TESTIMONY OF ROBERT INMAN BOUCK beginning at 4H294...
Mr. McCLOY. Mr. Bouck, you know the purpose for which you are here?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes, I do.
Mr. McCLOY. And we are very happy to have you help us to acquit ourselves of our responsibility here in determining all of the relevant circumstances in connection with the assassination of the President.
I believe you are going to give us something of the routine by which Presidents are protected?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes.
Mr. McCLOY. I will ask you to rise and hold up your right hand.
Do you solemnly swear the testimony you give in this hearing will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
Mr. BOUCK. I do.
Mr. STERN. Mr. Bouck, I would like to outline first the order of questioning I have in mind to give you a notion of how I would like to proceed and how you might respond to particular questions.
I would like to cover first your biographical background, then the functions of the Protective Research Section, generally the organization of the Section, the sources of information on which you rely regarding potentially dangerous people, the criteria you employ to determine when an individual might be dangerous, what you do with the information once you receive it, and then some detail on how your filing system is set up and operates, how do you get at data.
Then based on all that background information, the preparations that were actually made for the President's trip to Texas.
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I will begin by asking you to state your name, age and address.
Mr. BOUCK. My name is Robert Inman Bouck. I am 49 years of age. I live at 411 Norwood Drive, Falls Church, Va.
Mr. STERN. What is your education, Mr. Bouck, at the college level?
Mr. BOUCK. I have a B.S. degree in police administration.
Mr. STERN. From what college?
Mr. BOUCK. From Michigan State College.
Mr. STERN. And that was awarded when?
Mr. BOUCK. 1939.
Mr. STERN. What is your experience in the Secret Service--when did you join the Service?
Mr. BOUCK. I came to the Service in 1939 upon leaving college. From 1939 to 1945 I worked on protective assignments for the President and the presidential family and other people in the Washington area.
From 1945 until 1951 I worked in Chief's office on supervising and reorganizing various activities in the Chief's office.
In 1951 I was loaned to the Treasury Department as coordinator, I organized schools and directed them in the enforcement area until 1957, and in 1957 was assigned to the present job I now have of Special Agent-in-Charge, Protective Research.
Mr. STERN. Mr. Bouck, I show you this document of six pages which has been marked Commission Exhibit No. 760.
Can you identify that for me?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes. This is a memorandum of December 3 that I prepared, also a second memorandum of December 3 that I prepared.
Mr. STERN. And these were prepared in response to instructions to you?
Mr. BOUCK. In response to instructions from my headquarter's office, yes.
Mr. STERN. With the help of these memoranda I would like to touch briefly upon the functions of the Protective Research Section that you head--for the moment those functions other than with respect to persons of concern as a possible danger to the President.
If you will turn to the last page of this exhibit, there are a list of other duties of PRS, and would you explain briefly those and give some idea of the magnitude of the task involved?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes.
The manufacture and control of White House passes are the admittance passes to the White House issued to the press, employees and others who have occasion to come to the White House or the Executive Office Building that houses White House staff. This is some four to five thousand, fluctuating in volume.
The procurement and evaluation of character investigations and clearances for some categories of employees, these are the employees that passes are issued to and these are the clearances that we require.
Some of them we investigate ourselves, many of them are investigated by other agencies, and we review and evaluate the results, the number being roughly the same as the number of passholders in this category.
The procurement of national agency file checks and determination of admittance restrictions on a large number of tradesmen, contract employees and so forth who service the White House--these are non-White House employees. These are people who come to fix typewriters, clean rugs and that sort of thing.
Mr. STERN. Approximately how many people are involved in that category, Mr. Bouck.
Mr. BOUCK. This, we have a file of about 20,000 of these people, about 4,000 are active at any one time, and several hundred a month turn over in this.
Item No. 4, control of security processing of mail and gifts received at the White House, this is done by postal and White House employees under X-rays and security equipment provided by us under our guidance and we take over whenever any dangerous situation is indicated. This varies at Christmas time, when there are many hundreds of items reviewed; normally a few a day.
No. 5, handling and disposition-of suspicious packages or objects that may contain bombs or infernal devices; we have a bomb transporting truck, we have bomb analyzing equipment, we have a location and a place where we can
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dismantle bombs, and this, I am happy to say, we have had many scares but we have not had the real thing. We do this frequently as a precaution on things that we cannot analyze under the X-ray, but we have not actually had a bomb at the White House.
Mr. DULLES. May I ask where is the White House mail handled, right in the White House itself?
Mr. BOUCK. No; it is handled in the Executive Office Building which is across the street from the White House.
Mr. DULLES. The old State, War and Navy Building?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes, sir.
No. 6, evaluation of safety and control of disposition of all foods, beverages and similar consumable items received by the President or White House as gifts.
We do not, even though these are handled by White House and post office employees, we pass judgment as to whether any consumable item may be used and under what conditions it may be used or whether it must be-destroyed. This particular function we do entirely.
And again at Christmas time and birthdays it would be very high, many hundreds of items. Other times a few a day.
No. 7, control and investigation of----
Mr. McCLOY. Can I interrupt there, have you had any poisoned foods?
Mr. BOUCK. We think not at the White House, but this we are always watchful for. We have some food that we think sanitationwise is very bad, it smells bad, it looked bad, some has spoiled and some have been prepared under very, bad conditions but we know of no actual case of intended poison. We have had some where poisons may have generated because spoilage has set in.
Mr. McCLOY. Yes. You don't have a royal taster, do you? (Laughter.)
Mr. BOUCK. No, I am afraid we do not.
Control investigations on personnel and establishments that are supply sources for food, beverages, drugs and so forth, these are the places that the White House buys those supplies. We find out from the White House where they would like to buy, we check on the employees of these establishments, we check on the procedures by which it is handled, and we check on the sources of their food, where they get the raw materials.
This is an investigative process and a control process.
Representative FORD. How often do you go through this process?
Mr. BOUCK. The process is continuous in that the control, for instance a White House policeman goes and picks up, when the food is picked up. But the reinvestigation is every 6 months. We take a new look at each of these establishments every 6 months to see if any change has occurred. In between times we have arrangements with Public Health to make frequent health inspections, much more frequent than an ordinary establishment would be inspected.
Representative FORD. If there is a change of an employee at one of these shops or stores, are you notified?
Mr. BOUCK. We are supposed to be notified. Sometimes we aren't aware until we make the next check, although our White House policeman and our purchasing people do keep watch for this and usually we have established that only a small percentage of the people who handle White House orders, perhaps the manager and one clerk. It works quite well.
No. 8, the performance of technical and electronic inspections to protect against covert listening devices.
This is something that has been done for a great many years, the volume has gotten quite great in recent years, and we do this regularly at the White House and for the people close to the President, we do it regularly when he has stopover points on trips.
Mr. DULLES. Do you ever call the FBI in on this or do you have your own staffs to handle this detection of listening devices?
Mr. BOUCK. We have our own staff but we frequently use people of other agencies, including the FBI where they have, specialties or are able to perform something better than we could.
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Mr. DULLES. Did you consider there is any duplication there, I mean of facilities in government?
Mr. BOUCK. No; I think not. This really requires bodies, and if there is----
Mr. DULLES. And skills?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes; and if, once in a while a special skill is required that we do not possess then we turn to another agency to help us.
No. 9, determination of feasibility of application, establishment of specifications for procurement, and assistance in maintaining operation of a wide variety of electronic and technical protective aids. These are alarms, both for hazards, intrusion, and all sorts of dangers where a mechanical or electronic device can augment personal services.
Mr. DULLES. Could I just ask on that, do you have arrangements, say, with the FBI, CIA and others to keep abreast of the art, as it were?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes.
Mr. DULLES. I have in mind that time when we discovered the Russians had developed a new device and applied it in the Embassy in Moscow, you may recall which was quite novel, when they put in a hollow cavity inside the shield of the Great Seal of the United States, and then they could beam on that and they could listen to conversations in the room. That type of thing, you would be following that up through the FBI or through the CIA?
Mr. BOUCK. Very much so, yes.
We have rather low resources in those areas so the other agencies in the areas of research and development and hardware help us continuously and very well.
Mr. STERN. Now these, Mr. Bouck, as I understand it, are the functions of PRS which it has in addition to its main responsibility, and would you describe that just briefly and we will get to that in a minute.
Mr. BOUCK. Yes, the other responsibility that is not listed here, is the responsibility of attempting to detect persons who might intend harm to the President, and to control those persons or take such, corrective measures as we can take securitywise on them.
Representative FORD. I am not sure I understand that.
