From bathroom attendant to JFK-era whistleblower

The holidays are always a difficult stretch for Abraham Bolden.

Not only did his wife die at this time of year, but so did his president and so did a little of bit of himself.

In 1961, a young Mr. Bolden became the first black Secret Service agent ever to guard a U.S. president.

How he landed that job is quite a story.

Bolden had been working as an Illinois State Police trooper when he applied for the Secret Service. He remembers being hired, even though he says the woman taking applications at the Secret Service office said that an agent's job wasn't open to "people like you."

He was assigned to the Chicago office to work on counterfeiting cases, but whenever the president came to town he and the other local agents would help out the White House detail.

Bolden, now 72, recalls that his first opportunity to help guard President Kennedy reinforced that "people like him" were actually not considered equal to white agents.

Kennedy was to deliver a speech at the original McCormick Place convention hall on the south lakefront, and Bolden received his mission.

"I had been assigned to the washroom," he told me. "The washroom in the basement."

Just like the guy doling out soap and cologne for a quarter, Bolden felt as though the black guy was being put in his place…relegated to be a toilet attendant with a .38 caliber instead of a clothes brush.

After making sure no one was hiding in the stalls, Bolden took his place outside the men's room and heard commotion at the top of the stairs.

President Kennedy had entered the building accompanied by Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley. President Kennedy took a quick turn and started heading down the stairs, Bolden recalls.

"He had to go to the bathroom," Bolden says, with a sparkle in the same eyes that have given him so much trouble lately.

Kennedy stopped right in front of him and asked whether he was "one of Daley's finest or a Secret Service agent."

"I am a Secret Service agent, Mr. President," Bolden remembers saying.

"The president asked me if there had ever been a Negro in the White House detail. I said, 'No Mr. President, there hasn't.' He said, 'How would you like to be the first?' I said yes, I would. And he said, 'I'll be looking forward to seeing you.'"

With that personal invitation, Bolden became the first black man to serve on the president's protection detail.

But from the day he arrived in Washington in 1961, Bolden says he believes "the president's life was in grave danger." The threat wasn't just "assassins who were organized … following the president everywhere."

Bolden believes it also was his fellow agents. He says they would routinely drink alcohol before, during and after presidential events. Once, this resulted in agents being expelled from Chicago's Playboy Club and compromised Kennedy's safety, he says.

"They were in no condition once the plane landed to actually protect the president," Bolden says he told his supervisors. "Their reflexes are going to be in a condition that they won't be able to respond. And Dallas, Texas, proved that I was right."

A Secret Service spokesman in Washington, D.C., had no comment on Bolden's allegations.

Bolden says there were other contributing factors to what happened Nov. 22, 1963, when JFK was murdered.

"I actually heard some agents say, 'I wouldn't give my life for President Kennedy. If there were shots fired, I would duck because he is screwing up the country. He is letting these colored people screw up the country. He's letting them go to school together.' "

"When those shots were fired, that attitude came to fruition," he contends. "If you look at all of the pictures of the assassination, those agents' feet are glued to the running board. Their duty was to move and protect the life of President Kennedy."

Bolden said he tried to talk to the Warren Commission that later investigated Kennedy's murder.

The day he went to Washington on his own to arrange a meeting with commission lawyers, Bolden was arrested on charges he had solicited a bribe in an old counterfeiting case. He was convicted and sentenced to six years in prison.

Even though the government's main witness against him has since recanted, he is still a convicted felon.

Out of prison, he went from protecting the president to working on a loading dock.

But he never forgot what he saw during those Secret Service days.

His wife, Barbara, encouraged him to write a book and even saved all of his personal papers and letters. She helped him with the project until it was finished, just before she died two days after Christmas in 2005. It was right before their 49th wedding anniversary.

The book, "The Echo from Dealey Plaza," will be published by Random House in March. Bolden says he hopes it will clear his name and reputation.

"A person should never give up a fight for justice," he said, "because if you give up a fight for justice and truth, you don't deserve either."