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

I felt like I was actually living the experience with Mr. Bolden. His determination and unwavering resolve to rise above the racial pressures he encountered makes him a hero in my eyesight. Given the delicate issues his situation touched on its a wonder he wasn't killed. What little faith I had in our judicial system is completely gone.

I remember it like it was yesterday. On September 27, 1964 the Warren Commission released it's long awaited report on the facts surrounding the assasination of President John F. Kennedy less than a year earlier. I was only 13 at the time but after hearing the details of the Warren Commission Report I somehow knew even at that tender age that something was just not right. Over the years I have read an assortment of books on this topic and so it was with great anticipation that I latched on to a copy of "The Echo From Dealey Plaza". The chilling story told by author Abraham Bolden who was a Secret Service agent at the time of the President's assassination only serves to confirm what so many of us have suspected all these many years. Indeed, something was greatly amiss in Dallas on Friday, November 22, 1963. Abraham Bolden was the first African-American to serve in the Secret Service. He had graduated cum laude from Lincoln University in Jefferson City, MO with a B.A. in music composition. After his marriage to Barbara he went to work for the Pinkerton Detective Agency in nearby St. Louis. Bolden found that he enjoyed this type of work and a year later he found himself working in the Criminal Investigative Division of the Illinois State Police. A couple of years later he heard that the Secret Service was looking for agents. He was not terribly surprised to find that at that time there had never ever been a black Secret Service agent. Nevertheless he decided to submit an application and was astonished to learn that he had been accepted into the agency. The year was 1960. Abraham Bolden worked out of the Secret Service office in Chicago. In the spring of 1961 President Kennedy came to town and Abraham had the privilege of meeting him. As a result of that brief encounter Abraham Bolden would be offered an opportunity he deemed much too good to pass up--a chance to serve on the White House detail in Washington D.C.! What Abraham quickly discovered during his brief stint in Washington was that the agency was rife with racism. He also observed many other types of deplorable behavior by some of the agents he worked with. In his opinion, many of these agents were derelict in the performance of their duties, so much so that he feared for the life of the President. Because of all this Bolden opted to turn down a permanent assignment in Washington and chose to return to Chicago where he continued to serve with distinction, primarily in the area of counterfeiting investigations. But the laxity displayed by those agents continued to gnaw at him and he continued to observe behavior by some of his colleagues that made him extremely uncomfortable. Suffice to say that Abraham Bolden was not at all surprised when he learned that President Kennedy had been gunned down in Dallas. Both before and after the assassination Holden made his concerns known to some of his bosses in the Secret Service. His bosses came to the conclusion that Abraham knew fa

This work is intriguing as Abraham Bolden gives his side of how the Secret Service framed him rather than permit him to give testimony to the Warren Commission about the lax in the duties of Secret Service agents to protect President John F. Kennedy. The Warren Commission investigated the assassination. Bolden was the first black to serve on the White House Secret Service, assigned to protect the president, and was invited to that post by Kennedy. Bolden is very brief about his childhood, and tells even less about his teen and college years. The main purposes of this section is show the development of his sense of duty, honesty, and other values his parents taught him. Most of the book is devoted to his tenure as a Secret Service Agent and how all that he had built professionally was destroyed. He provides very detailed accounts of the trials, and his appeals and other strategies to clear his name and get his freedom. Despite all that happened to him, his family stood my him. The work is well written, and written in such a way that the reader can get a sense of the intellectual, emotional, spiritual and physical trials and tribulations of the author and those around him. The minute details are necessary because Bolden is attempting to clear his name and actions from a time period that is very controversial. Therefore, he uses footnotes so that the reader can cross check the facts. Some documents were unobtainable, but Bolden proves to a great researcher, using various primary source materials to support his claims. Unlike most autobiographies, the work is indexed. Others have criticized the book because it sheds little light on the Kennedy assassination, but this is an unfair assessment. The book is about Bolden, not Kennedy. This work is a very much needed addition to black American history, particular in the history of Secret Service Agents. In addition, it also contributes to the historiography of the assassination of President Kennedy, as well as the general historiography of the 1960s. It could also be used in the study of racism, organized crime, the criminal justice system, and the legal system. This work stands, perhaps, as the final testimony of Bolden, who wants to public to know his ordeal. At this point, the public becomes the jury.

Abraham Bolden joined the Secret Service in October, 1960 and was working out of the Chicago office providing security for an April, 1961 visit by President Kennedy to Chicago. After meeting Bolden during the course of the visit, Kennedy invited Bolden to permanently join the prestigious White House Security Detail. Bolden joins the detail and goes to Washington DC in June, 1960 for a 30-day trial period during which he encounters intense racism from other White House Secret Service agents that leads him to request to return to the Chicago office. During his July, 1961 exit interview with U.E. Baughmann, head of the Secret Service, Bolden described several of the incidents of racism, a lack of training, (Bolden was asked to use an AR-15 rifle but never received training on the weapon) and also mentioned names, dates, and places of agents who were drunking on duty. Baughmann notes this info, agrees that it was unacceptable, and states that he will take it up with his replacement, James J. Rowley, before he retires in a few days. Rowley was at that time the head of the White House Protective Detail and it is his group that Bolden is criticizing. Bolden goes back to Chicago and works on counterfeiting cases and Rowley becomes head of the Secret Service. Bolden is working in the Chicago office when Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963. One week before, on November 17, Bolden was asked to fly to Washington DC to take a new assignment as an undercover agent for the Internal Revenue Service. As a part of this job, Bolden would get a new name, birth certificate, marriage certificate, employment records, and all references to his former identity would be erased. Bolden is uncomfortable, says he needs to think it over, and goes back to Chicago. A week later, Kennedy is assassinated and Bolden sees repeated suspicious activities by Secret Service personnel. Bolden is the night duty agent for Chicago on November 24 when he receives a call from the Agent Sorrels in the Dallas office asking that the Chicago office begin investigating a guy named John Hurd who was identified by suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald during interrogation at Dallas Police Headquarters. The Chicago agents dutifully investigate for several days and turn up information on a suspect. The Agent in Charge of the Chicago Office, Maurice Martineau, then demands that they stop investigating and turn over every scrap of paper to him personally, whereupon every on Hurd stops...forever. Another suspicious activity occurs when one of the Secret Service agents in Dallas loses his official identification at a strip club on the night before the assassination. The day of the assassination, several police officers report encountering a Secret Service agent with official credentials on the grassy knoll...where no agent was supposed to be. Rather than investigating this, the Secret Service requests that every agent turn in their identification and new identificat

As the leading civilian authority on the U.S. Secret Service (and one who has interviewed and/ or corresponded with over 70 former agents, including, on quite a few occasions, the author), I highly recommend this seminal work from former Secret Service hero Abraham Bolden. The book is very well written and gripping in its narrative. Whether one views the JFK assassination as the work of one man (who beat the conspirators to the punch) or the work of a deadly conspiracy, Bolden's book holds up in any case, for it is the tale of injustice done to him, as well as the detailing of prior threats to President Kennedy's life. As one who has studied the Secret Service and President Kennedy's life and death in great detail, I find this book fascinating and indispensable. What more can I say? Get this asap!