The Tampa Scenario: The Kennedy Assassination and The Secret Service Whitewash
JFK, to San Antonio Congressman Henry Gonzalez on 11/21/63:
"The Secret Service told me that they had taken care of
everything - there's nothing to worry about."
by
John Harris
Soon after the Warren Commission convened, the compelling question emerged as to why there were no Secret Service Agents riding on the back of the Lincoln Continental carrying President Kennedy during the Dallas motorcade to protect, and if necessary, to take a bullet for the President. Later, as more facts presented themselves, there were other glaring omissions of security. We have clear evidence that a key member of his protection team, specifically ATSAIC Emory Roberts, initiated a stand down that left Kennedy unprotected when he waved Secret Service agent Donald Lawton off the back of the Lincoln in well documented footage of the motorcade leaving Love Field. Except for a couple of instances when Clint Hill jumped on the back of the Lincoln just before making the dogleg turn through Dealey Plaza, there is no evidence of any agents riding on the back of the Lincoln during the ride through the densely packed streets of Dallas. There were only four motorcycle cops riding behind the Lincoln, and absolutely no police presence on the rooftops or anywhere else along the motorcade route. According to Vincent Palamara in his book, Survivors Guilt, this kind of rooftop police presence was a normal security procedure for motorcades in other cities including Milwaukee in 1962(see Milwaukee Sentinel-May, 9th 1962), in Tampa on November 18, 1963, in San Antonio November 21st, and that morning in Fort Worth on the day of the assassination. In his exhaustive study of the Secret Service’s actions on the trip to Dallas, Palamara explores the various areas in which the Secret Service’s protections of Kennedy were incomprehensibly non-existent that day. Apparently the Warren commission had taken notice as well and decided to depose the Director of the Secret Service James J. Rowley. Perhaps in an attempt to at least partially forestall the inconvenient and embarrassing questions to come, Rowley had five agents including Jerry Behn, Floyd Boring, Emory Roberts, John Ready and Clint Hill submit reports on the particular matter of agents riding on the back of the Lincoln. Behn in particular was quoted as saying unequivocally in his report that JFK “told me that he did not want agents riding on the back of his car”. The other agent’s reports corroborated what Behn said in no uncertain terms: Kennedy had demanded no agents riding on the back of the Lincoln during the motorcade that had traveled through Tampa on November 18th. Equally embarrassing was the incident the night before the assassination when, according to the columnist Drew Pearson, several agents were spotted drinking in a Fort Worth “beatnik” club called The Cellar. Earl Warren was infuriated when he found out that Rowley and certain counsel on the commission tried to omit mention of this violation of Secret Service protocol when he exclaimed to Rowley during examination, “Don’t you think that if a man went to bed reasonably early, and hadn’t been drinking the night before, he would be more alert than if he stayed up until 3,4, 5 o’clock in the morning, going to ‘beatnik’ joints and doing some drinking along the way?” Rowley stammered his way through a series of excuses before exclaiming, “we don’t condone their actions, nor do we try to belittle the violation. But in the circumstances, I took the decision that I thought right…I don’t think these people should be blamed for the tragedy.”(pg377, shenon) Ultimately, despite consul’s objections, Warren compelled them to include mention of this incident in the final version of the Warren Commission Report. As Palamara became more obsessed with the possibility of Secret Service complicity in the assassination, he made a startling discovery when he interviewed Secret Service Agent Jerry Behn on the telephone back in 1992 just before Behn died. To quote Palamara, Behn told him, ‘I don’t remember Kennedy ever saying that he didn’t want anybody on the back of his car.’ Behn added that “newsreel footage from the period will bear him out…“. This ‘myth’ of Kennedy using presidential prerogative to limit his protection so that he might gain greater access to the people probably began with William Manchester’s book, Death of a President: "Kennedy grew weary of seeing bodyguards roosting behind him every time he turned around, and in Tampa on November 18 (1963), just four days before his death, he dryly asked Agent Floyd Boring to 'keep those Ivy League charlatans off the back of the car.' Boring wasn't offended. There had been no animosity in the remark." (1988 Harper & Row/Perennial Library edition, pp. 37-38) Palamara claims that in a separate interview Floyd Boring essentially told him same thing, “ ‘He quotes me?’ Boring asked incredulously. ‘I never told him that. He (JFK) was a very nice man…never interfered with us at all.’ “ Boring also confided to Palamara that he was never even interviewed by interviewed by Manchester in the first place. In 2010, Gerald Blaine along with co-writer Lisa McCubbin, published a crude “factionalization” called The Kennedy Detail. It is nothing more than an apologia and a veiled attack on Palamara’s work, conspicuously mounting a nostalgic and anecdotal “blame the victim” defense of the Secret Service. He lays the foundation for a whitewash at the beginning of his book when he asserts, “the Secret Service was not authorized to override a presidential decision”.(Blaine, p. 17) Blaine hints broadly, without actually coming right out and saying it, that Kennedy was somehow complicit in his own assassination because he issued orders not only preventing the SS agents from riding on the back of the limousine but also by reducing the number of local police motorcycle escorts to only four. Palamara theorizes that this cover story as elaborated to Manchester, could well have originated with agent Emory Roberts since he was one of the few Secret Service agents in Dallas that day that were actually interviewed by Manchester. By the time the agents had written their reports for Rowley, having obviously hashed out and clarified their stories so that they were all on the same page, the entire Secret Service must have been on high alert. J. Edgar Hoover had long coveted taking over presidential protection from the Secret Service and Kennedy’s death may well have presented an opportunity. Palamara further contends that an ongoing conspiracy soon evolved to whitewash these derelictions of duty and to portray President Kennedy as a reckless and un-cooperative subject who constantly stymied their efforts to protect him. Blaine goes out of his way to insist that the new stand down “policy” or “Tampa Scenario” began the week before in Tampa when he basically lifts the quote about “ivy league charlatans” from Manchester’s book and embellishes it liberally: “He (Kennedy) suddenly bent down because of the motorcycle noise,” purportedly to give Floyd Boring the word to stay off the back of the Lincoln. “The whole purpose of the motorcade was political and Floyd knew that Kennedy did not want to be shielded from the public.” After a few more sentences of superfluous disambiguation, Blaine gets to the point; “In the three years he’d been with JFK, he’d never heard the president call the agents off the back of the car in the middle of a motorcade. Apparently politics was trumping the Secret Service.” (Blaine, p. 148). Even the Clint Eastwood movie In the Line of Fire embellishes and adds to this “death wish” myth when the psycho assassin played by John Malkovich declares to Clint Eastwood’s Secret Service character “you wanted to station agents on his bumpers and sideboards: he refused. And do you know why I think he refused? He had a death wish.” Somehow the counter-myth of Kennedy being a reckless, death obsessed fatalist gained momentum over the years until it became accepted fact. Kennedy’s alleged decision to ban agents from the running boards and back of the car, combined with his so-called obsession with death, has become so prevalent that it is even referred to in popular movies. Although there is some truth to the often repeated notion that Kennedy was impulsive and had a tendency to rush toward crowds, especially women and groups of children, there are ample news pictures, video and film footage of the president well protected by agents and local PD on motorcycle during his trip to Tampa. There had been explicit threats against the president’s life in Tampa by the likes of Joseph Milteer, who, not two weeks before, had been quoted as predicting Kennedy’s being shot “from an office building with a high powered rifle” to an FBI informant. Why would Kennedy, as Blaine would have it, when his back was so delicate and he constantly wore a back brace which inhibited his range of movements, “bend down” to give instructions to Floyd Boring ordering the agents to get off the back of the car? So that people could see his back as the Lincoln drove away?
