The Knoll Plainclothes Detective

[Gerry Down]

A little known fact is that there was a plainclothes detective on the triple underpass along with Officer Foster and Officer White. Having read through all the testimonies of the people on the triple underpass, only Sam Holland ever mentions this plainclothes detective:

Mr. STERN - Now, on Friday, November 22, will you describe what you did concerning the President's visit and where you were.
Mr. HOLLAND - Well, about 11:00 o'clock, a couple of policemen and a plainclothesman, came up on top of the triple underpass. and we had some men working up there, and I knew that they was going to have a parade, and I left my office and walked up to the underpass to talk to the policemen. And they asked me during the parade if I would come back up there and identify people that was supposed to be on that overpass. That is, the railroad people.
Mr. STERN - Where are your offices, Mr. Holland?
Mr. HOLLAND - At the Union Terminal Station.
Mr. STERN - Is that within walking distance of the triple overpass?
Mr. HOLLAND - Yes, it is. About--less than a quarter of a mile a very short distance.
Mr. STERN - And these policemen that you spoke to, there were 3 altogether?
Mr. HOLLAND - Two---there were 2 city policemen and 1 man in plainclothes. I didn't talk to him. I talked to the city policemen.
Mr. STERN - You don't know what his affiliation was?
Mr. HOLLAND - I know he was a plainclothes detective, or FBI agent or something like that, but I don't know, and I told him I would be back and after lunch I would go up there.
Mr. STERN - Approximately what time did you arrive up there?
Mr. HOLLAND - Oh, I arrived up there, I guess, about a quarter until 12, and I would identify each person that came up there that he worked at the Union Terminal. and department so-and-so.

Though Officer Foster never mentions this plainclothes detective in his testimony, we know he must have been familiar with him because Officer Foster testified that he checked the credentials of everyone on the triple underpass:

Mr. BALL - You did permit some railroad employees to remain on the overpass?
Mr. FOSTER - Yes, sir.
Mr. BALL - How did you determine they were railroad employees?
Mr. FOSTER - By identification they had with them. Identification they had and the other men that was with them verifying that they were employees.

Sam Holland also saw Officer Foster check everyones credentials:

Mr. STERN - Did it seem to you that everybody up there had been checked by this policeman for identification?
Mr. HOLLAND - I think everyone was checked by some person.

Therefore we know this plainclothes detective was known to Officer Foster if that was not already obvious by Sam Hollands inference that the plainclothes detective was with the two police officers. 

If this plainclothes detective ran from the area of the triple underpass to the picket fence (as Officer Foster testified he himself did along with Sam Holland and others) and Officer Smith ran from the Elm Street/Huston Street junction to the picket fence, then it is a fair inference that the infamous “secret service” agent that Officer Smith met at the picket fence was none other than the plainclothes detective from the triple underpass. Officer Smith testified:

Mr. SMITH. Yes, sir; I checked all the cars. I looked into all the cars and checked around the bushes. Of course, I wasn't alone. There was some deputy sheriff with me, and I believe one Secret Service man when I got there.
I got to make this statement, too. I felt awfully silly, but after the shot and this woman, I pulled my pistol from my holster, and I thought, this is silly, I don't know who I am looking for, and I put it back. Just as I did, he showed me that he was a Secret Service agent.
Mr. LIEBELER. Did you accost this man?
Mr. SMITH. Well, he saw me coming with my pistol and right away he showed me who he was.
Mr. LIEBELER. Do you remember who it was?
Mr. SMITH. No, sir; I don't--because then we started checking the cars. In fact, I was checking the bushes, and I went through the cars, and I started over here in this particular section.
Mr. LIEBELER. Down toward the railroad tracks where they go over the triple underpass?
Mr. SMITH. Yes.

Detectives sometimes identify themselves as “Special Agents” which could be mistaken for “Secret Service Agent”. Military intelligence officer James Powell for example admitted to the ARRB that he sometimes referred to himself as “Special Agent”.