Mr. BOUCK. This is an effort to detect people who might intend to harm the President, people who make threats against the President, people who do things that indicate they may intend to harm him, and the various sort of things we do to see that they do not accomplish that, to prevent them from accomplishing them.
Mr. DULLES. Does your particular office maintain the central files for your agency?
Mr. BOUCK. For this function?
Mr. DULLES. For this function.
Mr. BOUCK. Yes.
Mr. DULLES. I mean if the FBI sent in to the Secret Service a name or a description of a particular man, or a particular area that would be filed in your office?
Mr. BOUCK. That is right.
Mr. DULLES. Do you file that alphabetically, by location or how do you develop those files?
Mr. BOUCK. The information in its file jackets is filed numerically but it is indexed alphabetically and by location as well as by certain other characteristics that may help us find it.
Mr. McCLOY. To come back to this matter of bugging again, do you feel that you are thoroughly well equipped, which is a repetition perhaps of what Mr. Dulles asked, Mr. Dulles' question, do you have an expert staff that know this business and that keep up to date with the developments in the area, and that can constantly keep your equipment in shape?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes; I think so. I think we, our contacts with the intelligence community in this area are very excellent. Our people are excellent. I think our big problem has been one of enough resources.
Mr. McCLOY. How many bodies have you got in this field?
Mr. BOUCK. I have three bodies devoted entirely to it, myself and my assistant have also had years of experience, and we devote part-time to this, which makes approximately four and a half full time bodies.
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Mr. STERN. This might be a good opportunity, Mr. McCloy, to introduce this document, marked Commission Exhibit No. 761.
Do you recognize that?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes, sir.
Mr. STERN. Did you prepare it.
Mr. BOUCK. I prepared it.
Mr. STERN. And what is it?
Mr. BOUCK. It is a chart showing the staffing of the Protective Research Section as of the time of Dallas.
Mr. STERN. And the category you were just explaining to Mr. McCloy is the last one?
Mr. BOUCK. That is right.
Mr. DULLES. Do you protect from this point of view anyone other than the President? Do you cover, say, the Vice President's offices in the Capitol?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes, sir.
Mr. DULLES. You do that, too?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes, sir.
Mr. DULLES. As far as safes are concerned and as far as listening devices are concerned?
Mr. BOUCK. Not safes.
Mr. DULLES. Not safes?
Mr. BOUCK. That has not been something that they have desired us to do. But insofar as----
Mr. DULLES. Why shouldn't you do that, I wonder, where he keeps his secret papers? You mean you don't----
Mr. BOUCK. That has not been something that has been determined as our responsibility. I believe other security officers have been given that responsibility, and we certainly, of course, help when we find something in that category, but we have not been asked at any of those levels to take care of safes.
Mr. DULLES. But you do take care of listening devices?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes, sir.
Mr. DULLES And for anybody else other than the Vice President in addition to the White House and the President?
Mr. BOUCK. The White House, the President, the Vice President, the close members of the Presidential staff, and the Secretary of the Treasury.
Mr. DULLES. Well, would that involve the homes, for example, of the close members of the President's staff?
Mr. BOUCK. The very high members, yes, not all, but the very high members. I think we do about six or seven homes of such people. The rest is office and working areas.
Mr. McCLOY. I have some question, I may say, that you have got enough people to do this from what I know of the art. This is quite a technical business now.
Mr. BOUCK. Yes, I know.
Mr. McCLOY. And the means of counteracting it and so forth, and the constant surveillance that you have to employ, but you are satisfied you are well equipped and have got sufficient people to do it?
Mr. BOUCK. As I mentioned earlier, I think we are well equipped in know-how and in equipment. Sometimes we are pressed very hard for enough hours to do it but our people have worked many hours overtime and I think they have covered this quite well.
Representative FORD. What results have you obtained? Have you found any problems?
Mr. BOUCK. We have not in the United States found any compromise. I am not sure that perhaps in the open record I should go beyond that.
(Discussion off the record.)
Mr. McCLOY. On the record.
Mr. STERN. From Exhibit 761, Mr. Bouck, it appears that in the area of processing information regarding threats, potential threats to the life of the President, there are six people presently working in addition to yourself and your assistant, one a clerk and five special agents, as they are designated is that correct? This is as of the time of Dallas,
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Mr. BOUCK. This is as of the time of Dallas.
Mr. STERN. These special agents are agents who would otherwise be involved in protective work or in the other activities of the Secret Service, counterfeiting and the like?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes.
Mr. STERN. Is there something about their general training that makes them particularly desirable in this work or is it the absence of other people that leads to the use of special agents in this work?
Mr. BOUCK. They have been selected because of an apparent aptitude for this work. Some of them, not all, but most of them have had many years of background in this work that increases their competence.
Mr. STERN. Are these men permanently assigned to this function or do they rotate?
Mr. BOUCK. They are susceptible to other assignment, but this assignment is something that may continue until the Chief should decide it was in the interest of the Service to change. It can and has gone many years for most of us. They do not automatically rotate.
Mr. STERN. I see.
As of the time of Dallas the total number of people in the Protective Research Section was 15 of which 3 were clerks, is that correct?
Mr. BOUCK. That is correct.
Mr. DULLES Could I ask one question that goes back to our earlier discussion? At the present time the Speaker is next in line in case anything should happen to the President.
Do you extend any special protective facilities as far as he is concerned?
Mr. BOUCK. This, we are kind of in an advance area here. I do handle mail that may come in the Protective Research area but I don't think I am quite qualified to speak on the entire Secret Service relationship to the Speaker, if I might seem not--
Mr. DULLES. What I was getting at was whether there were any special protection afforded now in view of his, in a sense new position as being next in line.
Mr. McCLOY. He is in effect the Vice President.
Mr. DULLES. He is in effect the Vice President.
Mr. BOUCK. Yes, I realize that, and I believe this gets into some areas that involve the wishes of the Speaker, that make this question a little bit difficult to answer, and I would say we do do what comes to our attention that we can, but I think the Chief is probably in a better position to indicate what degree we have gone. I am not really overly familiar with the exact extent of that degree except as it may apply here but we do handle in the crank area, and in the Protective Research subject area, we do handle that material as we would handle it for the President or Vice President when we are able to get it.
Mr. McCLOY. Off the record.
(Discussion off the record.)
Robert Carswell
TESTIMONY OF ROBERT CARSWELL
Mr. McCLOY. Why don't I swear you, Mr. Carswell?
Raise your right hand.
Do you solemnly swear the testimony you will give in this hearing will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
Mr. CARSWELL. I do.
Mr. McCLOY. You give your name for the record.
Mr. CARSWELL. Robert Carswell. Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury. My address is 3022 Q Street NW., Washington.
Mr. McCLOY. I think it might be well, Mr. Carswell, if you simply indicated some of it, in response to the last question, namely, as to whether or not there was security provided for the Speaker, who is next in line for the Presidency, and perhaps in view of your duties as Assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury you might have some information upon that which would be helpful to us.
Mr. CARSWELL. Yes. After the assassination in Dallas, the Secret Service initiated protection of the Speaker.
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The Secretary of the Treasury spoke with the Speaker, and agents were assigned to him. I am not qualified to say exactly the number of agents or the duties they perform but in general they provide protection comparable to that previously provided to the Vice President.
Mr. DULLES. And Mr. Rowley could furnish us any detail the Commission might want?
Mr. CARSWELL. Yes, I would suggest that Chief Rowley is the proper person to furnish that information.
Robert Inman Bouck
TESTIMONY OF ROBERT INMAN BOUCK RESUMED
Mr. STERN. I would like to turn now, Mr. Bouck, to the sources of information for PRS on potentially dangerous individuals.
Would you describe the various sources you rely upon?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes. If I might refer to this exhibit that is 760 which would be page 4 of that, the second memorandum. I believe the front of that lists the sources. No. 1 is mail, packages, telephone calls, received at the White House, the President's home, on trips, and so forth, these are screened, and so forth, in PRS and evaluated and if they meet certain prescribed criteria they are retained by PRS and become a source of information.
Unwelcome visitors to the White House or anywhere else the President may be is another source. Information received----
Mr. DULLES. What page are you on?
Mr. BOUCK. That is the page.
Mr. DULLES. The first page?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes, I am reading from the second paragraph or rather the tabulation.
Mr. DULLES. Yes, I find it.
Mr. BOUCK. Certain information comes directly to us or is developed by us, item 3. Item 4, reports from other Government agencies, and officials. Item 5, reports from police departments, State and local sources, and then we get a certain amount of phone calls, letters and information that come directly to us from the public.
