from the Secret Service as an Inspector in 1967 and
went on to found the Assoc. of Former Secret Service Agents in 1969. Believe it or
not (Orwell, are you listening?), there is a "Floyd Boring Award" given by the Treasury
Department & the Secret Service (and you thought GETTING an award for what transpired
on November 22, 1963 was
something. Well, Clint Hill and Rufus Youngblood, you've been outdone: how about an
award NAMED IN YOUR HONOR???)---
http://www.learning-for-life.org/exploring/scholarships/fboring/
Here is an excerpt:
The Floyd Boring Award
Department of the Treasury
United States Secret Service
The United States Secret Service established the Law Enforcement Assistance Award in 1972. In 1998, the award was renamed "The Floyd Boring Award." Floyd Boring, a now retired agent, was responsible for the initial organizing of the Association of Former Agents of the United States Secret Service (AFAUSSS). His personal integrity, commitment to duty, and personal convictions exemplify the tenets of the Exploring program. The purpose of this award is to recognize Explorers who assist law enforcement agencies with meaningful and exceptional service.
For more of my OWN writings on Floyd Boring,
please click here
For more on what Boring & Stu Stout did RIGHT on another November day when another
President was attacked, see
http://www.mosta.org/magazine/peril.html
and also
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/michael_patterson_4/lcoffelt.htm
(Stu Stout was also in a building on 11/22/63: the Trade Mart)
SEE ALSO:
http://www.thehistorynet.com/AmericanHistory/articles/1998/06982_text.htm
G. d'Andelot Belin, the former General Counsel and acting Secretary of the Treasury [18 H 810-815; 933-934; also 11/21/97 letter to Palamara], is now a Life Trustee, Museum of Science and the Boston Chairman, MTA Board Nominating Committee. See http://www.mta-hq.org/nominating.html
Needless to say, several of these gentlemen went on to quite prominent roles in government and into important and perhaps influential postitions in society; in some cases, much further than anyone could have imagined back in November 1963. Directly or indirectly, these men have and continue to impact our lives --- once, when serving the nation's leader. At present, they are oftentimes highly placed individuals working within our monetary system, our legal system, and involved in organizations dealing with our national and international freedoms. And sometimes, even in the scandals of former presidents and the current president. Truly amazing.