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New York Post
21-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
First black member of Secret Service finally testifies to JFK committee, details Chicago assassination plot
The man John F. Kennedy called 'the Jackie Robinson' of the Secret Service finally got to testify before a Congressional committee Tuesday — alleging fellow agents were often drunk on the job and there was a so-called 'Chicago plot' to kill the president before his 1963 assassination in Dallas. His head bowed, Abraham Bolden, 90, spoke with difficulty into a microphone when he addressed the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform by Zoom from his home in Chicago. The committee is probing the assassination of the president. But the audio cut off immediately as Bolden began to speak, effectively muting his testimony on the live stream. Advertisement 5 Abraham Bolden speaks into a microphone during his ZOOM testimony during a Congressional committee investigating the assassination of President Kennedy. 'On June 6, 1961, I walked into history,' said Bolden, according to a transcript obtained by The Post. 'I was assigned to the White House detail in Washington, DC to assist in protecting the life of the president. And I never met a more human and fair-minded person than President Kennedy.' The Trump administration released tens of thousands of previously classified documents with respect to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, his younger brother Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. Advertisement In the past, Bolden claimed government agents discredited him by arresting him on trumped up charges of bribery in order to prevent him from speaking to the federal Warren Commission, headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren to investigate the shooting in Dallas on November 22, 1963. In addition to Bolden, the committee heard from Don Curtis, a physician at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas who was on the team that tried to save the president's life. In his opening statement he said that the Warren Commission did not interview him or the other doctors, and that the bullet wounds he observed on Kennedy were not consistent with the version of a lone gunman that the Warren Commission reported. Four other witnesses also gave testimony during the second hearing of the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, chaired by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), which begins Tuesday. Advertisement 5 Abraham Bolden has long claimed that the Secret Service agents who were assigned to protect John Kennedy were often drunk and ignored threats to the president's life. TNS Douglas Horne, a former Assassination Records Review staff member, said medical records and autopsy photos are missing as are other key documents. Bolden, a former highway patrolman and Chicago-based Secret Service agent, was the first black member of the Secret Service, personally hired by Kennedy to be part of his presidential detail. He met the former president during the former president's stop in Chicago in 1961 while he was guarding a basement restroom at the McCormick Place banquet hall. Advertisement 5 John F. Kennedy was shot while he made a campaign stop in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Bettmann Archive 'He was serious about giving everyone equal opportunity,' Bolden said of Kennedy in a 2008 TV interview. 'He never walked by me once that he didn't strike up a conversation.' In his 2008 book, 'The Echo from Dealey Plaza: The True Story of the First African American on the White House Secret Service Detail and His Quest for Justice After the Assassination of JFK,' Bolden wrote about the racism he encountered from other agents on the president's team, claiming they were often drunk on the job. In his testimony Tuesday, he spoke about overhearing an angry 1963 meeting between Kennedy and his vice president Lyndon Johnson in the Oval Office in which Johnson accused Kennedy of dropping him from his run for president the following year, warning the president to ''better stop f—king with me.'' 'He was redder than a sack of beets,' Bolden said, referring to Johnson when he stormed out of the Oval Office. He also outlined a report he heard at a staff meeting about threats to kill Kennedy with 'a high-powered rifle' at an Army-Air Force footbal game in Chicago on November 2, nearly three weeks before he was killed. 'Information that I had revealed was that some Cuban exiles were trying to assassinate the president when he came to Chicago,' Bolden said, adding that he knew from one of the agency's weekly meetings that there had been threats against the president at the campaign stop in Dallas where was shot dead. 5 Experts addressed a Congressional committee Tuesday about the assassination of President Kennedy. Bettmann Archive Advertisement 'That information came to me every Wednesday morning when we got a rundown in what was happening in all the other districts,' said Bolden in the interview. In 1964, Bolden was fired from the Secret Service after being charged with trying to sell government secrets for a $50,000 bribe. He denied the allegations, saying that he was framed for trying to expose corruption within the agency. Although his first trial ended in a hung jury, Bolden was convicted at his second trial and sentenced to 15 years, even after some witnesses had said they had been pressured into lying to prosecutors. At the time, the father of three gave piano recitals to raise money for his legal defense 5 Abraham Bolden arriving for his trial in Chicago in 1964. He claims that government agents tried to keep him from testifying about the Secret Service by convicting him on trumped-up charges. TNS Advertisement Bolden served 39 months in federal prison, with a two-and-a-half year probation. During his time in prison, Mark Lane, an attorney who wrote a bombshell book in 1966 –'Rush to Judgment' — that alleged that Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, could not have acted alone, came to visit him in prison, he said. Bolden said that while he was in prison, he was drugged by guards and transferred to the 'psychiatry division' so that he wouldn't talk. 'They tried to fill me with drugs,' he said. He was pardoned by President Biden in 2022. 'Very often, as you people know, justice takes a long time,' he told the committee, adding that he was grateful to Biden for the pardon. 'Carry on, my brothers and sisters. Carry on this investigation. I truly thank you for giving me a chance to tell my story day because not too many years from now, the only thing in my pockets will be dirt. But the truth cannot die.'
