The Echo from Dealey Plaza: The true story of the first African American on the White House...

The Echo from Dealey Plaza: The true story of the first African American on the White House Secret Service ... | Abraham Bolden | Every American should read this

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The Echo from Deal...

	The Echo from Dealey Plaza: The true story of the first African American on the White House Secret Service ... Abraham Bolden Harmony, 2008 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 8 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Fantastic book from a former Secret Service hero

As the leading civilian authority on the U.S. Secret Service (and one who has interviewed and/ or corresponded with over 70 former agents, including, on quite a few occasions, the author), I highly recommend this seminal work from former Secret Service hero Abraham Bolden. The book is very well written and gripping in its narrative. Whether one views the JFK assassination as the work of one man (who beat the conspirators to the punch) or the work of a deadly conspiracy, Bolden's book holds up in any case, for it is the tale of injustice done to him, as well as the detailing of prior threats to President Kennedy's life.

As one who has studied the Secret Service and President Kennedy's life and death in great detail, I find this book fascinating and indispensable. What more can I say? Get this asap!

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Every American should read this

Abraham Bolden joined the Secret Service in October, 1960 and was working out of the Chicago office providing security for an April, 1961 visit by President Kennedy to Chicago. After meeting Bolden during the course of the visit, Kennedy invited Bolden to permanently join the prestigious White House Security Detail. Bolden joins the detail and goes to Washington DC in June, 1960 for a 30-day trial period during which he encounters intense racism from other White House Secret Service agents that leads him to request to return to the Chicago office. During his July, 1961 exit interview with U.E. Baughmann, head of the Secret Service, Bolden described several of the incidents of racism, a lack of training, (Bolden was asked to use an AR-15 rifle but never received training on the weapon) and also mentioned names, dates, and places of agents who were drunking on duty. Baughmann notes this info, agrees that it was unacceptable, and states that he will take it up with his replacement, James J. Rowley, before he retires in a few days. Rowley was at that time the head of the White House Protective Detail and it is his group that Bolden is criticizing. Bolden goes back to Chicago and works on counterfeiting cases and Rowley becomes head of the Secret Service.

Bolden is working in the Chicago office when Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963. One week before, on November 17, Bolden was asked to fly to Washington DC to take a new assignment as an undercover agent for the Internal Revenue Service. As a part of this job, Bolden would get a new name, birth certificate, marriage certificate, employment records, and all references to his former identity would be erased. Bolden is uncomfortable, says he needs to think it over, and goes back to Chicago. A week later, Kennedy is assassinated and Bolden sees repeated suspicious activities by Secret Service personnel. Bolden is the night duty agent for Chicago on November 24 when he receives a call from the Agent Sorrels in the Dallas office asking that the Chicago office begin investigating a guy named John Hurd who was identified by suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald during interrogation at Dallas Police Headquarters. The Chicago agents dutifully investigate for several days and turn up information on a suspect. The Agent in Charge of the Chicago Office, Maurice Martineau, then demands that they stop investigating and turn over every scrap of paper to him personally, whereupon every on Hurd stops...forever. Another suspicious activity occurs when one of the Secret Service agents in Dallas loses his official identification at a strip club on the night before the assassination. The day of the assassination, several police officers report encountering a Secret Service agent with official credentials on the grassy knoll...where no agent was supposed to be. Rather than investigating this, the Secret Service requests that every agent turn in their identification and new identification books are issued in which the front cover says "The Treasury Department" instead of "Treasure Department." Yet another suspicious event occurs when a cuban gun runner for the CIA named Homer S. Echevarria is investigated by the Chicago for having two rifles equipped with sniper scopes in a rooming house along the route of a planned Kennedy visit to Chicago in October, 1963. After Kennedy is killed, SAIC Martineau tells agents to stop investigating Echevarria and personally collects every scrap of paper connected with Echevarria. Then Martineau warns agents to never discuss the case with anyone and to forget that it had ever existed.

Bolden is outspoken in his criticism of the Secret Service regarding the assassination of Kennedy and decides to bypass the Secret Service and contact the then-new Warren Commission investigating the assassination. He attempts to call Warren Commission lawyer J. Lee Rankin on May 17, 1964 from a coffee shop pay phone while on a training assignment in Washington DC but is unsuccessful. Little does he know that he is under surveillance. The next day he is asked to return to Chicago where he is accused by a convicted petty criminal of attempting to sell an investigation file for $50,000. A weird court trial follows in which every witness against Bolden is a convicted felon. Bolden is found guilty and serves six years in federal prisons. After finally being released, he settles down to obscurity and works for private industry for 30 years before finally deciding to write his story. The Secret Service was never investigated after the Kennedy assassination and continues to provide security for presidents and other important public officials to this very day. There is much evidence to suggest Secret Service complicity in the Kennedy killing and Bolden's account provides an important insider view of the Secret Service on November 22, 1963 that further undermines confidence in the integrity of the Secret Service at a time when President Kennedy put his life in its hands. Bolden is a Christian man of integrity who has paid an enormous personal price for speaking out then and now. He deserves to be heard.

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