Warren Commission

“ I wonder whether — this brings up to my mind again, the desirability of our talking to the chief investigator of the FBI. We here, we don't know whether somebody checked up on Hosty again or whether he didn't. Why don’t' we get him in and just talk with him. I don't know whether we want to examine him under oath but talk to him about the extent of the FBI investigation. We hear they are continuing to investigate. What have they done. ”

“ Rankin. Yes.
Mr. Dulles. Since this has been so much out in the public, what harm would there be in talking to Hoover without waiving any right to make any investigation in the public?
Mr. McCloy. This is going to build up. In New York I am already beginning to hear about it. I got a call from Time-Life about it. Maybe it is prompted by this letter with these 12 perplexing questions — no, it wasn't because it came before that. "What is there to this story?"
Mr. Dulles. There is a terribly hard thing to disprove, you know. How do you disprove a fellow was not your agent. ”

“ These are things where people can reasonably disagree. Whatever you want to do I am willing to approach it in that manner.
Mr. Dulles. I agree with that, Mr. Chairman. May I point out, I don't think there is necessarily a question of probity. It might look so to the country. It is Mr. Hoover's job to watch the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and to try to penetrate it in any way he could. The reason I don't believe it is this fellow was so incompetent that he was not the kind of fellow that Hoover would hire. ”

“ Sen. Russell. There is no man in the employ of the Federal Government who stands higher in the opinion of the American people than J. Edgar Hoover.
Mr. Dulles. That is right.
Sen. Russell. Of course, we can get an affidavit from Mr. Hoover and put it in this record and go on and act on that but if we didn't go any further than that, and we don't pursue it down to Hudkins or whoever it is, there still would be thousands of doubting Thomases who would believe this man was an FBI agent and you just didn't try to clear it up and you just took Hoover's word. ”

“ But on the other hand, I have a feeling we are so dependent upon them for our facts that it might be a useful thing to have him before us, or maybe just you talk to him, to give us the scope of his investigation, and as of that date, some of the things that are still troubling us and we will be able to ask him, for example, to follow up on Hosty.
Mr. Rankin. Part of our difficulty in regard to it is that they have no problem. They have decided that it is Oswald who committed the assassination, they have decided that no one else was involved, they have decided —
Sen. Russell. ”

“ Rankin. And all kinds of things coming from out there in substantial amounts and it apparently was not only exacerbating the community in a number of ways, not only of the extreme reight [sic] and the extreme left, but also the elements of the people more moderately inclined who didn't assert themselves in regard to that, and from some of the information we have, it is really the communities can be like people, and if you let these forces work long enough it will have an effect upon their approach to many problems, and it may be something that the country should be well aware of. ”

“ You want to attach your writing to something substantial.
Lee, on the other hand, felt it would be the better of cooperation to go over and see Mr. Hoover and tell him frankly what the rumor was, state that is pure rumor, we haven't evaluated the facts, but ask him, first, if it is true, and secondly if he can supply us with information to establish that these facts are not true, and they are inconsistent with what would be the way of operation of their Bureau. ”

“ Sen. Russell. I don't propose to attack the F.B.I. unless there is some startling revelation that they have evaded their responsibility.
Mr. McCloy. I think the F.B.I. is an agency which has the security of this country, and a very important agency, as is this Commission.
Rep. Boggs. What we have to do is tell our counsel what to do.
The Chairman. Yes.
What do the rest of you think of the approach of Mr. Rankin, the way we have just laid it out here in the last few minutes?
Mr. Dulles. Doesn't that combine your idea, too, Mr. Chairman? It seems to me it is a marriage of the two. ”

“ Now, we are going to have a meeting with the agencies and see if it is acceptable to them in such a meeting to supply the information themselves rather than having the Commission supply the information it has received from any of the agencies to these — the C.I.A. and other people that we will need help from.
Sen. Russell. Mr. Rankin, have you given any thoughts to the fact that Oswald was not familiar with Dallas. ”

“ The fact that he was paid proportionally so much more than she was when he was a workman in the factory and she was at least a semi-skilled person with her pharmacy knowledge, and all, is another problem that isn't covered by any of their testimony. ”

“ The fact that the intention of the President to go to Dallas was not indicated in the press until in October, but the fact that he was going to Texas as distinguished from Dallas was indicated September 26. September 26 is the date that Oswald went down to Mexico City, and the article about the President coming to Texas was in the paper on that day before he went to Mexico City as far as we can determine. ”

“ Mr. Rankin. The first area is the day of the assassination, and all of the various elements that are involved in that, and that includes the plans for the trip, the program at the Trade Mart, the checking out of that area to be sure that it was secure, all of the steps that were made by the Secret Service in that regard, the collaboration between the police, and the Secret Service, and any other agencies such as the county sheriff in connection with the parade and the route that was designated or planned. ”

“ Well, I can't say that I have run into a fellow comparable to Oswald but I have run into some very limited mentalities both in the CIA and the FBI.
(Laughter)
The Chairman. Under agents, the regular agents, I think that would be right, but they and all other agencies do employ undercover men who are of terrible character.
Mr. Dulles. Terribly bad characters.
Sen. Russell. Limited intelligence, even the city police departments do it.
The Chairman. It takes almost that kind of a man to do a lot of this undercover work.
Mr. Dulles. They ought to be fairly smart. ”

“ Well, according to information we have it is very rare that they would insert anything like that or would allow it, because their controls are so carefully made to try to identify people all their life and particularly where they were born so they can trace down through for the rest of the period, and that is an unexplained feature. ”

