The Plot to Kill President Kennedy in Chicago
by Vince Palamara
Vince Palamara begins The Plot to Kill President Kennedy in Chicago with a quote by Martin Martineau of the Chicago office of the Secret Service. In an interview from 1993 Martineau said that he was certain there was more than one assassin on 11/22/63. And he added that one reason he knew this was his own role in the investigation. A second was his knowledge of and experience with firearms.
Palamara then continues with a surprise phone call he got from a man named Nemo Ciochina. Ciochina had a go between actually do the calling. But he wanted to talk to Vince since he knew he was dying. And, in fact, he passed away about two months later. Nemo wanted to tell Vince that he was aware of his work. But he wanted to point out that, to him, the real conspiracy was in Chicago and not in Dallas. Nemo was in fact an agent in the Chicago field office who later served in Indianapolis. (Palamara, p. 6)
He wanted to give Vince some information he thought was relevant but had been ignored. But he specified that he wanted to leave his name out of things until after he had passed. The main piece of information that Nemo gave Vince was about a man who was named Lloyd John Wilson, which was an alias, but the most common one he used.
Wilson was in the Secret Service files as of September 10, 1963. And there were continuing reports on the man after 11/23. According to these reports Wilson had enlisted in the Air Force in late October of 1963 and been sent to Texas on November 2nd. (Palamara, p. 13). He was discharged from the Air Force on December 17, 1963 and turned himself in to the FBI a couple of days later. He said he was part of a plot to kill JFK. And he said he wrote a threatening letter he did not send. An anonymous caller to the FBI said he had seen the letter. (Palamara, p. 41) Wilson also claimed he paid Oswald a thousand dollars to kill Kennedy. (p. 16). Wilson said he left this letter in a hotel in Santa Clara, in northern California. But when the Bureau checked the room they did not find it. (p. 45). They concluded he was a nutcase.
But Wilson was interviewed on October 29, 1963. This was in Spokane after his file was flown in from San Francisco. The FBI took a ten page statement from him. The review was sent to an assistant US attorney named Carroll D. Gray in Spokane. Wilson denied to Gray that he was organizing a white supremacist group; said he did not now own any weapons; and he was looking forward to being in the Air Force. He also added that he did not mean he was going to kill JFK personally, but destroy him politically. (Ibid, pp. 47-49)
The case was closed, prosecution was not enacted, and Wilson went on to duty in the Air Force in Texas. Later on we learn that Wilson claimed to have met Oswald in San Francisco through a contact who heard Oswald was anti-Kennedy and had threatened the president. Wilson gave Oswald a thousand dollar bill and told him to go ahead. This was at the Cow Palace in either late August 1963 or early September 1963. Allegedly Wilson paid him with a thousand dollar bill. (Palamara, p. 60)
There are some problems with this story. To my knowledge, I have never seen any evidence that Oswald was in San Francisco at this time. And I also have never seen any evidence that Oswald came into a thousand dollars, which today would be the equivalent of ten thousand dollars in this time period. Wilson was discharged from the Air force on December 17, 1963 because he appeared to be mentally imbalanced. And I should add he also threatened President Johnson. (Palamara, p. 16)
Its good to get this information out there I think. And it probably would have been wise to maintain Wilson under some kind of surveillance. But I tend to agree with Mr. Gray that it seems to me that Wilson was simply unstable.
II
The author now picks up his real subject which are the major threats to JFK toward the end of his life. These include instances in El Paso in June of 1963, in Billings in September of 1963, the famous Joseph Milteer case, and the Walter telex made famous by Jim Garrison, which the author corroborates with a San Antonio telex of November 15, 1963. (Palamara, p. 79)
Palamara reveals a couple of new details on the November 18th Tampa threat. (p. 82) It turns out that Ted Shackley and William Finch assisted the Secret Service on this visit by JFK. And the original threat was “posed by a mobile, unidentified rifleman with a high powered rifle fitted with a scope.”
Palamara also mentions the famous Cambridge News story. This is one of the strangest events in the entire JFK case, which does not get enough attention. About 25 minutes before the assassination, the Cambridge News in Britain was given an anonymous tip. Someone called a senior reporter working the East Anglia area of England. The caller said there was going to be big news from the States very soon. He advised the reporter to call the American Embassy in London. The reporter then called MI 5, the British version of the FBI. The MI 5 said that the reporter had a reputation for being of sound mind with no prior record. (p. 86)
One of the most telling parts of the book is a section where the author compares the protection afforded Kennedy in Dallas with what happened in Tampa. Palamara lists eleven significant differences. (pgs. 104-06). This includes agents riding on the rear of the limousine, the guarding of nearby rooftops, Dr. George Burkley riding close to the president, and multiple motorcycles riding next to Kennedy in a wedge formation. The author points out that what makes this even more odd is that Tampa was the longest motorcade President Kennedy ever took domestically. Dallas was much shorter, so it should have been more manageable.
III
The book then focuses on several Secret Service agents who seem to have merited some special attention by subsequent investigations, but did not get it. We will deal with only five of them here.
Paul Paterni was a direct assistant to chief James Rowley. During World War 2, he served in Italy with James Angleton and Ray Rocca. Both men ended up being influential with both the Warren Commission and the Jim Garrison investigation. As the author learned from Chief Investigator Michael Torina, Paterni served in the OSS concurrently while on the Secret Service. (p. 115) Which mean that, potentially, Paterni would be a good nexus point for the CIA to have a listening post inside the Secret Service. It was Paterni who made Inspector Thomas Kelley liaison to the Warren Commission, where, to put it mildly, he performed questionably. Paterni was involved in the Protective Research Section about threats against JFK prior to the visit, and he reported none prior.