Detectives also of course carry guns which would explain why Malcolm Summers said the person he encountered at the picket fence, whom he said he thought was a “detective or an FBI man” had a gun under a coat he had wrapped over his arm (12 minutes in on below video):

At 21 seconds on the below video we can see a man in a suit with a hat on carrying a coat over his arm which matches exactly to Malcolm Summers account of the well-dressed man:

Critically, if this guy was still hanging around the picket fence area by the time the above footage was taken, then he clearly could not be an assassin but instead would align more closely with being the plainclothes detective Sam Holland said was on top the triple underpass with Officers Foster and White. 

Does anyone know who this plainclothes detective might have been or what office/agency he might have been working with?

[Gerry Down]

In his WC testimony, Officer Foster explained how he and Officer White were only allowing official railroad employees onto the triple underpass to view the motorcade. He explains how several members of the public came through the railroad carpark to gain access but that he turned them back in the same direction from which they came from. One could imagine how the plainclothes detective might have been helping Officer Foster and White in this regard. This fact is interesting in light of the controversial eyewitness account of Gordon Arnold.

Gordan Arnold was 22 years old in 1963. His account first appeared in 1978 in the Dallas Morning News:

Gordon L. Arnold, [a] former Dallas soldier, said he was stopped by a man wearing a light-colored suit as he was walking behind a fence on top of the grassy knoll minutes before the assassination. Arnold, now an investigator for the Dallas Department of Consumer Affairs, was not called by the Warren Commission and has not been interviewed by the House Assassinations Committee. Arnold said he was moving toward the railroad bridge over the triple underpass to take movie film of the presidential motorcade when “this guy just walked towards me and said that I shouldn’t be up there.” Arnold challenged the man’s authority, he said, and the man “showed me a badge and said he was with the Secret Service and that he didn’t want anybody up there.” Arnold then retreated to the front of the picket fence high up on the knoll just to the west of the pergola on the north side of Elm Street.

SOURCE: Dallas Morning News (Sunday, August 27, 1978)

Gordan Arnold repeated the claim in “The Men Who Killed Kennedy”. Gordan Arnolds full interview on “The Men Who Killed Kennedy” can be found at 57 minutes to 1 hour 11 minutes on the below video:

Lee Bowers said he saw two men on the west end of the picket fence near the triple underpass. These two men could have been members of the public who tried to gain access to the triple underpass to get a good view from there but were refused access and forced to go to the next nearest spot – the west end of the picket fence near the triple underpass. Bowers said one of these men was a young man in his 20’s which in a very general sense aligns with Gordan Arnold.

In light of this, Gordan Arnold may well be telling the truth that he was near the picket fence when JFK was assassinated but that he was actually not in front of the east end of the picket fence but rather was one of the two men behind the west end of the picket fence who Bowers saw. In this scenario, Gordan Arnold would have been a genuine witness to the assassination who then decided to embellish his account years latter to make it more interesting. The allegation is that he copied the well publicized story of Beverly Oliver who had started claiming in 1970 to have taken a film of the assassination but which was confiscated by unknown authorities. In fact, in the 1978 Dallas Morning News article Gordan is quoted as saying: “because I heard after that there were a lot of people making claims about pictures and stuff and they were dying sort of peculiarly. I just said, well, the devil with it, forget it. Besides, I couldn’t claim my pictures anyway; how did I know what were mine?”

In this regard, the start of Gordan Arnolds story could potentially be factually correct – he may have tried to gain access to the triple underpass (to simply view the motorcade, not actually film it) but was turned back by the plainclothes detective. He was then forced to watch the motorcade from the west end of the picket fence where Bowers saw him. What’s interesting here is that this plainclothes detective does not feature in the rest of Gordan Arnolds story regarding the camera and so on that was taken off him – Gordan couldn’t feature him because the detective was a real individual on the triple underpass and if he had tried to include him in the rest of the story regarding the confiscation of the camera then the plainclothes detective could have come forward and refuted that part of his story.

