INVESTIGATION OF THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1978
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
SELECT COMMITTEE ON ASSASSINATIONS,
Washington, D. C
The select committee met, pursuant to adjournment, at 9:10 a.m., in room 345, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Richardson Preyer (acting chairman) presiding.
Present: Representatives Stokes, Preyer, Dodd, Ford, Fithian, Edgar, Devine, and Sawyer.
Staff present: G. Robert Biakey, chief' counsel and staff director; Michael Goldsmith, senior staff counsel; Charles Berk, research attorney; and Elizabeth L. Berning, chief clerk.
Mr. PREYER. The committee will come to order.
The Chair recognizes Mr. Blakey.
NARRATION BY MR. G. ROBERT BLAKEY, CHIEF COUNSEL
Mr. BLAKEY. I thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Over the years, the Central Intelligence Agency has conducted a massive investigation of Lee Harvey Oswald, the proof of which is a 142-volume file at the Agency headquarters in Langley, Va. Nevertheless, despite an impressive effort to probe the periods of Oswald's life during which there had been foreign encounters, some questions about the CIA persist. Several principal questions remain:
Was the CIA's post-assassination investigation of Lee Harvey Oswald thorough and reliable, and did the Agency share with others the relevant information it had or learned?
Was there a preassassination relationship between the CIA and Oswald? If so, could that relationship have extended to complicity in the assassination, or short of that, might it have led the Agency to seek to hide the relationship out of fear of being accused of complicity.
Much of the mystery is, of course, the result of the secretive nature of the CIA and its understandable unwillingness to reveal operational information. A brief review of the history of the CIA might afford a better grasp of the problem.
Created by the National Security Act of 1947, the CIA was, in fact, a postwar outgrowth of the Office of Strategic Services. The head of OSS, though never a CIA official, was William J. Donoran who, adapting the British approach, combined the intelligence activities of various agencies into one office.
Toward the end of World War II, President Roosevelt sought Donovan's advice on a permanent intelligence apparatus. Donovan's classified reply, leaked to the press 3 months later, described an "all-powerful intelligence service * * * which would supercede all existing Federal police and intelligence units." The reaction among the heads of existing intelligence and investigative agencies was predictable panic. Few wanted to see the OSS become more powerful.
President Roosevelt's death turned out to be a serious blow to OSS--very nearly a crippling one--for President Truman abolished the wartime OSS without even consulting Donovan or the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As a result, the United States was handicapped by a serious intelligence gap in the postwar international struggles.
Unification of the Armed Forces was the main objective of the 1947 act. But it also created the National Security Council, of which the CIA was to be the intelligence coordinating unit. Under the act, the CIA was charged with four responsibilities:
One, to advise the NSC on intelligence matters -elating to national security.
Two, to make recommendations on the coordination of intelligence activities.
Three, to correlate, evaluate, and disseminate intelligence.
Four, to perform additional intelligence activities and national security functions at the direction of the NSC.
In its early years, the CIA was hampered by internal organization difficulties and bad relationships with other agencies. The turnover of directors was rather rapid--Adm. Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter in 1947, Lt. Gen. Walter BedeIl Smith in 1950, Allen W. Dulles in 1952.
Dulles, who had been a wartime masters spy had strong opinions as to the type of men who should be named to top posts in the Agency. At Senate Armed Services Committee hearings on the National Security Act, he testified that the CIA: * * * should be directed by a relatively small but elite corps of men with passion for anonymity and a willingness to stick to that particular job They must find their reward in the work itself, and in the service they render their Government rather than in public acclaim.
In addition, in its formative period, the CIA was subjected to the tirades Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, who demanded a purge of Agency personnel. The upshot was a severe tightening of employment standards, as well as a restriction within the Agency of the expression of political viewpoints.
Although the CIA is not required to make public its organizational structure, it is publicly known to consist of five main entities-the Office of the Director and four Directorates. The Director and Deputy Director, one of whom must be a military officer, are appointed by the President. The four Directorates are as follows:
Operations: The clandestine services unit, with 45 percent of personnel stationed overseas, most of them in cover positions. Subdivisions of operations are foreign intelligence, counterintelligence, and covert action. Itelligence: Its responsibility is to turn out finished intelligence products.
Science and Technology: It's responsibility for basic research and development, and it operates reconnaissance satellites and analyzes highly technical information.
Management and Services: This is the Agency's housekeeping department.
There are also a number of proprietry organizations, front groups and social or political institutions that are run by the CIA or in its behalf. The best known proprietaries are Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, both established in the early 1950's. Among the front organizations are airlines and holding companies to support clandestine operations. In early 1967, it was, for example, learned that the CIA had for years been subsidizing the country's largest student organization, the National Student Associatior. Eventually, it became known that the Agency had channeled money to a number of business, labor, religious, charitable, and educational organizations.
In 1974 and 1975, a commission headed by then Vice President Rockefeller investigated CIA activities in the United States, specifically whether domestic CIA activities exceeded the Agency's statutory authority. The investigation was in response to charges that the Agency had engaged in large-scale spying on American citizens and had compiled dossiers on many citizens. Mail intercepts, infiltration of dissident groups, illegal wiretaps and break-ins were among other charges delved into in the investigation.
The Rockefeller Commission concluded that the "great majority of the CIA's domestic activities comply with its stautory authority * * * nevertheless, over the 28 years of its history, the CIA has engaged in some activities that should be criticized and not permitted to happen again--both in light of the limits imposed on the Agency by law and as a matter of public policy.
It was hardly worth noting at the time, but an event on October 31, 1959, would ultimately become part of the history of the CIA. A 20-year-old ex-Marine radar operator named Lee Harvey Oswald appeared at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and handed consular official Richard Snyder a note demanding that his American citizenship be revoked. He also intimated to Snyder that he intended to pass radar secrets to the Soviet Union.
This information was sent via the State Department to CIA Headquarters, and the CIA opened a file on Oswald.
Oswald's citizenship was not revoked. He was also permitted to remain in Russia until June of 1962. He then returned to the United States with a Russian wife Marina, and an infant daughter. As a returning defector, Oswald was of interest to U.S. intelligence agencies. His tracks were picked up once more when, in September 1963, Oswald turned up in Mexico City where he visited the Soviet Embassy and the Cuban Embassy and Consulate. The information that was added to Oswald's CIA dossier in Washington on October 11, 1963, was imprecise--it identified him as being 35 years old--he was 23 at the time--and as Lee Henry Oswald.
It is, of course, now public knowledge that the CIA continued covert operations against Cuba after the Bay of Pigs defeat in 1961. They included plots to murder Fidel Castro by the Agency and American gangsters, who had been operating lucrative grambling casinos in Havana until Castro threw them out of the country.
They also included CIA contact with a high-level associate of Premier Castro, code named "AMLASH," who had expressed a desire to murder Castro. While Castro himself was apparently aware of the American plots on his like, there is no evidence that Warren Commission knew of the Castro plots.
In 1964 when the Warren Commission determined that Oswald was the lone assassin, it also concluded had never been associated with, nor employed by, the CIA. Critics of the Warren Commission were quick to challenge the assertion, raising questions about the thoroughness of the Warren Commission's investigation and raising the sinister possibility that intelligence agencies may have been responsible for the assassination itself.
Mark Lane, in Rush to Judgment." implies, for example, Oswald had ties to the CIA, and in his more recently published code name "Zorro," a book on the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he writes:
The evidence now available discloses that Oswald worked for the FBI and with the CIA * * *
The Rockefeller Commission examined the allegation of Oswald's CIA ties and found no credible evidencs to support it.
In accord with its mandate, the select committee undertook to assess the quality of the CIA's performance in its investigation of Oswald and its working relationship with the Warren Commission. The investigation covered all periods of Oswald's life when he came in contact with an official entity overseas, either United States or foreign. It included Oswald's hitch in the Marine Corps, his trip through Europe and defection to the Soviet Union, his stay in Russia, his return to the United States, his political activities in the United States as they pertain to foreign affairs; for example, the fair play for Cuba campaign, and finally of course his trip to Mexico in 1963.
Second in the sequence, but by no means subsidiary in importance, the committee considered the charge that Oswald had ties to the CIA. Resolution of this issue was uppermost in the minds of committee investigators, as they poured over CIA reports--not only the 142 volumes on Oswald himself, but hundreds of other volumes as well. Again, the committee was aware that if a relationship was discovered, it did not necessarily mean that the Agency was guilty of complicity in the assassination. Nevertheless the committee reasoned that the CIA might have covered up links to Oswald out of concern for their implications, On the other hand, if the committee found no signs of coverup, it felt it could reach some reasonable judgment on the issue.
Ambassador Helms was serving as the CIA Deputy Director for Plans at the time of the Kennedy assassination. As such, he was responsible for the Directorate of Plans which was the office engaged in covert operations.
In 1964, Ambassador Helms was the senior CIA official who worked with the Warren Commission on a day-to-day basis, and he testified beibre the Commission on May 14, 1964.
Ambassador Helms was appointed Director of Central Intelligence in 1966, serving in that capacity until 1973. In 1973, he was named Ambassador to Iran.
At present, Mr. Helms is a business consultant here in Washington.
Mr. Chairman, it is appropriate to note that the committee's questioning of Mr. Helms today will be based on documents that have been released by the CIA in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act. The select committee has also, in the past week, reached agreement with the CIA for the declassification and release of certain documents not previously available to the public. These newly released documents will also be referred to in today's hearing.
On August 9, however, Ambassador Helms testified at an executive session of the committee, in which many issues of a classified nature were discussed in detail. Because they are still classified, they will not be brought up today.
It would be appropriate at this time, Mr. Chairman, to call Ambassador Helms.
Mr. PREYER. The committee calls Ambassador Helms.
Mr. Helms, will you be sworn at this time. Do you solemnly swear the testimony you are about to give this committee will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
Mr. HELMS. I do, Mr. Chairman.
[Whereupon, at 4:20 p.m., the hearing was adjourned, the committee to reconvene on Monday, September 25, 1978, at 9 a.m.]
INVESTIGATION OF THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1978
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
SELECT COMMITTEE ON ASSASSINATIONS,
Washington, D. C
The select committee met, pursuant to adjournment, at 9:15 a.m., in room 345, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Louis Stokes (chairman of the select committee) presiding.
Members present: Representatives Stokes, Devine, Preyer, McKinney, Fauntroy, Sawyer, Ford, Fithian, and Edgar.
Staff present: G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel and staff director; I. Charles Mathews, special counsel; Kenneth Klein, assistant deputy chief counsel; Michael Goldsmith, senior staff counsel; Robert Genzman, staff counsel; Ms. Jacqueline Hess, chief researcher, and Ms. Elizabeth Berning, chief clerk.
Chairman STOKES. The committee will come to order. At this time I would like to make brief opening remarks.
This morning, the Select Committee on Assassinations begins a final week of public hearings on the death of President John F. Kennedy. As I indicated when the committee opened its public hearings on September 6, 1978, the committee has identified three main issues to investigate in order to fulfill its legislative mandate, which is found in House Resolution 222.
First, who assassinated President Kennedy?
Second, how well did the agencies perform?
Third, did the assassin or assassins have assistance, that is, was there a conspiracy?
In the past several weeks, the committee's hearings have moved through two general phases. First, evidence was received on the facts and circumstances surrounding the President's death and the connection, if any, between those facts and circumstances and the alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. Second, an effort has been made to evaluate the performance of the various Federal agencies, Secret Service, the FBI, the C/A, and the Warren Commission.
Today, and the rest of this concluding week, the committee will hear evidence focused directly on the third question: Was there a conspiracy?
But let me first make one point explicit. The committee will be hearing testimony this week dealing with what the committee has found. In presenting this evidence to the committee, the staff will not be trying to prove or disprove any particular theory. The purpose of these hearings is not to try to establish or refute particular theories, but to consider the evidence available on the various points. That evidence may either prove it, disprove it, or be insufficient to make a judgment either way. Nevertheless, because these hearings are legislative in character, and not a judicial trial, the committee has a duty to make what it has learned public, even if it falls short of what everyone might wish to know on the crucial question: Was there a conspiracy involved in the assassination of President Kennedy?
Let me make another point. The evidence that the committee has heard in these past several weeks--and will hear this week--in fact bears on more than one question. For example, when the committee heard testimony dealing with its neutron activation analysis project, the results dealt with the question to whose gun the bullets found in the car and at Parkland Hospital might be linked, the performance of the FBI in conducting such tests in 1964, and the possibility that more than one assassin may have fired at President Kennedy. In fact, the committee will have held 17 days of hearings on each of the three key questions, even though the principal focus of a particular phase of the hearings or of an individual day may have been some aspect of one of these questions. Let me say it another way. Although these hearings have been structured in an organized fashion, we have not compartmentalized them in a restrictive way, as if to indicate this is only conspiracy week, last week was only agency performance week, and so on. As I said, in each day of hearings we are attempting to settle all three questions in our mandate.
Let me make another important point. It may be helpful for those following our hearings if something is also said here about the quality and quantity of evidence available to the committee as it has moved through each of these three phases of its deliberations and the need to recognize how to use each kind of evidence. In general, during the first phase of our hearings--what happened in Dallas--the committee has had available to it the hard stuff of science. The quality and quantity of the evidence available to the committee was, therefore, unusually high. As the committee turned to assessing the performance of the agencies, less scientific evidence was available to the committee, and it was necessary to rely more on documents and human memories, principally those of public officials. Now, as the committee's attention turns directly to the question of conspiracy, it will be necessary to move further away from the hard evidence of science and documents and consider more and more oral testimony. We do have available to us the aid of science and documents here, but the shifting nature of the balance ought to be explicitly noted and commented on. Those who follow our hearings must, therefore, recognize the difference in the quality and quantity of the evidence available to resolve issues in this most difficult area. Human perception and memory, to say nothing of bias or motive to lie, sharply qualify human testimony, making it less reliable than scientific analysis or documents written, not for litigation, but as an accurate record of actual events.
Granted, when we examine conspiracy, science has something to say, and documents are available to us. But much of our deliberations this week will depend on recorded conversations. While they may well be reliable, they must be carefully interpreted, lest erroneous conclusions be drawn from them. I would note that we are also dealing in many instances with remembrances now 15 years old, so I would caution that great discrimination is required in making final judgments.
Finally, those who follow our hearings might also find helpful some comment about the law of conspiracy and the special difficulties associated with its proof. Mr. Justice Holmes once succinctly defined a conspiracy as "a partnership in criminal purposes." That definition serves well enough here. Unless evidence is adduced, from which "a partnership in criminal purposes" can be inferred, a conspiracy cannot be said to exist. A suspicion suspected must always be distinguished from a fact found.
Let me say concretely what I mean. Basically, the Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin of President Kennedy because it concluded that he was a loner. In short, because he had no significant associations, it was not possible, the Commission found, to conclude that there was a conspiracy involved in the assassination. What the Warren Commission rightly recognized was that conspiracy is first rooted in association. But no association, no conspiracy.
Because the Commission concluded there was no association, it was not forced to deal with the difficult questions posed by evidence of conspiracy, for it is a fundamental principle of American law that guilt cannot be inferred from association alone. To be sure, conspirators seldom shout their intentions from the roof tops or publish their thoughts in the newspaper. Conspiracy must, therefore, usually be inferred from circumstantial evidence: associations, plus. But herein lies the difficulty in all conspiracy investigations, whether they are trials or legislative hearings dealing with conspiracy questions.
Mr. Justice Jackson once observed of conspiracy trials:
A defendant in a conspiracy trial occupies an uneasy seat. There generally will be evidence of wrongdoing by somebody. It is difficult for the individual to make his own case stand on its own merits in the minds of jurors who are willing to believe that birds of a feather flock together. If he is silent, he is taken to admitting and if, as it often happens, codefendants can be prodded into * * * contradicting each other, they convict each other.
What Mr. Justice Jackson said about a conspiracy trial applies even more strongly in the context of a congressional hearing. As I mentioned in my opening statement, these proceedings are not a criminal trial. There is no indictment, and there is no defendant. There is no prosecutor, and there is no defense counsel. The normal rules of evidence do not apply. Because none of the elements are here present, a special burden is imposed on this committee as evidence is introduced before it, and on those who follow our proceedings, not to take the evidence so introduced beyond what it fairly establishes or to sensationalize it.
This caution is particularly apt when evidence of association is introduced. I repeat: Conspiracy is rounded in association, but more than association is required to establish conspiracy. Reasoning that guilt goes hand in hand with association--the principle of guilt by association--is to be abhorred in a free society. Let me give two examples of just how that mode of reasoning can be misused:
Jacqueline Kennedy, the President's wife, had a passing acquaintanceship with George DeMohrenschildt, a friend of Lee Harvey Oswald.
Would anyone seriously suggest that because Jacqueline Kennedy was somehow associated with Lee Harvey Oswald that she was, therefore, somehow involved in the assassination?
