United States. Warren Commission

“ 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. ”

“ 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. Barney Baker, did you ever hear of him?
Mr. Rubenstein. No.
Mr. Griffin. How does Jack know Lenny Patrick?
Mr. Rubenstein. Everybody knows Lenny Patrick. When you go to school you know everybody in a school, grade school or even high school, and if you lived on the west side you know Lenny Patrick because Lenny Patrick, you walk into a delicatessen or into a poolroom, “Hi, Lenny,” “Hi, Jack,” that is how you know him.
Mr. Griffin. What does Lenny Patrick do?
Mr. Rubenstein. I don’t know what he does.
Mr. Griffin. Does he make an honest living? ”

“ 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”? ”

“ 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.” ”

“ I say to you now that the general nature of the Commission’s inquiry is to ascertain, evaluate and report upon the facts relevant to the assassination of President Kennedy and the subsequent violent death of Lee Harvey Oswald.
In particular as to you, Mr. Goin, the nature of the inquiry today is to determine what facts you know about the death of Oswald and any other pertinent facts you may know about the general inquiry.
Now Mr. Goin, you appear today by virtue of a letter request made to you by Mr. J. Lee Rankin, general counsel on the staff of the President’s Commission. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Mr. Griffin. He sells sports goods.
Mrs. Grant. That is more like my brother’s friends. I once had lunch with a judge. That doesn’t make me a judge.
Mr. Griffin. You don’t think I am accusing you of anything?
Mrs. Grant. No; I like you, but I want you to try to understand that we are not children. If we were 20 years of age, we only have many acquaintances. Jack and I traveled a great deal, and we met many people. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Mr. Meyers. Well, yes; to this extent. He remodeled the club. He built runways out into the audience. Of course, he was very proud of this, I assume like any businessman would, what he considered progress. He wanted to know what my opinion was. What are you going to say? Great, fine. Doing business? Wonderful!
Mr. Griffin. Did he ever talk to you about any promotions other than his nightclubs?
Mr. Meyers. Yes; he had a gimmick, I don’t know what the heck to call it, some sort of a twistboard, I guess, for the want of a better word. ”

“ Mr. Hubert. Did he ever express to you any sensitivity or consciousness about his Jewish background or the position of the Jew in society?
Mr. Saunders. No; not that I recall. Many people that I call on are Jewish, in my particular phase of business, and this area is very commonplace with me and never taken offense at or was there any reason to bring it up.
Mr. Hubert. Did he ever express any sensitivity in that area, or did you observe any?
Mr. Saunders. No.
Mr. Hubert. Now, by way of closing this interview, I will ask you first of all if you have anything else you want to say? ”

“ Mr. Griffin. In your acquaintance with Ruby, did you have any occasion to notice any kindnesses that he bestowed on people?
Mr. Hansen. I did. Yes sir; I sure did.
Mr. Griffin. Can you tell us about some of the things you recall him doing?
441 Mr. Hansen. I have seen Ruby, oh, I would say, three or four times, maybe five that I can recall, give money to a woman. I mean some woman or destitute woman he would see coming down the street. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hubert. In your opinion, what would have been completely adequate security against one-man action?
Captain Talbert. Secret transfer.
Mr. Hubert. By secret, you mean done in such a way and in such a manner that there would not have been a crowd around? Transferred at night?
Captain Talbert. No announcement. We know that now. It is quite obvious now.
Mr. Hubert. What you are saying is, to guard against one-man action you have to do it in such a way that there are not a great many people around?
Captain Talbert. Anybody can be murdered by an individual who is willing to give up his life to do so. ”

“ I knew Barney through Jack, you know, met him.
Mr. Griffin. I take it you were not in a position to know Jack’s friends when Jack was a child.
Mr. Rubenstein. His friends were the fellows who loved life and go out and have a good time. His business associates were fellows who were hustlers and like to make money. So you put two and two together. You find good business associates who are hustlers, and you had to be, without much education, go out and make money, and in the evening you go out and you find the friends you like to spend it with. He never hung around with no hoodlums. ”

“ Mr. Griffin. Was there any possibility that this telephone call could have been made to you at home rather than at the radio station?
Mr. Knight. No; none whatsoever.
Mr. Griffin. Did Jack call you on a private line of any sort, or did he have to go through a switchboard to get you?
Mr. Knight. Well, no. Well, the switchboard would have been closed. We have two news lines which are supposed to be private but everybody knows them. Even kids call on them. ”

“ Mr. Waldo. None that I saw, sir; no.
Mr. Hubert. So that everybody got into the assembly room who wanted to get in, and Oswald was brought down shortly thereafter?
Mr. Waldo. Yes.
Mr. Hubert. I understand that the interview was of very short duration?
Mr. Waldo. It was, and it was preceded by a very stern warning from Chief Curry—that any undue movement to crowd in on the prisoner or shove cameras forward or to clamor on furniture, would immediately cause the interview to be cut short and he said, “The prisoner will be taken away and will not be brought back; is that clear?” ”

“ She was jolly, and happy-go-lucky, and I know, I was always under the impression that she was very much in love with Jack because she just absolutely idolized him. She would never get too far way from his side and never take her eyes off him.
Mr. Griffin. You refer to this man as Jack Rubenstein. How certain are you that his name was Jack?
Mr. Fehrenbach. Everybody referred to him as Jack. But now I will say this; there is one thing that I don’t understand and this is one reason why after this Jack Ruby shot Oswald, I didn’t connect him because I had never heard him referred to as Jack Ruby. ”

“ Mr. Hubert. From what you knew of him as a person, would he be the type of person that would be interested in international politics or international ideological philosophies and so forth?
Mr. Kaufman. If he was, I had never discussed it with him. Actually, as I explained to you, I’m sure that many of us even in the course of legal conversation will digress somewhat and talk about sports or talk about women or talk about a multitude of subjects. To the best of my recollection I never had talked politics with Jack. ”

“ I mean, I personally as a lawyer and trained as a lawyer, think that the facts should be brought out, and I think that the things that have motivated people in their testimony, whether it’s before the Commission or otherwise, certainly is worthwhile. ”

“ From the standpoint of a newspaper reporter, do you feel that the local authorities in Dallas could have or should have instituted procedures which would have provided a more orderly flow of news to the press, or more restricted flow than was permitted?
Mr. Pappas. It is hard to say for me. I think that we got the news from the police department. That is what I am concerned with. And how I get it, whether it is orderly or not, is really none of my concern. I think if that is the way they do it, holding interviews in a hallway, that is the way I have to get it. ”