Boston Globe
02-04-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
For Republicans, probing the JFK assassination isn't just about his death, it's also about discrediting the ‘deep state'
Advertisement 'The deep state, not only was it around during JFK's assassination, but it's here today,' Mace said. 'It is right before our eyes.' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The creation of the House Oversight Committee Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets this year and its first hearing on Tuesday — which featured two Kennedy assassination experts and Oliver Stone, director of the 1991 movie 'JFK' — has provided Republicans more than an opportunity to dive into decades-old alleged conspiracies. It has also given them a way to bash the federal government, right as President Trump is dramatically downsizing it. 'For far too long, the American people have had reasonable questions of what their government, which they fund every day, keeps hidden about certain issues,' Representative James Comer, a Kentucky Republican who heads the Oversight Committee, said in announcing the formation of the task force at a Advertisement The panel will also look at the 1968 assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, as well as the origins of COVID-19, the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, 'unidentified aerial phenomena' (commonly known as unidentified flying objects, or UFOS) and 'unidentified submerged objects,' Luna said. But the John F. Kennedy assassination continues to be the center of gravity for distrust of the federal government. For decades, historians and amateur sleuths have had doubts about the role of alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, and whether he was part of a broader plot to kill Kennedy. A 2023 'Aside from the conspiracy theories on the History Channel, there is sort of an aura around this case that people say, 'Wait, this guy did this on his own?'' Republican pollster Jon McHenry said in an interview. Trump, long distrustful of government, signed an executive order on Jan. 23 declassifying the remaining documents related to President Kennedy's assassination as well as sealed records of the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and King. Advertisement Historians have said there is no 'smoking gun' evidence so far of anything beyond the established story. 'I have not seen anything in the new releases that sheds significant light on the assassination,' Fredrik Logevall, a Harvard historian and author of the 2020 book, 'JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956,' said in an email. But that wasn't the view of the task force's Republicans on Tuesday. 'The revelations emerging from these files are nothing short of staggering discoveries that challenge the long-held assumptions and raise profound questions about what we've been told happened on that day,' Luna said. Luna, a rising Republican star, already had oversold an earlier development. On Friday, But Gerald Posner, author of the 1993 book 'Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK,' noted on X that a copy of Advertisement 'I told her it is NOT secret. It is NOT a definitive piece of evidence. It is NOT important to the JFK research community,' Morley Morley, vice president the Mary Ferrell Foundation in Ipswich, Mass., the largest electronic archive of files on the assassinations of the 1960s, reiterated those points as a witness Tuesday. But Stone testified that it would be a good idea for the task force to get the original of the Darnell film and Luna said she planned to request it from NBC. Posner said in an interview that he thought Republicans were simply using the task force for political purposes. 'I don't want to be the conspiracy theorist and say it's a plot to dismantle the deep state,' Posner said. 'But I think it's additional fuel in the fire for the consistent argument that the deep state tried to destroy Trump, and this is what they do to presidents they don't like.' The bipartisan task force is stocked with Republicans who've embraced conspiracy theories, including the false assertion that Trump won the 2020 presidential election. But they appeared to still be getting up to speed on the Kennedy assassination. At Tuesday's hearing, After Tuesday's hearing, Luna said she saw some parallels between her task force and the Trump administration's push to rein in the federal government, given the attempts by the CIA to withhold evidence related to what it knew about Oswald for years. Advertisement 'If you have an agency that's operating outside the purview of the federal government, then you have a rogue entity,' she said. 'I'm not saying all agencies do that. But it's definitely evident that there have been factions ... within the intelligence agencies that were doing that.' Jim Puzzanghera can be reached at
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Oliver Stone, Testifying Before Congress, Is Confused for Roger Stone by GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert
Filmmaker Oliver Stone found himself confused with another man named Stone, who is also associated with the world of U.S. politics, while testifying before Congress about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Stone, the director behind the controversial 1991 political thriller JFK, was appearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets on Tuesday to advocate for the reinvestigation of the assassination of President Kennedy. The annual meeting comes weeks after the National Archives released over 2,000 files related to the Kennedy assassination. More from The Hollywood Reporter Kid Rock Says Meeting He Brokered With President Trump and Bill Maher 'Could Not Have Been Better' Amber Ruffin Responds to Being Dropped from White House Correspondents' Dinner: "I Would Have Been So Terrifically Mean" White House Correspondents' Association Cancels Amber Ruffin Performance at Annual Gala Dinner But the lauded filmmaker was likely stumped when Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert asked him a question about a book he didn't write. 'You wrote a book accusing LBJ of being involved in the killing of President Kennedy. Do these most recent releases confirm or negate your initial charge?' Boebert asked, referring to the declassified Kennedy documents. 'No, I didn't,' Stone replied. 'If you look closely at the film, there's no — it accuses President Johnson of being part of — complicit in a cover-up of the case, but not in the assassination itself, which I don't know.' That's when Jefferson Morley, a JFK expert who was seated with Stone, chimed in with his expertise to see that the record was corrected. 'I think you're confusing Mr. Oliver Stone with Mr. Roger Stone. It's Roger Stone who implicated LBJ in the assassination of the president. It's not my friend Oliver Stone,' Morley corrected the Colorado Republican. A flummoxed Boebert seemed to realize she'd lost the thread and quickly apologized. 'I may have misinterpreted that and I apologize for that. But there seems to be some alluding of, like you said, incompetence or some sort of involvement there on the back end,' she replied. 'Sorry, I'm going to move on.' Roger Stone, a fixture in Washington, D.C. for decades, wrote a book in 2013 called The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ. Best of The Hollywood Reporter Most Anticipated Concert Tours of 2025: Beyoncé, Billie Eilish, Kendrick Lamar & SZA, Sabrina Carpenter and More Hollywood's Highest-Profile Harris Endorsements: Taylor Swift, George Clooney, Bruce Springsteen and More Most Anticipated Concert Tours of 2024: Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny, Olivia Rodrigo and More
CBS News
01-04-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
"JFK" director Oliver Stone to testify to Congress about newly released assassination files
Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone, whose 1991 film "JFK" portrayed President John F. Kennedy's assassination as the work of a shadowy government conspiracy, is set to testify to Congress on Tuesday about thousands of newly released government documents surrounding the killing. Scholars say the files that President Donald Trump ordered to be released showed nothing undercutting the conclusion that a lone gunman killed Kennedy, and the declassified versions did not appear to contain significant new revelations about the assassination, based on a review by CBS News. Many documents were previously released but contained newly removed redactions, including Social Security numbers, angering people whose personal information was disclosed. The first hearing of the House Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets comes five decades after the Warren Commission investigation concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald, a 24-year-old former Marine, acted alone in fatally shooting Kennedy as his motorcade finished a parade route in downtown Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, who chairs the task force, said last month that she wants to work with writers and researchers to help solve "one of the biggest cold case files in U.S. history." Scholars and historians haven't viewed the assassination as a cold case, viewing the evidence for Oswald as a lone gunman as strong. Stone's "JFK" was nominated for eight Oscars, including best picture, and won two. It grossed more than $200 million but was also dogged by questions about its factuality. The last formal congressional investigation of Kennedy's assassination ended in 1978, when a House committee issued a report concluding that the Soviet Union, Cuba, organized crime, the CIA and the FBI weren't involved, but Kennedy "probably was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy." In 1976, a Senate committee said it had not uncovered enough evidence "to justify a conclusion that there was a conspiracy." The Warren Commission, appointed by Kennedy's successor, President Lyndon B. Johnson, concluded that Oswald fired on Kennedy's motorcade from a sniper's perch on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, where Oswald worked. Police arrested Oswald within 90 minutes, and two days later, Jack Ruby, a nightclub owner, shot Oswald during a jail transfer broadcast on live television. For Tuesday's hearing, the task force also invited Jefferson Morley and James DiEugenio, who both have written books arguing for conspiracies behind the assassination. Morley is editor of the JFK Facts blog and vice president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, a repository for files related to the assassination. He has praised Luna as being open to new information surrounding the killing. Shortly after taking office in January, Mr. Trump took executive action to establish a process to declassify and release any remaining documents related to Kennedy's killing, as well as the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. The recently released documents about JFK's assassination have been uploaded to a portal maintained by the National Archives, which can be found here . Stefan Becket contributed to this report.