The Volkswagen was a centerpiece in Hitler's Nazi Germany. It was to be the people's car, a proud product of national socialism. Today, thousands of Americans drive Volkswagens.
Would anyone seriously suggest that by so doing they have become somehow associated with the aims and goals of Nazi Germany?
I would caution, therefore, those who follow our hearings or read our record, evaluate the evidence that we will hear this week as carefully as the committee itself will, reserve judgment until all the evidence is in, and de not reach conclusions beyond what the evidence itself fully justifies. Anything else would be bad logic. It could only lead to what none can easily contemplate more suspicion and doubt in an area already much too much troubled. It would also be unfair to all concerned.
The committee calls Mr. McNally.
Mr. McNally, you have previously been sworn in this hearing and the Chair would admonish you that you are still under that oath.
Mr. McNALLY. Yes, sir.
FURTHER TESTIMONY OF JOSEPH McNALLY
The Chair recognizes Professor Blakey.
Mr. BLAKEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Another way the committee has tried to shed light on the so-called two-Oswald mystery is by comparing photographs taken over the years of the man identified as Lee Harvey Oswald, photographs taken when he was in the Marines, after his return from the Soviet Union, and during the period he was detailed at the Dallas police headquarters on November 22 to November 24, 1963.
To try to determine if the photographs in question show the same person, the committee asked a panel of anthropologists to study them, to see if the shape and structural features of the face match from photo to photo. Mr. Chairman, before proceeding with an analysis of the photographs, it is necessary that we note and take testimony on an issue that has been raised about one of them, the photograph of Oswald when he was in the Marines. In it, the bead, appearing before a height chart, appears to be disproportionate in length, leading some critics to claim it had been doctored Sergeant Cecil Kirk, director of' the mobile crime lab of the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., is here to discuss that aspect of the photo in question.
Sergeant Kirk will also address alleged differences in Oswald's height as he appeared in different photographs. The committee will recall that Sergeant Kirk has already testified in these hearings. It would be appropriate at this time, Mr. Chairman, to call Sergeant Kirk.
Chairman STOKES. The committee calls Sergeant Kirk.
Good morning, Sergeant Kirk. You have previously testified and you have been sworn--
Sergeant KIRK. That is right.
Chairman STOKES [continuing]. In these proceedings and you understand you are still under the same oath?
Sergeant KIRK. Yes, sir; I do.
Chairman STOKES. Thank you. The Chair recognizes counsel Michael Goldsmith.
Mr. GOLDSMITH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman STOKES. The Chair recognizes Professor Blakey.
Mr. BLAKEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The anthropology panel was asked to address two additional issues that involved photo identification. Early in its existence the Warren Commission was presented with a problem by an Associated Press photograph taken head-on of the presidential limousine in Dealey Plaza at about the very instant of' the first shot.
Standing in the doorway of the Texas School Book Depository was a man whose facial characteristics were markedly similar to those of Lee Harvey Oswald, so much so that at least one major metropolitan newspaper captioned the photo with a question: Is it Oswald?
Obviously if Oswald had been in the doorway at that moment. he could not have been the assassin. The Warren Commission determined that the man in the doorway was Billy Nolan Lovelady, another School Book Depository employee. Lovelady himself, the Commission reported, confirmed it. But many critics refused to accept the explanation. Mark Lane, in his Rush to judgment said:
There was insufficient basis for the Commission's statement. Lovelady did not appear before the Commissioners and no evidence suggests that his picture was ever shown to them. Sylvia Meagher, in her "Accessories After the Fact":
The Commission presents no supporting visual evidence by which one can appraise the resemblance between Lovelady and the man in the doorway, although nothing less hangs on the accurate identification of the doorway man than Oswald's innocense in the assassination.
The committee asked the anthropology panel to compare the AP photo with pictures of Lovelady and pictures of Oswald, and to try to come to a decision as to which one it is.
Now on the two other photographic issues that will be addressed by the anthropology panel. Shortly after the assassination, an arrest was made by Dallas police of three shabbily dressed men who had been discovered in a railroad car not far from the grassy knoll that was to become famous for the fact that many witnesses thought they had heard shots coming from its vicinity.
Press photos were taken of the tramps, as they came to be called,. and publication of the photos caused considerable controversy, especially since the tramps had been released without being booked or otherwise identified. For years the "'tramps" photos were little more than conversation pieces, but in 1975, in a book called "Coup d'Etat in America," Michael Cranfield and Alan J. Webermann proposed that two of these three tramps were none other than Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis who had been involved in the Watergate prosecutions. An identification of the third tramp, one who has earned the nickname "Frenchy" due to the European look of the cut of his clothing, has also been suggested by critics connecting him to individuals whose names have come up in private investigations. Critics have dug up another AP photo taken on the date of the assassination and found an elderly white-haired man they alleged to be a well-known right-winger named Joseph Milteer, In a tape recording of a conversation with a police undercover agent in Miami on November 9, 1963, Milteer was heard explaining how an assassination of President Kennedy could be accomplished:
Milteer: From an office building with a high-powered rifle.
Informant: They are really going to try to kill him?
Milteer: Oh, yes, its in the working.
Milteer, who is now deceased, was questioned by the FBI but was never known to be an actual suspect in the Kennedy assassination. The implications of these questions is enormous, about a Watergate burglary and a former long-time CIA officer who directed the 1972 break-in might have been involved in the assassination or that a militant conservative who had talked of killing President. Kennedy was standing along the motorcade route. These implications are, of course, of a conspiracy. The committee therefore asked its panel of anthropologists to compare the photos in question with known photos of the men they allege to show.
The members of the anthropology panel are Ellis Kerley, professor of anthropology, University of Maryland; Steven Rosen, associate professor of anthropology, University of Maryland; Clyde Coilis Snow, Chief of Physical Anthropology Research, Civil Aeromedical institute, Federal Aviation Administration Aeronautical Center, Oklahoma City, Okla.
Dr. Snow, who will be our witness this morning, received a B.S. degree in zoology from Eastern New Mexico University in 1950, an M.S. in zoology from Texas University in 1955, and a Ph.D. degree in physical anthropology from the University of Arizona in 19{;71
It would be appropriate at this time, Mr. Chairman, to call Dr. Snow.
Chairman STOKES. The committee calls Dr. Snow.
Good morning. Would you please stand and raise your right hand and be sworn. Do you solemnly swear the testimony you give before this committee is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you, God?
Dr. SNOW. I do.
Chairman STOKES. Thank you. You may be seated. The Chair recognizes counsel Robert Genzman.
Mr. GENZMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chair recognizes Professor Blakey. STATEMENT OF MR. BLAKEY
Mr. BLAKEY. Thank you, Mr, Chairman,
There are other photographs, both still and motion picture, that were taken at the scene of the assassination that suggest to critics a conspiracy, These don't show alleged accomplices or masterminds who possibly could be identified. Rather, they show shapes or blurred images that critics have contended are gunmen. Most of these gunmen are in the vicinity of the grassy knoll.
In the years since the assassination, significant progress has been made in the field of photographic enhancement. New chemical and computer processes have been developed that record and improve picture quality.
The select committee assembled a group of photographic consultants to conduct a thorough analysis of photographic materials to see if there is, in fact, visual evidence of gunmen in Dealey Plaza The members of this panel are scientists from leading educational institutions and private corporations whose field of specialization is photographic enhancement.
Representing the panel today is Dr. Bob R. Hunt of the University of Arizona. Dr. Hunt received a B.S., cum laude, in aeronautical engineering from Wichita State University, an M.S. in electrical engineering from Oklahoma State University, and a Ph.D. in systems engineering from the University of Arizona. He has been an adjunct professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of New Mexico and an alternate group leader at the University of California's Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. Currently, he is an associate professor of systems and industrial engineering and optical sciences at the University of Arizona.
Dr. Hunt is a member of the Optical Society of America and the American Society of Photogrammery. He was the recipient of the NEDA Fellowship in 1964 and a NASA Traineeship in 1966. Dr. Hunt is the author of numerous publications.
It would be appropriate at this time, Mr. Chairman, to call Dr. Hunt.
Chairman STOKES. The committee calls Dr. Hunt.
Will you please raise your right hand?
Do you solemnly swear the testimony you will give before this committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
The Chair recognizes Professor Blakey.
Mr. BLAKEY. When the Zapruder film of the Kennedy Assassination was made public, critics and people generally were fascinated by the sight of a man with a black umbrella standing just a few few feet from the Presidential limousine. It was a sunshiny day so what purpose could anyone have for an umbrella?
The theories about the umbrella man, for the most part, attributed to him some sinister intent. At the very least, he was a signalman for the actual gunmen, although one critic proposed the idea that a firing device concealed in the umbrella was the weapon used to assassinate the President.
It also appeared curious that the umbrella man was one of the few spectators in Dealey Plaza who was not later identified. In fact, his identity has remained a secret to this day.
When it studied all of the photographs taken in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963, the committee discovered one, taken by a Life photographer, in which the umbrella man could be seen from the front. It is moments after the president has been shot, and the man is sitting cn the curb, his umbrella by this time lying at his feet, The only problem was that he is off to the corner of the picture, and the image is tiny, unrecognizable in fact.
Nevertheless, through photographic enhancement techniques, the committee was able to obtain a blowup of the photo in which the umbrella man appeared clearly enough to be identified.
The committee released the picture to the press, asking anyone who recognized the umbrella man to contact, the committee. The committee was contacted, and, as a result, the umbrella man was located by the committee.
It would be appropriate at this time, Mr. Chairman, to call Louie Steven Witt.
Will you please stand and raise your right and be sworn. Do you solemnly swear the testimony you will give before this committee will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
Mr. WITT. I do.
TESTIMONY OF LOUIE STEVEN WITT
The Chair recognizes Professor Blakey.
Mr. BLAKEY. A widely held belief that has been fostered by some of the critics is that the death rate of individuals connected in some way to the assassination has been improbably high.
The editor of a weekly newspaper in Midlothian Tex. Penn Jones, started it all by publishing his mysterious death theory in a book "Forgive My Grief", in 1966. Jones assembled details of the deaths and of the connections of the deceased to the assassination--an attorney for Jack Ruby, Oswald's landlady, newsman who had covered the assassination, a noted columnist who had interviewed Ruby, and so on.
Other critics picked up on Jones' thesis. In Accessories After the Fact, Sylvia Meagher writes:
Viewed subjectively, the witnesses appear to be dying like flies. But an authoritative opinion on the mortality rate of those involved directly or marginally in the assassination and attendant events remains to be rendered by some actuarial expert. It may be that the deaths are within the normal rates, despite the appearance of an epidemic, or it may be that they are radically out of line.
Mr. Chairman, Jacqueline. Hess, the committee's chief of research for the Kennedy assassination investigation, has been in charge of the mysterious deaths project. Her report, on which she is prepared to testify today, contains the findings of the project.
It would be appropriate at this time, Mr. Chairman, to call Ms. Hess.
Chairman STOKES. The committee calls Miss Hess.
Stand and raise your right hand and be sworn.
Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you are about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
[Whereupon, at 4:30 p.m., the committee was adjourned, to reconvene at 8:30 a.m., Tuesday, September 26, 1978.]
INVESTIGATION OF THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
SELECT COMMITTEE ON ASSASSINATIONS.
Washington, D.C.
The committee met at 8:50 a.m., pursuant to recess, in room 345, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Louis Stokes chairman of the committee presiding.
Present: Representatives Stokes, Preyer, Fithian, Edgar, Devine, and Sawyer.
Staff present: G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel and staff director; gary T. Cornwell, deputy chief counsel; Elizabeth Berning, chief clerk; James E. McDonald, staff counsel; Donald A. Purdy, Jr., staff counsel; I. Charles Mathews, special counsel; and Howard Shapiro, attorney.
Chairman STOKES. The committee will come to order.
The Chair recognizes Professor Blakey.
NARRATION BY G. ROBERT BLAKEY, CHIEF COUNSEL AND STAFF DIRECTOR
Mr. BLAKEY. Thank you, Mr, Chairman.
As you noted yesterday, the question of conspiracy has been with us since the beginning of these hearings which opened nearly 3 weeks ago, although it was addressed more specifically here yesterday. It can be argued that the theories examined yesterday seem to break down under careful inspection, but that is one of the purposes of these boorings--to weigh the validity of the evidence
Today, however, other more substantial theories will be examined, if only briefly.
But before the committee continues to look into various conspiracy theories, it may be helpful to note that none of them wholly originated with this committee's investigation. Most of the leads allegations that the committee has examined have heretofore been the subject of some public discussion, the subject of earlier investigations or of books and articles. No claim is advanced here to originality or special insight.
What the committee has done is to apply in its own investigation hopefully more sophisticated techniques of examination than those used or available to those who have preceded us or themselves raised the questions, some of which were demonstrated yesterday.
Beyond scientific analysis of the evidence, the committee has also employed investigative tools that were disregarded in earlier investigations of the Kennedy assassination.
The committee, for example, has made an extensive use of immunity grants and interrogation under oath in executive session. Files have also been widely read, using only the most tenuous theories of relevance.
Another approach that must be mentioned here is the use of a carefully thought-out investigative plan that employed a detailed reconstruction of conspiracies that might have occurred, in order to determine if, in fact, they had any bearing on the actual events in Dallas. The committee did not just run out leads in hand, the typical law enforcement approach and the one principally utilized by the FBI in 1963 and 1964.
Over the next 3 days, we will be looking into a couple of conspiracy theories that the committee felt warranted its fullest attention. This is not to say that these are possible plots that are the most likely ones to have led to the assassination, if, indeed, any of them did.
What is being said is simply this: There are a couple of conspiracy theories that cannot be readily dismissed, as those we considered yesterday may possibly be, and this is the way in which they were investigated. This is, therefore, a status report on the investigation, the full findings and conclusions of which will be detailed in the final report. Obviously, all that was done cannot be adequately portrayed here.
First, the theory that anti-Castro Cubans conspired to kill the President will be examined and summarized in this narration. Then, it may be appropriate to hear testimony on an aspect of the concern that other, perhaps more sinister forces, may have been behind the assassination.
Mr. Chairman, in light of the time pressures the committee is operating under today, I would like to ask permission that the narration on the anti-Castro Cubans be inserted in the record as if read.
Chairman STOKES. With objection, so ordered.
Mr. BLAKEY. Why anti-Castro Cubans? For several reasons. From the evidence available to them in 1964, two staff attorneys for the Warren Commission, David Slawson, and William Coleman, went so far as to speculate that Lee Harvey Oswald, despite his public posture as a Castro sympathizer, was actually an agent of antiCastro exiles. Pressing for further investigation of the possibility, they wrote a memorandum which, in part, said:
The evidence here could lead to an anti-Castro involvement in the assassination on some sort of basis as this: Oswald could have become known to the Cubans as being strongly pro-Castro. I/e made no secret of his sympathies, and so the anti-Castro Cubans must have realized that law enforcement authorities were also aware of Oswald's feelings and that, therefore, if he got into trouble, the public would also learn of them.
Second, someone in the anti-Castro organization might have been keen enough to sense that Oswald had a penchant for violence.
On these facts, it is possible that some sort of deception was used to encourage Oswald to kill the President when he came to Dallas.
The motive of this would, of course, be the expectation that after the President was killed, Oswald would be caught or at least his identity ascertained. the law enforcement authorities and the public would then blame the assassination on the Castro government and a call for its forceful overthrow would be irresistible.
Some critics of the Warren Commission have termed the period Oswald lived in New Orleans, the summer of 1963, the "Cubanization of Oswald," implying there were sinister motives for his inserting himself into the Cuban controversy. They point out that, aside from letters he wrote to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New York, Oswald's known Cuban contacts in the United States were with anti-Castroites.
There are other reasons the committee's attention has been drawn to the anti-Castro area. The Warren Commission files reveal, for instance, that there were numerous reports from Dallas and Miami immediately after the assassination which linked Oswald with Cuba. Yet, when the FBI checked out the reports, in almost all cases they had come from anti-Castro sources, some militant enough to deserve suspicion themselves.
It comes down to this: In a homicide investigation, any individual or group is suspect, if it has the motive, opportunity, and means to commit the crime. There is no doubt that certain anti-Castro groups had all three.
It is difficult, these many years later, to appreciate the political and emotional impulses of the Cuban exile communities--in Miami, New Orleans, and Dallas--when John F. Kennedy was President.
The hopes and expectations of the exiles had been on a roller coaster ride; their relationship with the U.S. Government had deteriorated. They were puzzled by the often conflicting policies of various Federal agencies toward them and their objectives, the main one being to get rid of Castro. The anti-Castro groups were trustrated, bitter, and angry. And the focal point of their resentment was President Kennedy.