In the 1978 version of his story Gordan Arnold only spoke to the guy in a suit whom he was quoted as calling a “secret service agent” at the triple underpass once but by a 1985 interview with Jim Marrs he was now recounting a second encounter with him where he spoke briefly with him again a second time. Gordan Arnold mentions this “second encounter” in the 1988 “The Men Who Killed Kennedy” by which time he was calling this “secret service agent” a "CIA" agent".

In “The Men Who Killed Kennedy” Gordan was shown a colorized version of the Moorman photo. He gave the following reaction to this:

Gordan Arnold says:

“To be honest with you the picture bothers me cos if this is a true thing of what has occurred, then I could be the only one that…saw the man that killed the President. And to be honest with you if I had known this [pointing to the colorized version of the Moorman photo] I wouldn’t have given the interview …cos that’s too close to home right now.”

One interpretation of this is that Gordan Arnold was making up a bogus story simply to gain attention but then he was shown this photo of a police officer firing from the grassy knoll. At this point in the interview Gordan Arnold thinks that in creating a bogus story he has inadvertently made himself into a witness who could have been the only person to see an assassin firing from the grassy knoll, which would now put his life in danger. In realizing this during the interview Gordan then blurts out he wouldn’t have given an interview placing himself on the knoll beside this assassin had he known there actually was an assassin there. Gordan Arnold becomes emotional during the interview as he now thinks he could have placed his life in danger by making up his bogus story.

But aside from all that, what’s interesting is that Gordan Arnold could potentially be one of the two men who Bowers saw at the west end of the picket fence and could have interacted with the plainsclothes detective on the triple underpass who later became infamous as the alleged secret service agent on the knoll that Officer Smith encountered.

[Steve Thomas]

On 11/13/2022 at 5:57 PM, Gerry Down said:

If this plainclothes detective ran from the area of the triple underpass to the picket fence (as Officer Foster testified he himself did along with Sam Holland and others) and Officer Smith ran from the Elm Street/Huston Street junction to the picket fence, then it is a fair inference that the infamous “secret service” agent that Officer Smith met at the picket fence was none other than the plainclothes detective from the triple underpass.

Gerry,

That would be a fair inference except that Officer Smith told the Warren Commission that the man showed him identification, and he told author, Anthony Summers that he had seen Secret Service Credentials before.

“I pulled my pistol from my holster, and I thought, this is silly, I don't know who I am looking for, and I put it back. Just as I did, he showed me that he was a Secret Service agent”

Testimony of Joe Marshall Smith. Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits, volume VII, p. 535, as cited in the History Matters Archive, http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk..._Vol7_0272a.htm

The question arises, had Officer Smith ever seen Secret Service credentials? As a matter of fact, Smith told author Anthony Summers that he had. As he said to Summers, “The man, this character produced credentials from his hip pocket which showed him to be Secret Service. I have seen those credentials before, and they satisfied me and the deputy sheriff.”

Summers, Anthony. Conspiracy, as cited in North, Mark. Act of Treason. New York: Carroll and Graf, 1991. p. 386.

Steve Thomas

[Gerry Down]

15 minutes ago, Steve Thomas said:

Gerry,

That would be a fair inference except that Officer Smith told the Warren Commission that the man showed him identification, and he told author, Anthony Summers that he had seen Secret Service Credentials before.

“I pulled my pistol from my holster, and I thought, this is silly, I don't know who I am looking for, and I put it back. Just as I did, he showed me that he was a Secret Service agent”

Testimony of Joe Marshall Smith. Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits, volume VII, p. 535, as cited in the History Matters Archive, http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk..._Vol7_0272a.htm

The question arises, had Officer Smith ever seen Secret Service credentials? As a matter of fact, Smith told author Anthony Summers that he had. As he said to Summers, “The man, this character produced credentials from his hip pocket which showed him to be Secret Service. I have seen those credentials before, and they satisfied me and the deputy sheriff.”

Summers, Anthony. Conspiracy, as cited in North, Mark. Act of Treason. New York: Carroll and Graf, 1991. p. 386.

