Possible Conspiracy in Wallace Assassination Attempt?

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Nov 29, 1999 | by Timothy W. Maier, | James P. Lucier

President Richard Nixon may have ordered the Secret Service to stay away from the 1972 assassination attempt on Gov. George Wallace, but declassified records obtained by news alert! show agents went against Nixon's orders and continued to look for a possible conspiracy.

After Insight filed a freedom of information request nearly a year ago in the course of researching the "Walshot Files" (see "New Chapters in Assassin's Diary," Dec. 14, 1998), the Treasury Department finally has released a "partial" file from the Secret Service Agency dealing with the Wallace assassination attempt. The 1,520-page file contains a complete transcript of convicted assassin Arthur Bremer's trial and a series of newspaper clippings from the 1970s to the 1990s.

What's odd about the file is that the clippings are from dates long past 1972, when Nixon ordered the FBI to take charge of the case and kicked the Secret Service out of the investigation. Of particular concern to the Secret Service was a possible conspiracy in the assassination because of questions surrounding Bremer's ability to finance his many trips on a busboy salary. Prior to stalking Wallace in Maryland, Bremer allegedly also had stalked Nixon in Canada.

The articles are from various Maryland newspapers and wire stories, including pieces from 1980 when 148 pages of Bremer's original diary were found near a Milwaukee construction site and ending with a 1993 article quoting Bremer's prosecutor about a possible conspiracy.

None of the records in this partial file contain investigative reports, which might answer questions concerning how the Secret Service was able to enter Bremer's apartment -- less than 45 minutes after the shootings -- well before the FBI and well before Bremer officially had been identified. And it's unclear whether those records will be made available.

Last year, a Secret Service official claimed that the case was "still under investigation;' but later news alert! was told by the agency's freedom of information officer, Gary Edwards, that the employee misspoke. When the employee was asked again, she said she simply was repeating what she had been told by an investigator. The Justice Department acknowledged reopening the case in 1993 but insists that it closed it after conducting one interview.