Mr. STERN. We may get some notion of the volume of the information you receive from this document, which is entitled "Protective Research Cases, November 1961 through November 1963," which would be Exhibit 762. Do you recognize that, Mr. Bouck?
Mr. BOUCK. I do, I prepared this document.
Mr. STERN. May it be admitted?
Mr. McCLOY. It may be admitted.
(The document referred to, previously marked as Commission Exhibit No. 762, for identification, was received in evidence.)
Mr. STERN. Turning to the first page in the summary of Exhibit 762, Mr. Bouck, you have taken the Protective Research cases from November 1961 to November 1963, which involve residents of the State of Texas, and these were how many cases?
Mr. BOUCK. 34.
Mr. STERN. And you have broken them down by the source of the information in four categories which are----
Mr. BOUCK. Letters or phone calls; detected by the Secret Service; reported by Federal agencies; reported by local authorities.
Mr. STERN. Then towards the bottom of that page you have given gross figures during the same 2-year period of the nationwide activity. Would you state what the nationwide caseload was?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes. The cases we received nationwide and did not investigate because they didn't meet the criteria for investigation were 7,337. The cases we received and investigated were 1,372.
During the same period on these cases we arrested 167 people and 91 investigations were unproductive. They did not solve the cases.
Mr. STERN. You stated that the volume of information received has been
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rising. Would you describe the total for the years 1943, 1953, and 1963?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes. These do not represent cases. These represent items of information reported.
In 1943 we had about 7,000 such items coming to our attention; in 1953 this had increased to somewhat over 17,000 items. By 1963 this had increased in excess of 32,000 items.
Mr. STERN. Each of those items is examined by one of the five Special Agents working on this area?
Mr. BOUCK. That is right.
Mr. STERN. Now of the 34 Texas cases in this 2-year period----
Mr. DULLES. Could I ask a question before you get on the Texas cases, on this record, it indicates that about 6,000 cases were "received but not investigated" it seems to me for the record it would be well to have a little more on that as to why they weren't investigated, and so forth.
I suppose in a great many cases, you couldn't find who it was. It was an anonymous letter that came in. Would that be included?
Mr. BOUCK. Not for the cause of this, sir. I assume you are speaking of this 7,337 cases.
Mr. DULLES. That is right.
Mr. BOUCK. In the bottom table.
Mr. DULLES. Of those 1,372 were received and investigated?
Mr. BOUCK. We receive a great deal of information on people that we do not feel at that time intended to harm the President, but that would bear watching. We aren't quite sure whether they will become worse in the future, and this is----
Mr. DULLES. Is that among about the 6,000 cases I am referring to?
Mr. BOUCK. The 7,000.
Mr. DULLES. Well, there are 7,337 cases received, but not investigated.
Mr. BOUCK. These are two separate ones. The investigated cases are in addition.
Mr. DULLES. This is in addition to that?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes.
Mr. DULLES. I see.
Mr. BOUCK. The 7,000 cases are cases that we received, we looked at, and felt that we will file it and see if anything more happens on this, but it doesn't warrant investigative attention until we get something more alarming than we have.
Mr. DULLES. Who makes that judgment, is that made in your department?
Mr. BOUCK. That is made in my department by one of these five agents that are listed in this document.
Mr. DULLES. Do you review their determination?
Mr. BOUCK. I do not review all of them. I review a percentage of their determinations, and I am consulted on any that are borderline or that are difficult.
Mr. STERN. Of the 34 Texas cases, almost half or 15 were reported by Federal authorities. Is this typical of all information received by PRS in the course of a year?
Mr. BOUCK. No, this would be typical of the investigated cases but not typical of the entire quantity of cases received.
Mr. STERN. I see.
Representative FORD. Are the 34 listed here included in the 7,337 or the 1,372?
Mr. BOUCK. 1,372.
Mr. STERN. Do you have a judgment, Mr. Bouck, as to the proportion of cases coming to you from other agencies, Federal agencies, State and local agencies, of the total number of cases you have?
Mr. BOUCK. About 90 percent of the cases generated would be other than from agencies. The 10 percent that come from Federal and local agencies, the majority of that come from Federal agencies. I wouldn't know quite the percentage. But the majority of the 10 percent would be Federal agencies.
Mr. STERN. And predominantly from any one agency?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes, predominantly from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Mr. STERN. As to the 90 percent that is generated internally, as it were, do
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you have an opinion as to how many of those arise because of correspondence with the White House by the subject?
Mr. BOUCK. The great majority of them arise from telegrams, telephone calls, unwelcome visitors, letters to the White House.
Mr. STERN. Unwelcome visitors at the White House?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes.
Mr. DULLES. Do you know how many cases within the 7,337 noted here, which I understand is nationwide, were from Texas?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes. I believe we show that in the third paragraph, 115 cases were in Texas.
Mr. STERN. Yes.
Mr. BOUCK. In addition to the cases investigated. It is up in the third paragraph from the top, right under the table, the second paragraph under the table, sir; right where your finger is, the first line there.
Mr. DULLES. 115?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes.
Mr. DULLES. Did the name of Lee Harvey Oswald appear in your files at any time prior to the 22d of November 1963?
Mr. BOUCK. No, sir; we had never heard of him in any context.
Mr. DULLES. His name doesn't appear at all?
Mr. BOUCK. Not as of that time. Prior to Dallas, it did not appear in any fashion. We had no knowledge of the name.
Mr. DULLES. You had no report from the State Department or the FBI that covered his trip to Russia or anything of that kind?
Mr. BOUCK. No, sir.
Mr. McCLOY. Or of the CIA?
Mr. BOUCK. No, sir.
Mr. STERN. Mr. Bouck, what kind of information do you look for, what are the criteria you apply, in determining whether someone is a potential danger to the President? What do you ask other agencies, Federal, State, and local to be on the lookout for?
Mr. BOUCK. Our criteria is broad in general. It consists of desiring any information that would indicate any degree of harm or potential harm to the President, either at the present time or in the future.
Mr. STERN. Had you ever prior to Dallas had occasion to---for any part of your activities---list criteria that you would apply in trying to determine whether someone is a potential danger?
Mr. BOUCK. We had not had a formal written listing of criteria as such except in this general form of desiring everything that might indicate a possible source of harm to the safety of the President. We had some internal breakdown of information for the processing of certain kinds of material where the criteria were involved.
Mr. STERN. I didn't mean to restrict my question to criteria for external sources, but those you used internally as well.
Mr. BOUCK. We had some internal, as well.
Mr. STERN. I show you now a one-page document entitled "The following criteria are used as guides in determining whether White House mail is to be accepted for PRS processing," which has been marked for identification as Commission Exhibit No. 763. Can you identify that?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes, sir; this is a document that I helped draft some years ago. It is a document I prepared for the Commission. It is a document that was used up to and at the time of Dallas.
Mr. STERN. For what purpose?
Mr. BOUCK. For the purpose of screening White House mail. The White House gives us a considerable quantity of mail, not all of which we it is desirable that we keep, and this is a guide to the agents in determining what we should keep and what should go back to be answered by the White House staff.
Mr. STERN. This guide is not used by the White House mailroom? This is an internal guide for your own agents?
Mr. BOUCK. My own agents.
Mr. STERN. What instructions does the White House mailroom have as to mail that is to be sent to you?
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Mr. BOUCK. The White House mail has two general instructions: One, we supply them with identification information on all existing cases in which mail is concerned; that any further mail in those cases is automatically referred to us.
Their criteria are the same as our other general criteria--that in addition to these known cases we desire letters, telegrams, or any other document they receive that in any way indicates any one may have possible intention of harming the President.
Mr. STERN. Have you----
Mr. DULLES. Could I ask just one question here?
Mr. STERN. Yes, sir.
Mr. DULLES. I note that this list does not include membership in various types of organizations, such as the, for example, the organizations that are on the Attorney General's list. Have you ever considered that?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes; if I might explain, sir; the letters we are talking about are letters that are written by people, and they rarely include that kind of information, but we do in other categories, this is for a special purpose. This is letters only that are sent to the President which is all this is applied to. This does not apply to other sources of information, only the one source of letters.
Mr. STERN. Have you had occasion, Mr. Bouck, before Dallas, to put in writing criteria to be employed by Secret Service agents in dealing with uninvited callers at the White House?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes, sir.
Mr. STERN. I show you now a document which I have marked for identification Commission Exhibit No. 764, one page, entitled "The following criteria are used as guides in determining whether White House callers should be committed for mental observation." Do you recognize that?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes, sir.