Steve Thomas

Could this be an off duty secret service agent who afterwards never told the secret service or media he had been up there? You could see why an off duty secret service agent might want to hide he had been there in light of the assassination that then occured - he should not have allowed officers Foster and White to allow railroad workers be on the triple underpass directly over the path of the motorcade. You can see in some if officer Fosters reports that he was embarrassed at having left those railroad workers up there because at the start of the day his sergeant had said to let no one up on the triple underpass.

Of course you also have the problem that officer Smith might not want to admit to Summers or anyone else that he did not check this unknown person's credentials correctly. Which given the panic of the moment is something that could very easily have happened.

Edited November 15, 2022 by Gerry Down

[Allen Lowe]

All of the above, while intelligently invented, is all supposition, and takes a whole lot of possibles and turns them into certainties, which is not evidence. And remember Gordon Arnold talked about hearing the bullet come from behind the fence, which means he wasn’t behind the picket fence when the shots rang our, at least by his own telling. I appreciate the thought that goes into all these kind of stories, but it does neither side any good; all we have to go by is the empirical evidence, the testimony, the witnessing, which says Secret Service man, no documentation of who this could’ve been, and raises suspicions about the role of such a person. And let us not forget Roy Hargreaves, the known bearer of false Secret Service credentials, who  has admitted being in Dallas that day. 

Edited November 16, 2022 by Allen Lowe

[Gerry Down]

54 minutes ago, Allen Lowe said:

All of the above, while intelligently invented, is all supposition, and takes a whole lot of possibles and turns them into certainties, which is not evidence. And remember Gordon Arnold talked about hearing the bullet come from behind the fence, which means he wasn’t behind the picket fence when the shots rang our, at least by his own telling. I appreciate the thought that goes into all these kind of stories, but it does neither side any good; all we have to go by is the empirical evidence, the testimony, the witnessing, which says Secret Service man, no documentation of who this could’ve been, and raises suspicions about the role of such a person. And let us not forget Roy Hargreaves, the known bearer of false Secret Service credentials, who  has admitted being in Dallas that day. 

From a quick search online, apparently Secret Service agents can potentially carry firearms while off duty:

 

and:

The "plainclothes detective" which Sam Holland saw and which apparently Malcolm Summers met might quiet possibly simply be an off-duty Secret Service agent who went to a good viewing spot atop the triple underpass to view the motorcade, and inadvertently got caught up in an assassination and its aftermath. 

The fact this person was apparently captured on film hanging around the picket fence several minutes after the assassination had occurred, as seen in the above video, means we can be safe in the knowledge that this person most likely had no connection to the shooting itself.  

 

[Paul Cummings]

2 minutes ago, Gerry Down said:

From a quick search online, apparently Secret Service agents can potentially carry firearms while off duty:

 

and:

The "plainclothes detective" which Sam Holland saw and which apparently Malcolm Summers met might quiet possibly simply be an off-duty Secret Service agent who went to a good viewing spot atop the triple underpass to view the motorcade, and inadvertently got caught up in an assassination and its aftermath. 

The fact this person was apparently captured on film hanging around the picket fence several minutes after the assassination had occurred, as seen in the above video, means we can be safe in the knowledge that this person most likely had no connection to the shooting itself.  

 

Sketch drawing based upon Summers description.

[Gerry Down]

53 minutes ago, Gerry Down said:

The "plainclothes detective" which Sam Holland saw and which apparently Malcolm Summers met might quiet possibly simply be an off-duty Secret Service agent who went to a good viewing spot atop the triple underpass to view the motorcade, and inadvertently got caught up in an assassination and its aftermath. 

Though this assertion should be weighed against what Sam Holland said:

Mr. HOLLAND - Well, about 11:00 o'clock, a couple of policemen and a plainclothesman, came up on top of the triple underpass. and we had some men working up there, and I knew that they was going to have a parade, and I left my office and walked up to the underpass to talk to the policemen. And they asked me during the parade if I would come back up there and identify people that was supposed to be on that overpass. That is, the railroad people.

