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The person John F. Kennedy referred to as “the Jackie Robinson” of the Secret Service lastly acquired to testify earlier than a Congressional committee Tuesday — alleging fellow brokers have been typically 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 problem right into a microphone when he addressed the Committee on Oversight and Authorities Reform by Zoom from his house 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 dwell stream.
“On June 6, 1961, I walked into historical past,” mentioned Bolden, in response to a transcript obtained by The Submit. “I used to be assigned to the White Home element in Washington, DC to help in defending the lifetime of the president. And I by no means met a extra human and fair-minded particular person than President Kennedy.”
The Trump administration launched tens of hundreds of beforehand labeled paperwork with respect to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, his youthful brother Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
Prior to now, Bolden claimed authorities brokers discredited him by arresting him on trumped up prices of bribery to be able to stop him from talking to the federal Warren Fee, headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren to research the capturing 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 mentioned 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 in the course of the second listening to of the Job Power 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 Evaluation workers member, mentioned medical data and post-mortem images 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 in the course of the former president’s cease in Chicago in 1961 whereas he was guarding a basement restroom on the McCormick Place banquet corridor.
“He was severe about giving everybody equal alternative,” Bolden mentioned of Kennedy in a 2008 TV interview. “He by no means walked by me as soon as that he didn’t strike up a dialog.”
In his 2008 e-book, “The Echo from Dealey Plaza: The True Story of the First African American on the White Home Secret Service Element 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 have been typically drunk on the job.
In his testimony Tuesday, he spoke about overhearing an indignant 1963 assembly between Kennedy and his vp Lyndon Johnson within the Oval Workplace through which Johnson accused Kennedy of dropping him from his run for president the next 12 months, warning the president to “‘higher cease f—king with me.’”
“He was redder than a sack of beets,” Bolden mentioned, referring to Johnson when he stormed out of the Oval Workplace.
He additionally outlined a report he heard at a workers assembly about threats to kill Kennedy with “a high-powered rifle” at an Military-Air Power footbal sport in Chicago on November 2, almost three weeks earlier than he was killed.
“Info that I had revealed was that some Cuban exiles have been making an attempt to assassinate the president when he got here to Chicago,” Bolden mentioned, including that he knew from one of many company’s weekly conferences that there had been threats in opposition to the president on the marketing campaign cease in Dallas the place was shot useless.
“That info got here to me each Wednesday morning once we acquired a rundown in what was occurring in all the opposite districts,” mentioned 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 reveal corruption throughout 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 mentioned 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 12 months probation. Throughout his time in jail, Mark Lane, an lawyer 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 over him in jail, he mentioned.
Bolden mentioned 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 medicine,” he mentioned.
He was pardoned by President Biden in 2022.
“Fairly often, as you folks know, justice takes a very long time,” he advised the committee, including that he was grateful to Biden for the pardon. “Keep it up, my brothers and sisters. Keep it up this investigation. I actually thanks for giving me an opportunity to inform my story day as a result of not too a few years from now, the one factor in my pockets will probably be dust. However the fact can’t die.”
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