It began with the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961. Since January 1959, when Castro marched triumphantly into Havana, the more than 100,000 Cubans who had fled the revolution lived in anticipation of its overthrow. These Cuban exiles were not only encouraged in this hope by the U.S. Government, they were organized, directed, and almost totally funded by its agencies. The training camps, the arms and weapons, the instructors, the ships and landing craft were all supplied by the U.S. Government. The invasion plan itself was formulated by the Government. The Cuban exiles came to feel that the Government not only promised them success, it guaranteed it.
When what has been touted as "the glorious march on Havana" turned into a tragic rout, the Cuban exiles, unappreciative of President Kennedy's inherited role in the invasion, reacted with incredulous disbelief and anger that he would allow the operation to fail.
Intensifying the exiles' reaction was the fact that Kennedy himself insisted on taking the blame. In executive session before this committee, Manuel Antonio Varona, in 1961 the head of the united exile organization, the Revolutionary Democratic Front, told of a tense and emotional encounter with President Kennedy at the White House as hope for the invasion as fading.
We were not charging Mr. Kennedy with anything. We knew he was not in charge of the military effects directly. Nevertheless, President Kennedy told us he was the one--the only one responsible.
Varona may have sympathized with Kennedy's position, but most anti-Castro Cubans didn't. The noted attorney, Mario Lazo, in his book, "Dagger in the Heart," put it very directly:
The Bay of Pigs defeat was wholly self-inflicted in Washington. Kennedy told the truth when he publicly accepted responsibility * * *. The heroism of the beleaguered Cuban Brigade had been rewarded by betrayal, defeat, death for many of them, long and cruel imprisonment for the rest. The Cuban people * * * had always admired the United States as strong, rich, generous--but where was its sense of honor and the capacity of its leaders?
The mistake of the Cuban fighters for liberation was that they thought too highly of the United States. They believed to the end that it would not let them down. But it did * * * President Kennedy was well aware of the bitter reaction to the Bay of Pigs debacle. Far from abandoning the Cuban exiles, he set out to convince them of his loyalty to their cause. Perhaps the most ironic event of his relationship with the Cuban exiles occurred on December 29, 1962, at the Orange Bowl in Miami. He had come to welcome the survivors of Brigade 2506, the 1,200 men who had been ransomed from Cuba after almost 20 months in prison. The President was presented with the brigade flag in a dramatic and emotional scene.
But the euphoria was false and misleading. Although the Cuban exiles cheered President Kennedy that day, there also coursed through the crowd a bitter resentment among some who felt they were witnessing a display of political hypocrisy. Later, it would be claimed that the brigade feeling against President Kennedy was so strong that the presentation nearly did not take place, and it would be alleged, incorrectly, as it turns out, that the brigade flag given to Kennedy was actually a replica.
That intensity of anti-Kennedy feeling by Cuban exiles was the result of events between the time of the Bay of Pigs invasion and the ceremony in the Orange Bowl.
It is not possible to know fully how the Bay of Pigs defeat changed President Kennedy's attitude toward Cuba, but when journalists Taylor Branch and George Crile wrote in Harpers magazine about a massive infusion of U.S. aid to clandestine anti-Castro operations in the wake of the Bay of Pigs, they titled their article, "The Kennedy Vendetta."
What is known is that the period between the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962 can be accurately characterized as the high water mark of anti-Castro activity. Miami, the center of the exile community, became a busy staging ground for armed infiltrations into Cuba. While not every raid was supported or even known about in advance by Government agencies, the United States played a key role in monitoring, directing, and supporting the anti-Castro Cubans. Hundreds of Cubans were set up in proprietary corporations established by the U.S. Government to support the massive covert operation. And although this effort was cloaked in secrecy, there were very few Cubans in the exile community who did not know what was happening and who was supporting the operation.
That was a time of great activity and exhilaration in the Cuban exile community. American arms and weapons flowed freely through south Florida. Miami's "Little Havana" was a beehive of gossip about the latest infiltration operations or paramilitary missions. Raiding parties that left from small secret islands in the Florida Keys had the "green light" from the U.S. Government.
Then came the Cuban missile crisis and negotiations that ended it. The anti-Castro groups felt as if the rug had been pulled out from under them.
The Cuban exiles were initially elated by the possibility that the crisis would provoke a showdown with Castro. But President Kennedy made a deal for the removal of the missiles. Only later did the exiles come to feel full force the impact of Kennedy's agreement with Khrushchev and Castro.
The word was soon passed; newspapers reported a basic turnaround in the Kennedy policy. For example, the raids that were being conducted by Alpha 66, one of the most aggressive exile organizations, were abruptly condemned by Washington. The State Department asserted that it did not sanction such attacks.
In December, 2 months after the missile accord, 13 anti-Castro guerrillas were arrested at a training camp in the Florida Keys and their arms and explosives were seized by U.S. Customs agents. In March 1963, another Alpha 66 raid brought a statement from President Kennedy himself. "The raids," he said, "served no useful purpose." An attack on a Soviet ship in Cuban waters led to the formal issuance of a policy pronouncement on March 31. Kennedy said, in no uncertain terms, "We intend to take every step necessary to assure that such raids are not launched, manned or equipped on U.S. territory."
On April 5, the New York Times noted that the United States was throwing more planes, ships, and men into its effort to police the straits of Florida against anti-Castro raiders.
Throughout the spring and summer of 1963, the crackdown on guerrilla activity continued, causing frustration and resentment on the part of the exiles. They could not grasp how they could be supported and aided by one U.S. agency and then be slapped down by others.
In August, the FBI seized a cache of explosives at an anti-Castro training camp in Louisiana. Just weeks later, the U.S. Coast Guard cooperated with the British Navy in a raid on an exile base in the Bahamas.
Then, U.S. Customs cracked down on a group of anti-Castro pilots in Miami. The Secret Service arrested a Cuban exile leader for conspiring to counterfeit Cuban currency, destined for forces inside Cuba.
The brunt of that anger fell on President Kennedy. The Cuban exiles came to think of the missile crisis deal as a "betrayal." Mario Lazo called it a "soul-shattering blow." Jose Miro Cardona, the head of the Cuban Revolutionary Council, an exile organization put together by the U.S. Government to unite fragmented exile groups, resigned in disgust.
In the major enclaves of anti-Castro Cubans--in Miami, New Orleans, and Dallas--the once glittering image of President Kennedy had turned dark.
So, the motivation for anti-Castro Cuban involvement in the Kennedy assassination was based not only on a schism in political and ideological viewpoints, but also on a disposition growing out of a pragmatic realization that Castro probably would survive.
Despite the recommendations of Slawson and Coleman, the Warren Commission largely ignored the mood of the exiles in its final report. It distilled the subject down to a nine-paragraph review entitled, "Alleged Association With Various Mexican or Cuban Individuals"
This committee opted to approach the possibilities in a more open-minded way. It decided to examine in depth those exile groups which, besides motivation, had the capability and resources to be involved in an assassination--in other words, the action groups.
The committee also attempted to determine if Oswald sought to utilize or exploit resources of the exile groups or if they may have tried to use him.
The first step was, of course, to define the action groups. The committee examined public records; it instituted requests for file reviews from every Federal agency in contact with the groups, including the CIA, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Customs Service, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Secret Service, and so on; it delved into the records of local law enforcement agencies in Miami, New Orleans, and Dallas. The committee also sent field investigators into Cuban exile communities on an exploratory mission, to talk to former members of the action groups.
From these sources, the committee discovered there were a few hundred militant anti-Castro exile organizations rounded between the Castro revolution and the Kennedy assassination. Most did not stay in operation for long, but at one time, 105 of them could be identified from local police files alone. The committee finally boiled the list down to 20 key anti-Castro Cuban groups which had the motivation, capability, and resources to assassinate the President.
They will be named and discussed in detail in the committee's final report. Suffice it to say now that the committee closely scrutinized the history of the groups and it looked very carefully at the activities and associations of their key leaders.
The committee conducted dozens of field interviews, it took depositions, and it cross-examined witnesses in executive session.
In its investigation of two of the main action groups, the committee found indications of a possible connection with figures named in the Kennedy assassination, specifically with Lee Harvey Oswald.
The two anti-Castro Cuban exile organizations of special interest to the committee are Alpha 66 and a group named Junta Revolucionaria Cubana, or JURE.
Alpha 66 was founded in Puerto Rico in the summer of 1962 by Antonio Veciana Blanch, a soft-spoken, mild-mannered former Havana accountant, a church-going family man who had fled Cuba in 1961. Two months after he left, Cuba's government-controlled press named Veciana as the ringleader of an unsuccessful assassination attempt on Castro.
On rounding Alpha 66, Veciana declared he was forming the group because the Cuban exiles needed a new, coordinated effort to topple Castro and to counteract the do nothing attitude of President Kennedy toward the Castro regime. Dramatic action was required, he said, announcing there would soon be a series of significant hit-and-run attacks on Cuba.
Although most of the original members of Alpha 66 were also former accountants, Veciana put together a tough commando unit. Veciana, as the chief spokesman, fundraiser and coordinator, claimed no political aims other than the overthrow of Castro. Alpha 66 was uniquely independent, generally having little to do with other exile groups whose members were often at odds over the hierarchy that would follow Castro's overthrow.
When Alpha 66 acted, it did so with a flourish. One of its first faults was the shelling and machine-gunning of a British ship and two Cuban vessels off the north coast of Cuba. At a press conference following the raid, Veciana issued a "declaration of war" against Castro and any ships that were carrying Cuban goods. The British Government filed a strong complaint with the State Department, but Veciana promised more raids.
Throughout the rest of 1962 and into the summer and early fall of 1963, Alpha 66 struck often, quickly gaining the reputation as the most militant of the exile groups. In the middle of the missile crisis, it had the audacity to pull a raid. By March, 1963, the Alpha 66's unceasing hit-and-run attacks provoked direct public criticism
President Kennedy. Veciana was not cowed. "We are going to attack again and again," he declared.
Veciana had made an old friend, former Castro army major, Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo, the military leader of Alpha 66. But Veciana himself was the strategic organizer, the public spokesman and fundraiser of the organization. At least, that's what a review of the newspaper files of the time has reflected.
Yet, in September 1962, the New York Times attributed to Veciana a cryptic statement. He had called a press conference to announce five raids in 60 days. Then, in the body of the story, Veciana was quoted as saying that all the planning for the raids was done by leaders "I don't even know."
As the years went by and the military operations of the Cuban exile groups, including those of Alpha 66, lapsed, Veciana himself remained very active in anti~Castro operations in Latin America. From 1968 to 1972, he used La Paz, Bolivia, as his base. There, he was ostensibly working as a banking consultant, though he spent most of his time planning anti-Communist subversive operations. He was, in fact, on the U.S. Government payroll. Nevertheless, in 1971, he organized an attempt on Castro's life.
Then, in March 1976, a staff investigator for Senator Richard Schweiker, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, approached Veciana in Miami to talk about the relationship of U.S. intelligence agencies to anti-Castro activities. The Kennedy assassination was not mentioned.
Veciana told the investigator of his anti-Castro activities. Then, when asked, he said that, yes he had been in touch with certain Americans on those activities. In fact, he said, there was one American who had directed him in all his activities, including the Castro assassination attempts in 1961 and 1971.
Veciana said the man told him, when they first met in the Havana bank in which Veciana was working in 1960, that his name was Maurice Bishop. Veciana believed that to be a false name.
Veciana said Bishop never told him he was an agent of a U.S. intelligence agency and, in fact, avoided a direct answer when asked. But, Veciana recounted, Bishop was obviously a man with strategic contacts, both in the United States and Latin America.
Veciana said that Bishop had broken contact with him in 1973, that down through the years he had never initiated contact with Bishop, and he didn't know how that could be done. Bishop had always contacted him. He had met with Bishop at various locations, on the average of several times a year, between 1960 and 1973.
He met him in Miami often, in Las Vegas once, in Puerto Rico many times, in Washington, D.C., in La Paz, in Caracas and in a few other cities. And, yes, said Veciana when asked, he had met Maurice Bishop a few times in Dallas. As a matter of fact, he recalled one meeting there in August 1963, when he was scheduled to rendezvous with Bishop in the lobby of a large office building.
When he arrived, Bishop was there talking with a young, slightly built American. Veciana did not recall whether he was introduced to the man by name, but after the Kennedy assassination, he immediately recognized Lee Harvey Oswald as the man with Maurice Bishop that day in Dallas.
Antonio Veciana's story has been of considerable interest to this committee, which has gone to great lengths to access it. The committee has spent many hours with Veciana, who has provided it with details of his relationship with Bishop. There are still leads which cannot now be revealed, but which the committee is pursuing.
The committee has, of course, taken sworn testimony from Veciana and other key witnesses. Its investigators have tapped sources from as far as Venezuela and Cuba. Numerous files which have been requested from the CIA, the FBI, and the Department of Defense are still being reviewed and analyzed. In addition, the committee is probing the possibility that Bishop may not have been associated with a U.S. intelligence agency. On July 30, 1978, the committee released a composite sketch of Bishop, produced from a detailed description provided by Veciana.
The committee cannot be conclusive, but it can say that Veciana's allegations remain undiscredited and that the committee has obtained an indication of the existence of a Maurice Bishop, or someone using that name. The meaning of this story remains, as yet, indeterminate.
The other anti-Castro group of special interest to the committee was JURE. JURE was formed in September 1962, as an outgrowth of a split in another anti-Castro group, the Revolutionary Movement of the People, or MRP. The founder of JURE was Manolo Ray Rivero. JURE was considered a relatively "leftist" Cuban exile organization, and many of its detractors accused it of "Fidelism without Fidel." Ray and his group were mistrusted by the rightwing elements of the exile Cuban community.
Although JURE was supported by the CIA, the Agency had to prod other exile organizations to accept JURE into the Cuban Revolutionary Council, their umbrella organization. Ray kept his group in the CRC for only 3 months, during the period of the Bay of Pigs invasion.
The largest and most active JURE chapters were in Miami and Puerto Rico, but other chapters were located throughout the United States and in Latin American countries. One was in Dallas, and one of the members of the Dallas chapter was Silvia Odio, a 26-year-old, recently divorced mother of four, whose husband had abandoned her in Puerto Rico. Educated in the United States and raised in an upper class Cuban environment, Mrs. Odio was the eldest daughter of Amador Odio, once one of Cuba's top trucking executives.
In 1961, Castro's officers, arrested Silvia Odio's mother and father for harboring a confederate of Antonio Veciana in the October Castro assassination attempt. The Odio children had left Cuba, and several of them lived in Dallas.
One of Silvia Odio's sisters, Serita, attended the University of Dallas and was acquainted with a socialite named Lucille Connell, who was active in civic and charitable activities. Mrs. Connell made arrangements in early 1963 for Silvia to come to Dallas, and further arranged for her to receive psychiatric treatment at Southwestern Medical School, where she became a patient of Dr. Burton C. Einspruch. According to Mrs. Connell, Silvia suffered from a condition which caused blackouts when reality became oppressive.
Silvia Odio testified to the Warren Commission that a man she identified as Lee Harvey Oswald, in the company of two Latin men, visited her apartment in Dallas in late September 1963. The two Latin men identified themselves as members of JURE.
It should be noted that Silvia Odio was not unknown in the Cuban community of Dallas. She had attended JURE meetings, and in the summer of 1963, a large photograph of her sisters, Annie and Serita, had appeared on the front page of the Dallas Morning News, along with a human interest story about the Odio family. Silvia's name was mentioned.
Mrs. Odio testified before the Warren Commission in September 1964. She said that one of the men identified himself as Leopoldo, and she assumed from his accent that he was Cuban. A second man, possibly named Angelo, was also Spanish speaking, but, she said, he looked Mexican. The third, a white American male, was introduced to her as Leon Oswald.
Later, Annie Odio, who was at her sister's apartment that evening, would corroborate Silvia's story to the FBI. She said she opened the door for the visitors.
Silvia Odio, who said she declined to help the men because she didn't trust their credentials, said that Leopoldo called her 1 or 2 days later. In this telephone conversation, she said, he mentioned his American friend, and said that Leon had remarked that the Cubans should have killed Kennedy after the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion.
When Mrs. Odio learned of Kennedy's assassination, she had one of her blackouts. She regained consciousness in a hospital room where her sister Annie soon visited her. Earlier, watching Oswald on television, Annie had independently recognized as someone she had seen before. When she mentioned it to her older sister, Silvia reminded her of the first of the three men to her apartment.
Emotionally shaken, the women decided not to mention the incident to anyone. They did, however, tell their sister Serita, and Serita mentioned it to Lucille Connell. On December 12, 1963, the FBI interviewed Silvia Odio. She admitted the visit and positively identified Lee Harvey Oswald as the Leon who had come to her apartment with the two Latin-looking men. A week later, the FBI interviewed Dr. Einspruch who said, that, although Silvia had had some emotional problems, she was a thoroughly credible person.
Silvia Odio's story ran contrary to other evidence which the Warren Commission had compiled. The had documentation that Oswald had traveled to Mexico City by bus and had registered at a hotel there on the morning of September 27.
