ALAN DALE DANIEL SAID:
>>> "Any ideas about why no men were on the back of the Kennedy car? Was that Secret Service practice? It just seems a bit odd to me. Perhaps Kennedy wanted it that way." <<<
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Yes, it's been reported that JFK didn't like the Secret Service agents riding on the back of the car any more than was absolutely necessary.
Some conspiracy theorists like to think that the motorcade in Dallas on 11/22/63 was totally different than ANY other previous JFK motorcade with respect to Secret Service agents (not) riding the back bumper of Kennedy's limo.
But this assumption is simply not true...and provably so by taking a look at the following pre-November 22 photos of JFK motorcades which depict NO AGENTS riding the back bumper of Kennedy's vehicle (and NO AGENTS even walking along side the car either). So why would anybody expect anything different regarding the specific "ride the bumper" procedures on November 22nd?.....
In addition, there's the following Warren Commission testimony from Secret Service agent Clint Hill (who rode on the front-left running board of the SS follow-up car in the Dallas motorcade):
ARLEN SPECTER -- "Did you have any other occasion en route from Love Field to downtown Dallas to leave the followup car and mount that [back bumper] portion of the President's car?"
CLINTON J. HILL -- "I did the same thing approximately four times."
MR. SPECTER -- "What are the standard regulations and practices, if any, governing such an action on your part?"
MR. HILL -- "It is left to the agent's discretion more or less to move to that particular position when he feels that there is a danger to the President, to place himself as close to the President--or the First Lady as my case was--as possible, which I did."
MR. SPECTER -- "Are those practices specified in any written documents of the Secret Service?"
MR. HILL -- "No, they are not."
MR. SPECTER -- "Now, had there been any instruction or comment about your performance of that type of a duty with respect to anything that President Kennedy himself had said in the period immediately preceding the trip to Texas?"
MR. HILL -- "Yes, sir; there was. The preceding Monday, the President was on a trip in Tampa, Florida, and he requested that the agents not ride on either of those two steps."
MR. SPECTER -- "And to whom did the President make that request?"
MR. HILL -- "Assistant Special Agent in Charge Boring."
David Von Pein
April 19, 2008