Mr. STERN. Did you have it prepared?
Mr. BOUCK. I did.
Mr. STERN. How was this employed?
Mr. BOUCK. A great percentage of the people who come to see the President or to the White House gates have been found to be suffering from mental illness. This involves a determination as to whether a legal process will take place of committing these people, and in discussions with the Mental Commission in Washington and elsewhere, we have found that certain criteria meet their desires in whether or not we should legally process them. So this was prepared as a guide to agents in trying to determine whether we could send these people down for commitment to a mental institution or consideration by the Commission on Mental Health.
Mr. STERN. Under the District of Columbia commitment procedures?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes; that is right.
Mr. STERN. Beyond these criteria for dealing with White House mail and uninvited visitors at the White House, what instructions within the broad framework of your criteria do you give to Treasury law enforcement officers, including Secret Service agents, with respect to the kind of information you are interested in receiving?
Mr. BOUCK. We have participation in a broad program of Treasury schools which include all of the Treasury agencies as well as participation of certain other people in our own schools. We have a coordination setup in Treasury on which the heads of organization levels meets regularly.
In all of those the Secret Service jurisdiction, the Secret Service desires and needs in the way of protection of the President have been included many times over.
It is a constant, one of those things that is constantly brought up many times both in the schools and in the coordination needs of the Secret Service needs and functions in these areas.
Mr. STERN. Do you participate in other training programs of other law enforcement agencies?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes.
Mr. STERN. Will you describe that and with particular reference to this problem?
Mr. BOUCK. We participate both on the national level and at the field level.
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Our agents in the field are instructed to accept any invitation to teach in a police school of any level or security school, and we have prescribed exact outlines of material they should get across. One of the main topics being the protection topic.
We teach in Marine schools here in Washington. We teach in some of the State activities; a number of the different military activities. We have had students from most of the bigger agencies of government, CIA, State, and so forth, who have attended these portions of our training schools.
Mr. STERN. What requests do you make to other Federal agencies?
Mr. BOUCK. We make this same request--that we desire any and all information that they may come in contact with that would indicate danger to the President.
Mr. STERN. How are these requests communicated?
Mr. BOUCK. They are fundamentally communicated by personal contact of varying degrees with the FBI. We have a personal liaison contact in which an individual, a liaison officer actually makes daily contact.
With the other agencies, other security agencies and enforcement agencies, we are--people on my staff have personal relationships where we can call on the telephone and do call on the telephone very frequently, sometimes some agencies everyday, and they in turn call us.
Mr. STERN. What agencies do you have these liaison relationships with--Federal agencies?
Mr. BOUCK. We have on a commonly used basis, we have some liaison with almost all of them but on a common using basis we have these relationships with CIA, with the several military services, with the Department of State. I have mentioned the FBI.
Mr. STERN. Central Intelligence Agency?
Mr. BOUCK. Oh, yes; very much so. They are, especially on trips very, very helpful.
Mr. DULLES. Foreign trips?
Mr. BOUCK. Foreign trips, yes.
Representative FORD. How often do your people check to see procedures which are used by these various agencies for the determination of whether an individual is a dangerous person?
Mr. BOUCK. We don't do that systematically. We frequently have such discussions but they are usually on a specific basis. Our representative will call up and say, "We just received this information. Would this be of interest to you."
In these borderline cases, we have much of that, and after discussion we decide whether it would or would not be. But outside of raising this question as it comes in connection with business between our agencies we do not make a practice of just simply querying them on this. We have not done that, as I recall.
Representative FORD. You don't lay down a particular criterion for Agency X, Y, or Z?
Mr. BOUCK. No. We have the one general criterion that we have advocated for many years. I think it is quite well understood. We do not see signs that there were any lack of knowledge that this was our job and we wished this kind of information.
Mr. DULLES. Have you made any study going back in history of the various attempts that have been made, and successful and unsuccessful attempts, that have been made against Presidents or----
Mr. BOUCK. Rulers.
Mr. DULLES. Or people about to be President, or who have been President?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes, yes. We have not only studied all of our own but we have studied all of the assassinations that we could find any record of for 2,000 years back. And strangely enough some of the thinking that went on 2,000 years ago seems to show up in thinking of assassinations today.
Mr. STERN. Do you increase protection on the Ides of March?
Mr. DULLES. Is that available? Is that--I don't know.
Mr. BOUCK. It is available in a rather crude form. It has not been boiled down to a concise report.
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Mr. DULLES. How voluminous is this? I should be very much interested in thumbing through it because I have been trying to study the past history.
Mr. BOUCK. The rough notes on this are this high.
Mr. DULLES. A few thousand pages?
Mr. BOUCK. The studies didn't go beyond that.
Mr. DULLES. By cases?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes. Of course, in many of these cases it is very spotty and these are handwritten notes. We never, outside of extracting in this in training material and what not, we have never systematized it down to where it is a readable document as such.
Mr. DULLES. Have you tried to draw any conclusion out of this study as to the type of people, the types of causes, the types of incentives?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes; we have.
Mr. DULLES. That is in your department, is it, to do this?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes; it is. We have arrived at some conclusions from it.
(Discussion off the record.)
Mr. McCLOY. On the record. Your study of the prior assassinations would take into account Czolgosz, Guiteau, what type of persons they were?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes, sir.
Mr. McCLOY. The thing to me that seems very worthy of research is the plotter, I mean the political plotter as against, for want of a better word, the loner, the man who is self-motivated against the man who has to have a group around him. How do you tell one from the other? I just was reading last night in Loomis about Madame Corday. She was just as much of a loner as apparently Mr. Oswald was.
Mr. DULLES. So was Czolgosz so far as I can make out, and so was Zangara. Zangara, I was told, planned to shoot Hoover and then he decided that the climate of Washington wasn't very healthy in February and March for him because he had stomach trouble, so he decided that F.D.R. was coming to Miami and it was just as good to shoot him. You have situations of that kind that defy it.
Mr. BOUCK. I believe he intended to shoot the King of Italy before that but he got a chance to migrate before he got an opportunity.
Mr. DULLES. Zangara?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes.
Mr. McCLOY. Do you have any look out for defectors as such?
Mr. BOUCK. As such we have never been quite able to determine that that is a valid criterion. We do not as such.
Mr. McCLOY. You have some suspicions, now, don't you?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes; we have some suspicions now; yes, sir.
Mr. DULLES. I wonder whether it would not be useful for this Commission to have, if it could be reduced to readable form and to assist, the conclusions of your study if you have such conclusions?
Mr. BOUCK. We will do that, sir.
Mr. DULLES. What do you think, do the rest of you agree to that?
Mr. McCLOY. I think it is part of our mission to try to make recommendations in regard to the future protection of the Presidents. Actually, we don't want to go into anything which is going to compromise the future security of Presidents. We simply want to augment. What we are concerned about is how well equipped we are to do the job in the light of all the circumstances and I would think that any conclusions that you have in this regard, if you--the Secret Service, Treasury--could convey them to us in a form that perhaps we might endorse, it might be helpful from your point of view and our point of view.
Representative FORD. I would agree with that observation.
Mr. DULLES. You can possibly define categories. You may find the loner, you may find a fellow engaged in a plot with others for political reasons and that would help us very much because we find that particularly the case we are investigating falls into one of these classes.
Mr. BOUCK. All right.
(Discussion off the record.)
(At this point Senator Cooper entered the hearing room.)
Mr. McCLOY. I think we are ready to go ahead.
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Mr. STERN. Fine, Mr. Chairman. I would like to turn now to the actual processing by PRS of the information they receive and have Mr. Bouck tell us what happens to an item of information when it is received, how it is processed, how the references to field offices are made, and perhaps you might illustrate, Mr. Bouck, from the cases that are summarized in Commission Exhibit 762.
Mr. BOUCK. In Exhibit 760, the second memorandum applies to that, and I will basically follow that unless questions differ.
Mr. STERN. I think it would be better for you not to read it but to paraphrase it, tell us what happens.
Mr. BOUCK. When a document is received by the Secret Service, it is first searched against our files to see if we have any previous experience with this individual or with this threat. If it is found that we do have previous material there is an analysis made, and then a determination is made at that point as to what the apparent degree of threat would be on this.
If it appears that on the surface there is a threat, lookouts will immediately be issued to the White House detail, the White House police and various other security details, in order that they may be alerted to any danger that happens.
If the danger seems quite strong, a telephone call will be made to the field office in order to begin the investigation without even waiting for the mail. The threat is then processed and sent through the mail with the documents to the office concerned.