The Warren Commission ordered an investigation, to be conducted principally by the FBI, of Mrs. Odio's allegation. It represented a glaring inconsistency in the movements of Oswald, as the Commission was prepared to report them.
In the summer of 1964, the Warren Commission pressed the FBI to dig more deeply into the Odio allegation. On July 24, Chief Counsel J. Lee Rankin, in a letter to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, stated: * * * the Commission already possesses firm evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald was on a bus traveling from Houston, Tex. to Mexico City, Mexico, on virtually the entire day of September 26 * * *
This so-called firm evidence was based on an analysis of Oswald's travel during the time period of September 24-27 by Assistant Counsel David Slawson, J, Wesley Liebeler, the assistant counsel who had interviewed Mrs. Odio, disagreed with this analysis and sent a memo to Rankin citing fallacies in the Slowson analysis,
On August 23, Rankin again wrote to Hoover and said, "It is a matter of some importance to the Commission that Mrs. Odio's allegations either be proved or disproved." Rankin requested that the FBI attempt to learn the identities of the three visitors, by contacting members of anti-Castro groups active in the Dallas area as well as leaders of the JURE organization.
He asked the FBI to check the possibility that Oswald had spent the night of September 24 in a hotel in New Orleans, after vacating his apartment.
Portions of this investigation, which were inconclusive in supporting the Warren Commission's contention that Odio was mistak on, were not sent to Rankin until November 9, at which time the final report had been completed.
Back on September 19, Liebeler was extorting Howard Willens, another Warren Commission attorney, to tone down the write-up of the Odio incident. Liebeler contended in that memo: "There are problems. Odio may well be right. The Commission will look bad if it turns out that she is."
The FBI did attempt to alleviate the problems. In a report dated September 26, it produced the story of Loren Eugene Hall, who claimed he had been in Dallas in September 1963, accompanied by two men fitting Odio's general description, and that it was they who had visited Silvia Odio. Oswald, Hall said, was not one of the men.
Within a week of Hall's statement, the other two men Hall had named, Lawrence Howard and William Seymour, had been interviewed. They denied ever having met Silvia Odio. Then, later, Hall himself retracted his statement.
Despite the fact that the Commission could not prove Oswald took a bus to Mexico City, and despite the fact that Loran Hall's story was an admitted fabrication, the Warren report was published, with this explanation of the Odio incident:
While the FBI had not yet completed its investigation into this matter at the time the report went to press, the Commission has concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was not at Mrs. Odio's apartment in September 1963.
This critics of the Warren Commission have been quick to pounce on this conclusion.
In her book, "Accessories After the Fact," Sylvia Meagher wrote:
The Commission's failure to get to the bottom of this affair, with its inescapble implications, is inexcusable. If the Commission could leave such business unfinished, we are entitled to ask whether its members were ever determined to uncover the truth.
Indeed, the Commission did not even give an honest account of such facts as were established. Its own exhibits expose the evidence presented in the report as a tissue of evasion and deception which discredits more than it justified the conclusion that Oswald could not have visited Mrs. Odio.
The committee is continuing to investigate the Odio allegation. The approach has been two-pronged. First, the committee has endeavored to interview everyone connected with the allegation. Additionally, the committee has made intensive efforts to identify the two Spanish-speaking men who visited Mrs. Odio.
Interviews and depositions have been conducted with the principals: Silvia Odio, Annie Odio, Amador Odio, Lucille Connel Light, and Dr. Burton Einspruch. The staff also arranged a conference telephone call between Dr. Einspruch in Dallas and Silvia Odio in Miami, during which they recalled the period when Mrs. Odio was under the doctor's care and related to him the visit of the three men.
Mrs. Odio and Dr. Einspruch concurred that the relation of this event came shortly after its occurrence and prior to the President's assassination.
Loren Hall testified before this committee in executive session on October 5, 1977, and Howard and Seymour were interviewed by the investigative staff.
From a review of the FBI files, the committee secured a list of persons who belonged to the Dallas chapter of JURE, and the committee is continuing its attempts ot locate and interview these individuals. Additionally, staff investigators interviewed the leader of JURE, Manolo Ray, now residing in Puerto Rico.
Further, the committee secured photographs of scores of proCastro and anti-Castro activists in 1963 who might fit the descriptions of the two Latins who Mrs. Odio says visited her. The committee also utilized the services of various Government agencies to run a computerized check on all individuals who used the war names of Leopoldo and Angelo, or names basically similar.
An extensive search produced the names and photographs of three men who might possibly have been in Dallas in September of 1963. These photographs were shown to Mrs. Odio, but she was unable to identify them as the men she had seen.
The committee has determined, as did members of the Warren Commission staff, that Silvia Odio's story still is credible. Over the period of the past 15 years, only minor details have changed, and one important one remains consistent--Silvia and Annie Odio are adamant that "Leon" was Lee Harvey Oswald.
While this committee has gone much beyond the Warren Commission's investigation of the Odio story, it, too, has, as yet, an undetermined meaning.
I would note that it summerizes those factors which led the committee to conclude that perhaps some groups within the antiCastro community may have had the motive, opportunity and the means to be concerned with the death of the President in Dallas. It also outlines several specific instances which may tend to show some link between Lee Harvey Oswald and particular groups.
Let me turn now to a second area of concern, the so-called Cubanization of Lee Harvey Oswald occurred during the time he lived in New Orleans in 1963, It is a puzzling period and a mysterious career, moreso for the gaps in the record of his activities, as the Warren Commission was able to document it.
New Orleans was Oswald's hometown. He was born there October 18, 1939. In April 1963, he moved back, having lived in Fort Worth, in Dallas since his return from the Soviet Union the previous June. He spent the first 2 weeks job-hunting, staying with the Murrets, Aunt Lillian, and Uncle Charles or "Dutz," as he was called, the sister and brother-in-law of Oswald's mother, Marguerite.
After being hired at the Reiley Coffee Co., as a maintenance man, he sent for his wife, Marina, and their baby daughter, and they moved into an apartment on Magazine Street.
In May, Oswald wrote to Vincent T. Lee, national director of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, expressing a desire to open an FPCC chapter in New Orleans and requesting literature to distribute. He also had handouts printed, some of which were stamped "L. H. Oswald, 4907 Magazine Street," others with the alias, "A. J. Hidell, Post Office Box 30016", still others listing the FPCC address as 544 Camp Street.
Mr. Chairman, it would be appropriate to enter into the record and display at this time JFK exhibits F-595, F-597 and F-596.
Chairman STOKES. Without objection, they may be entered into the record at this point.
[Whereupon, the above-reierred-to exhibits, JFK F-595, JFK F-597 and JFK F-596, follow:]
JFK EXHIBIT F-595
JFK EXHIBIT F-597
JFK EXHIBIT F-596
Mr. BLAKEY. These exhibits illustrate Mr. Oswald's activity at this time.
The Camp Street address has been a riddle to investigators, official and otherwise, over the years, because the only Cuban activity known to have been based there was an anti-Castro sort.
Oswald lost his job in July, and his efforts to find another were futile. It is known through the rest of the summer he filed claims at the Unemployment Compensation Office.
The FPCC campaign, however, attracted attention, since Oswald was perhaps the sole overt supporter of Castro in a city where the Cuban community was strongly opposed to his regime. It also got him into a fight with three anti-Castro Cubans, resulting in Oswald spending a night in jail, but earning him some publicity, nevertheless. On August 17, he was interviewed on the radio and on August 21, he appeared in a television debate.
Oswald virtually passed out of sight, however, from August 21 until September 17, the day he applied for a visa to Mexico. He is known to have written letters to left-wing political organizations and he and Marina visited the Murrets on Labor Day. Marina has claimed he spent his free time reading books and practicing with his rifle.
There is evidence, however, that Oswald was busier than Marina has admitted, or perhaps was even aware, and that in his activities, he was perhaps possibly associated with some highly improbable individuals. Six witnesses in all, each corroborating the others, have testified before this committee in executive session that Oswald was in Clinton and Jackson, La., in late August and early September, seeking employment at the East Louisiana State Hospital.
At this time, Mr. Chairman, it would be appropriate to enter into the record JFK F--598 and JFK F-599, which is the map of Louisiana and a display of David Ferrie.
Chairman STOKES. Without objection, they will be entered into the record.
[Whereupon, the above-referred to exhibits, JFK F-598 and JFK F-599 follow:] SOUTHEASTERN LOUISIANA
JFK EXHIBIT F-598
JFK EXHIBIT F-599
Mr. BLAKEY. Some of that testimony about Clinton and Jackson place Oswald there with two men, both now deceased, who had been charged by New Orleans Destrict Attorney Jim Garrison with conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination. One of them, David W. Ferrie, represented by JFK exhibit F-599, died before he was brought to trial. The other, Clay L. Shaw, was aquitted.
The fashion in which the Garrison investigation was conducted, and the character of the Shaw trial, have served to complicate an already complex case. It may be that the full story of Oswald in New Orleans will never be told, for added to the problem of deceased witnesses and fading memories is the unfortunate fact that the evidence has been tarnished by the way in which it was handled in the Shaw prosecution.
Nevertheless, the critics of the Warren Commission have argued that there was more to be learned about what Oswald was up to in New Orleans and with whom he was associated. There may be something to this, and the committee will have the opportunity in its final report to lay out in full the details of the New Orleans situation.
The committee can, for example, present its conclusions about Oswald's alleged association with David Ferrie. It has been suggested that the testimony that Oswald and Ferrie were together in Clinton and Jackson is, despite the Garrison prosecution, impressive.
The implications of such an association may be serious, at least on the level of association, for David Ferrie worked as an investigator for Carlos Marcello, who has been identified over the years as the organized crime boss of Louisiana and Texas.
On the day of the assassination, he was with Marcello in a Federal court room in connection with legal proceedings against the alleged mafia leader.
Of the forces that may have conspired to assassinate the President, organized crime, itself, therefore, deserves great scrutiny, and the committee has indeed examined organized crime for its motive, opportunity and means to assassinate President Kennedy. It has also studied in depth the alleged mafia associations of both Oswald and Jack Ruby.
Mr. Chairman, it would be appropriate at this time to view the single greatest justification for this effort to look anew at organized crime.
Mr. Chairman, I would ask that the next exhibit, JFK F-594 be viewed at this time and entered into the record.
Chairman STOKES. Without objection, it may be entered into the record at this point.
[Whereupon, the above-referred to exhibit, JFK F-594, was received into the record.] [JFK exhibit F-594, a film clip, is retained in committee files.]
Mr. BLAKEY. I would also note this film clip was obtained through the courtesy of the NBC's live coverage of the events in Dallas. If we could have the lights, please.
[Film clip presentation:]
Mr. BLAKEY. Mr. Chairman, that film clip, in the most simple, direct and forceful way, explains why, understandably, the American people are disturbed by the Kennedy assassination. They might well accept one lone assassin in November in Dallas, but two surely asks for more than many have been willing to accept.
When Ruby shot Oswald in the basement of the Dallas Police Department on November 24, 1963, the Nation was shocked by a nationally televised murder of the accused assassin of the President. In addition, the American people and history were deprived of the best single source of evidence in the case. When evidence was so put beyond reach, as it was in the assassination of Oswald, the first order of an investigation is to seek the motive for that killing.
First, what do we know about Jack Ruby? Is there anything in his background that sheds light on why he murdered Oswald? Ruby grew up in Chicago in a lower middle-class surrounding, His early life was disrupted by family disputes. In 1923, after his parents had separated, he was placed in a foster home, when a court found that he, two brothers, and a sister were not receiving proper care.
He moved to California in 1933, then returned to Chicago in 1937 to become a union organizer. He moved to Dallas in 1947, where he operated a string of nightclubs. The last one he owned, the Carousel, was a burlesque house.
Ruby was known as idiosyncratic, a man of contradictions, given to occasional bursts of violent temper.
When President Kennedy was assassinated, Ruby was at the Dallas Morning News, arranging for an advertisement for the Carousel. In a swirl of activity that culminated in the shooting of Osvald, Ruby, it has been alleged, seemed to be shadowing, or possibly stalking the accused assassin. He was present when Oswald met the press on Friday evening and he was at the Dallas County Jail on Saturday afternoon, waiting for Oswald to be transferred there.
The transfer was postponed until Sunday, Ruby telephone several friends to express his grief over the murder of the President, Some of them reported he would lapse into periods of sobbing. He prowled the streets at night, lamenting the decision of nightclub owners to stay open in the aftermath of tragedy.
The Carousel was closed, out of respect. On Sunday morning, Ruby went to the Western Union office on Main Street, next door to the Dallas Municipal Building and police headquarters. At Western Union he sent a $25 money order to an employee and then, 4 after the money order was time-stamped, he somehow, entered the basement of the police headquarters. As Oswald was being led to the awaiting car, as the committee has just seen Ruby fired one fatal shot into him.
Ruby was tried and convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death, An appellate court, however, reversed the conviction on evidentiary grounds and a new trial was ordered. Before it could begin, he contracted cancer and died of a blood clot in January 1967.
Our objective here today is to learn more about Jack Ruby, his character, career, and associations, as they might pertain to a motive for shooting Oswald. For that purpose, we have three witnesses who knew Ruby, each of them, a close relative, a police officer and perhaps tomorrow a gambler, encountered a distinct facet of the Jack Ruby character.
The first witness is Earl Ruby, Jack's younger brother. He was born in 1915 and has spent his career as a businessman.
Mr. Ruby is, at present, the proprietor of Cobo Cleaners in Detroit. He is a resident of Birmingham, Mich.
Mr. Chairman, it would be appropriate before calling Mr. Ruby to take a short sit-down recess while the film is reset since there is a clip that we would like to show Mr. Ruby during the course of his testimony, [Prepared statement of Prof. G. Robert Blakey follows:]
PREPARED NARRATION OF PROF. G. ROBERT BLAKEY, CHIEF COUNSEL AND STAFF DIRECTOR
As you noted, Mr. Chairman, the question of conspiracy has been with us since these hearings opened nearly 3 weeks ago, although it was addressed more specifically here yesterday. It can be argued that the theories examined yesterday seem to break down under careful inspection, but that is one of the purposes of these hearings--to weigh the validity of the evidence. Today, other, more substantial theories will be examined, if only briefly.
Nevertheless, before the committee continues to look into conspiracy theories, it may be helpful to note that none of them wholly originated with this committee's investigation. Most of the leads or allegations that the committee has examined have heretofore been the subject of some public discussion, the subject of earlier investigations or of books and articles. No claim is advanced here to originality or special insight.
What the committee has done is to apply in its own investigation more sophisticated techniques of examination than those used or available to those who have preceded us or raised questions, some of which were demonstrated yesterday. Beyond scientific analysis of the evidence, the committee has also employed investigative tools that were disregarded in earlier investigations of the Kennedy assassination. The committee has made extensive use of immunity grants and interrogation under oath in executive session. Files have been widely read, using only the most tenuous relevancy theories. Another approach has been mentioned here before is the use of a carefully thought out investigative plan that employed a detailed reconstruction of conspiracies that might have occurred, in order to determine, if, in
fact, they had any bearing on the actual event in Dallas. The committee did not just run out leads in hand, the typical law enforcement approach.
Over the next 3 days, we will be looking into a couple of conspiracy theories that the committee felt warranted its fullest attention. This is not to say these are the plots that are the most likely to have led to the assassination, if indeed any of them did. What is being said is this--here are a couple of conspiracy theories that cannot be readily dismissed (as those we considered yesterday can be), and this is the way they were investigated. This is a status report on the investigation, the full findings and conclusions of which will be detailed in the final report. Obviously, all that was done cannot be portrayed here.
First, the theory that anti-Castro Cubans conspired to kill the President will be examined and summarized in this narraton. Then it will be appropriate to hear testimony on an aspect of the concern that other forces may have been behind the assassination.
Why anti-Castro Cubans? For several reasons. From the evidence available to them in 1964, two staff attorneys for the Warren commission, David Slawson and William Coleman, went so far as to speculate that Lee Harvey Oswald, despite his public posture as a Castro sympathizer, was actually an agent of anti-Castro exiles. Pressing for further investigation of the possibility, they wrote a memorandum which, in part, said:
"The evidence here could lead to an anti-Castro involvement in the assassination on some sort of basis as this: Oswald could have become known to the Cubans as being strongly pro-Castro. He made no secret of his sympathies, and so the anti-Castro Cubans must have realized that law enforcement authorities were also aware of Oswald's feelings and that, therefore, if he got into trouble, the public would also learn of them * * * Second, someone in the anti-Castro organization might have been keen enough to sense that Oswald had a penchant for violence * * * On these facts, it is possible that some sort of deception was used to encourage Oswald to kill the President when he came to Dallas * * * The motive of this would, of course, be the expectation that after the President was killed Oswald would be caught or at least his identity ascertained, the law enforcement authorities and the public would then blame the assassination on the Castro government and a call for its forceful overthrow would be irresistible* * *"
Some critics of the Warren Commission have termed the period Oswald lived in New Orleans, the summer of 1963, the "Cubanization of Oswald", implying there were sinister motives for his inserting himself into the Cuban controversy. They point out that, aside from letters he wrote to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New York, Oswald's known Cuban contacts in the United States were with anti-Castroites.
