Discrediting Secret Service complicity in the elimination of JFK…

[Paul Rigby]

...

Or: why did the agents in the car behind JFK all pile out and run toward the grassy knoll? All their training should have been to put bodies around Kennedy and Jackie. They so doggedly DIDN'T follow SOP that you have to wonder why.
...

I wasn't aware that the agents in Emory Robert's car piled out and ran towards the knoll. Can you please point me to a source for that so I can learn more about it Helen?

The false trail up the knoll:

1) Ronald B. Fischer: “And, after that, we stood there for 10 or 15 seconds and then we ran up to the top of the hill there where all the Secret Service men had run, thinking that that's where the bullets had come from since they seemed to be searching that area over there. They jumped off-out of cars and ran up the side of the hill there and onto the tracks where these passenger--freight cars were,” 6WCH196

2) Jack Franzen: “He noticed the men, who were presumed to be Secret Service Agents, riding in the car directly behind the President's car, unloading from the car, some with firearms in their hands, and noticed police officers and these plain clothesmen [sic] running up the grassy slope across Elm Street from his location and toward a wooded and bushy area located across Elm Street from him”:

http://www.jfk-online.com/franzen.html

FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
Date: 11/24/63

Mr. JACK FRANZEN, 10572, [sic] Cromwell Circle, telephone FL 7-3717, who is employed by the Fox and Jacob Construction Company, 9106 Soverign [sic] Row, was contacted in response to a telephone call received from him at 1900 Main Street.

Mr. FRANZEN advised he and his wife and small son were standing in the grass area west of Houston Street and south of Elm Street at the time the President's motorcade arrived at that location at approximately 12:30 PM on November 22, 1963. He said he heard the sound of an explosion which appeared to him to come from the President's car and noticed small fragments flying inside the President's car and immediately assumed that someone had tossed a firecracker inside the automobile. He heard a second and third and possibly a fourth explosion and recognized these sounds as being shots fired from some firearm. At the same time he noticed blood appearing at the top and sides of the head of President Kennedy. He noticed a colored family consisting of a man, woman and small child nearby and at the sound of these shots the man picked up the small boy and ran with the woman west on Elm Street toward the overpass. During the ensuing confusion he remembers looking at the side of the building occupied by the Texas School Book Depository, located across Elm Street from his position but does not remember seeing anything of a suspicious nature with regard to that building. He noticed the men, who were presumed to be Secret Service Agents, riding in the car directly behind the President's car, unloading from the car, some with firearms in their hands, and noticed police officers and these plain clothesmen [sic] running up the grassy slope across Elm Street from his location and toward a wooded and bushy area located across Elm Street from him.

Because of this activity he presumed the shots which were fired came from the shrubbery or bushes toward which these officers appeared to be running.

He looked over the crowd which had assembled along both sides of Elm Street in this block but noticed nothing which appeared unusual among these spectators.

Mr. FRANZEN advised he is aware that the information which he has furnished may not be of any particular significance but advised in view of his close proximity to the President's vehicle at the time of these shots, felt that he possibly should furnish whatever information he could.
on 11/22/63 at Dallas, Texas File # DL 89-43
by Special Agents Alfred C. Ellington and Joseph L. Loeffler [sp

Apologies for "unresigning," but I couldn't resist!

Paul

PS: Secret Service on Elm immediately post-shooting:

1) Earl Cabell: “No; we couldn't tell. We could tell, of course, there was confusion in the presidential car--activity. The Secret Service men ran to that car,” 7WCH479.

2) James Chaney and other unnamed Dallas officers, as related by fellow motorcycle outrider, Marrion L. Baker: “I talked to Jim Chaney…during the time that the Secret Service men were trying to get into the car…from the time the first shot rang out, the car stopped completely, pulled to the left and stopped…I heard several of them say that, Mr. Truly he was standing out there, he said it stopped. Several officers said it stopped completely,” 3WCH265.

3) Norman Similas: “I swung back to look at the car. A Secret Service man ran up with his gun drawn…The Secret Service man opened the car door and I saw the President slumped down to the floor…,” Source: “‘I saw president fall’ – Willowdale man,” Toronto Daily Star, (All Star Night edition), Friday, 22 November 1963, pp.1&13

4) Robert Baskin: “The motorcade ground to a halt. There was a good deal of activity round the President’s car, with Secret Service men running about,” Source: “Day Began As Auspiciously As Any in Kennedy’s Career,” The Dallas Morning News, 23 November 1963, p.2

SS men checking the presidential condition is entirely logical when you think about - we couldn't have the target reaching the hospital in a survivable condition.