If it is determined that it is a possible danger, a card is put in a particular file which would alert us in case the President went to that area that an investigation of a dangerous person were underway. After the field office has investigated they would attempt to take corrective action if a law has been violated, the individual will be prosecuted, if practical, and if the individual is determined to be mentally ill, attempts will be made to get commitment into a mental institution.
When the report is submitted back, if the individual is not confined or is not evaluated as being no danger, then we would put cards in several control devices, one being a trip index file to make sure that we alerted the field office when the President went to that area; another being a control checkup device which means that if this individual is regarded as dangerous we will keep checking up on him every few months to see if he is getting worse or see what he is doing.
Mr. STERN. Could you illustrate by a case or two from Exhibit 762 the different kinds of matters that come to your attention and the different ways in which they are processed?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes. On page 2 of this exhibit happens to be a case that had its origin in the field, in Denton, Tex., of a potential threat that appeared to apply to Dallas, It was investigated in the field, and pictures were obtained, and information was obtained and dispensed to the White House detail at the time President Kennedy went to Dallas, and in this particular case, it was subsequently referred to PRS and has been placed in our files and indexed in our indexes. Case No. 3 is a similar----
Mr. DULLES. May I ask a question there? When you refer to the field offices, this is the field office of the Secret Service?
Mr. BOUCK. Field offices of the Secret Service.
Mr. DULLES. How many do you have?
Mr. BOUCK. Sixty.
Mr. DULLES. Sixty?
Mr. BOUCK. In the United States, and I believe one of those is in Puerto Rico and one is in Paris, of the 60.
Mr. DULLES. Those offices cooperate with the FBI offices?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes. If you will look over these cases, you will see that as a matter of fact, this page. 3, this case is given as originating with the chief of police of Denton, Tex. but the FBI already also determined that and they reported that to us almost simultaneously.
Mr. DULLES. Yes; that doesn't show up on this particular page.
Mr. BOUCK. No; it is stated, I think in some other exhibit but I erroneously neglected it here. But you will find in many of those, that was true on page 5, that indicates a case where the FBI has picked up information and gave it to us.
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Mr. STERN. You might mention, perhaps, Mr. Bouck, the cases under the last tab of your exhibit which were cases that were not investigated, just as a contrast.
Mr. BOUCK. That is right. These referrals from the FBI are all through here. Page 8 is another one where they picked up information and gave it to us. The first four sections relate to the cases in the four offices of Texas during a 2-year period. The very final one illustrates just a little sample of the kind of cases we received in Texas which we did not think warranted investigation. That will give you an idea of what those cases amounted to. Why we didn't go into them.
Mr. McCLOY. Let me ask you this: Are your records and equipment modern in the sense that you have got punchcards on all these, have you got the type of equipment that you would think that extensive files and extensive information and quick access to them might be very important. Do you have IBM machines and do you have punchcards, for example, so that you can have quick cross references?
Mr. BOUCK. No, sir. Our files are conventional, card indexes, conventional folders. We do not have machine operation in that sense.
Mr. McCLOY. Don't you think that with all this mass of information that comes in that that would be an asset to you?
Mr. BOUCK. If I might defer to Mr. Carswell again, I believe that is in the document you are handling, discussion of that, am I right, Mr. Carswell, or in the studies that are going on.
Mr. CARSWELL. Yes.
Mr. BOUCK. This is part of this big overall consideration again.
Mr. McCLOY. It just seems to me this is almost a typical case of where that type of thing can do you a great deal of good. You have it in industry to a very marked degree. I wonder whether it could be I don't know enough about the flow of these things.
Mr. BOUCK. This is under a great deal of consideration as a part of this post-Dallas study that Mr. Carswell referred to and I am quite sure that it will be contained in the final results.
Mr. McCLOY. Very well. Go ahead.
Mr. DULLES. Could I ask one question in that connection? You say at the bottom of the page, this introductory table page, that the total exceeded 32,000 items.
Mr. BOUCK. Yes.
Mr. DULLES. Does that mean now you have cards on 32,000 people?
Mr. BOUCK. Oh, no; we have cards on close to a million people.
Mr. DULLES. A million people?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes.
Mr. DULLES. This total then is 1-year total?
Mr. BOUCK. This is a 2-year total--no, wait a minute. I beg your pardon.
Mr. McCLOY. 1963.
Mr. BOUCK. This is a l-year total for 1943, 1-year total for 1953, and 1-year total for 1963.
Mr. DULLES. That is just the number, and these figures are cumulative that you have here?
Mr. BOUCK. No; everyone is a year.
Mr. DULLES. That is what I mean, you have the total you have to add this up for previous years, but you don't keep them forever, you take some of these out.
Mr. BOUCK. These are not all cards, but these are items of information. In 1-year cases we might get 40, 50 items in a particular case, and these items would go in the case files.
Mr. DULLES. Do you know how many names you have carded now, approximately?
Mr. BOUCK. We have not counted them but we think in the vicinity of a million but they are not all active, you see. We have no way of knowing when people die in some cases and things like that. So we don't know just how many of these million are now active. Certainly very much less than a million.
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Mr. DULLES. But you have a million names carded?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes. In the indexes.
Mr. STERN. In the files which you describe as basic files, I believe, how many cases are current, either in your office or within easy access?
Mr. BOUCK. About 50,000.
Mr. STERN. About 50,000. So that 950,000 are in some other storage?
Mr. BOUCK. Not all of these cards, you see, will represent cases because we have some cases in which many people are involved. There would be considerably less cases than there would be card indexes, but we do have a very sizable storage of cases under National Archives, some of the older ones having gone to places like the Roosevelt Library.
(At this point Representative Ford left the hearing room.)
Mr. STERN. These are your basic files which now have something in the order of 50,000 active cases?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes.
Mr. STERN. And some of these involve more than one individual?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes.
Mr. STERN. In these cases?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes.
Mr. STERN. A case might be an organization, as I understand it, rather than an individual?
Mr. BOUCK. That is right.
Mr. STERN. And the members of that organization would be collected under that one case?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes.
Mr. STERN. Would they also be listed individually?
Mr. BOUCK. They would be listed individually if they were of interest to us as individuals. Sometimes we would get the membership of a group of people that attended a lecture, let's say, where very derogatory information was given out about the President, but most of these people seem like ordinary citizens and it doesn't seem like worth investigating. We might have 200 people listed in that, this would not be normal, but it would be a few cases like that.
Mr. STERN. Now, as I understand it you by no means investigate every individual who is in one of these 50,000 cases?
Mr. BOUCK. That is correct.
Mr. STERN. And what are the criteria that you use?
Mr. BOUCK. The criteria for investigation are feelings that there is indeed an indication that there may be a danger to the President.
Mr. STERN. But there has to be some indication of a potential danger to the President to get that individual into a case to begin with, I take it. If it were clear he was not?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes; but not necessarily a current indication. We take many of these where we think an individual is becoming hostile and a little bit disgusted with the President, we take many of those cases to watch these people. We keep getting information here and there along, and frequently after we get the second or third piece of information, we decide indeed this individual is perhaps--does perhaps constitute a menace, and at that point we would investigate it.
Mr. STERN. As I understand it, one of the main purposes of your investigation is to attempt to deal with the dangerous individual at that time?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes, sir.
Mr. STERN. How would you deal with these people whom we are speaking about?
Mr. BOUCK. We deal with them primarily in three ways. First, if a law violation is involved an attempt will be made to see if a prosecution is in order.
Mr. STERN. What sort of law violation?
Mr. BOUCK. Well, we have a threat law, for one, that is under our jurisdiction. Then in the case----
Mr. STERN. This is threats against the President?
Mr. BOUCK. Threats against the President. Then there is----
Mr. DULLES. Is that a local law?
Mr. BOUCK. No; that is a Federal law.
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Mr. DULLES. It is a Federal law?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes.
Mr. STERN. And it involves what sort of act?
Mr. BOUCK. It involves making a threat to kill the President or to harm the President.
Mr. STERN. Not necessarily----
Mr. McCLOY. Do you have a citation of that law?
Mr. BOUCK. It is in some exhibit, I am sure.
Mr. McCLOY. I think it is well to put it in the record if we have it.
Mr. DULLES. Yes; I think it would be very good.
Mr. CARSWELL. Can we supply it?
Mr. DULLES. Why don't you supply it?
(It was later supplied as 18 U.S.C., Section 871.)
Mr. BOUCK. If the investigation indicates that the individual is mentally unbalanced, which a high percentage are, then attempt will be made to persuade local authorities to get hospitalization, confinement in an institution.