There are other reasons the committee's attention has been drawn to the anti-Castro area The Warren Commission files reveal, for instance, that there were numerous reports from Dallas and Miami immediately after the assassination which linked Oswald with Cuba. Yet, when the FBI checked out the reports, in almost all cases they had come from anti-Castro sources, some militant enough to deserve suspicion themselves.
It comes down to this: In a homicide investigation, any individual or group is suspect, if it has the motive, opportunity, and means to commit the crime. There is no doubt that certain anti-Castro groups had all three.
It is difficult, these many years later, to appreciate the political and emotional impluses of the Cuban exile communities--in Miami, New Orleans, and Dallas--when John F. Kennedy was President. The hopes and expectations of the exiles had been on a roller coaster ride; their relationship with the U.S. Government had deteriorated. They were puzzled by the often conflicting policies of various Federal agencies towards them and their objectives, the main one being to get rid of Castro. The anti-Castro groups were frustrated, bitter and angry. And the focal point of their resentment was President Kennedy.
It began with the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion in April, 1961. Since January 1959, when Castro marched triumphantly into Havana, the more than 100,000 Cubans who had fled the Revolution lived in anticipation of its overthrow. The Cuban exiles were not only encouraged in this hope by the US Government, they were organized, directed and almost totally funded by its agencies. The training camps, the arms and weapons, the instructors, the ships and landing craft were all supplied by the U.S. Government. The invasion plan itself was formulated by the Government. The Cuban exiles came to feel that the Government not only promised them success, it guaranteed it.
When what had been touted as "the glorious march on Havana" turned into a tragic rout, the Cuban exiles, unappreciative of President Kennedy's inherited role the invasion, reacted with incredulous disbelief and anger that he would allow the operation to fail. Intensifying the exiles' reaction was the fact that Kennedy himself insisted on taking the blame. In executive session before this committee, Manuel Antonio Varona, in 1961 the head of the united exile organization, the Revolutionary Democratic Front, told of a tense and emotional encounter with President Kennedy at the White House as hope for the invasion was fading. "We were not charging Mr. Kennedy with anything," Varona said. "We knew he was not in charge of the military effects directly. Nevertheless, President Kennedy told us he was the one--the only one responsible."
Varona may have sympathized with Kennedy's position, but most anti-Castro Cubans didn't. The noted attorney, Marlo Lazo, in his book, "Dagger in the Heart," put it very directly:
"The Bay of Pigs defeat was wholly self-inflicted in Washington. Kennedy told the truth when he publicly accepted responsibility * * * The heroism of the beleaguered Cuban Brigade had been rewarded by betrayal, defeat, death for many of them, long and cruel imprisonment for the rest. The Cuban people * * * had always admired the United States as strong, rich, generous--but where was its sense of honor and the capacity of its leaders?
"The mistake of the Cuban fighters for liberation was that they thought too highly of the United States. They believed to the end that it would not let them down. But it did * * *"
President Kennedy was well aware of the bitter reaction to the Bay of Pigs debacle. Far from abandoning the Cuban exiles, he set out to convince them of his loyalty to their cause. Perhaps the most ironic event of his relationship with the Cuban exiles occurred on December 29, 1962, at the Orange Bowl in Miami. He had come to welcome the survivors of Brigade 2506, the 1,200 men who had been ransomed from Cuba after almost 20 months in prison. The President was presented with the Brigade flag in a dramatic and emotional scene.
But the euphoria was false and misleading. Although the Cuban exiles cheered President Kennedy that day, there also coursed through the crowd a bitter resentment among some who felt they were witnessing a display for political hypocrisy. Later, it would be claimed that the Brigade feeling against President Kennedy was so strong that the presentation nearly did not take place, and it would be alleged (incorrectly, as it turns out) that the Brigade flag given to Kennedy was actually a replica.
That intensity of anti-Kennedy feeling by Cuban exiles was the result of events between the time of the Bay of Pigs invasion and the ceremony in the Orange Bowl.
It is not possible to know fully how the Bay of Pigs defeat changed President Kennedy's attitude toward Cuba, but when journalists Taylor Branch and George Crile wrote in Harper's magazine about a massive infusion of U.S. aid to clandestine anti-Castro operations in the wake of the Bay of Pigs, they titled their article, "The Kennedy Vendetta".
What is known is that the period between the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962 can be accurately characterized as the high water mark of anti-Castro activity. Miami, the center of the exile community, became a busy staging ground for armed infiltrations into Cuba. While not every raid was supported or even known about in advance by government agencies, the United States played a key role in monitoring, directing and supporting the anti-Castro Cubans. Hundreds of Cubans were set up in proprietary corporations established by the U.S Government to support the massive covert operation. And although this effort was cloaked in secrecy, there were very few Cubans in the exile community who did not know what was happening and who was supporting the operation.
That was a time of great activity and exhilaration in the Cuban exile community. American arms and weapons flowed freely through South Florida. Miami's "Little Havana" was a beehive of gossip about the latest infiltration operations or paramilitary missions. Raiding parties that left from small secret islands in the Florida Keys had the "green light" from the U.S. Government.
Then came the Cuban missile crisis and negotiations that ended it. The anti-Castro groups felt as if the rug had been pulled out From under them.
The Cuban exiles were initially elated by the possibility that the crisis would provoke a showdown with Castro. But President Kennedy made a deal for the removal of the missiles. Only later did the exiles come to feel full force the impact of Kennedy's agreement with Khrushchev and Castro.
The word was soon passed. Newspapers reported a basic turn-around in the
Kennedy policy. For example, the raids that were being conducted by Alpha 66, one of the most aggressive exile organizations, were abruptly condemned by Washington. The State Department asserted that it did not sanction such attacks. In December, 2 months after the missile accord, 13 anti-Castro guerrillas were arrested at a training camp in the Florida Keys and their arms and explosives were seized by U.S. Customs agents. In March 1963, another Alpha 66 raid brought a statement from President Kennedy himself. "The raids," he said, "served no useful purpose." An attack on a Soviet ship in Cuban waters led to the Formal issuance of a policy pronouncement on Mareh 31. Kennedy said, in no uncertain terms: "We intend to take every step necessary to assure that such raids are not launched, manned or equipped on United States territory." On April 5, The New York Times noted that the United States was throwing more planes, ships, and men into its effort to police the straits of Florida against anti-Castro raiders.
Throughout the spring and summer of 1963, the crackdown on guerrilla activity continued, causing frustration and resentment on the part of the exiles. They could not grasp how they could be supported and aided by one U.S. agency and then be slapped down by others. In August, the FBI seized a cache of explosives at an anti-Castro training camp in Louisiana. Just weeks later, the U.S. Coast Guard cooperated with the British Navy in a raid on an exile base in the Bahamas. Then, U.S. Customs cracked down on a group of anti-Castro pilots in Miami. The Secret Service arrested a Cuban exile leader for conspiring to counterfeit Cuban currency, destined for forces inside Cuba.
The brunt of that anger fell on President Kennedy. The Cuban exiles came to think of the missile crisis deal as a "betrayal". Mario Lazo called it a "soul-shattering blow". Jose Miro Cardona, the head of the Cuban Resolutionary Council, an exile organization put together by the U.S. Government to unite fragmented exile groups, resigned in disgust.
In the major enclaves of anti-Castro Cubans--in Miami, New Orleans and Dallas--the once glittering image of President Kennedy had turned dark. So, the motivation for anti-Castro Cuban involvement in the Kennedy assassination was based not only on a schism in political and ideological viewpoints, but also on a disposition growing out of a pragmatic realization that Castro probably would survive.
Despite the recommendations of Slawson and Coleman, the Warren Commission largely ignored the mood of the exiles in its final report. It distilled the subject down to a nine-paragraph review entitled, "Alleged association with various Mexican or Cuban individuals".
This committee opted to approach the possibilities in a more open-minded way. It decided to examine in depth those exile groups which, besides motivation, had the capability and resources to be involved in an assassination--in other words, the "action groups".
The committee also attempted to determine if Oswald sought to utilize or exploit resources. of the exile groups or if they may have tried to use him.
The first step was, of course, to define the "action groups". The committee examined public records; it instituted requests for file reviews from every Federal agency in contact with the groups, including the CIA, the Department of Defense, the US. Customs Service, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Secret Service, and so on; it delved into the records of local law enforcement agencies in Miami, New Orleans and Dallas. The committee also sent field investigators into Cuban exile communities on an exploratory mission, to talk to former members of the "action groups".
From these sources the committee discovered there were a few hundred militant anti-Castro exile organizations rounded between the Castro Revolution and the Kennedy assassination. Most did not stay in operation for long, but at one time 105 of them could be identified from local police files alone. The committee finally boiled the list down to 20 key anti-Castro Cuban groups which had the motivation, capability and resources to assassinate the President.
They will be named and discussed In detail in the committee's final report, Suffice it to say now that the committee closely scrutinized the history of the groups and it looked very carefully at the activities and associations of their key leaders. The committee conducted dozens of field interviews, it took depositions, and it cross-examined witnesses in executive session.
In its investigation of two of the main action groups the committee found indications of a possible connection with figures named in the Kennedy assassination, specifically with Lee Harvey Oswald.
The two anti-Castro Cuban exile organizations of special interest to the committee are Alpha 66 and a group named Junta Revolucionaria Cubana, or JURE.
Alpha 66 was rounded in Puerto Rico in the summer of 1962 by Antonio Veciana Blanch, a soft-spoken, mild-mannered former Havana accountant, a church going family man who had fled Cuba in 1961. Two months after he left, Cuba's government-controlled press named Veciana as the ringleader of an unsuccessful assassination attempt on Castro.
On rounding Alpha 66, Veciana declared he was forming the group because the Cuban exiles needed a new, coordinated effort to topple Castro and to counteract the "do nothing" attitude of President Kennedy towards the Castro regime. Dramatic action was required, he said, announcing there would soon be a series of significant hit-and-run attacks on Cuba.
Although most of the original members of Alpha 66 were, also, former accountants, Veciana put together a tough commando unit. Veciana, as the chief spokesman, fund-raiser and coordinator, claimed no political aims other than the overthrow of Castro. Alph 66 was uniquely independent, generally having little to do with other exile groups whose members were often at odds over the hierarchy that would follow Castro's overthrow.
When Alpha 66 acted, it did so with a flourish. One of its first assaults was the shelling and machine-gunning of a British ship and two Cuban vessels off the north coast of Cuba. At a press conference following the raid, Veciana issued a "declaration of war" against Castro and any ships that were carrying Cuban goods. The British Government filed a strong complaint with the State Department, but Veciana promised more raids.
Throughout the rest of 1962 and into the summer and early fall of 1963, Alpha 66 struck often, quickly gaining the reputation as the most militant of the exile groups. In the middle of the missile crisis, it had the audacity to pull a raid. By March 1963, the Alpha 66's unceasing hit-and-run attacks provoked direct public criticism by President Kennedy. Veciana was not cowed. "We are going to attack again and again," he declared.
Veciana had made an old friend, former Castro Army Major, Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo the military leader of Alpha 66. But Veciana himself was the strategic organizer, the public spokesman and fundraiser of the organization. At least that's what a review of the newspaper files of the time has reflected. Yet, in September 1962, the New York Times attributed to Veciana a cryptic statement. He had called a press conference to announce five raids in 60 days. Then, in the body of the story, Veciana was quoted as saying that all the planning for the raids was done by leaders, "I don't even know".
As the years went by and the military operations of the Cuban exile groups, including those of Alpha 66, lapsed, Veciana himself remained very active in anti-Castro operations in Latin America. From 1968 to 1972, he used La Paz, Bolivia, as his base. There he was ostensibly working as a banking consultant, though he spent most of his time planning anti-Communist subversive operations. He was, in fact, on the U.S. Government payroll. Nevertheless, in 1971, he organized an attempt on Castro's life.
Then in March 1976, a staff investigator for Senator Richard Schweiker, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, approached Veciana in Miami to talk about the relationship of U.S. intelligence agencies to anti-Castro activities. The Kennedy assassination was not mentioned.
Veciana told the investigator of his anti-Castro activities. Then, when asked, he said that, yes, he had been in touch with certain Americans in those activities. In fact, he said, there was one American who had directed him in all his activities, including the Castro assassination attempts in 1961 and 1971. Veciana said the man told him, when they first met in the Havanna bank in which Veciana was working in 1960, that his name was Maurice Bishop. Veciana believed that to be a false name.
Veciana said Bishop never told him he was an agent of a U.S. intelligence agency and, in fact, avoided a direct answer when asked. But, Veciana recounted, Bishop was obviously a man with strategic contacts, both in the United States and Latin America.
Veciana said that Bishop had broken contact with him in 1973, that down through the years he had never initiated contact with Bishop, and he didn't know how that could be done. Bishop had always contacted him. He had met with Bishop at various locations, on the average of several times a year, between 1960 and 1973. He met him in Miami often, in Las Vegas once, in Puerto Rico many times, in Washington, D.C., in La Paz, in Caracas and in a few other cities. And, yes, said Veciana when asked, he had met Maurice Bishop a few times in Dallas. As a matter of fact, he recalled one meeting there in August 1963, when he was scheduled to rendezvous with Bishop in the lobby of a large office building. When he arrived, Bishop was there talking with a young, slightly built American. Veciana did not recall whether he was introduced to the man by name, but after the Kennedy assassination, he immediately recognized Lee Harvey Oswald as the man with Maurice Bishop that day in Dallas.
Antonio Veciana's story has been of considerable interest to this committee, which has gone to great lengths to assess it. The committee has spent many hours with Viciana, who has provided it with details of his relationship with Bishop. There are still leads which cannot now be revealed, but which the committee is pursuing.
The committee has, of course, taken sworn testimony from Veciana and other key witnesses. Its investigators have tapped sources from as far as Venezuela and Cuba. Numerous files which have been requested from the CIA, the FBI and the Department of Defense are still being reviewed and analyzed. In addition, the committee is probing the possibility that Bishop may not have been associated with a U.S. intelligence agency. On July 30, 1978, the committee released a composite sketch of Bishop, produced from a detailed description provided by Veciana.
The committee cannot be conclusive, but it can say that Veciana's allegations remain undiscredited and that the committee has obtained an indication of the existence of a Maurice Bishop, or someone using that name. The meaning of this story remains, as yet, indeterminate.
The other anti-Castro group of special interest to the Committee was JURE. JURE was formed in September 1962 as an outgrowth of a split in another anti-Castro group, the Revolutionary Movement of the People, or MRP. The founder of JURE was Manolo Ray Rivero. JURE was considered a relatively "leftist" Cuban exile organization, and many of its detractors accused it of "Fidelism without Fidel". Ray and his group were mistrusted by the right-wing elements of the exile Cuban community.
Although JURE was supported by the CIA, the Agency had to prod other exile organizations to accept JURE into the Cuban Revolutionary Council, their umbrella organization. Ray kept his group in the CRC for only 3 months, during the period of the Bay of Pigs invasion.
The largest and most active JURE chapters were in Miami and Puerto Rico, but other chapters were located throughout the United States and in Latin American countries. One was in Dallas, and one of the members of the Dallas chapter was Silvia Odio, a 26-year-old, recently divorced mother of four, whose husband had abandoned her in Puerto Rico. Educated in the United States and raised in an upper class Cuban environment, Mrs. Odio was the eldest daughter of Amador Odio, once one of Cuba's top trucking executives.
In 1961, Castro's officers arrested Silvia Odio's mother and father for harboring a confederate of Antonio Veciana in the October Castro assassination aterapt. The Odio children had left Cuba, and several of them lived in Dallas.
One of Silvia Odio's sisters, Serita, attended the University of Dallas and was acquainted with a socialite named Lucille Connell, who was active in civic and charitable activities. Mrs. Connell made arrangements in early 1963 for Silvia to come to Dallas, and further arranged for her to receive psychiatric treatment at
Southwestern Medical School, where she became a patient of Dr Burton C. Einspruch. According to Mrs Connell, Silvia suffered from a condition which caused blackouts when reality became oppressive.
Silvia Odio testified to the Warren Commission that a man she identified as Lee Harvey Oswald, in the company of two Latin men, visited her apartment in Dallas in late September 1963. The two Latin men identified them as members of JURE.
It should be noted that Silvia Odio was not unknown in the Cuban community of Dallas. She had attended JURE meetings, and in the summer of 1963, a large photograph of her sisters, Annie and Setira, had appeared on the front page of the Dallas Morning News along with a "human interest" story about the Odio family. Silvia's name was mentioned.
