JFK in Springfield
How a 1962 Trip to the Illinoisan Capital City Foreshadowed Both the Protection Problems Within Kennedy's Secret Service and the Pattern of Unsuccessful Attempts on His Life
On October 20, 1962 President John F. Kennedy was leading the country through day five of what historians have since speculated could have been an abbreviated path to a nuclear World War III. In the moment, there was no definitive sign that it was day five of thirteen. It could have been the final day of the crisis, and had the Joint Chiefs and Russian hardliners prevailed, the finality could have been catastrophic. A recently declassified report now informs us that it could also have been the final day of Kennedy’s life, one year before Dallas.
On this beautiful fall day, in the middle of what would be called the Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK had made a one-day campaign trip to the Midwest. The midterm election season was in full swing and Illinois, a rock-solid state for the national Democratic Party, was getting its icing on the electoral cake, a visit from the popular president. Illinois had been one of the key states that had tipped the 1960 election to Kennedy, and historians have written about Kennedy’s 1962 trip to the Midwest in passing.
“As Air Force One landed at Springfield’s Capital Airport – hardly much more than a landing strip – Kennedy picked up a new pack of politicos, Illinois’s Governor Otto Kerner, Senator Paul Douglas, and Congressman Sidney Yates,” wrote Robert Smith Thompson in The Missiles of October. “Together they rode to Lincoln’s Tomb, where Kennedy laid a wreath, then they rode again to the livestock pavilion of the state fairgrounds. … Then it was back to the landing strip: Kennedy’s stay in Springfield lasted just over an hour and a half. By 3:45 p.m., he was airborne again, heading now for Chicago.”
Historian James Giglio was even more nondescript, if not outright rosy. “Kennedy’s campaign swing represented a welcome diversion as he enjoyed the animated crowds, the friendly ovations, and colorful fall landscape. For a few moments, he might have actually forgotten all of the troubles he had left behind.”
What historians didn’t know then and what the JFK research community hadn’t known until 2018 was that two young men, ages 16 and 20, had been arrested after having been spotted pointing a rifle barrel with a telescopic sight out of a second-story window along the motorcade route. Police seized the .22-caliber semi-automatic rifle and a full box of ammunition.
The rifle was spotted minutes after the motorcade had passed by the location once, but the presidential motorcade was scheduled to return on its way back to the airport. The two young men were detained and taken to Secret Service agents on the scene. They admitted pointing the rifle out of the window, a questionable action which they claimed was done to test the power of the telescopic sight as they wanted to get a closer look at Kennedy when he returned.
The official report is not specific, which is curious for such a unique situation that took place at such a dangerous time. The exact name and address of the building are not mentioned, nor is it clarified whether the rifle was loaded. The report also makes no mention of the young men having been questioned regarding why they would have been carrying a box of ammunition on a mere sightseeing excursion.
When reporters from Springfield’s State Journal-Register visited the then 16-year-old, now in his 70s, the man scanned the document, said “You’ve got a story … Go with it,” and closed his door, refusing to comment further.
Reports from the interrogations had been declassified by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in 2016, but it was not until Stephen Knott, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, wrote about it in the Washington Post in 2018 that Illinoisans and the research community became aware of the incident. Knott appears to believe that the intentions of the men were neither casual nor optical.
“God knows what would have happened if that Illinois state trooper or whoever it was hadn’t spotted the gun on the first pass,” Knott wrote.
The most concerned officials in Springfield that day should have been the Secret Service. Gerald Blaine was one of the two Secret Service “advance men” in Springfield. He mentioned Springfield in his book, The Kennedy Detail, but he did not mention the rifle or the two men. When Springfield journalist Crystal Thomas interviewed Blaine by phone, he minimized the incident as routine.
“Every time you went on a trip, something would usually happen,” Blaine said.
Author and Secret Service historian Vince Palamara disagrees with Blaine and does not find him credible on this topic and others. “This did not happen that often,” Palamara told this writer in an e-mail exchange. “Did the president receive threats on his life? Yes, of course he did. Was it a daily [or] weekly thing? No. … I do not believe Blaine whatsoever. He is someone who does not tell the truth. … Blaine is a liar and cannot be trusted. … He plays very fast and loose with the truth and definitely has a huge pro-government and pro-Warren Commission bias.”
Blaine was positioned in the lead car of the presidential motorcade and was not informed of the incident until later. “I just heard word that they picked up somebody that was carrying a rifle and that they were taking (the rifle) to a gun shop,” Blaine told Springfield’s State Journal-Register.
Questions still existed: Rather than exporting the rifle back to FBI headquarters, why was it taken to a gun shop? Was the rifle loaded? Why were the young men in possession of a box of ammunition if they weren’t going to use it? Why was the report not more specific? Should the Secret Service have performed a more detailed follow-up on the incident? If incidents like these were indeed routine, why did Blaine not mention these incidents in his book?
“Exactly,” Palamara exclaimed. “Nothing adds up. It sounds like [the young men were] attempting to make a rationalization of what they may really have been up to. … The whole strange saga does not compute. It sounds like there was a huge degree of naivete in just ‘accepting’ the story of an innocent telescopic sightseeing mission.”
According to Blaine, there were only five agents in Springfield protecting JFK that day. None of them could be pulled off their assigned detail to follow up. Investigation of the incident then would have been the responsibility of the Secret Service special agent in charge of the Springfield office, Fred Backstrom. At the time of the Springfield trip, Backstrom had led the office for eight years and had already spent 21 years in the Secret Service. He retired in 1973 and died in 1992.
Knott focuses his work largely on what could have happened if the young men had successfully taken shots at Kennedy. “Had the president been assassinated at this time, it probably would have led to a catastrophic war between the United States and the Soviet Union that totally changed the face of history,” Knott wrote.
Knott and Thomas both write about JFK in Springfield as an odd, isolated coincidence 13 months before Dallas. Both work on the assumption that the Warren Commission’s conclusions were correct. Neither mention the other foiled plots on Kennedy’s life, such as those in Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, and Tampa, and neither mention Springfield as a potential part of an escalating pattern. Kennedy’s life was in danger before Dallas. Springfield could have been a legitimate attempt; it could have been a trial run.
If it was simply a case of two foolish young men acting out of ignorance, the box of ammunition and the status thereof within the rifle remain unexplained. The lack of a thorough investigation seems neglectful and irresponsible from a Secret Service that diligently investigates lesser threats.
“While there were undoubtedly (probably) some ‘innocent’ incidents of bad judgment,” Palamara wrote, “there were definitely quite a few threats to President Kennedy that were documented by the time the press at that time and which largely were only discovered by myself within the last few years.”
Knott and Thomas also forsake the idea of any assassination attempt being a false flag purposely designed to incite conflict. Instead, Knott pushes the theory that a true attempt on JFK’s life would have solely been misinterpreted as a Russian operation due to the geopolitical situation of October 20, 1962. The danger, to Knott, was the possibility of a misinterpretation that led to war rather than any plot-by-design. Without a further investigation or a more specific report, deducing a motive may be unlikely.