According to this account, the plainclothesman was more than just a bystander and was actually with Officers Foster and White as early as 11am. Still, that does not preclude this individual as being an off duty secret service agent that happened to be friendly with either Officer Foster and/or White and was just hanging around with them.

In the hours after the assassination when this off-duty secret service agent heard the heat coming from his fellow secret service agents about how bystanders were allowed to stand on the triple underpass directly over the motorcade, you could see why he would now want to remove himself from the record of ever having been up there. And maybe even Officer Foster facilitated him in this request by not mentioning him in his WC testimony. But Sam Hollands WC testimony gives his existence on the overpass away. 

[Benjamin Cole]

11 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

Gerry,

That would be a fair inference except that Officer Smith told the Warren Commission that the man showed him identification, and he told author, Anthony Summers that he had seen Secret Service Credentials before.

“I pulled my pistol from my holster, and I thought, this is silly, I don't know who I am looking for, and I put it back. Just as I did, he showed me that he was a Secret Service agent”

Testimony of Joe Marshall Smith. Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits, volume VII, p. 535, as cited in the History Matters Archive, http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk..._Vol7_0272a.htm

The question arises, had Officer Smith ever seen Secret Service credentials? As a matter of fact, Smith told author Anthony Summers that he had. As he said to Summers, “The man, this character produced credentials from his hip pocket which showed him to be Secret Service. I have seen those credentials before, and they satisfied me and the deputy sheriff.”

Summers, Anthony. Conspiracy, as cited in North, Mark. Act of Treason. New York: Carroll and Graf, 1991. p. 386.

Steve Thomas

Dallas Sheriff Seymour Weitzman also encountered the Secret Service agent near the GK, and that is on the record. So you have a sheriff and cop both saying they saw a guy who flashed SS credentials, near the GK. Mistakes happen, but....

[Gerry Down]

33 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Dallas Sheriff Seymour Weitzman also encountered the Secret Service agent near the GK, and that is on the record. So you have a sheriff and cop both saying they saw a guy who flashed SS credentials, near the GK. Mistakes happen, but....

Sam Holland had become familiar with the "plainclothes detective" since 11am that morning. Sam Holland ran around the fence immediately after the shooting and saw no one there. Therefore we know this "plainclothes detective" did not shoot anyone from the knoll.

Looks to me like this was an off duty secret service agent that was on the triple underpass all morning with officers Foster and White.

[Benjamin Cole]

1 hour ago, Gerry Down said:

Sam Holland had become familiar with the "plainclothes detective" since 11am that morning. Sam Holland ran around the fence immediately after the shooting and saw no one there. Therefore we know this "plainclothes detective" did not shoot anyone from the knoll.

Looks to me like this was an off duty secret service agent that was on the triple underpass all morning with officers Foster and White.

Looks to me like this was an off duty secret service agent that was on the triple underpass all morning with officers Foster and White.--GD

I don't follow. Why do you think Mr. Plainclothes was not a Dallas PD detective? Or maybe even a railroad dick? 

If he was an off-duty Secret Service agent...why was he there? Evidently, all SS agents were accounted for that day. 

 

 

[Ron Ege]

Excerpted from:  FAKE SECRET SERVICE AGENTS (whokilledjfk.net).

Thank you, Michael T. Griffith.

 

" . . . Explained Officer Smith:

He looked like an auto mechanic. He had on a sports shirt and sports pants. But he had dirty fingernails, it looked like, and hands that looked like an auto mechanic's hands. And afterwards it didn't ring true for the Secret Service. At the time we were so pressed for time, and we were searching. And he had produced correct identification, and we just overlooked the thing. I should have checked that man closer, but at the time I didn't snap on it. (Summers 50)

Former Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry stated in 1977 that the man encountered by Officer Smith "must have been bogus." Said Curry,

"I think he must have been bogus--certainly the suspicion would point to the man as being involved, some way or other, in the shooting since he was in an area immediately adjacent to where the shots were--and the fact that he had a badge that purported him to be Secret Service would make it seem all the more suspicious." (Summers 51) . . ."

