06-10-2014, 08:04 PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/03/upshot...0002&abg=1
Michael Beschloss, writing in the New York Times about Secret Service "protection" of presidents, admits that the performance of that agency in Dallas was "insufficient" (a mild way of putting it). He quotes LBJ's 1964 complaint that when he traveled, the Secret Service would "notify everybody in town what time you're coming, how you're coming, where you're coming. . . They do everything except kill you. They don't know how to operate their guns. Hell, I had 10 of 'em out there one day trying to kill a snake, and they couldn't kill it -- they just emptied the gun -- at my ranch."
But Beschloss apparently still believes the lie by LBJ that Secret Service Agent Rufus Youngblood threw himself over the front seat during the Kennedy assassination and shielded Johnson with his body in the back seat. Some of the reader comments on the article that have appeared on the Times website point to the Secret Service stand-down in Dallas and give more details, etc., but apparently for the Times, it is not acceptable to point out that Beschloss (regarded as a major historian by the mainstream media) is just wrong about Youngblood. I filed this comment, but the Times (so far) has not printed it:
October 3, 2014
Thank you for your submission. We'll notify you at [email address] when your comment has been approved.
Joseph McBrideBerkeley, CaliforniaPending Approval
In 1988, I interviewed former Texas Senator Ralph Yarborough, who was riding in the back seat of the car in Dallas with LBJ and Lady Bird Johnson. Yarborough scoffed at the story of Rufus Youngblood supposedly jumping over the front seat to shield LBJ with his body. Yarborough said Youngblood never left the front seat. The back seat was so full, as photographs of the car in the motorcade confirm, that there would not have been room for the agent along with three other people. From my book INTO THE NIGHTMARE, this is Yarborough's description of Johnson's reaction after the shots were fired:
"Absolutely motionless. Said nothing. You know that tale Johnson liked to tell about Youngblood, the Secret Service man, jumping over the front seat when the shots were fired and shielding him with his body? Well, that's as big a cock-and-bull tale as the time he told the Marines in Da Nang that his great-grandfather had fought at the Alamo. [Actually, Johnson told servicemen at Camp Stanley in Korea, 'My great-great-grandfather died at the Alamo.'] Youngblood never jumped over the seat. Johnson sat there stoically. The only time they moved was when we were going through the Triple Overpass, and Youngblood leaned over the seat -- he had a small radio receiver in his hand -- and Johnson leaned over, they were about six inches apart, and they listened to some transmission together on the radio. [A photograph indicates LBJ had ducked earlier.]"
Michael Beschloss, writing in the New York Times about Secret Service "protection" of presidents, admits that the performance of that agency in Dallas was "insufficient" (a mild way of putting it). He quotes LBJ's 1964 complaint that when he traveled, the Secret Service would "notify everybody in town what time you're coming, how you're coming, where you're coming. . . They do everything except kill you. They don't know how to operate their guns. Hell, I had 10 of 'em out there one day trying to kill a snake, and they couldn't kill it -- they just emptied the gun -- at my ranch."
But Beschloss apparently still believes the lie by LBJ that Secret Service Agent Rufus Youngblood threw himself over the front seat during the Kennedy assassination and shielded Johnson with his body in the back seat. Some of the reader comments on the article that have appeared on the Times website point to the Secret Service stand-down in Dallas and give more details, etc., but apparently for the Times, it is not acceptable to point out that Beschloss (regarded as a major historian by the mainstream media) is just wrong about Youngblood. I filed this comment, but the Times (so far) has not printed it:
October 3, 2014
Thank you for your submission. We'll notify you at [email address] when your comment has been approved.
Joseph McBrideBerkeley, CaliforniaPending Approval
In 1988, I interviewed former Texas Senator Ralph Yarborough, who was riding in the back seat of the car in Dallas with LBJ and Lady Bird Johnson. Yarborough scoffed at the story of Rufus Youngblood supposedly jumping over the front seat to shield LBJ with his body. Yarborough said Youngblood never left the front seat. The back seat was so full, as photographs of the car in the motorcade confirm, that there would not have been room for the agent along with three other people. From my book INTO THE NIGHTMARE, this is Yarborough's description of Johnson's reaction after the shots were fired:
"Absolutely motionless. Said nothing. You know that tale Johnson liked to tell about Youngblood, the Secret Service man, jumping over the front seat when the shots were fired and shielding him with his body? Well, that's as big a cock-and-bull tale as the time he told the Marines in Da Nang that his great-grandfather had fought at the Alamo. [Actually, Johnson told servicemen at Camp Stanley in Korea, 'My great-great-grandfather died at the Alamo.'] Youngblood never jumped over the seat. Johnson sat there stoically. The only time they moved was when we were going through the Triple Overpass, and Youngblood leaned over the seat -- he had a small radio receiver in his hand -- and Johnson leaned over, they were about six inches apart, and they listened to some transmission together on the radio. [A photograph indicates LBJ had ducked earlier.]"