Yahoo
29-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Anna Paulina Luna: The truth is still out there on JFK assassination
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) is still searching for a cover-up in the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy Jr. — asserting without evidence that an allegedly previously unreleased video could reveal new details of the president's death, despite the recent declassification of reams of government files on the killing. In an interview with Fox News on Friday, Luna said that she had just been told that NBC has a 'never been seen before' video of the shooting that she would be requesting access to. The video, according to Luna, 'allegedly' shows famed gunman Lee Harvey Oswald near Kennedy's vehicle when the assassination happened. Would that be the case, 'he couldn't have been the shooter,' Luna told Fox host Jesse Watters. Luna has been elevated by House Republicans to lead the House Oversight Committee's 'Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets,' and said she would be asking NBC to turn over this alleged video. While the conspiracies behind the Kennedy assassination have been spun for decades, they've recently grown in strength as the Trump administration pledged complete transparency into multiple investigations that have captured the public fascination — from the Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. assassinations, to the death of financier Jeffrey Epstein. Kennedy's assassination on Nov. 22, 1963, has captivated Americans for decades, despite repeated investigations concluding that Oswald was in fact Kennedy's assassin and that there wasn't clear evidence of a grander conspiracy. Americans have consistently believed otherwise, with a majority of Americans for decades saying in Gallup polls that the killing of the president was not the work of one individual. In 2023, 65 percent of those surveyed told Gallup they believed others were involved, while just 29 percent said it was one man. Luna claimed that the Central Intelligence Agency 'never bought' the one gunman theory. Luna added that Oliver Stone — who made the 1991 movie "JFK" that reignited interest in the assassination — purportedly saw a secondhand copy of the alleged video. 'I think the American people had an inclination as to what we were saying, but we never had the hard evidence until now,' Luna told Watters, adding recent declassification efforts are "going to be generational changing." NBC did not respond to request for comment. Upon entering office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order calling for the release of the assassination investigation records to the public. Since then, hundreds of pages from the Epstein investigation were released. Luna's task force is set to convene a hearing on the JFK files on April 1, and she has promised to travel to Dallas and interview 'first-hand witnesses' from the six-decades-old assassination. She also shared her disappointment over the Epstein files, which she repeatedly campaigned for the government to release, but has pushed full steam ahead on other investigations. Earlier this month, thousands of pages of the Kennedy investigation were released on the National Archives website, in what Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard called a push for 'maximum transparency and a commitment to rebuild the trust of the American people in the Intelligence Community (IC) and federal agencies.' 'I applaud President Trump for following through on his promise of transparency to the American people,' Luna said in a release celebrating the publication of the records. 'By investigating the newly released JFK files, consulting experts, and tracking down surviving staff of various investigative committees, my task force will get to the bottom of this mystery and share our findings with the American people.' Multiple experts have said they do not expect any new major revelations from the release of the JFK files. Luna said Friday she plans to introduce Congressional legislation to ensure that this 'never happens again.'
