A Secret Service Assassination Coverup? There's a Lawsuit for That
A Secret Service Assassination Coverup? There's a Lawsuit for That
In 1995 the presidential protectors shredded key JFK files. The Mary Ferrell Foundation is holding them accountable in court in 2024.
Of the six attacks on presidents in the last 75 years, two stand out for egregious lapses in Secret Service security procedures: the assassination of JFK on November 22, 1963, and the near assassination of Donald Trump on July 13, 2024.
As I predicted last month, today’s media environment makes it possible for a real investigation and real accountability — neither of which happened in 1963.
Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle has resigned after scathing bipartisan criticism in a Capitol Hill hearing. In 1963, director James Rowley inexplicably kept his job for another eight years.
The Secret Service has said agents will be disciplined, which seems likely after Acting Director Ronald Rowe Jr. said he was “ashamed” of the agency’s actions on July 13 when Trump was nearly killed by a fusillade fired by Thomas Crooks, the 20-year-old gunman who was killed by a Secret Service sniper.
In 1963, no agents were disciplined, even though some had been out drinking until 5 a.m. on the morning JFK was ambushed in Dallas’ Dealey Plaza. The Warren Commission, created by President Lyndon Johnson to ratify the “lone gunman” theory, did no serious investigation of the agency’s security procedures in 1963.
The record of the Secret Service on JFK’s assassination is the essential background to the work of the bipartisan House of Representatives task force, which is now looking into the near assassination of Trump. Absolute transparency and vigilant accountability are essential, lest the sorry history of 1963 repeat itself.
What History Tells Us
Vince Palamara, the leading expert on the Secret Service in 1963, has documented in painful detail the agency’s egregious failures in Dallas, showing that Kennedy’s security detail was much tighter on 20 previous public appearances in 1963.
(Palamara’s YouTube channel is an indispensable tool for understanding the real history of Kennedy’s assassination. It’s much more accurate and comprehensive, for example, than Wikipedia’s outdated, biased pro-government entry on JFK’s assassination.)
And when an independent civilian review board asked the Secret Service in 1995 to provide records of its actions in the fall of 1963, the Secret Service destroyed the records.
In its final report, issued in September 1998, the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) stated:
The Review Board learned of the destruction approximately one week after the Secret Service destroyed them, when the Board was drafting its request for additional information. The Board believed that the Secret Service files on the President’s travel in the weeks preceding his murder would be relevant.
The board asked the Secret Service to submit a sworn declaration that it had complied with the JFK Records Act. The Secret Service ignored the board’s demand.
Judge John Tunheim, chair of the ARRB, said no federal agency was worse than the Secret Service in complying with the 1992 JFK Records Act, which mandated the release of all government files related to President Kennedy’s murder.
Suing Biden
In October 2022, the Mary Ferrell Foundation, a nonprofit educational organization based in Ipswich, Mass., sued President Biden and the National Archives for failure to enforce the JFK Records Act.
In its court filing, the foundation, which sponsors the internet’s largest collection of searchable JFK assassination records, cited the Secret Service’s failure to submit a sworn declaration of compliance. The lawsuit is ongoing in federal court in San Francisco.
Last month, the foundation’s attorney, Bill Simpich, asked Chief District Judge Richard Seeborg for permission to initiate discovery proceedings to investigate whether the Secret Service records might still exist.
“We are seeking the records of the destroyed Secret Service records because they may let us know what their practices were back in 1963 and what went wrong with JFK's protection,” Simpich told JFK Facts. “The kind of scrutiny that is happening now with the attempt on Trump's life simply didn't happen in 1963. Why not?"
Other Attacks
In four other presidential attacks, the agency’s managers were not at fault and its agents acted appropriately.
In 1951, when two Puerto Rican nationalists attempted to shoot their way into Blair House, the presidential guest house where President Harry Truman was staying, the Secret Service returned fire and captured the assailants. Truman was not harmed.
In two separate attempts on President Gerald Ford’s life in September 1975, the Secret Service hustled Ford to safety.
In the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan in 1981, agents quickly tackled gunman John Hinckley.
But the events of Dallas in November 1963 and Butler in July 2024 revealed a dangerously incompetent agency. President Kennedy paid with his life, and Trump was fortunate to escape with his.
To repeat, absolute transparency and vigilant accountability is essential, lest the sorry history of 1963 make a return appearance.
JFK Facts YouTube editor Ryan Carter provided research assistance for this article.
If you want to support the Mary Ferrell Foundation’s efforts to enforce the JFK Records Act, click here.
The visit of several SS agents to a Fort Worth bar on the night of 11/21, until 5:00 am on 11/22, was not the most serious error. After JFK was pronounced dead at 1:00 pm, the SS agents took custody of the body, commndered an ambulance, drove it to Love Field and absconded with the best evidence of the murder: the victim's corpse. A standard forensic autopsy wpould have been performed by the Dallas Medical Examiner; what happened is that two incompetent pathologists in Bethesda, neither of whom had ever conducted an autopsy of a gunshot victim, destroyed the evidence. Boswell was allowed to spend twenty minutes ALONE with the body, during which time he macerated the frontal neck wound and, according to his partner, Humes, performed "an incision of a wound" above the right eye at the hairline. Dr. Michael Chesser, who has examined the medical imaging at the National Archives, described the "incised wound" as a bullet wound of entry in the right cerebral hemisphere.
This was not mere dereliction of duty; it was criminal conspiracy by accesories after the fact.
They should not have been merely fired; they should have been tried in Texas criminal court.
Of course, no final conviction of ANYONE involved in the murders of JFK, Tippet and Oswald was ever obtained, and never will be.
"Mission Accomplished."
No accountability. Then or now. More scrutiny now only because we’re not distracted by pink mist. Need I add that both situations demonstrate obstruction of justice? When the coup succeeds no one dares call it by that name.