“ Hoover that we were investigating him he would be just as angry at us as he was or would be at the Attorney General for investigating him.
Now, I thought that the better way to do it would be to try to establish in our own minds whether or not there is any truth or whether it is — as to whether it is based on any one who assumes to have positive knowledge or whether it is just a rumor that has developed through a lot of gossip from the press rooms, or not, and if we decide that there isnothing [sic] to it except rumor, as far as we can find, I would still ask Mr. ”

“ And then they took Oswald out, and took him down the corridor, and then Ruby went out, and Wade talked to the press for two or three minutes, and then as he was going out, went out, started down the corridor, Ruby called to him from one of the inner offices of the police, and said that the TV station wanted to talk to him on the telephone. ”

“ As far as we are concerned, the men are getting advised of the areas as rapidly as possible, and they are coming back with these further inquiries, but there are vast areas that are unanswered at the present time. ”

“ He may be over in Geneva. It is awfully important that you get a bilingual man.
Mr. Rankin. We have a vast area about Ruby.
Mr. Dulles. This completes the other, the Oswald one?
Mr. Rankin. Just in a general way.
Sen. Russell. Has it every [sic] been determined whether he could drive an automobile or not? There has been a conflict in that in nearly everything I have read.
Mr. Rankin. They claim he never could drive an automobile. He didn't know how. That he took a lesson, I think about Mr. Paine's car and he got along all right but it was just a very preliminary. ”

“ Mr. Rankin. Presumably, he would not go to Houston or San Antonio without going to the Dallas area. That it has been in the nature of politics that Presidents in going to Texas make it a point to try to get to the middle area as well as the Houston area if they are going to go there on political trips. ”

“ Of course there are so many Spanish-speaking people down in Texas.
Mr. Rankin. In the area.
The Chairman. That she might have gotten it from someone else.
Mr. Rankin. Then there is the great range of material in regard to the wounds, and the autopsy and this point of exit or entrance of the bullet in the front of neck and that all has to be developed much more than we have at the present time. ”

“ He said it didn't make any difference in his Ruby case.
Mr. Dulles. Could I add one thing, on the suggestion that I would make, I would suggest that you ask Mr. Hoover for the right to see any reports that agents made who did contact — we know he was contacted at various times for various reasons. Now, normally, an agent makes a report to headquarters when he has a contact of that kind. There ought to be some reports.
Mr. Rankin. And we have those.
Mr. Dulles. You have those reports?
Mr. Rankin. But we don't have any assurance that those are the only reports, you see.
Mr. Dulles. I see. ”

“ As the head of the Department, the F.B.I., of course, is under the Attorney General, but I think we must frankly recognize amongst ourselves that there is a daily relationship there involved in the handling of the problems of the Department and the work of the F.B.I. for the Department, and that we wouldn't want to make that more difficult.
We were informed by Mr. Willens, the liaison with the Department, who has worked with us and has done very fine work here, that it is the feeling of the Department, not the Attorney General because he is not here, but Mr. Katzenbach, and Mr. ”

“ But on the detail, when he went to Dallas, and whether he took the gun or whether the gun was in the garage, on that part, not muchhelp [sic] there, and yet it is difficult to believe that two women would have this gun in a blanket in the corner of a garage especially after that walker affair and never even peak [sic] in there to see if that gun was there or what kind of a gun it was or whether he took it out sometimes and brought it back, and, of course, there are a good many stories about his practicing with a gun, you know, around various rifle ranges and so forth. ”

“ Mr. Rankin. Well we asked for a full background report on the Paine's [sic] , andit [sic] is a very curious situation. She is a member of the Friends Society, and they are separated, and he is a member of an old New England family, and apparently quite well educated. She was teaching Russian in a school there were she lived, and she said that she was very much interested in having Marina stay with her so she could become more proficient in speaking Russian.
Mr. Dulles. Paine's father was a member of the Trotskyite Society, I think, 11 members. ”

“ Hoover to report to us on it, tell him that this rumor has persisted, that Oswald was on the payroll of the FBI, and that the date of his employment was stated, his number was stated, his wages were stated, and that we would like anything he has in his records or through his investigation to disprove that thing.
Now, I don't see how a man in a public position whose own reputation is at stake in the thing, could object to such procedure I don't think that is unfriendly in any way, shape or form. But I do believe, I am inclined to believe, if we just go and indicate to Mr. ”

“ Lee, what was that we were told today about, what was it today, about this FBI agent in Dallas who has gone to the police station shortly after the assassination and had said he knew Oswald because, and then he made some statement about having, he having been connected up with two known subversives a short time before, do you remember that conversation? Will you tell is [sic] , please.
Mr. Rankin. At the police station, just after the assassination, Hosty, the agent for the FBI in the Dallas area, said that he knew Oswald had been — had visited two known subversives.
Mr. Dulles. Said to whom? ”

“ Mr. Dulles. That will be brought out at the trial, won't it?
Mr. Rankin. Yes.
Sen. Cooper. There hasn't anything been developed to show that they know each other.
Mr. Rankin. There is no showing of connection, there is no showing that Oswald was the kind of person that would hang around the joints that Ruby had, either. It is possible that he could have in earlier days before he ever went to Russia, and that he might have just with some young people stopped in but that would have been a long time before.
Rep. Boggs. Oswald apparently didn't to [sic] to night clubs.
Mr. Rankin. ”