Blaine, having admitted that Kennedy had never complained about agents standing on the back of the Lincoln, doesn’t lend credence to his contention that Kennedy suddenly and arbitrarily made the demand for them to stay off in Tampa. His constant novelized recreations of conversations, exchanges between the president and other agents that he couldn’t he couldn’t possibly been privy to, while planting thoughts, emotions and motivations into the heads of his various secret service cohorts stretches credibility. Blaine is an old man on a mission. He makes it seem as if he were at the center of the chain of command, when he was a very junior agent with only a few years under his belt. Palamara contradicts Blaine with this exchange during the tape recorded interview exchange with Floyd Boring who seems to suggest how he may have inadvertently created the impression that Kennedy wanted the agents off of the back of the Lincoln: “No, no, no-that’s not true…(JFK) was a very easy going guy…he didn’t interfere with our actions at all. He actually—No, I told them…He didn’t tell them anything…He just—I looked at the back and I seen these fellahs were Hanging on the limousine—I told them to return to the car.” Palamara also provides other evidence to refute the Tampa Scenario. Perhaps the most salient testimony comes from former Florida Congressman Samuel Melville Gibbons who was in the limousine with Senator George Smathers and Kennedy during Tampa motorcade and stated to Palamara by letter that, “I rode with Kennedy every time he rode. I heard no such order. As I remember it the agents rode on the rear bumper all the way.” Is it possible that a misunderstanding about Boring’s actions developed into a full-blown cover story once the worst had happened and Kennedy was dead? Ultimately, the Tampa scenario takes on the aspect of a hastily scripted alibi, as does the use of the phrase “Ivy League charlatans” which smacks of an embarrassing attempt at literary license to imitate Kennedy’s style and sense of humor.
Blaine even provides a convenient answer to explain the famous footage taken at Love Field showing Agent Don Lawton being told to stand down by Emory Roberts from trailing the President’s Lincoln. Apparently Lawton is simply saying, “It’s all yours now, guys. I’ve done my job. Now get out of here so I can have some lunch?” as he waved his arms at Roberts in bewilderment. If you view the increasing vehemence of Lawton’s protestations as he raises his arms three times you can certainly interpret the urgency and bewilderment otherwise.
Blaine, having admitted that Kennedy had never complained about agents standing on the back of the Lincoln, doesn’t lend credence to his contention that Kennedy suddenly and arbitrarily made the demand for them to stay off in Tampa. His constant novelized recreations of conversations, exchanges between the president and other agents that he couldn’t he couldn’t possibly been privy to, while planting thoughts, emotions and motivations into the heads of his various secret service cohorts stretches credibility. Blaine is an old man on a mission. He makes it seem as if he were at the center of the chain of command, when he was a very junior agent with only a few years under his belt. Palamara contradicts Blaine with this exchange during the tape recorded interview exchange with Floyd Boring who seems to suggest how he may have inadvertently created the impression that Kennedy wanted the agents off of the back of the Lincoln: “No, no, no-that’s not true…(JFK) was a very easy going guy…he didn’t interfere with our actions at all. He actually—No, I told them…He didn’t tell them anything…He just—I looked at the back and I seen these fellahs were Hanging on the limousine—I told them to return to the car.” Palamara also provides other evidence to refute the Tampa Scenario. Perhaps the most salient testimony comes from former Florida Congressman Samuel Melville Gibbons who was in the limousine with Senator George Smathers and Kennedy during Tampa motorcade and stated to Palamara by letter that, “I rode with Kennedy every time he rode. I heard no such order. As I remember it the agents rode on the rear bumper all the way.” Is it possible that a misunderstanding about Boring’s actions developed into a full-blown cover story once the worst had happened and Kennedy was dead? Ultimately, the Tampa scenario takes on the aspect of a hastily scripted alibi, as does the use of the phrase “Ivy League charlatans” which smacks of an embarrassing attempt at literary license to imitate Kennedy’s style and sense of humor.
Works cited:
A Cruel and Shocking Act by Philip Shenon
Survivors Guilt by Vincent Palamara
The Kennedy Detail by Gerald Blaine
Death of A President by William Manchester