If neither of those are possible, attempts will be made to get local officers and family, if they will cooperate, to help us keep track of him, and we will institute checkups from time to time when we are investigating. Those are basically the control measures that we are able to use. In some cases we may conduct surveillance, by the way, if we can't do any of those, and we regard the man as very dangerous.
Mr. STERN. I show you a 1-page pink card marked for identification Commission Exhibit No. 765. Can you tell us what that is?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes; this is a card which we have prepared when an individual that we have rated as dangerous is placed in an institution, either a mental institution or a penal institution. We supply that card to the superintendent of the institution. We ask him to put it in the front of the individual's case jacket, and it is all filled in so that the return address and all are on it. The frank portion of it on the bottom is a frank portion, all he has to do is to indicate whether the individual has escaped, transferred or been released and drop it in the mail to advise us on action they may take on letting him out or if he has escaped.
Mr. STERN. That is the control you exercise over persons who are institutionalized in prison or some sort of hospital?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes.
Mr. STERN. When an individual is determined after investigation to present some level of danger but not sufficient to warrant prosecution or not to be a mentally disturbed person warranting commitment, how do you control that individual, keep track of him?
Mr. BOUCK. If we think he is in fact dangerous, he would be in our checkup file which is really a control device by which at least every 6 months we re-investigate and in between times we try to have arrangements with the family and local officers to let us know if he leaves town or buys a gun or anything.
The other device is a geographical card file in which we would put a card to let us know about this individual in case the President went to that geographical area so that the office might take a further look and see if he was a menace.
Mr. STERN. At the time of Dallas, do you know approximately how many persons were in institutions under this system where you would be notified if they left or escaped?
Mr. BOUCK. I am sorry, I don't have that.
Mr. STERN. The order of magnitude, any estimate?
Mr. BOUCK. It would be some thousands but I wouldn't really have a close idea. I could get that and supply it. I just would have to guess and it would be a very bad guess.
Mr. STERN. Fine. But you can determine this for us?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes.
Mr. STERN. Good. How many at the time of Dallas would be in your checkup control file system with this periodic review?
Mr. BOUCK. About 400.
Mr. STERN. 400 individuals?
Mr. BOUCK. That is nationwide.
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Mr. STERN. Again, at the time of Dallas, how many individuals would have been listed in the trip-index file which you have described?
Mr. BOUCK. About a hundred.
Mr. STERN. One hundred in the Nation?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes.
Mr. STERN. What are the criteria for putting someone's name in the trip-index file?
Mr. BOUCK. The belief on the part of the local field office, with confirmation from the Protective Research Section that this individual would indeed constitute a risk to the President's safety, if he went to that area.
Mr. STERN. This is done, this is organized, on a geographic basis?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes.
Mr. STERN. By Secret Service field offices?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes.
Mr. STERN. Is there any other control device that you employed at the time of Dallas?
Mr. BOUCK. We had at the time a very small device that we call an album which has a few, perhaps 12 or 15 people that we consider very dangerous or at least dangerous and so mobile that we can't be sure where they might be. This is a constant thing. Copies of these are kept before the protective personnel at the White House all the time. This resides in their office.
Senator COOPER. On that point, if this last category represents a group that is so highly dangerous, have any individuals in that group reached the place where they have made such statements as would bring them under the Federal act which would require prosecution?
Mr. BOUCK. No, sir; if they were prosecutable we would seek that solution immediately, and many of them have been taken to the district attorney and it has just been determined they do not quite meet the requirements for prosecution.
Some have been prosecuted, and have served sentences and are out at the end of sentences but still thought to be dangerous.
Senator COOPER. Yes.
Mr. BOUCK. Some have been in mental institutions and discharged, and there isn't ground to put them back but we are still afraid of them.
Mr. STERN. Are the individuals who are listed in the trip-index file, which numbered at the time of Dallas about 100, also listed in the checkup control files?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes. Yes; they would, primarily that 100 would to a large degree be in both places.
Mr. STERN. Then it is a fair summary, Mr. Bouck, that at the time of Dallas the number of individuals that you were concerned with were some thousands, the number you will supply, who were institutionalized either in prison or in mental hospitals, and with such institutions you had an arrangement that would promptly notify you of the discharge or escape of that individual, some 400 on a systematic review, approximately every 6 months by your field offices, of which 400, 100 were separately identified as particularly dangerous in the trip-index file, and some 12 to 15 whose photographs were in the album?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes; I think----
Mr. STERN. As a matter of fact, I would suppose the people in the album would also be in the checkup control file so really we are talking about, are we not, the unknown number in institutions, and about 400 other individuals whom you were actively reviewing and about whom you would be concerned on the occasion of the President's trip?
Mr. BOUCK. That is right.
Mr. STERN. In addition, you had files on, active files on, approximately 50,000 cases involving at least that number and probably more, individuals which were your-basic library, as it were, but of reference use only until more information was developed about them?
Mr. BOUCK. Well, I think you are quite accurate except in the last category. In these 50,000 cases would be tremendous numbers of cases that had been given investigative attention, and had been determined that our first thought or our first indications of danger were not substantiated. The investigator,
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and we concurred, felt that the individual, at least at any particular time, that this particular individual was not really in fact a menace to the President's life.
Mr. DULLES. What was the location of these 50,000 cases? We are talking now about Dallas, is that countrywide?
Mr. BOUCK. Countrywide.
Mr. McCLOY. International.
Mr. BOUCK. It is worldwide over a period of 20 years.
Mr. DULLES. Yes. Somebody in Thailand, if he was in Thailand wouldn't be of much danger in Dallas.
Mr. STERN. But he would, as I understand it, sir, be included in the basic files if he had come to their attention as a potential danger.
Mr. DULLES. Someone in New Orleans, for example, he could get up to Dallas very quickly or if he were in Houston, but this 50,000 covers the whole world.
Mr. STERN. Yes; and I think the important point here, Mr. Dulles, is that these are 50,000 cases of background information, including people already investigated and found not to represent danger. The number of cases under active scrutiny at the time of Dallas amounted to about 400, who were reviewed periodically, plus a much larger number, in the thousands, of persons committed or imprisoned, and as to those, I expect there would be no problem until they were released.
Mr. BOUCK. That is right.
Mr. STERN. And you had a system to be notified about the release or escape, is that correct?
Mr. BOUCK. That is correct.
Mr. DULLES. So can we get from that about the number of cases you felt to look at in connection with the President's trip to Dallas?
Mr. BOUCK. We actually----
Mr. DULLES. What range would that be?
Mr. BOUCK. We actually looked at a volume of cases approximating 400 in connection with the trip to Dallas.
Mr. STERN. Well----
Mr. BOUCK. That is the total file that we looked into.
Mr. STERN. On a national basis?
Mr. BOUCK. The total two or three files we looked into would encompass about that many people.
Mr. DULLES. All right. That gives me just what I was asking for.
Mr. STERN. In point of fact, Mr. Bouck, when you looked at the checkup control file and the trip-index file before the Dallas trip how many names were reported for the areas in the Dallas field office territory where the President was to visit?
Mr. BOUCK. We found no uncontrolled people in the trip file for Dallas. All of the cases in Dallas were controlled to our satisfaction. We found also in the checkup file no uncontrolled individuals that we thought warranted an alert for Dallas.
Mr. DULLES. Did you ask the FBI or any ether local agency for any cases they might have?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes, sir.
Mr. DULLES. In connection with the trip?
Mr. BOUCK. In fact, they referred several cases to us in connection with the trip, right prior to the trip on the local level.
Mr. DULLES. On the local level?
Mr. BOUCK. On the local level.
Mr. McCLOY. Being as objective as you can be under the circumstances, what would you have done if the FBI had told you there was a man named Oswald in Dallas, who was a defector, had been a defector?
Mr. BOUCK. I think if they had told us only that, we probably would not have taken action. If I might qualify it further, if we had known what all of the Government agencies knew together, and knew that he had that vantage point on the route, then we certainly would have taken very drastic action.
Mr. McCLOY. If they had told you that there was a man named Oswald in
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Dallas, who had been a defector, who was employed at the Texas School Book Depository?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes, sir; we would have looked at that.
Mr. McCLOY. You would have looked at that?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes, sir.
Mr. McCLOY. Knowing that the Texas School Book Depository was on the President's route?
Mr. BOUCK. On the President's route.
Mr. STERN. Would it have made a difference to you if he was a legitimate employee of that institution?
