United States. Warren Commission

“ Summary and Conclusions The assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy on November 22, 1963, was a cruel and shocking act of violence directed against a man, a family, a nation, and against all mankind. A young and vigorous leader whose years of public and private life stretched before him was the victim of the fourth Presidential assassination in the history of a country dedicated to the concepts of reasoned argument and peaceful political change. ”

“ Mr. Griffin. When you answered the telephone on these couple of occasions, did you at anytime give your name to Ruby?
Mr. Dowe. Probably; yes. I don’t remember doing it. I am sure I must have.
Mr. Griffin. You don’t recall Ruby calling you by name?
Mr. Dowe. No; he did not call me by name. He asked me, now I remember, when I first answered the phone, he said, “Who is this?” And I said, “This is Ken Dowe.” And he said, “Is there a newsman or somebody? This is Jack Ruby.” And he talked like he knew me.
Mr. Griffin. In the conversation did he use your name, or don’t you have any recollection? ”

“ Mr. Hubert. Why?
Mrs. Rich. There is no possible way that Jack Ruby could walk in Dallas and be mistaken for a newspaper reporter, especially in the police department. Not by any stretch of the imagination.
Mr. Hubert. Is that your opinion?
Mrs. Rich. That is not my personal opinion. That is a fact.
Mr. Hubert. Well, on what do you base it?
Mrs. Rich. Ye gods, I don’t think there is a cop in Dallas that doesn’t know Jack Ruby. He practically lived at that station. They lived in his place. Even the lowest patrolman on the beat. He is a real fanatic on that, anyway. ”

“ Mr. Ruby. Yes.
Mr. Herndon. I’m going to ask you, “Have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?”
Mr. Ruby. No.
Mr. Herndon. You understand the difference—one is now and one is—have been perhaps sometimes in your youth or life—if you were affiliated with the Communist Party.
Mr. Ruby. Yes; I understand.
Mr. Herndon. I’m going to ask you this question, Mr. Ruby: “Are you now a member of any group that advocates the violent overthrow of the United States Government?”
Mr. Ruby. No.
Mr. Herndon. Do you understand that question?
Mr. Ruby. Yes, sir.
Mr. Herndon. ”

“ My original concept was that these poor people he was talking about were his competitors whom he felt had no heart and no—well, no feelings, you know; they were money hungry and this bit. And then it dawned on me as he went on and kept mentioning the poor woman and the children and then I realized he was talking not about his competitors but about Mrs. Kennedy and her children, and I don’t know exactly what I said to him. How could I remember exactly other than, well, Jack, I am sure that she will make—you know, life goes on. She will make a life for herself, and so on and so forth. ”

“ Mr. Griffin. Did your husband object to the fact that you had gone to Parkland Hospital?
Mrs. Tice. Yes.
Mr. Griffin. Has this disturbed you, his objection to that?
Mrs. Tice. Yes: it disturbs me all the time, because he doesn’t want me to go out of the house while he is gone, because he says my place is in the house.
Mr. Griffin. If you were really sure that the man you saw out there was Jack Ruby, wouldn’t you have reported it to the police or the FBI within a few days, or called them on the telephone, or something like that and told them about it very shortly after Jack shot Oswald? ”

“ Mr. Burleson. You have now, as of this moment, been informed by a newspaper and also by me about what Jack attempted to do today?
Mrs. Grant. Yes; I have.
Mr. Burleson. And you were informed and knew of what Jack had attempted to do about a month ago when he rammed his head up against the wall, were you not?
Mrs. Grant. Yes.
Mr. Burleson. What has Jack told you as to what you should do with and to yourself?
Mrs. Grant. He wants me to do away with myself.
Mr. Burleson. Does he give you a reason why? ”

“ The rumors and theories about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln that are still being publicized were for the most part first bruited within months of his death. Wherever there is any element of mystery in such dramatic events misconceptions often result from sensational speculations.
Lacking the testimony of Lee Harvey Oswald, it has been necessary to reconstruct painstakingly all of the facts that led the Commission to the conclusion that Oswald assassinated President Kennedy, acting alone and without advice or assistance. ”

“ Mrs. Richey. Oh; let’s go ahead.
Mr. Griffin. And give us the testimony. Do you have any questions before we start about the nature of the investigation?
Mrs. Richey. No; I don’t think so.
Mr. Griffin. I don’t know if there is anything that I could clarify for you. I think it fairly obvious from what I have said the general areas we are going to cover. Let me ask you to raise your right hand then and I will administer the oath to you. Do you solemnly swear the testimony you are about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; so help you God?
Mrs. Richey. I do. ”

“ He cannot and will not take the precautions of a dictator or a sovereign. Under our system, measures must be sought to afford security without impeding the President’s performance of his many functions. The protection of the President must be thorough but inconspicuous to avoid even the suggestion of a garrison state. The rights of private individuals must not be infringed. If the protective job is well done, its performance will be evident only in the unexceptional fact of its success. ”

“ Mr. Ruby. Please let me do it, will you? [Addressing Mr. Fowler.]
Mr. Fowler (no response) .
Mr. Herndon. I will bow to whatever Mr. Specter or counsel wants to do in this regard.
Mr. Ruby. Fowler, I hate to dispute with you, but let me do it this way?
Mr. Fowler. Well, Jack, again, Mr. Alexander is here and again I tell you this—that the answers to some of these questions could be absolutely very detrimental to you.
Mr. Ruby. They can’t be.
Mr. Fowler. I’m talking about from a legal standpoint. Now, morally, I know how you feel and you want to do the best you can for the Commission. ”

