In reality, the Service deemed a trip to Chicago with two or more hit men at large, possibly armed with telescopic rifles, to be too dangerous for the President. A Kennedy hater and former Marine, Richard Vallee, was arrested in Chicago and found with two M-1 rifles, a pistol, and 3000 rounds of ammunition. Vallee told a journalist that in 1963 prior to returning to his hometown of Chicago he had been on Long Island training Cuban exiles for the assassination of Fidel Castro. Vallee's place of employment looked out over the Jackson Street exit ramp where Kennedy's motorcade would have travelled headed to Soldier Field from O'Hare airport. Despite being heavily armed, the Secret Service considered Vallee to pose a entirely separate threat from the alleged four man assassination team. They left surveillance of Vallee to local police while they followed what were apparently two members of the assassination squad. Researcher Lamar Waldron considers Vallee would have been a patsy similar to the role played later in Dallas by Oswald. Here is a transcript of the superficial CNN report:
BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It seems to happen this time every year -- more buzz about the death of John F. Kennedy. This time, the question of whether potential assassins were targeting him weeks before his death. A former Secret Service agent tells CNN just before President Kennedy was to go to Chicago in early November 1963, the agency got an important tip. An employee of a boarding house had seen rifles with telescopic sites and an outline of Kennedy's motorcade route in a room rented by Cuban nationals.The former agent, Abraham Bolden, would not go on camera with us or do a phone interview. He's writing a book out next spring called "The Echo from Dealey Plaza".Bolden admits he was not directly involved in the Secret Service investigation into the alleged plot. But in the 1970s, he told the House Select Committee on Assassinations he learned about it by monitoring Secret Service radio channels and observing suspects in custody.A different author, who has researched the alleged Chicago plot, told us what he believed happened to the suspected Cuban hit man. LAMAR WALDRON, AUTHOR, "ULTIMATE SACRIFICE": From all indications, the surveillance on the two men were -- was blown somehow. And so the two men were actually at large at the time that JFK was getting ready to leave Washington and come to Chicago.TODD: Kennedy's trip to Chicago was canceled. But it's not clear if it was because of a security threat.Contacted by CNN, the Secret Service would not comment on Abraham Bolden's claim, but did tell us he was separated from the agency in 1964 after being convicted of a crime. Published reports say Bolden was convicted of soliciting bribes from a counterfeiter, but that his accuser later recanted. Bolden claims he was framed.
What CNN failed to report is that Bolden was an exemplary law enforcement officer. Eisenhower appointed him to the Secret Service in 1959. He worked counterfeiting cases in Chicago where
he won two commendations for cracking counterfeiting rings. In 1961 Kennedy appointed him to the presidential protection detail making him the first black agent to work that detail. The Chicago assassination attempt is documented in detail and confirmed by multiple sources including the former Chicago head of the Secret Service, Maurice Martineau. Lamar Waldron in his extensively researched book, Utimate Sacrifice, devotes an entire chapter to events in Chicago. According to Waldron, Bolden is largely responsible for bringing the attempt to public attention. Bolden was prevented from testifying to the Warren Commission because he was arrested on charges of soliciting bribes. Bolden faced two trials before finally being convicted on the testimony of two criminals, one of whom he had previously arrested. One of the criminals, an associate of Chicago mobster Sam DeStefano, later admitted he perjured himself against Bolden. Bolden served six years in prison some of it in solitary confinement.