Mr. BOUCK. Well, not from our standpoint of having us look at it. I can't predict too well what the field office would have done after they looked. It would depend on what they found out, but the field office would have checked that. We would has asked them to check it and they would in fact have checked it not knowing what conclusions they would have arrived at, I don't quite--I am not quite able to predict just what measures they would have taken.
Senator COOPER. May I ask a question on this point? Have you examined your records since the assassination of President Kennedy to determine if the name Lee Oswald appears in your files?
Mr. BOUCK. We have never had it prior in any connection, never in our records.
Senator COOPER. I gathered from what you said in response to Mr. McCloy's question you do not keep any special file relating to defectors?
Mr. BOUCK. No, sir.
Senator COOPER. In this country?
Mr. BOUCK. Not unless there is something much more to it than the fact they defected.
Senator COOPER. Then in the case of Lee Oswald from your statement that you do not keep any file on defectors, if you had known about his presence there, what would have been the cause then for you to have taken special notice of him?
Mr. BOUCK. The key there would have been a defection plus a knowledge that he had a vantage point on the route. Those two together would have required action.
Senator COOPER. The point I make is, and this again is arguing after the fact, if the fact he was a defector, plus a vantage point would make you take notice of him it would seem to me it would be very substantial evidence to have in your file that he was a defector, wouldn't you think so?
Mr. BOUCK. Well, again, this is part of this big study that we are in. We never before knew, I think, of a defector who did anything like this so we are not quite sure that defection in itself is a key to an assassin. However, that combined with certain things, knowing that he had a vantage point would have caused us to look.
Mr. STERN. Were there any other characteristics of Oswald that you believe to have been known to other Federal agencies before November 22 that would have been important to you in deciding whether or not he was a potential threat?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes. I think I have supplied you with a list of about 18 things that were known to the Federal agencies, but these, I believe, were spread from Moscow to Mexico City in at least four agencies, so I am not aware of how much any one agency or any one person might have known.
But there was quite a little bit of derogatory information known about Oswald in this broad expanse of agencies.
Mr. STERN..Without respect to any such list, what other characteristics, trying as much as possible to avoid hindsight, do you think were germane to determine his potential danger?
Mr. BOUCK. I would think his continued association with the Russian Embassy after his return, his association with the Castro groups would have been of concern to us, a knowledge that he had, I believe, been court-martialed for illegal possession of a gun, of a hand gun in the Marines, that he had owned a weapon and did a good deal of hunting or use of it, perhaps in Russia, plus a number of items about his disposition and unreliability of character, I think all of those,
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if we had had them altogether, would have added up to pointing out a pretty bad individual, and I think that, together, had we known that he had a vantage point would have seemed somewhat serious to us, even though I must admit that none of these in themselves would be would meet our specific criteria, none of them alone.
But it is when you begin adding them up to some degree that you begin to get criteria that are meaningful.
Senator COOPER. I am sure you have answered what I am going to ask but I will ask it anyway. Then it is correct prior to the assassination the Secret Service had no information from any agency or any source----
Mr. BOUCK. That is correct.
Senator COOPER. Relating to Lee Oswald?
Mr. BOUCK. That is correct.
Mr. STERN. I believe you said earlier, Mr. Bouck, that before Dallas you thought the liaison arrangements were satisfactory and that other Federal agencies, in particular, had full awareness of the kind of information that the Secret Service was looking for under the general criteria that you articulated?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes, sir.
Mr. STERN. Why then, do you think you were not notified of Oswald? Was there perhaps something wrong with the system?
Mr. BOUCK. This, of course, is opinion. In my opinion, there was no lack of knowledge of what we should have. Insofar as I know no individual knew enough about Oswald to judge him to meet our criteria of presenting a danger to the President. I know of no individual who knew all about Oswald, including the fact that he had a vantage point on the route. If that is so, I don't know. I didn't know.
Mr. McCLOY. Somebody in the FBI knew it, didn't they?
Mr. BOUCK. I have no record to know that. They knew certain information. I have no record that would indicate they knew all of the derogatory information.
Mr. McCLOY. I don't know I would say they knew all the derogatory information but they certainly knew the vantage point and they certainly knew the defection elements.
Mr. BOUCK. I know they knew he was in Dallas. Whether they recognized that as being on the route, I don't know that.
Mr. McCLOY. I think the record shows he was employed there, or the deposition shows.
Mr. BOUCK. I don't know that.
Mr. STERN. Is it of key importance to what you say now regarding the information on Oswald before the assassination to identify his vantage point? If you would take that away from the other characteristics does he then not become a threat?
Mr. BOUCK. He would not meet the criteria of a threat as we had it at that time, if you take that away.
Mr. STERN. And the criterion was----
Mr. BOUCK. That there be some specific indication that a possible danger to the President existed.
Mr. DULLES. Off the record.
(Discussion off the record.)
Mr. McCLOY. Back on the record.
Mr. STERN. Well, Mr. Bouck, if the pivotal ingredient is his employment at that Depository, is that because that showed some, to your mind, some intention, some desire to be on the route, because access to the route----
Mr. BOUCK. No; it relates him to the President. This, I think if all the information that was known about him, indicates that he was a pretty untrustworthy individual, I think there was no indication that that untrustworthiness might be of a danger to the President until you associated that he had a vantage point where he might use it toward the President.
There was nothing previous that indicated that the President might be an object of this, and----
Mr. STERN. As far as any of us know, any citizen had pretty much the same sort of access to the parade route. Is there any difference----
Mr. BOUCK. We would feel the same way if we knew this much derogatory
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type of information about any citizen if we knew he had a particular vantage point on a route.
Mr. STERN. But a citizen, possessing all the characteristics you believe to have been known about Oswald but not having access through employment or residence or some comparable relationship to the parade route, would not have been of concern to you under the criteria and practices in effect at the time of Dallas, is that what you are saying?
Mr. BOUCK. I think a little broader than that. Access of any kind, working in a hotel or any point where he might have unusual access.
If you broaden the question to that, I would say that is what I am saying.
Mr. STERN. Unusual access?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes.
Mr. McCLOY. If I might intervene here, if I understand it. I don't know whether it is good but there is speculation and conjecture in it, I don't know it you will get far with it. Probably if you had known all the derogatory information that you now know was accumulated in all of the agencies of the Government irrespective of where this fellow was in Dallas you might have kept your eye on him.
Mr. BOUCK. Again, that would be speculation. I don't know. It wouldn't be normal. It wouldn't fit within our normal category unless we knew he was--he had a vantage point. We know of tremendous numbers of people who are bad people that we don't keep an eye on.
Mr. McCLOY. Yes; but suppose you knew these men, or suppose you encountered some of these defectors, I am told there are 18 others, wouldn't you have been somewhat negligent if you didn't check up on him when he got to the vantage point in Dallas?
Mr. BOUCK. If we had checked up, I don't know whether we would have gone beyond that.
Mr. McCLOY. I don't suggest that but you might have kept him under surveillance.
Mr. BOUCK. We would have taken note of this.
Mr. STERN. Would that have been true if he had not been known to be living in Dallas, if his last known address was New Orleans?
Mr. BOUCK. If he had not been living in Dallas we would not have checked on on him in this trip area even with the other information.
Mr. STERN. Suppose he had been living in Fort Worth?
Mr. BOUCK. Well, if we had known he were living in Fort Worth that would be the same as Dallas, to us. When we speak of a city we speak of the driving distance or the commutable distance to a city.
Mr. Stern. We will move very quickly to questions concerning Oswald and I would like to go back now and cover the details of your file search and other PRS activity for the Texas trip, the total Texas trip. If you would start with the first date you heard that the President was preparing to travel to Texas and tell us what your Section did and what you found.
Mr. BOUCK. Our first knowledge of the Texas trip was on November 8 when the advance agent, Agent Lawson, reported to the Protective Research Section that the President was going to Texas, and that Dallas was one of the stops. A check at that time was made of our trip index, and no cards were found on Dallas to indicate that there was an uncontrolled dangerous person in Dallas.
Two such people were found at the Houston stop. This information was imparted to Mr. Lawson at that time.
Mr. STERN. Excuse me, could you identify the two Houston cases from Exhibit 762?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes; they are in here. Case No. 21 is one. This individual is a local law-enforcement officer that was not considered awfully dangerous but again because he might have an unusual vantage point we made arrangements each time to see that he was not used in any way that he might have a vantage point. Case 26 is the other one, which is a case that goes back many, many years of an individual who has been repeatedly threatening but we have been unable to do much about. She has been in and out of mental hospitals.
Mr. STERN. So these were the two cases?
Mr. BOUCK. The two cases.
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Mr. STERN. That were in the trip-index file involving the jurisdiction of the Houston field office?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes.