Mrs. Odio testified before the Warren Commission in September 1964. She said that one of the men identified himself as "Leopoldo" and she assumed from his accent that he was Cuban. A second man, possibly named Angelo, was also Spanish speaking but, she said, he "looked" Mexican. The third, a white american male, was introduced to her as "Leon Oswald".
Later, Annie Odio, who was at her sister's apartment that evening, would corroborate Silvia's story to the FBI. She said she opened the door for the visitors.
Silvia Odio, who said she declined to help the men because she didn't trust their credentials, said that leopoldo called her 1 or 2 days later. In this telephone conversation, he said, he mentioned his American friend, and said that "Leon" had remarked that the Cubans should have killed Kennedy after the failure of the bay of Pigs invasion.
When Mrs. Odio learned of Kennedy's assassination, she had one of her blackouts. She regained conciousness in a hospital room where her sister Annie soon visited her. Earlier, watching Oswald on television, Annie had independently recognized Oswald as someone she had seen before. When she mentioned it to her older sister, Silvia reminded her of the visit of the three ment to her apartment.
Emotionally shaken the women decided not to mention the incident to anyone. They did, however, tell their sister Serita, and Serita mentioned it to Lucille Connell. On December 12, 1963, the fBI interviewed Silvia Odio. She admitted the visit and positively identified Lee Harvey Oswald as the "Leon" who had come to her apartment with the two Latin-looking men. A week later, the fBI interviewed Dr. Einspruch who said that, although Silvia had some emotional problems, she was a thoroughly credible person.
Silvia Odio's story ran contrary to other evidence which the Warren Commission had compiled. It had documentation that Oswald had traveled to Mexico City by us and had registered at a hotel there on the morning of September 27.
The Warren Commission ordered an investigation, to conducted, principally by the FBI, of Mrs. Odio's allegation. It represented a glaring inconsistency in the movements of Oswald, as the Commission was prepared to report them.
In the summer of 1964, the Warren Commission pressed the FBI to dig more deeply into the Odio allegation. On July 24, Chief Counsel J. Lee Rankin, in a letter to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, stated, "* * * the commission already possesses firm evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald was on a bus traveling from Houston, Tex. to Mexico City, Mexico, on virtually the entire day of September 26 * * *" This so-called "firm" evidence was based on an analysis of Oswald's travel during the time period of September 24-17 by Assistant Counsel david Slawson. J. Wesley Liebeler, the Assistant Counsel who had interviewed Mr. Odio, disagreed with this analysis and sent a memo to Rankin again wrote to Hoover and said, "It is a matter of some importance to the Commission that Mrs. Odio's allegations either be proved or disproved". Rankin requested that the FBI attempt to learn the identities of the three visitors, by contacting members of anti-Castro groups active in the Dallas area, as well as leaders of the JURE organization. He asked the FBI to check the pollibility that Oswald had spent the night of September 24 in a hotel in New Orleans, after vacating his apartment. Portions of this investigation, which were inconclusive in supporting the Warren Commission's contention that Odio was mistaken, were not sent to Rankin until November 9, at which time the final report had been completed. Back on September 19, Liebeler was extorting Howard Willens, another Warren Commission attorney, to "tone down" the write-up of trhe Odio incident. Liebeler contended in that memo: "there are problems. Odio may well be right. the commission will look bad if it turns out that she is."
The FBI did attempt to alleviate the "problems." In a report dated September 26, it produced the story of Loran Eugene Hall, who claimed he had been in dallas in September 1963, accompanied by two men fitting Odio's description, and
that it was they who had visited Silvia Odio. Oswald, Hall said, was not one of the men. Within a week of Hall's statement, the other two men Hall had named, Lawrence Howard and William Seymour, had been interviewed. They denied ever having met Silvia Odio. Then, later, Hall himself retracted his statement.
Despite the fact that the commission could not prove Oswald took a bus to Mexico City, and despite the fact that Loran Hall's story was an admitted fabrication, the Warren report was published, with this explanation of the Odio incident: "While the FBI had not yet completed its investigation into this matter at the time the report wet to press, the commission has concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was not at Mrs. Odio's apartment September 1963."
The critics the Warren commission have been quick to pounce on this conclusion.
In her book, "Accessories After the Fact", Sylvia Meagher wrote:
"The commission's failure to get to the bottom of his affair, with its inescapable implications, is inexcusable. If the Commission could leave such business unfinished, we are entitled to ask whether its members were ever determined to uncover the truth. Indeed, the Commission did not even give an honest account of such facts as were established. Its own Exhibits expose the "evidence" presented in the Report as a tissue of evasion and deception which discredits more than it justifies the conclusion that Oswald could not have visited Mrs. Odio."
The committee is continuing to investigate the Odio allegation. The approach has been two-pronged. First, the committee has endeavored to interview everyone connected with the allegation. Additionally, the committee has made intensive efforts to identify the two spanish-speaking men who visited Mr. Odio.
Interviews and depositions have been conducted with the principals: Silvia Odop, Annie Odio, Amador Odio, Lucille Connell Light and Dr. Burton Einspruch. The staff also arranged a conference telephone call between dr. Einspruch in dallas Silvia Odio in Miami, during which they recalled the period when Mrs. Odio was under the doctor's care and related to him the visit of the three men. Mrs. Odio and Dr. Einspruch concurred that the revelation of this event came shortly after its occurrence and prior to the President's assassination.
Loran Hall testified before this committee in executive session on October 5, 1977, and Howard and Seymour were interviewed by the investigative staff.
From a review of FBI files, the committee secured a list of persons who belongged to the Dallas Chapter of JURE, and the committee is continuing its attempts to locate and interview these individuals. Additionally, staff investigators interviewed the leader of JURE, Manolo Ray, not residing in Puerto Rico.
Furthermore, the committee secured photographs of scores of pro-Castro and anti-Castro activists in 1963 who might fit the descriptions of the two latins who Mrs. Odio says visited her. The committee also utilized the services of various Government agencies to run a computerized check on all individuals who used the "war" names of Leopoldo and Angelo, or names basically similar. An extensive search produced the names and photographs of three men who might possibly have been in Dallas in september of 1963. These photographs were shown to Mrs. Odio, but she was unable to identify them as the men she had seen.
The committee has determined, as did members of the Warren commission staff, that Silvia Odio's story still is credible. Over the period of the past 15 years, only minor details have changed, and one important one remains consistent--Silvia and Annie Odio are adamant that "Leon" was Lee Harvey Oswald.
While this committee has gone much beyond the Warren commission's investigation of the Odio story, it, too, has as yet an undetermined meaning.
The so-called "Cubanization of Lee Harvey Oswald" occurred during the time he lived in New Orleans in 1963. It is a puzzling period in a mysterious career, more so for the gaps in the record of his activities, as the Warren Commission was abale to document it.
New Orleans was Oswald's home town--he was born there October 18, 1939. In April 1963 he moved back, having lived in fort Worth and Dallas since his return from the Soviet Union the previous June.
He spent the first 2 weeks job hunting, staying with the Murrets, Aunt Lillian and uncle Charles, or "Dutz", as he was called, the sister and brother-in-law of nance man, he sent for his wife, Marina, and their baby daughter, and they moved into an apartment on Magazine Street.
In May, Oswald wrote to Vincent T. Lee, national director of the fair Play for Cuba Committee, expressing desire to open an FPCC chapter in New Orleans and requesting literature to distribute. He also had handouts printed, some of which
were stamped "L. H. Oswald, 4907 Magazine Street", others with the alias, "A. J. Hidell, P.O. Box 30016", still others listing the FPCC address as 544 Camp Street.
The Camp Street address has been a riddle to investigators, official and otherwise, over the years, because the only Cuban activity known to have been based there was of the anti-Castro sort.
Oswald lost his job in July, and his efforts to find another was futile. It is known that through the rest of the summer he filed claims at the unemployment office.
The FPCC campaign attracted attention, since Oswald was perhaps the sole overt supporter of Castro in a city where the Cuban community was strongly opposed to Castro. It also got him into a fight with three anti-Castro Cubans, resulting in Oswald spending a night in jail, but earning him some publicity. On August 17, he was interviewed on radio, and on August 21, he appeared in a television debate.
Oswald virtually passed out of sight from August 21 until September 17, the day he applied for a visa to Mexico. He is known to have written letters to left-wing political organizations, and he and Marina visited the Murrets on Labor Day. Marina has claimed he spend his free time reading books and practicing with his rifle.
There is evidence, however, that Oswald was busier then Marina has admitted, or even may be aware, and that in his activities he was associating with some highly improbable individuals. Six witnesses in all, each corroborating the others, have testified before this committee that Oswald was in Clinton and Jackson, La., in late August and early September, seeking employment at East Louisiana State Hospital.
Some of the testimony about Clinton and Jackson place Oswald there with two men, both now deceased, who have been charged by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison with conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination. One of them, David W. Ferrie, died before he was brought to trial. The other, Clay L. Shaw, was acquitted.
The fashion in which the Garrison investigation was conducted, and the character of the Shaw trial have served to complicate an already complex case. It may be that the full story of Oswald in New Orleans will never be told, for added to the problems of deceased witnesses and fading memories is the unfortunate fact that evidence has been tarnished by the way in which it was handled in the Shaw prosecution.
The critics of the Warren commission have argued, however, that there is more to be learned about what Oswald was up to in New Orleans and with whom he associated. There may be something to this, and the committee will have the opportunity, in its final report, to lay out in full detail the situation in New Orleans.
The committee can, for example, present its conclusions about Oswald's alleged association with David Ferrie. It has been suggested that the testimony that Oswald and Ferrie were together in Clinton and Jackson is, in a word, impressive. The implications of such an association may be serious--at least on the level of association.
David Ferrie worked as an investigator for Carlos Marcello, who has been identified as the organized crime boss of Louisiana and Texas. On the day of the assassination, he was with Marcello in a Federal courtroom in connection with legal proceedings against the alleged Mafia leader.
Of the forces that might have conspired to assassinate the President, organized crime itself deserves great scrutiny, and the committee has examined organized crime for its motive, opportunity and means to assassinate President Kennedy, and it has studied in depth alleged Mafia associations of both Oswald and Jack Ruby.
Mr. Chairman, it would be appropriate at this time to view the greatest single justification for this effort to look into organized crime.
[Film Clip.]
Mr. Chairman, understandably, the American people might well accept one lone assassin in November in Dallas, but two surely asks for more than many have been willing to accept.
When Ruby shot Oswald in the basement of the Dallas Police Department on November 24, 1963, the Nation was shocked by a nationally televised murder of the accused assassin of the President. In addition, the American people were deprived of the best single source of evidence in the case. When evidence is put beyond reach, as it was in the assassination of Oswald, the first order of an investigation is to seek the motive for that killing.
First, what do we know about Jack Ruby? Is there anything in his background that sheds light on why he murdered Oswald?
Ruby grew up in Chicago in lower middle class surroundings. His early life was disrupted by family disputes. In 1923, after his parents had separated, he was placed
in a foster home, when a court found that he, two brothers and a sister were not receiving proper care.
He moved to California in 1933, then returned to Chicago in 1937 to become a union organizer. He moved to Dallas in 1947, where he operated a string of nightclubs The last one he owned, the Carousel, was a burlesque house.
Ruby was known as idiosyncratic, a man of contradictions, given to occasional outbursts of violent temper.
When President Kennedy was assassinated, Ruby was at the Dallas Morning News, arranging for an advertisement for the Carousel. In a swirl of activity that culminated in his shooting Oswald, Ruby, it has been alleged, seemed to be shadowing, or possibly stalking, the accused assassin. He was present when Oswald met the press on Friday night, and he was at the Dallas County Jail on Saturday aftrernoon, awaiting for Oswald to be transfered there. The transfer was postponed until Sunday.
Ruby telephoned several friends to express his grief over the murder of the President, Some of them reported he would lapse into periods of sobbing. He prowled the streets at night, lamenting the decision of nightclub owners to stay open in the aftermath of tragedy. The Carousel was closed, out of respect.
On Sunday morning, Ruby went to the Western Union office on Main Street, next door to the Dallas Municipal Building and police headquarters. At Western Union, he sent a $25 money order to an employee, and then--4 minutes after the money order was time stamped--he somehow entered the basement of police headquarters. As Oswald was being led to an awaiting car, Ruby fired one fatal shot into him.
Ruby was tried and convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. An appellate court reversed the conviction on evidentiary grounds, however, and a new trial was ordered. Before it could begin, he contracted cancer and died of a blood clot in January 1967.
Our objective today is to learn more about Jack Ruby, his character, career and association, as they might pertain to a motive for shooting Oswald. For that purpose, we have three witnesses who knew Ruby, each of whom--a close relative, a police officer, a gambler--encountered a distinct facet of the Jack Ruby character.
The first witness is Earl Ruby, Jack's younger brother. He was born in 1915, and he has spent his career as a businessman. Mr. Ruby is, at present, the proprietor of Cobo Cleaners in Detroit. He is a resident of Birmingham, Michigan.
It would be appropriate at this time, Mr. Chairman, to call Mr. Ruby.
As well as Earl Ruby might have known his brother in their early years, they spent much of their adult life apart. Earl Ruby is particularly limited when it comes to commenting on Jack's life in Dallas, since Earl was not there.
To learn more about Jack Ruby's life in Dallas, the committee has turned to the Dallas Police Department. It has for two reasons: Ruby was on friendly terms with many officers of the DPD; and because there are questions still about the shooting of Oswald at Dallas Police Headquarters.
Our next witness is Captain Jack Revill of the Dallas Police Department. He has been a member of the DPD since 1951 and is currently in charge of the Internal Affairs Division of the Department.
In 1963, Captain Revill was a lieutenant assigned to the Criminal Intelligence Section of the Special Service Bureau. Later, he was a member of a special investigative unit charged with determining how Ruby entered the police headquarters basement on November 24, 1963.
It would be appropriate at this time, Mr. Chairman, to call Captain Revill. The question of whether Jack Ruby acted alone in the shooting of Oswald has not been answered by his own assurances that he did. This is what he told the Warren Commission, which subjected him to a polygraph test for verification. But when this committee asked its panel of experts on polygraphs to examine the results of Ruby's test, it declined to come to a conclusion, explaining the polygraph procedures of 1964 were of such poor quality as to preclude a judgment. In addition, many critics of the Warren commission insist it did hot go far enough examining Ruby's associations, to see if any of them give support to the suspicion that he was part of a conspiracy. Noting that the Warren commission had discovered that Ruby had been in contact with an array of less than respectable characters--gamblers, ex-cons and henchmen of some underworld bigwigs, the committee
decided to investigate these connections further, to find out if they might support a conspiracy finding. There were three steps in the committee approach:
First, the files on the individuals under investigation were reviewed, files from Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies.
Second, selected individuals were interviewed, deposed or questioned at executive session hearings.
Third, Jack Ruby's 1963 long-distance phone calls to his associates were analyzed.
The Warren commission had access to long-distance telephone records, but it did not make the fullest use of them. The committee took the records the Warren Commission had, gathered additional ones, and then analyzed all of them, using a House Information Systems computer. The objective was to categorize Ruby's phone contacts with an eye to discerning patterns.
During the Warren commission investigation, on February 24, 1964, staff attorneys Burr Griffin and Leon Hubert recommended that immediate steps be taken to obtain and preserve the phone records of Jack Ruby and numerous associates. In a lengthy memorandum, ]Hubert and Griffin recommended that the FBI be instructed to secure the records, and that commission chairman Earl Warren address a letter to telephone companies to secure preservation of existing records. Some records that were specified in the Griffin-Hubert request were obtained, but the extensive preservation they had envisioned was not carried out, an investigative step that Hubert and Griffin ultimately agreed to. Griffin has said that commission General Counsel J. Lee Rankin vetoed the recommendation on grounds that it was too far-reaching
and would create too great a burden. In another memorandum, dated April 4,
Griffin and Hubert said they needed additional assistance in evaluating the phone records that were available. Though it was suggested by Rankin that Chief Justice Warren's security guard might be able to devote some time to the project, the project envisioned by Griffin and Hubert was never conducted. In a subsequent memorandum dated May 14, the adequacy of the Ruby investigation was discussed, but ultimately compromises were worked out and the commission's work was completed.
Utilizing various phone records still available, including those of Jack Ruby's phone calls in 1963, the select committee has developed a computer project for the purpose of detailed analysis of them.
Using the computer technology of the Legislative and Committee Systems Division of the [louse Information System, House Administration Committee, the phone records analysis took shape. An Amdahl 470 V-5 computer was utilized, backed up by two IBM 370-158 central processing units. Various programs were run, using the master data base developed from the various phone records obtained by the committee, Additional programs are still continuing.
