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Shadows Before Dallas: The Chicago and Tampa Plots Against JFK

In the weeks leading up to President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, two lesser-known but chilling episodes unfolded in Chicago and Tampa—cities where, according to credible reports, plans to kill the president were thwarted. These incidents, occurring on November 2 and November 18, 1963, respectively, cast a long shadow over the official narrative of a lone gunman and raise haunting questions about the forces arrayed against Kennedy in his final days. While the Warren Commission focused solely on Lee Harvey Oswald and the events in Dallas, the Chicago and Tampa plots suggest a broader, more sinister web of intent—one that Oliver Stone’s JFK hinted at but that history has yet to fully unravel.

Chicago: The Aborted Motorcade

On November 2, 1963, Kennedy was scheduled to visit Chicago to attend an Army-Air Force football game at Soldier Field and ride in a motorcade from O’Hare Airport through the city’s streets. The trip was announced weeks in advance, with newspapers publishing detailed plans of his route—a blueprint for both enthusiastic crowds and potential assassins. Abraham Bolden, the first Black Secret Service agent assigned to the White House detail, later recounted how the agency uncovered two separate threats that forced the president to cancel at the last minute.

The first threat centered on Thomas Arthur Vallee, an ex-Marine and outspoken Kennedy critic with ties to right-wing groups. On the morning of November 2, Chicago police arrested Vallee after a traffic stop revealed an M1 rifle, a handgun, and over 3,000 rounds of ammunition in his car. A trained marksman, Vallee had secured a job at a warehouse overlooking the motorcade route, positioned near a sharp turn where Kennedy’s limousine would slow—a setup eerily similar to the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas. Bolden, who was in Chicago at the time, later told ABC7’s I-Team that Vallee’s arrest came just hours before the president’s plane was due to land, prompting the Secret Service to urge cancellation.

The second threat emerged from a motel manager’s tip to federal agents. She reported seeing two Cuban nationals in a rented room with automatic rifles equipped with telescopic sights, alongside a map of Kennedy’s motorcade route pinned to the wall. Bolden described how the Secret Service botched the surveillance, allowing the suspects to vanish before they could be apprehended. Despite the lack of arrests, the gravity of the threat—coupled with Vallee’s detention—convinced the White House to scrub the trip. Kennedy stayed in Washington, and the football game proceeded without him.

Tampa: The Mob’s Alleged Gambit

Sixteen days later, on November 18, 1963, Kennedy arrived in Tampa, Florida, for a packed day of speeches and a 20-mile motorcade through the city—the first visit by a sitting president. He landed at MacDill Air Force Base, spoke at Al Lopez Field and the Fort Homer Hesterly Armory, and rode in an open Lincoln convertible, waving to thousands lining the streets. It was a triumphant scene, captured in photographs and local headlines, but beneath the surface lurked a plot that, if successful, might have ended his life four days before Dallas.

According to Ultimate Sacrifice by Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann, a conspiracy spearheaded by Tampa mob boss Santo Trafficante Jr. targeted Kennedy that day. Drawing on interviews with former Tampa Police Chief J.P. Mullins and a Miami police informant, the authors allege that Trafficante—alongside New Orleans don Carlos Marcello and Chicago’s Johnny Roselli—planned to shoot Kennedy from a window of the Floridan Hotel, then the city’s tallest building. The plan mirrored Dallas: a high vantage point, a slow-moving motorcade, and a patsy to take the fall. In this case, the fall guy was reportedly Gilberto Policarpo Lopez, a young Cuban exile with parallels to Oswald, including a recent trip to Mexico and ties to pro-Castro groups.

The plot unraveled when a tip reached law enforcement days before Kennedy’s arrival. A November 23, 1963, Tampa Tribune article—published the day after the Dallas assassination—vaguely referenced a threat involving two suspects, one matching Lopez’s description. Waldron claims Trafficante called off the hit, perhaps aware that Dallas offered another chance in Marcello’s territory. Kennedy completed his Tampa visit unscathed, flying to Miami that evening, oblivious to how close he may have come to death.

Echoes of Conspiracy

The Chicago and Tampa plots share striking similarities with each other and with Dallas: motorcades through urban corridors, high-powered rifles with scopes, and suspects with murky backgrounds. Vallee, a disaffected veteran with extremist leanings, prefigures Oswald’s profile as a former Marine with a rifle and a grudge. Lopez, like Oswald, was a young man entangled in the volatile Cuban exile scene, a nexus of CIA operations and mob influence amid the Cold War. Both incidents suggest a coordinated effort beyond a single deranged individual—a thread Oliver Stone wove into JFK with Donald Sutherland’s Mr. X, who warns of a conspiracy spanning cities and agencies.

Yet, the evidence remains fragmentary. The Warren Commission ignored these earlier attempts, focusing solely on Dallas. Secret Service records from Chicago and Tampa, as journalist Carol Leonnig noted in 2022, have vanished or remain classified, fueling speculation of a cover-up. Bolden, who faced retaliation after criticizing agency lapses, insists the Chicago plot was a dress rehearsal for Dallas, thwarted only by luck and timing. Waldron and Hartmann tie Tampa to a broader Mafia vendetta against the Kennedys, enraged by Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s war on organized crime—a motive Stone’s film amplifies through its portrayal of New Orleans intrigue.

A Pattern Unresolved

Why did these plots fade from official history? The Cold War’s paranoia offers one answer: exposing Cuban or mob involvement risked escalating tensions with the Soviet Union or unraveling covert operations like the CIA’s anti-Castro efforts. National security trumped transparency, leaving the public with the Warren Commission’s tidy conclusion. Yet, the 1992 Assassinations Disclosure Act, spurred partly by JFK’s impact, and subsequent document releases have kept the questions alive. Files declassified in 2017 and 2022 mention Vallee’s arrest and hint at Tampa’s unrest, but no smoking gun ties these plots definitively to Dallas.

For Kennedy, Chicago and Tampa were near misses in a presidency marked by peril—four assassination attempts in three years, including a dynamite-laden car chase in 1960. His survival until November 22 seems less a triumph than a delay. For historians and skeptics, these incidents are a puzzle with missing pieces, a prelude to the tragedy that reshaped America. As Bolden told ABC7, “If it had happened in Chicago, it would’ve been successful.” In Tampa, Trafficante allegedly saw Dallas as the next opportunity. Together, these shadows before Dallas whisper of a storm that broke in Texas—one whose full scope we may never know.