JFK survived two other assassination plots in the three weeks before Dallas
Most JFK discussions jump from Oswald straight to Dealey Plaza and skip the fact that there were at least two other documented plots against Kennedy in the three weeks before Dallas. Both have parallels to what happened on Nov 22, and both have Cuba/FPCC threads running through them.
Nov 2, 1963 — Chicago
JFK was set to fly into O'Hare, motorcade down the Northwest Expressway, exit at Jackson, and go to the Army–Air Force game at Soldier Field. The route was in the papers. Two separate threats surfaced:
- A four-man hit team: A motel landlady reported seeing rifles with scopes and a map of the route on a bed rented by two Cuban nationals. Secret Service surveillance got blown (former agent Abraham Bolden says the FBI burned the informant). The Cubans were never identified. This strand ties to Homer Echevarria, an anti-Castro exile and arms dealer who told a Secret Service informant his group was going to "take care of Kennedy."
- Thomas Arthur Vallee: Ex-Marine, John Birch Society, arrested the morning of Nov 2 with an M1, a handgun, and ~3,000 rounds. He worked at IPP Litho-Plate, 625 W. Jackson — a building overlooking the slow 90-degree turn the motorcade would have taken off the expressway. Same setup as the Book Depository.
The Oswald overlap with Vallee is hard to ignore: both ex-Marines, both stationed at U-2-linked bases in Japan (Camp Otsu for Vallee, Atsugi for Oswald), both flagged as "loners" with extremist politics, both working in a building on the motorcade route.
The Chicago trip was canceled about an hour after Vallee was picked up. Official reason: JFK was sick and busy with the Diem coup. Per Bolden, it was a security pull.
Nov 18, 1963 — Tampa
Four days before Dallas, JFK did a 28-mile open-top motorcade through Tampa. Security was up because of the Nov 9 Joseph Milteer tape, where Milteer told police informant Willie Somersett a plan to kill JFK was "in the working": "From an office building with a high-powered rifle... they will pick up somebody within hours afterwards, if anything like that would happen, just to throw the public off."
Four days later JFK was shot from an office building with a high-powered rifle, and Oswald was picked up within hours. The parallel Miami motorcade that day got canceled. Tampa went ahead.
Tampa police chief J.P. Mullins later confirmed the Secret Service had flagged three threat subjects in the area — one of whom was still in jail under heavy bond as of Nov 23. A Secret Service memo dated Nov 8 described one subject as "white, male, 20, slender build" who had stated he planned to "use a gun." The Tampa Tribune ran "Threats on Kennedy Made Here" on Nov 23. The main person of interest was Gilberto Policarpo Lopez — and his parallels with Oswald are hard to shrug off.
The Cuba / FPCC thread
Oswald ran the New Orleans FPCC chapter and was photographed handing out pro-Castro leaflets in August 1963. Lopez attended a Tampa FPCC meeting on Nov 17, the day before JFK's motorcade. Beyond that, per Waldron & Hartmann and declassified HSCA/CIA files, Lopez and Oswald share a startling overlap:
- Both former defectors
- Both of interest to Navy Intelligence
- Both made mysterious trips to Mexico City in fall 1963 trying to reach Cuba
- Both used the Nuevo Laredo border crossing; both reportedly traveled by car despite neither owning one
- Both had recently separated from their wives
- Both got into fistfights over pro-Castro sympathies in the summer of 1963
On Nov 23, the day after Dallas, Lopez crossed into Mexico at Nuevo Laredo. On Nov 27 he was the only passenger on Cubana Flight 465 from Mexico City to Havana. CIA cables called the timing "suspicious." Declassified docs indicate Lopez was on a "secret mission" involving Cuba that the agency considered more important to protect than the JFK investigation. The HSCA later faulted the FBI and CIA for not fully pursuing him.
Meanwhile the unidentified Chicago shooters were Cuban nationals tied to the anti-Castro exile network, with the trail running through Homer Echevarria.
So in three weeks: anti-Castro Cuban exiles in Chicago, a Cuban FPCC figure slipping out of Tampa to Havana, and an FPCC organizer in Dallas — all in cities on JFK's schedule, all roughly the same profile, all moving at the same time. "Lone nut" doesn't cover it.
Sources for further research:
- Abraham Bolden, The Echo from Dealey Plaza (2008)
- Edwin Black, "The Plot to Kill JFK in Chicago, November 2, 1963" (Chicago Independent, Nov 1975)
- Waldron & Hartmann, Ultimate Sacrifice (Tampa chapters)
- HSCA file on Gilberto Policarpo Lopez, NARA RIF 180-10141-10498
- Mary Ferrell Foundation archive (Hoover letter re: Vallee, doc 112783)