The telephone calls of Jack Ruby in 1963 were given top priority in the project. In recent years, Ruby's alleged associations with organized crime have been raised anew. In particular, it has been said that he was in repeated contact with a number of underworld figures in the months just before the assassination of President Kennedy. A response to these charges has been, however, that any contact by Ruby with such people may well have resulted from his attempts to seek assistance in a labor dispute.
In programing a chronological consolidation of the telephone calls made by Ruby from five business and home telephones, the committee discovered a significant upsurge in the number of calls in October and November 1963. As can be seen from the month by month plotting of these calls on the graph in exhibit F-545, the number of calls soared from an average of 25 to 35, in May through September, to 75 in October, and 96 in November. (That is, 96 calls up to November 24, the day he was imprisoned for shooting Oswald.)
To fathom the possible meaning of the upsurge in Ruby's calls in October and November, the committee closely evaluated his activities during that period. It considered who it was Ruby was calling and being called by; why he was in contact with these people; whether or not he had contacted them previously. The committee was also careful to examine the circumstances surrounding Ruby's labor problems in 1963.
The labor dispute involved Ruby's competition with other owners of clubs in the Dallas area. Specifically, he was involved quarreling with other owners over whether amateur striptease dancers--nonunion girls from the local area--could perform in Dallas nightclubs. Ruby had been prohibited by the American Guild of Variety Artists from featuring nonprofessional local strippers in his club. The hiring of local girls in weekend shows, in what were usually billed as "amateur nights", was a source of profit for him. Ruby was further angered by the fact that at least one of his competitors reportedly had been allowed to use nonunion talent.
The exact circumstances of Ruby's labor difficulties in 1963 are too complex to be dealt with in detail, but one aspect is relevant. In analyzing the dramatic upsurge in calls in October and November 1963, the committee was able to isolate a significant number from the main body of calls. It determined that these particular calls were made in conjunction with Ruby's efforts to seek acceptable mediation or settlement of his dispute with AGVA.
As can be seen from the second line of the graph in exhibit 545, which plots the calls made by Ruby in connection with his efforts to solicit advice from AGVA, the increase in these union-related calls corresponds, to a considerable degree, with the increase in the total body of Ruby's calls during the same period. The analysis shows that Ruby's labor difficulties were in fact related to much of the increase in calls made by Ruby in October and November 1963.
But in going one step further, it became apparent that to attribute all of Ruby's increased telephone activity in October and November to his AGVA dispute might be an inaccurate oversimplification, for a closer look at the specific calls he made in 1963, raised questions that could not be readily or easily dismissed: Ruby had, in fact, placed calls to a number of individuals who have been identified as being in some way associated with organized crime. Exhibit F-546 is a printout of these calls.
Although it may again be noted that these particular calls also correspond somewhat to the upsurge in the main body of Ruby calls in the weeks prior to the assassination, and even though some of the individuals in question have said that Ruby was in contact with them to seek help in his labor difficulties, the committee felt that more detail on the backgrounds of these persons was essential. Extensive file reviews were therefore conducted, and the following picture emerged.
Between June and August of 1963, Jack Ruby placed seven long distance calls to one Lewis J. McWillie. McWillie was 3 close Ruby associate, as Ruby told the Warren commission If. 1959, Ruby bad visited Lewis McWillie in Havana, where McWillie was working in an organized crime controlled casino.
Jack Ruby's phone calls to McWillie occurred on June 27, September 2 (two calls), September 4, September 19, September 20, and September 22, The first two calls were placed to McWillie's home number, the remaining five calls were to McWillie's place of business, the Thunderbird Casino in Las Vegas.
On the afternoon of October 26, 1963, Jack Ruby placed a long distance phone call to Irwin S. Weiner in Chicago, with whom he spoke for 12 minutes. Weiner was and is a prominent bondsman in Chicago, who has been closely linked with such figures as James Hoffa, Santos Trafficante, Sam Giancana, Paul and Allen Dorfman. Weiner, according to Federal and State law enforcement files, is alleged to have served as a key functionary in the longtime relationship between the Chicago Mafia and various corrupt union officials, particularly during Hoffa's reign as President of the Teamsters Union.
Additionally, Weiner has been involved in a business relationship with two men long identified as executioners for the Chicago Mafia--Felix "Phil" Alderisio and Albert "Obie" Frabotta.
In the immediate days following President Kennedy's murder, the FBI sought to question Weiner about the call he had received from Ruby on October 26. According to an FBI teletype of November 28, 1963, Weiner refused to respond to questioning by FBI Agents in Chicago, with regard to his contact with Ruby, and he declined to assist the investigation in any way. Other information received by the FBI during the investigation indicated that Weiner had been acquainted years earlier in Chicago with Ruby's brother Earl.
Though the Warren commission was aware of Ruby's phone call to Weiner, the commission never sought to have him questioned. Additionally, neither Ruby nor his brother, Earl, were ever asked by the commission about their relationship with Weiner.
In executive session testimony before this committee, Weiner was questioned about his contact with Ruby. He testified that he had gone to high school with Ruby's brother, Earl, and had been distantly acquainted with Jack. Weiner said he had little or no contact with Ruby in later years, and had not heard from him in at least 10 years at the time Ruby called him in late October 1963.
Weiner declared the purpose of Ruby's call was to seek assistance in the labor dispute he was having with his Dallas nightclub competitors. Ruby asked for aid in putting up a bond related to his attempt to file for an injunction against his competitors. Weiner testified that he declined to assist Ruby, and had no further contact with him.
The committee has examined testimony and documentation relating to Ruby's
labor difficulties, in particular his dispute with AGVA. Nevertheless, the committee has not found another reference to an effort by Ruby to put up a bond in connection with seeking an injunction against his competitors.
In his appearance before the committee, Weiner further testified that he had lied to a reporter when he said in a taped interview that Ruby's phone call to him on October 26, 1963 had had nothing to do with labor problems.
Weiner testified he had refused to submit to FBI questioning about Ruby in the weeks following the assassination because he believed Bureau agents had harrassed
his daughter by implying he might be connected to the assassination. Weiner stated he could not specifically recall where he was on the day of the assassination, or on the day Ruby shot Oswald, though he believed he was on a visit to Miami.
At 9:13 p.m., October 30, 1963, 4 days after his call to Irwin Weiner, Jack Ruby placed a call to the Tropical Court Tourist Park, a trailer park in New Orleans The number Ruby called, 242 5431, was listed as the business office of the Tropical Court, and the duration of the call was one minute. In a partial compilation of numbers called by long distance by Ruby, transmitted to the Warren commission by the FBI in early 1964, a notation was made indicating that this Ruby call to the Tropical Court went to N.J. Pecora. The Warren commission did not, however, interview or investigate Pecora and made no reference to him in its Report.
Nofio J. Pecora, alias Joseph O. Pecoraro, was the owner of the Tropical Court Tourist Park. He ran the park from a one-man office located on the premises, the office Ruby had called on October 30. Pecora, a former heroin smuggler, was alleged to be a close associate of Carlos Marcello. The FBI, Justice Department and Metropolitan Crime Commission of New Orleans have identified Pecora as one of Marcello's three most trusted aides. Law enforcement surveillance reports have indicated a particularly close Marcello-Pecora relationship during the early 1960's, with Pecora
always close at hand at Marcello's Town and Country Motel headquarters on the
outskirts of New Orleans. In fact, it was noted in the select committee's computer phone project that Marcello himself placed a call to Pecora on June 24, 1963, at the same trailer office number that Ruby called four months later.
Earlier this year, when committee investigators sought to question Pecora about the October 30, 1963 telephone call from Ruby's office to his own, Pecora declined to respond. Earlier this month, however, Pecora did agree to respond to questions put him by committee investigators.
Pecora stated that he does not recall receiving any telephone call from Ruby. lie said he did not know Ruby or have any knowledge of him. Pecora stated that he believes that he was probably the only person who had access to his Tropical Court telephone in 1963, but that he may well have taken a phone message, suggesting the call from Ruby may have been for someone else in the trailer park. The committee has established that Ruby did in fact have an associate who lived at the Tropical Court Tourist Park in 1963. He was a New Orleans nightclub manager named Harold Tannenbaum, now deceased, who was himself a friend and colleague of Pecora, having run several Bourbon Street clubs controlled by the Marcello interests. In his recent interview with Committee investigators, Pecora stated he had been acquainted with Tannenbaum, that Tannenbaum was a neighbor in the trailer court. Pecora said he was not aware that Tannenbaum had been a friend of Ruby.
Harold Tannenbaum met Ruby in the summer of 1963 and discussed going into
business with him. The computer telephone project has established that Ruby and Tannenbaum were in frequent contact from June to October 1963.
The project has also established that an hour after the October 30 call was placed from Ruby's office to Pecora's office, Tannenbaum placed a call to Ruby.
On November 7, 1963, Ruby received a collect call from Robert G. (Barney) Baker of Chicago. The call lasted 17 minutes.
Baker is said to have been a top Leutenant and reputed "enforcer" for Teamster President James Hoffa. A former boxer and ex-convict, Baker was perhaps Hoffa's best known assistant during the McClellan committee investigation of labor racketeering in the late 1950's. The Senate investigation, coordinated by then chief counsel Robert F. Kennedy, had detailed Baker's role as Hoffa's personal liaison to various leading Mafia figures. In his McClellan testimony, Baker recited a long list of Mafia hit men with whom he had been associated. In 1960, Robert F. Kennedy
wrote of Baker, "Sometimes the mere threat of his presence in a room was enough to silence the men who would otherwise have opposed Hoffa's reign."
Barney Baker was questioned by the FBI in Chicago on January 3, 1964, regarding his contact with Ruby. Baker stated that Ruby was a complete stranger to him until the very day he spoke with him, November 7, 1963. Baker explained that Ruby had called him earlier that day and that, m his absence, his wife had taken a message to call Ruby's nightclub in Dallas. Baker told the FBI that Ruby had not used his real name, but had instructed him to ask for "Lou", which he did, placing a collect call to Ruby's number. (It might be noted that this is the only instance the committee has come across in which Ruby has used a false name or alias.
In his 1964 interview with the FBI, Baker stated that the purpose of Ruby's call was to seek assistance in the labor dispute. According to the FBI report, Baker said had "* * * concluded the conversation by firmly declining to offer any assistance in this matter." While in his FBI interview Baker "advised that * * * he had many
friends (who) were * * * high-ranking hoodlums", he stated that he had had no
prior association with Ruby, and he had no knowledge of any Ruby connection to such hoodlums.
On November 8, 1963, the day after he received the call from Barney Baker, Ruby placed a call to Murray W. (Dusty) Miller at the Eden Roc Hotel in Miami. The call lasted four minutes.
Dusty Miller was another key lieutenant of Teamster President James Hoffa, and as head of the powerful southern conference of the union, he was regarded as a possible successor to Hoffa. Miller, who had been a teamster leader in Dallas, was associated with numerous underworld figures.
In a recent interview with this committee, Miller stated that he had no contact with Ruby prior to being called by him on November 8, 1963. Miller said Ruby complained of labor problems and asked Miller for help. Miller testified that Ruby said something to the effect, "Barney Baker gave me your number and told me that maybe you could help me out." Miller stated that on hearing the reference to Baker, he quickly ended the conversation, explaining he viewed Baker as a man with questionable associations.
At 5:22 p.m. November 8, 1963, 31 minutes after he called Dusty Miller, Jack Ruby placed a call to Barney Baker in Chicago. This call lasted 14 minutes. It occurred on the day after Baker telephoned Ruby in Dallas.
As noted earlier, Baker told the FBI on January 3, 1964 that he had terminated his November 7 conversation with Ruby by" * * * firmly declining to offer any assistance" to Ruby In his FBI interview, Baker made no mention of the fact that Ruby had called him back on November 8, 1963. in fact, he indicated that he had no further contact with him.
The committee has extensively questioned Baker about his past contacts with Jack Ruby, When asked why he did not tell the FBI of his second lengthy conversation with Ruby. Baker said he must have forgotten about the second call.
The committee has noted several other areas of telephone contact or relationship that are of probative interest, Three examples:
1. In testimony before the Warren Commission, Jack Ruby's sister, Eva Grant, said that her brother had called Lenny Patrick in Chicago sometime during the 1963 Mrs. Grant stated that Ruby had had some difficulty in locating Patrick's number but he had told her he had finally found it and had, in fact, called Patrick in Chicago.
2. A call made on September 24, 1963 by an investigator for New Orleans Mafia leader Carlos Marcello to a woman in Chicago, who was present with Ruby on the night before the assassination. The committee found that David W. Ferrie had called the number of Jean Aase West and had spoken for at least 15 minutes. On November 21, 1963, Miss West visited Ruby in Dallas, accompanied a mutual friend, Lawrence Meyers. Miss West and Meyers had drinks with Ruby shortly before midnight on November 212 at the Cabana Motel.
3. The committee found that Barney Baker had placed a telephone call to another onetime associate of Jack Ruby on the evening of November 21, 1963. The person Bader called was david Yaras of Miami. Yaras was a close friend and partner of Lenny Patrick. He had also been acquainted with Ruby during their early years in Chicago. Like Lenny Patrick, Dave Yaras has served, it is alleged, as a key lieutenant of Chicago Mafia leader Sam Giancana, reputedly as an executioner. In an FBI interview in 1964, Yaras stated that he had last seen Ruby over 10 years prior to the assassination.
Once again, the ultimate meaning of these facts and circumstances remains as yet indeterminate.
Chairman STOKES. The Chair recognizes Professor Blakey.
NARRATION BY G. ROBERT BLAKEY, CHIEF COUNSEL AND STAFF DIRECTOR
Mr. BLAKEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
As well as Earl Ruby might have known his brother in their early years, they, in fact, spent much of their adult life apart. Earl Ruby is particularly limited when it comes to commenting on Jack's life in Dallas, since Earl was not there.
The question of whether Jack Ruby acted alone in the shooting of Oswald, moreover, has not been answered by his own assurances that he did. That is what he told the Warren Commission, which subjected him to a polygraph test for verification. But when this committee asked its panel of experts on polygraphs to examine the results of Ruby's test, the panel declined to come to a conclusion, explaining the polygraph procedures of 1964 were of such poor quality as to preclude a judgement.
In addition, many critics of the Warren Commission insist that it did not go far enough in examining Ruby's associations, to see if any of them give support to the suspicion that he was part of a conspiracy. Noting that the Warren Commission had discovered that Ruby had been in contact with an array of less-than-respectable characters--gamblers, ex-cons and henchmen of some underworld bigwigs, the committee decided to investigate these connections further, to find out if they might support a conspiracy finding. There were three steps in the committee approach:
First, the files on the individuals under investigation were reviewed, the files from Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies.
Second, selected individuals were interviewed, deposed, or questioned at executive session hearings.
Third, Jack Ruby's 1963 long-distance phone calls to his associates were analyzed. The Warren Commission had access to longdistance telephone records, but it did not make the fullcar use of them.
The committee took the records the Warren Commission had, gathered additional ones, where they were available, and then analyzed all of them, using a House information systems computer. The objective was to categorize Ruby's phone contacts with an eye to discerning patterns.
During the Warren Commission investigation, on February 24, 1964, staff attorneys Burt Griffin and Leon Hubert recommended that immediate steps be taken to obtain and preserve the phone records of Jack Ruby and numerous associates in a lengthy memorandum, which, Mr. Chairman, I ask be incorporated into the record at this point.
Chairman STOKES. Without objection, it will be entered into the record.
Mr. BLAKEY. As JFK F-448. [The above referred to exhibit, JFK exhibit F-448, follows:]
JFK EXHIBIT F-448
Mr. BLAKEY. In a lengthy memorandum, Hubert and Griffin recommended that the FBI be instructed to secure the records, and that Commission Chairman Earl Warren address a letter to telphone companies to secure preservation of existing records.
Some records that were specified in the Griffin-Hubert request were obtained, but the extensive preservation they had envisioned was not carried out, an investigative step that Hubert and Griffin ultimately agreed to.
Griffin has said that Commission General Counsel J. Lee Rankin vetoed the recommendation on grounds that it was too far reaching and would create too great a burden on private companies. In other memorandum, which I would ask be incorporated in the record at this point as JFK F-590.
Chairman STOKES. Without objection, it may be entered into the record. [The above referred to exhibit, JFK F-590, follows:]
JFK EXHIBIT F-590
Mr. BLAKEY. In another memorandum dated April 4, Griffin and Hubert said they needed additional assistance in evaluating the phone records that were available. Though it was suggested by Rankin that Chief Justice Warren's security guard might be able to devote some time to the project, the project envisioned by Griffin and Hubert was never conducted. In a subsequent memorandum dated May 14, the adequacy of the Ruby investigation was discussed, but ultimately compromises were worked out and the Commission's work was completed.
Mr. Chairman, I would ask that at this point, these memorandums, to which I have just referred, be incorporated in the record as JFK 591, 592, and 593.
Chairman STOKES. Without objection, they may be entered into the record at this point.
