“Was there a fake Secret Service agent on the grassy knoll?” a reader inquires
This headline from the Dallas Morning News in 1978 provides one answer.
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Earl Golz reported in the Dallas Morning News on August 27, 1978, that “Several men posing as Secret Service agents were in Dealey Plaza shortly before and after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.”
Golz reported that five people who were in Dealey Plaza when JFK was shot dead had told him of encountering men who displayed Secret Service credentials in the immediate aftermath.
“All but one of the encounters were in the parking lot west of the Texas Schoolbook Depository from where Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly shot the president on November 22, 1963,” Golz wrote.
That parking lot sits atop the area famously known as “the grassy knoll.”
Golz highlighted the problem with these statements by quoting the final report of the Warren Commission:
“‘None of the 28 Secret Service agents were on foot at the scene either before or after the shooting,’ the report said.
So anybody who was flashing Secret Service credentials in the crowd that day had to be an imposter, Golz concluded.
Fact checking time
Many people at the seen said they thought the gunfire came from in front of the presidential motorcade, from the parking lot west of the Texas Schoolbook Depository, atop the embankment famously known as “the grassy knoll.”
Professor John McAdams of Marquette University says 33 witnesses to JFK’s assassination said they heard gunfire from the grassy knoll area.
A more comprehensive survey of witness testimony by Stewart Galenor found 52 witnesses who heard a shot from the knoll.
Twenty one law enforcement officers at the scene thought the shots had come from that area.
It was in that area that men circulated pretending to be Secret Service officers.
Read Golz’s article here. (H/T to the Baylor University’s Poage Library.)
Golz died on New Years Day 2014 at age 79. He was eulogized by the Austin Statesman-American as a journeyman reporter and editor.
Postscript
If you have anything to add to Earl Golz’s reporting about Secret Service imposters in Dealey Plaza, please send new information, original documents and working links to JFK Facts.
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