Forrest Sorrels was Special Agent in charge of the Dallas Secret Service field office. He took part in the dubious planning of the motorcade route. According to Palamara, Sorrels was involved in the 1936 route for FDR in Dallas, which used Main Street instead of Houston and Elm. (p. 118)
On November 27, 1963 the FBI was in receipt of a call from a woman who did not give her name. She said she was a member of a local theater guild, and on numerous occasions she had attended functions where Sorrels had spoken. She advised he should be removed from his position since he could not have protected Kennedy. She stated that Sorrels was “definitely anti-government, against the Kennedy administration, and she felt his position was against the security of not only the president, but the US.” (p. 118)
Mike Howard was an agent who was proficient at putting out rather unsound stories concerning the assassination. For instance, that a janitor had seen Oswald pull the trigger from the Depository building. It was Howard and Charles Kunkel who tried at first to manipulate Marina Oswald into saying her husband had been to Mexico City, an overture she first resisted. Howard was also one who effectively smeared Marguerite Oswald as being an eccentric and unreliable source. (pp. 134-36)
Roger Warner, like Paterni, served both in the CIA (12 years) and the Secret Service (20 years). He was also in the Bureau of Narcotics for three years. He was on the Texas trip when JFK was murdered and it was his first protective assignment. (p. 121) According to the late Church Committee witness Jim Gochenaur, Warner was the man who later accompanied fellow Secret Service agent Elmer Moore to Parkland Hospital with the Kennedy Bethesda autopsy in hand. They used that to align the Parkland witnesses not with what they saw, but what was in that very questionable document. (p. 125)
Of course, Palamara lists Moore as one of the agents about which an extensive inquiry should have been made. Jim Gochenaur talked about Moore at length in Oliver Stone’s films JFK Revisited and JFK:Destiny Betrayed. Not only was Moore involved in the Parkland doctors’ testimony, but Palamara notes that Moore was also involved in influencing Jack Ruby’s in a substantive way. This included his movements on the day before the assassination. (p. 125)
And it was not just Ruby and the Parkland doctors. As exposed in Secret Service Report 491, there is evidence that Moore was one of the agents involved in the interviews of Depository workers Harold Norman, Bonnie Ray William and Charles Givens. In that interview these men changed some of their testimony that they had given earlier, and in a dramatic way. For instance, in the later report Norman mentioned hearing a gun bolt working and cartridge cases falling on the floor above him. There was no mention at all of these noises in his November 26th FBI report. Or to anyone else prior to Moore getting the interview. (James DiEugenio, The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, p. 55)
To put it mildly, the Secret Service did not perform admirably either before, during or after the Dallas assassination.
IV
Palamara concludes the book with his examination of the threats against Kennedy emanating from Chicago in November of 1963. There was one early in the month and one late. The later one, on November 21st was suppled by informant Thomas Mosley who was negotiating a sale of machine guns to Homer Echevarria, part of the Cuban exile community. According to Mosley, an ATF informer, Homer said they now have new backers who are Jews, and they would close the arms deal as soon as Kennedy was taken care of. When Kennedy was killed, Mosley reported the conversation to the Secret Service. (Palamara, p. 154)
Echevarria was part of the 30th November Group which was associated with the DRE, who Oswald has associated with that summer. According to Mosley, the arms deals was being arranged and paid for through Paulino Sierra Martinez and his newly formed well financed group, Junta of the Government of Cuba in Exile.
Agent David Grant said that he had conducted surveillance on Mosley and Echevarria, prior to the assassination. All memos and files and notebooks went to Washington, and he was told not to talk about the case with anyone. For whatever reason this inquiry was later dropped.
Palamara adds that interestingly, Chief Jim Rowley had written an article for Reader’s Digest in November that outlined how easy it would be to assassinate a president using a high powered rifle. (p. 155) To say the least it was odd timing that went unnoted after the fact.
Earlier that November month, Rowley phoned the agent in charge in Chicago, Maurice Martineau. The FBI had gotten wind of an assassination plot featuring a team of four men. Martineau called in his men and briefed them on the call and said this inquiry was going to be hush hush. It would have no file number and nothing was to be sent by interoffice teletype. (p. 156). It was never made clear why this was so.
One of the most interesting parts of the book is the substantiation Palamara gives for this early November plot in Chicago. Over 7 pages the author lists 16 direct and indirect sources to prove such a plot was was in the making and that it was thwarted. It was not just journalist Edwin Black. Not even close. And like Sorrels, Martineau did not like JFK, especially his stand on integration. (p. 167)
The book concludes with Palamara’s discussion of Abe Bolden, recently pardoned by President Biden for a crime he very likely never committed. The frame up was clearly retaliation for Bolden trying to tell the Warren Commission about the early November Chicago plot. In fact, the man who set up Bolden later admitting to doing so. (p. 200). Plus there was a man, Gary McLeod, who tracked Bolden to Washington when he was trying to talk to the Commission.
The book ends by listing all the Secret Service failures that took place that day in Dallas that should not have been allowed to occur. But these led to the murder of Kennedy. Palamara lists 13 of them. This book shows—through descriptions of what happened in Tampa, Chicago, and Dallas and elsewhere–that for whatever reason, Kennedy was not getting out of 1963 alive.
