Abraham Bolden was the first African-American Secret Service agent assigned to a presidential protective detail. John Kiriakou says Bolden quite literally saved John F. Kennedy’s life in Chicago in October 1963.[1] Kiriakou says fellow Secret Service agents told Bolden, to his face, that if something happened to Kennedy they would not protect him, using a racial slur and citing Kennedy’s civil-rights sympathies as the reason.[2]
Bolden is represented by constitutional attorney Tyler Nixon, a friend of Kiriakou’s, who is working to secure Bolden a pardon before he dies; as of the interview Bolden was in his 90s. Kiriakou attributes the case against Bolden in part to racism.[2]