A notation was made at that time for the individual in charge of that section and on the 14th he again checked that file. He pulled out these two cards, and he checked the checkup file and concluded that these in the State of Texas were the only two uncontrolled people that we should alert the field about, and he pulled the case jackets on these two people and reviewed those, and then caused an alert to be prepared on these two people, the original being sent to the White House Detail, and the copy being sent to the field office.
Mr. STERN. These are the same two Houston cases?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes.
Mr. STERN. Was there an additional case added on the 14th?
Mr. BOUCK. No; not by our section. There were just the two. There were cases picked up in the field on some of these, but we only sent out the two cases as being in our opinion of protective concern on that trip.
Mr. STERN. Would you look, Mr. Bouck, please, at the first page of Exhibit 760, the first text page, the third paragraph, the middle of the paragraph, it says, "On November 14, 1963, the above indicated clerical employee prepared an office memorandum advising the name of one PRS subject who had previously been referred to the interested offices and was still of concern and furnishing identifying data on a new PRS subject who had not been previously included in the alert."
Mr. BOUCK. These were the two cases. The one we had alerted on a previous trip, the deputy sheriff one, had not been, that had occurred since a previous trip and so this was the first time that we had told the detail and the field office that this individual should be looked at. Making a total of two.
Mr. STERN. Were there entries in the trip-index file then for the other cities that the President was planning to visit or the other field office areas, Dallas, San Antonio, and El Paso?
Mr. BOUCK. No; there were no cards on any of the other three cities, indicating uncontrolled people.
Mr. STERN. So in the four field offices covering the entire State of Texas there were in the trip index only two cards both of them residing in the Houston office area?
Mr. BOUCK. That is correct.
Mr. STERN. Now, do you know what was done in Dallas to supplement this investigation into potentially harmful people?
Mr. BOUCK. Dallas made contact with the local authorities, they had contact with the FBI, they had contact with the local police in Dallas, and also some of the suburbs, particularly Denton, Tex., in which they received information on several situations and several individuals in addition to, well, they received this information.
Mr. STERN. Are those cases summarized in Exhibit 762?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes; they are. I think the first one of those is page No. 2 of Exhibit 762, which involved people who had attempted to embarrass Ambassador Stevenson. Also page 3 is a further one. I believe they also received information on some scurrilous literature that was being circulated in Dallas at that time from the FBI.
Mr. STERN. Now, referring to the visit of Ambassador Stevenson in October, I believe----
Mr. BOUCK. Yes.
Mr. STERN. Was anything done at the time of that visit in October to identify the people who were participating in the obstreperous conduct that occurred?
Mr. BOUCK. I do not know. It was nothing----
Mr. STERN. So far as PRS was concerned?
Mr. BOUCK. Nothing was done by PRS.
Mr. STERN. These individuals did come to light in the liaison activities just prior to President Kennedy's trip to Dallas?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes, sir.
Mr. STERN. And they were then, as I understand it, placed in your permanent records and are now in-your trip-index files?
Mr. BOUCK. That is correct.
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Mr. STERN. Mr. Bouck, since the Stevenson trip received a great deal of publicity and I take it you knew about it at the time or PRS knew about it, can you tell us why there was no effort in October to determine who these people were for possible use if President Kennedy or a later President should consider a trip to Dallas?
Mr. BOUCK. Well, there are a great many disturbances and activities around, and we have never felt that we should document those per se inasmuch as they did not constitute a jurisdiction--they were not within our jurisdiction except when the President went to an area, so it has always been something that we attempted to resolve when we had jurisdiction in the area because the President was going there, rather than engage in investigative activity that was not within our jurisdiction just per se, whenever there was a disturbance.
Mr. STERN. I am not sure I follow that. I take it your jurisdiction is to determine, perhaps not to act upon, but to determine people who might be threats i the President or Vice-President.
Mr. BOUCK. These people were not judged at that time to be threats to the President, necessarily.
Mr. STERN. I see. Their activities in connection with Ambassador Stevenson's visit did not seem to you at that time
Mr. BOUCK. They did not fit our criteria as being a direct indication that the President might be harmed, but then when the President went to that area, the a more serious connotation was put on those people and they were investigate and were identified and pictures were made of them and given to the agents.
Mr. STERN. That is because the President was then going to that area?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes; that is right.
Mr. STERN. Suppose the President was going to another area to which these individuals had moved in between the Stevenson visit and the hypothetical Presidential trip. You would have had no record of them, no way of knowing about them, is that correct?
Mr. BOUCK. No; that would have to--unless it had been reported to me they had moved, then the only way we would pick that up would be in the local liaison which begins some days before a trip.
Mr. STERN. But there would have been no basis to report to you that they had moved as I understand it because they would not have been persons of concern to you merely because of their involvement in the Stevenson affair?
Mr. BOUCK. That is probably right.
Mr. McCLOY. To summarize your testimony a bit, I gather that the funds mental criterion that you were looking for is the potential threat to the health and life of the President of the United States, that you are not a genera security agency of the United States, but are directed particularly to that particular Objective, and one of the things that alerts you most is the threat and then you examine that threat to determine whether or not it is a serious threat. A lot of elements enter into that and at that point when it does become a serious threat, then you put it on your alert files, is that about right?
MR. BOUCK. That is a very good----
Mr. McCLOY. Furthermore----
Mr. BOUCK. Analysis.
Mr. McCLOY. Flowing from that the mere fact that a man or woman was a defector, or a man is a member of a political organization doesn't in itself embody the threat to the United States, to the President, the person of the President of the United States.
Mr. BOUCK. Right.
Mr. McCLOY. It is only as there is some additional element that causes you to fear that there is a potential menace that you put in that category you have been talking about?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes, sir.
Mr. STERN. I think we might illustrate that, Mr. McCloy, by a series of abstracts of cases that Mr. Bouck has prepared. I show you Commission Exhibit No. 766 for identification.
Mr. BOUCK. Yes.
Mr. STERN. And would you describe that and summarize very briefly the cases involved there which I think are intended to typify, are they not----
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Mr. BOUCK. Yes; I prepared this and the thought was that the Commission might be interested in a couple of examples of how the PRS function has been helpful in protection, and so three cases have been presented in this paper.
Mr. STERN. Mr. Bouck, have you anything you would like to add, any clarification, any amplification of the matters we have discussed this morning?
Mr. BOUCK. I don't believe so. I think Mr. McCloy's summary probably exceeds anything I could give, and I think it is quite good and reflects, I believe, what we were trying to get at here.
Mr. STERN. Have you reviewed the memoranda and other exhibits that you have identified this morning and do you have any corrections or additions to make to those?
Mr. BOUCK. No, sir; I think they are accurate.
Mr. STERN. Mr. Chairman, I would like to request the admission of all the exhibits that Mr. Bouck has identified for us this morning. I have no further questions.
Mr. McCLOY. They may be admitted.
(The documents referred to, previously marked as Commission Exhibit Nos. 760 through 766, were received in evidence.)
Mr. McCLOY. I have one more question I would like to ask you. In the light of what you know now about the whole episode, have you come to any conclusions as to how you ought to operate in the future other than you did in the Dallas situation?
Mr. BOUCK. As Mr. Carswell has mentioned, of course, a great deal of study is being conducted. I think there are a number of other things that can be done. Great problems arise as to human rights and constitutional rights and costs and resources and just sheer--dealing with just sheer volumes of millions of people, and I do not feel I would want to give final judgment as to whether we should do these things until we have completed all of these studies, but perhaps there will be some that will----
Mr. McCLOY. Do you at this stage have any definite ideas about any steps that ought to be taken for the added protection of the President?
Mr. BOUCK. Well, I have quite a lot of them which are incorporated in this study. I have been, and as I understand it, the Commission perhaps will have the benefit of that but I. have been very heavily involved in many, many ways in this study, and as to the final conclusions, of course, I think maybe it goes all the way to the Congress to decide the practicality of some of this.
Mr. McCLOY. I am sure it does.
Mr. BOUCK. I just don't quite feel in a position to say that I would want to recommend most of these things without reservation at this time. If I might, without presuming to evade your question, if we could delay that a little bit until we have completed this rather massive look that we are now taking.
Mr. McCLOY. Very well. Thank you very much for your cooperation, and very much obliged to you and the Treasury Department for helping us.
Mr. BOUCK. Thank you, sir.
Mr. McCLOY. To achieve our--perform our duties. Thank you
We will adjourn until 2 o'clock.
(Whereupon, at 1 p.m., the President's Commission recessed.)