[The above referred to exhibits, JFK F-591, JFK F-592, and JFK F-593 follow:]
JFK EXHIBIT F-591
JFK EXHIBIT F-592
JFK EXHIBIT F-593
Mr. BLAKEY. Utilizing various phone records still available, including those of Jack Ruby's phone calls in 1963, the select committee has developed a computer project for the purpose of detailed analysis of them.
Using the computer technology of the legislative and committee systems division of the House information system, House Administration Committee, the phone records analysis took shape.
An Amdahl 470 V-5 computer was utilized, backed up by two IBM 370-158 central processing units. Various programs were run, using the master data base developed from the various phone records obtained by the committee. Additional programs are still continuing.
The telephone calls of Jack Ruby in 1963 were given top priority in the project. In recent years, Ruby's alleged associations with organized crime have been raised anew. In particular, it has been said that he was in repeated contact with a number of underworld figures in the months just before the assassination of President Kennedy. A response to these charges has been, however, that any contact by Ruby with such people may well have resulted from his attempts to seek assistance in a labor dispute.
In programing a chronological consolidation of the telephone calls made by Ruby from five business and home telephones, the committee discovered a significant upsurge in the number of calls in October and November 1963.
Mr. Chairman, I would ask that JFK F-545 be entered into the record and displayed at this point.
Chairman STOKES. Without objection, it may be entered into the record at this point. [The above referred to exhibit, JFK F-545, follows:]
JFK EXHIBIT F-545
Mr. BLAKEY. As can be seen from the month-by-month plotting of these calls on the graph in exhibit F-545, the number of calls soared from an average of 25 to 35, in May through September, to 75 in October, and 96 in November. That is, 96 calls up to November 24, the day he was imprisoned for shooting Oswald.
To fathom the possible meaning of the upsurge in Ruby's calls in October and November, the committee closely evaluated his activities during that period. It considered who it was Ruby was calling and being called by; why he was in contact with these people; whether or not he had contacted them previously. The committee was also careful to examine the circumstances surrounding Ruby's labor problems in 1963.
The labor dispute involved Ruby's competition with other owners of clubs in the Dallas area. Specifically, he was involved quarreling with other owners over whether amateur striptease dancers, that is, nonunion girls from the local area, could perform in Dallas nightclubs.
Ruby had been prohibited by the American Guild of Variety Artists from featuring nonprofessional local strippers in his club. The hiring of local girls in weekend shows, in what were usually billed as amateur nights, was a source of profit for him. Ruby was further angered by the fact that at least one of his competitors reportedly had been allowed to use nonunion talent.
The exact circumstances of Ruby's labor difficulties in 1963 are too complex to be dealt with in detail here, but one aspect is relevant. In analyzing the dramatic upsurge in calls in October and November 1963, the committee was able to isolate a significant number from the main body of calls. It determined that these particular calls were made in conjunction with Ruby's efforts to seek acceptable mediation or settlement of his dispute with AGVA.
As can be seen from the second line of the graph in JFK exhibit F-545, which plots the calls made by Ruby in connection with his efforts to solicit advice from AGVA, the increase in these unionrelated calls corresponds, to a considerable degree, with the increase in the total body of Ruby's calls during the same period. The analysis shows that Ruby's labor difficulties were, in fact, related to much of the increase in calls made by Ruby in October and November 1963.
But in going one step further, it became apparent that to attribute all of Ruby's increased telephone activity in October and November to his AGVA dispute might be an inaccurate oversimplification, for a closer look at the specific calls he made in 1963 raised questions that could not be readily or easily dismissed.
Ruby had, in fact, placed calls to a number of individuals who have been identified as being in some way associated with organized crime.
Mr. Chairman, I would ask that JFK exhibit F-546 be entered into the record at this point and displayed.
Chairman STOKES. Without objection, it may be entered into the record at this point. [The above-referred to exhibit, JFK exhibit F-546, follows:]
JFK EXHIBIT F-546
Mr. BLAKEY. JFK exhibit F-546 is a printout of these calls. Although it may again be noted that these particular calls also correspond somewhat to the upsurge in the main body of Ruby calls in the weeks prior to the assassination, and even though some of the individuals in question have said that Ruby was in contact with them to seek help in his labor difficulties, the committee felt that more detail on the backgrounds of these persons was essential. Extensive file reviews were, therefore, conducted, and the following picture emerged.
Between June and August of 1963, Jack Ruby placed seven longdistance calls to one Lewis J. McWillie. McWillie was a close Ruby associate, as Ruby told the Warren Commission. In 1959, Ruby had visited Lewis McWillie in Havana, where McWillie was working in an organized crime-connected casino. 564
Jack Ruby's phone calls to McWillie occurred on June 27, September 2, two calls, September 4, September 19, September 20, and September 22. The first two calls were placed to McWillie's home number; the remaining five calls were to McWillie's place of business, the Thunderbird Casino in Las Vegas.
On the afternoon of October 26, 1963, Jack Ruby placed a longdistance phone call to Irwin S. Weiner in Chicago, with whom he spoke for 12 minutes. Weiner was and is a prominent bondsman in Chicago, who has been closely linked with such figures as James Hoffa, Santos Trafficante, Sam Giancana, Paul and Allen Dorfman. Weiner, according to Federal and State law enforcement files, is alleged to have served as a key functionary in the longtime relationship between the Chicago Mafia and various corrupt union officials, particularly during Hoffa's reign as president of the Teamsters Union.
Additionally, Weiner has been involved in a business relationship with two men long identified as executioners for the Chicago Mafia--Felix "Phil" Alderisio and Albert "Obie" Frabotta.
In the immediate days following President Kennedy's murder, the FBI sought to question Weiner about the call he had received from Ruby on October 26. According to an FBI teletype of November 28, 1963, Weiner refused to respond to questioning by FBI agents in Chicago with regard to his contact with Ruby, and he declined to assist the investigation in any way.
Other information received by the FBI during the investigation indicated that Weiner had been acquainted years earlier in Chicago with Ruby's brother Earl.
Though the Warren Commission was aware of Ruby's phone call to Weiner, the Commission never sought to have him questioned under oath. Additionally, neither Ruby nor his brother, Earl, were ever asked by the Commission about their relationship with Weiner.
In executive session testimony before this committee, Weiner was questioned about his contact with Ruby. He testified that he had gone to high school with Ruby's brother, Earl, and had been distantly acquainted with Jack. Weiner said he had little or no contact with Ruby in later years, and had not heard from him in at least 10 years at the time Ruby called him in late October 1963.
Weiner declared the purpose of Ruby's call was to seek assistance in the labor dispute he was having with his Dallas nightclub competitors. Ruby asked for aid in putting up a bond related to his attempt to file for an injunction against his competitors. Weiner testified that he declined to assist Ruby, and had no further contact with him.
The committee has examined testimony and documentation relating to Ruby's labor difficulties, in particular his dispute with AGVA. Nevertheless, the committee has not found another reference to an effort by Ruby to put up a bond in connection with seeking an injunction against his competitors.
In his appearance before the committee, Weiner further testified that he had lied to a reporter when he said in a taped interview that Ruby's phone call to him on October 26, 1963, had nothing to do with labor problems.
Weiner testified he had refused to submit to FBI questioning about Ruby in the weeks following the assassination because he believed Bureau agents had harassed his daughter by implying he might be connected to the assassination. Weiner stated he could not specifically recall where he was on the day of the assassination or on the day Ruby shot Oswald, though he believed he was on a visit to Miami.
At 9:13 a.m., October 30, 1963, 4 days after his call to Irwin Weiner, Jack Ruby placed a call to the Tropical Court Tourist Park, a trailer park in New Orleans. The number Ruby called, 242-5431, was listed as the business office of the Tropical Court, and the duration of the call was 1 minute. In a partial compilation of numbers called by long distance by Ruby, transmitted to the Warren Commission by the FBI in early 1964, a notation was made indicating that this Ruby call to the Tropical Court went to N.J. Pecora. The Warren Commission did not, however, interview or investigate Pecora and made no reference to him in its report.
Nofio J. Pecora, alias Joseph O. Pecoraro, was the owner of the Tropical Court Tourist Park. He ran the park from a one-man office located on the premises, the office Ruby had called on October 30. Pecora, a former heroin smuggler, was alleged to be a close associate of Carlos Marcello. The FBI, Justice Department, and Metropolitan Crime Commission of New Orleans have identified Pecora as one of Marcello's three most trusted aides.
Law enforcement surveillance reports have indicated a particularly close Marcello-Pecora relationship during the early 1960's, with Pecora always close at hand at Marcello's Town and Country Motel headquarters on the outskirts of New Orleans.
In fact, it was noted in the select committee's computer phone project that Marcello himself placed a call to Pecora on June 24, 1963, at the same trailer office number that Ruby called 4 months later.
Earlier this year, when committee investigators sought to question Pecora about the October 30, 1963 telephone call from Ruby's office to his own, Pecora declined to respond. Earlier this month, however, Pecora did agree to respond to questions put to him by committee investigators.
Pecora stated that he does not recall receiving any telephone call from Ruby. He said that he did not know Ruby or have any knowledge of him. Pecora stated that he believes that he was probably the only person who had access to his Tropical Court telephone in 1963, but that he may well have taken a phone message, suggesting the call from Ruby may have been for someone else in the trailer park.
The committee has established that Ruby did in fact have an associate who lived at the Tropical Court Tourist Park in 1963. He was a New Orleans nightclub manager named Harold Tannenbaum, now deceased, who was himself a friend and colleague of Pecora having run several Bourbon Street clubs controlled allegedly by the Marcello interests.
In his recent interview with committee investigators, Pecora stated he had been an acquaintance of Tannenbuam, that Tannenbaum was a neighbor in the trailer court. Pecora said, however, he was not aware that Tannenbuam had been a friend of Ruby.
Harold Tannenbuam met Ruby in the summer of 1963 and discussed going into business with him. The computer telephone project has established that Ruby and Tannenbaum were in frequent contact from June to October 1963.
The project has also established that an hour after the October 30 call was placed from Ruby's office to Pecora's office, Tannenbaum placed a call to Ruby.
On November 7, 1963, Ruby received a collect call from Robert G. (Barney) Baker of Chicago. The call lasted 17 minutes.
Baker is said to have been a top lieutenant and reputed enforcer for Teamster president James Hoffa. A former boxer and ex-convict, Baker was perhaps Hoffa's best known assistant during the McClellan committee investigation of labor racketeering in the 1950's. The Senate investigation, coordinated by then chief counsel Robert F. Kennedy, had detailed Baker's role as Hoffa's personal liaison to various leading Mafia figures.
In his McClellan testimony, Baker recited a long list of Mafia hit men with whom he had been associated. In 1960, Robert F. Kennedy wrote of Baker:
Sometimes the mere threat of his presence in a room was enough to silence the men who would otherwise have opposed Hoffa's regime.
Barney Baker was questioned by the FBI in Chicago on January 3, 1964, regarding his contact with Ruby. Baker stated that Ruby was a complete stranger to him until the very day he spoke with him, November 7, 1963. Baker explained that Ruby had called him earlier that day and that, in his absence, his wife had taken a message to call Ruby's nightclub in Dallas.
Baker told the FBI that Ruby had not used his real name, but had instructed him to ask for Lou, which he did, placing a collect call to Ruby's number. It might be noted that this is the only incident the committee has come across in which Ruby has used a false name or an alias.
In his 1964 interview with the FBI, Baker stated that the purpose of Ruby's call was to seek assistance in the labor dispute. According to the FBI report, Baker said that he had "* * * concluded the conversation by firmly declining to offer any assistance in the matter." While in his FBI interview, Baker "advised that * * * he had many friends (who) were * * * high-ranking hoodlums," he stated that he had no prior association with Ruby, and he had no knowledge of any Ruby connections to such hoodlums.
On November 8, 1963, the day after he received the call from Barney Baker, Ruby placed a call to Murray W. (Dusty) Miller at the Eden Rock Hotel in Miami. The call lasted 4 minutes.
Dusty Miller was another key lieutenant of Teamster president James Hoffa, and, as head of the powerful Southern Conference of the union, he was regarded as a possible successor to Hoffa himself. Miller, who had been a Teamster leader in Dallas, was associated with numerous underworld figures.
In a recent interview with this committee, Miller stated that he had had no contact with Ruby prior to being called by him on November 8, 1963. Miller said Ruby complained of labor problems and asked Miller for help. Miller testified that Ruby said something to the effect, "Barney Baker gave me your number and told me that maybe you could help me out." Miller stated that on hearing the reference to Baker, he quickly ended the conversation, explaining he viewed Baker as a man with questionable associates.
At 5:22 p.m., November 8, 1963, 31 minutes after he called Dusty Miller, Jack Ruby placed a call to Barney Baker in Chicago. This call lasted 14 minutes. It occurred on the day after Baker telephoned Ruby in Dallas.
As noted earlier, Baker told the FBI on January 3, 1964, that he had terminated his November 7 conversation with Ruby by "* * * firmly declining to offer any assistance" to Ruby. In his FBI interview, Baker made no mention of the fact that Ruby had called him back on November 8, 1963. In fact, he indicated that he had had no further contact with him.
The committee has extensively questioned Baker about his past contacts with Jack Ruby. When asked why he did not tell the FBI of his second lengthy conversation with Ruby, Baker said that he must have forgotten about the second call.
The committee has noted several other areas of telephone contact or relationship that are of particular interest. Three examples:
One, in testimony before the Warren Commission, Jack Ruby's sister, Eva Grant, said that he brother had called Lenny Patrick in Chicago sometime during the summer of 1963. Mrs. Grant stated that Ruby had had some difficulty in locating Patrick's number, but that he had told her he had finally found it and had, in fact, called Patrick in Chicago.
Lenny Patrick is said to have been one of the Chicago Maria's leading assassins, responsible, according to Federal and State law enforcement files, for the murders of over a dozen mob victims. Patrick had grown up in the same Chicago neighborhood as Ruby and had been slightly acquainted with him. Later, Patrick became, it is said, senior lieutenant of Chicago Mafia leader, Sam Giancana.
Two, a call made on September 24, 1963, by an investigator for New Orleans Mafia leader Carlos Marcello to a woman in Chicago, who was present with Ruby on the night before the assassination.
The committee found that David W. Ferrie had called the number of Jean West and had spoken for at least 15 minutes. On November 21, 1963, Miss West visted Ruby in Dallas, accompanied by a mutual friend, Lawrence Meyers. Miss West and Meyers had drinks with Ruby shortly before midnight on November 21 at the Cabana Motel.
Three, the committee found that Barney Baker had placed a telephone call to another one-time associate of Jack Ruby on the evening of November 21, 1963. The person Baker called was David Yaras of Miami. Yaras was a close friend and partner of Lenny Patrick. He had also been acquainted with Ruby during their early years in Chicago.
Like Lenny Patrick, Dave Yaras has served, it is alledged, as a key lieutenant of Chicago Mafia leader Sam Giancana, reputedly as an executioner. In an FBI interview in 1964, Yaras stated that he had last seen Ruby over 10 years prior to the assassination.
Once again, Mr. Chairman, unfortunately, the ultimate meaning of these facts and circumstances remains as yet indeterminate.
The possible implication of these phone calls may be more fully explored in tomorrow's proceeding but first, it may be helpful to return to look at Jack Ruby in Dallas. To learn more about Jack Ruby's life, the committee has turned to the Dallas Police Department. It has done so for two reasons. One, Ruby was on friendly terms with many officers of the DPD, and two, because there are still questions about the shooting of Oswald in the Dallas police headquarters.
Our next witness is Captain Jack Revill of the Dallas Police Department. He has been a member of the DPD since 1951 and currently is in charge of the Internal Affairs Division of the department. In 1963, Captain Revill was a lieutenant assigned to the Criminal Intelligence Section of the Special Service Bureau.
Later, he was a member of the special investigative unit charged with determining how Jack Ruby in fact entered the police headquarters basement on November 24, 1963.
It would be appropriate at this time, Mr. Chairman, to call on Captain Revill.
Chairman STOKES. At this time, before calling the witness, the committee will take a 10-minute recess. [A short recess was taken.]
Chairman STOKES. The committee will come to order.
The committee calls Captain Revill. Please raise your right hand. Do you solemnly swear the testimony you will give before this committee is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
Captain REVILL. I do.
Chairman STOKEs. Thank you, sir. You may be seated.
The Chair recognizes counsel for the committee, Mr. Donald Purdy.
Mr. PURDY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. What is your full name and where do you live?
TESTIMONY OF JACK REVILL, CAPTAIN OF POLICE, DALLAS POLICE DEPARTMENT
There being nothing further to come before the committee, the committee will adjourn until 9 a.m. tomorrow morning.
[Whereupon, at 1:08 p.m., the committee was adjourned, to reconvene at 9 a.m., Wednesday, September 27 1978.]