 

And:

 

" . . .Often overlooked in discussions on phony SS agents in Dealey Plaza is the disturbing account of Sergeant D. V. Harkness, (Posner, for example, does not even mention it.). Sergeant Harkness went to the REAR of the Texas School Book Depository Building within a few minutes of the assassination. When he arrived there, he encountered several "well-armed" men dressed in suits. These "well-armed" men TOLD Harkness they were SS agents (Hurt 110-111). It's not hard to understand why the presence of the armed, well-dressed men at the rear of the Book Depository did not make Harkness suspicious. Police officers were beginning to seal off the area, and just six minutes after the shooting Harkness himself identified the Depository over the radio as a possible source of gunfire. The problem, of course, is that the men encountered by Harkness could not have been legitimate SS agents, nor is it credible to suggest that Harkness somehow "misunderstood" what they said to him. . . ."

[Steve Thomas]

17 hours ago, Gerry Down said:

Could this be an off duty secret service agent who afterwards never told the secret service or media he had been up there? You could see why an off duty secret service agent might want to hide he had been there in light of the assassination that then occured -

 

Gerry,

I once wrote an essay on this very subject that you can read here, if you are interested:

Secret Service: On the Knoll and Beyond

© by Steve Thomas

January 21, 2008

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/12084-secret-service-on-the-knoll-and-beyond/

https://myjfksite.weebly.com/

The incidents of Dallas Policemen and Deputy Sheriffs encountering someone whom they identified, or were identified to them as being members of the U.S. Secret Service at a time and place where no members of the Secret Service are known to be present,  is more extensive than is commonly known. There are at least twelve accounts (if you count the identification of Jack Puterbaugh as a Secret Service agent in the pilot car by Detectives Senkel and Turner), and eighteen if you count the six policemen who say there was a Secret Service Agent present during Oswald’s first interrogation beginning at 2:20PM."

"

"Were these agents imposters?

I believe that some were and some were not. I think that the agent on the sixth floor of the TSBD is genuine; the agent on the knoll is not. The agent needing a ride from the airport at 12:38 is probably genuine; the agents encountered at the library probably were not. The agents encountered at the back of the TSBD by David Harkness were probably imposters; the agent in the Dallas Police Headquarters was probably genuine. In either case, the implications are disturbing. It would be evidence of conspiracy if bogus agents were impersonating U.S. Secret Service officials that day; and if there were real Secret Service Agents in and around Dealey Plaza and this fact has been withheld from the American people for close to 40 years, then we have not been told the truth about what really happened one sunny November afternoon in Dallas, TX. in 1963."

Steve Thomas

Edited November 16, 2022 by Steve Thomas

[Gerry Down]

23 hours ago, Paul Cummings said:

Sketch drawing based upon Summers description.

 

10 hours ago, Ron Ege said:

" . . . Explained Officer Smith:

He looked like an auto mechanic. He had on a sports shirt and sports pants. But he had dirty fingernails, it looked like, and hands that looked like an auto mechanic's hands. And afterwards it didn't ring true for the Secret Service. At the time we were so pressed for time, and we were searching. And he had produced correct identification, and we just overlooked the thing. I should have checked that man closer, but at the time I didn't snap on it. (Summers 50)

The above sketch done to the description given by Malcolm Summers does not match the description given by Officer Smith to Anthony Summers.

We must be talking about two different men in this regard? Malcolm Summers most likely met the well-dressed plainclothes detective with a gun that had been on the triple underpass with Officers Foster and White while Officer Smith met a completely different man, more casually dressed with dirty fingernails, identifying himself as Secret Service but with no gun. 

[Paul Cummings]

1 hour ago, Gerry Down said:

 

The above sketch done to the description given by Malcolm Summers does not match the description given by Officer Smith to Anthony Summers.

We must be talking about two different men in this regard? Malcolm Summers most likely met the well-dressed plainclothes detective with a gun that had been on the triple underpass with Officers Foster and White while Officer Smith met a completely different man, more casually dressed with dirty fingernails, identifying himself as Secret Service but with no gun. 

 

Edited November 17, 2022 by Paul Cummings