“ Hubert, that frankly I certainly would give any additional information that you would want to know now or at any time, whether by interrogatories by letter, and I assure you that you have my utmost full cooperation. I know what the function of the Commission is—I have read it. I know that it’s a difficult task that you have and whether you can ever come up with the conclusions that the American people want, I don’t know. I certainly feel that many people won’t believe the findings of the Commission, that they’ve already prejudged this thing. ”

“ This is the salutary goal to which the Secret Service regulation is directed, when it absolutely forbids drinking by any agent accompanying the President on a trip. Nor is this goal served when agents remain out until early morning hours, and lose the opportunity to get a reasonable amount of sleep. It is conceivable that those men who had little sleep, and who had consumed alcoholic beverages, even in limited quantities, might have been more alert in the Dallas motorcade if they had retired promptly in Fort Worth. ”

“ If a man had told you on Saturday morning right after the President had been shot that he had been to the police station, and had said anything about what he had done there, wouldn’t that have been something that you would have remembered as being important? You would have been curious, wouldn’t you? You would have asked the man “What did you see down at the police station? Who did you talk to down there?” After all, that was right down there where Oswald was, and where the investigation was going on. ”

“ Happiness is not based on oneself, it does not consist of a small home, of taking and getting, Happiness is taking part in the struggle, where there is no borderline between one’s own personal world, and the world in general. I never believed I would find more material advantages at this stage of development in the Soviet Union than I might of had in the U.S. ”

“ How stupid can people be? Then it is premeditated. You don’t do things like that. Why wait for an investigation? Sure, it would have been a wonderful thing to have done but you can’t, you don’t know what is in the other man’s mind. I blame everything on the stupid Dallas police from every angle, even from that angle up there. They knew Oswald was in town, why didn’t they grab him. That is my opinion. They blame everything on Jack, the scapegoat, the poor guy has got to take it for the whole police department down there. You know that is the truth and I mean it. ”

“ Mrs. Grant. You may write to the man—Abraham Rubenstein, he is still alive.
Mr. Hubert. I just want to know whether your impression and your attendance at the meetings of the club indicate to you whether this group at any time had any political implication whatsoever?
Mrs. Grant. No, no; not that I would know of.
Mr. Hubert. You never observed any? Of any kind?
Mrs. Grant. Never.
Mr. Hubert. Could you tell us something of Jack’s youth and education and his childhood—you were older than he was and therefore, you are able to observe it, I would think. ”

“ The burden of insuring that appropriate action is taken to establish ethical standards of conduct for the news media must also be borne, however, by State and local governments, by the bar, and ultimately by the public. The experience in Dallas during November 22-24 is a dramatic affirmation of the need for steps to bring about a proper balance between the right of the public to be kept informed and the right of the individual to a fair and impartial trial. ”

“ Mr. Hubert. Did you ever observe any traits which you might classify as homosexual in Jack Ruby?
Mr. Pryor. No, sir; now, he was a peculiar duck, and he’s not the type of person that—well, I consider myself a normal individual to a degree, but he was a little rational——
Mr. Hubert. He was a little “rational” or “irrational”? ”

“ Oswald observed that although reform groups may oppose the government in power, they always declare that they are for their people and their country, and he asked what “would happen if somebody was to stand up and say he was utterly opposed not only to the governments, but to the people, too the entire land and complete foundations” of his society. He condemned existing political groups and proposed the formation of a third choice between communism and capitalism, neither of which was acceptable to him. ”

“ Mr. Griffin. Did he come back to your house at all Friday night?
Mrs. Grant. No. Wait a minute, you are asking me—I know what the question is. Now, I am sorry, sir, you will have to forgive me. My mind isn’t that good any more.
When he was leaving, he looked pretty bad. This I remember. I can’t explain it to you. He looked too broken, a broken man already. He did make the remark, he said, “I never felt so bad in my life, even when Ma or Pa died.”
So I said, “Well, Pa was an old man. He was almost 89 years. Anyone lives that long, you are lucky, such as the life he lived.” ”

“ Mr. Griffin. To put it another way, you wouldn’t describe Jack Ruby as the kind of person who as a matter of his constitutional and emotional makeup had to tell you everything he was doing? There are some people like that.
Mr. Senator. You mean would he tell me everything he was doing?
Mr. Griffin. No; there are some people who are the kind of people who just somehow have to unload almost everything they are doing to other people. Now Jack Ruby wasn’t that kind of person, was he? ”

“ If Oswald had been tried for his murders of November 22, the effects of the news policy pursued by the Dallas authorities would have proven harmful both to the prosecution and the defense. The misinformation reported after the shootings might have been used by the defense to cast doubt on the reliability of the State’s entire case. Though each inaccuracy can be explained without great difficulty, the number and variety of misstatements issued by the police shortly after the assassination would have greatly assisted a skillful defense attorney attempting to influence the attitudes of jurors. ”

“ And due to Jack’s childhood, which I have read so much about—I knew nothing about it until I read about this—and his home life, the way he matured, it is very obvious to me that Jack did have an inferiority complex, we’ll use the old cliche, and that he had become or tried to become an extrovert in order to fit in with what he thought were important people to fit in with due to his lack of formal education. He would attach himself to people from whom he thought he could learn, from whom he thought he could better himself, which, more power to him. ”