Mr. JENNER. Just tell us in summary.
Mr. OLIVER. I took my doctoral degree at the University of Illinois,
under Prof. William Abbott Oldfather.
Mr. JENNER. A very great man.
Mr. OLIVER. A very distinguished man. I have been successively
instructor, assistant professor, associate professor, and professor
of the classics, and I have also been assistant professor, associate
professor, and full professor of Spanish and Italian--largely a matter
of my giving courses in the Renaissance.
Mr. JENNER. Do you teach Latin and Greek, too, or have you?
Mr. OLIVER. Oh, that is classics.
Mr. JENNER. I see. During the war did you have some special assignment
militarily oriented or Government oriented?
Mr. OLIVER. Yes; during the war I was on leave from the university for
service with the War Department.
Mr. JENNER. And without revealing any secrets, would you tell us the
general nature of that?
Mr. OLIVER. The general nature of that was work that is supposedly
secret in nature. I can only say I was with the War Department and that
the offices in which I principally worked were located on Lee Boulevard
in Arlington, and not in the Pentagon.
Mr. JENNER. Was this civilian oriented rather than army oriented?
Mr. OLIVER. I was a civilian expert. It was, however, an Army
Establishment under the command of a general.
Mr. JENNER. What was that, research work?
Mr. OLIVER. Yes; under the command of a brigadier general, I should say.
Mr. JENNER. This research work, did that involve any work of
investigating or inquiring into the commission of crimes or
conspiracies, work of that nature?
Mr. OLIVER. Not actual investigation on my part.
Mr. JENNER. But----
Mr. OLIVER. It involved the use of the results of the investigations of
others.
Mr. JENNER. So that you had experience in examining investigators’
reports and reaching judgments from those reports?
Mr. OLIVER. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. And reporting your judgment to your superiors.
Mr. OLIVER. That is right.
Mr. JENNER. Are you a member of the John Birch Society?
Mr. OLIVER. I am a member of the council of John Birch Society.
Mr. JENNER. Would you explain to me what that is? I am frank to say to
you I don’t know.
Mr. OLIVER. The John Birch Society was founded by Mr. Robert Welch in
Indianapolis, Ind., in December 1958. Very shortly after its foundation
a council was organized. The council consists of persons whom the
society regards as prominent, and has approximately 30 members. The
number fluctuates, of course as a result of deaths, and so on. The
council meets with Mr. Welch periodically.
Mr. JENNER. Is it in the nature of a board of managers or a board of
governors of a bar association? I am not trying to be technical, but
just trying to get a notion of what the council is.
Mr. OLIVER. I am not sufficiently familiar with the board of governors
of a bar association but I think as a general analogy that would stand,
yes.
Mr. JENNER. That is all I wanted.
And you became a member in 1958, did you say?
Mr. OLIVER. At the foundation.
Mr. JENNER. And you have remained one ever since?
Mr. OLIVER. Oh, yes.
Mr. JENNER. Do you have any other official connection with the John
Birch Society apart from being a member of the society and of the
council?
Mr. OLIVER. No; I write for American Opinion. And I am associate editor
of it, I believe. American Opinion, by the way, is published by Robert
Welch, Inc.----
Mr. JENNER. Explain that to me, if you please?
Mr. OLIVER. Which is a corporation, some of the stock of which is held
by the John Birch Society.
Mr. JENNER. Could I ask you one thing, Doctor?
Mr. OLIVER. Yes, sir.
Mr. JENNER. You tend, and many witnesses do, you tend to drop your
voice about three-quarters of the way through a sentence. It would be
helpful to me if you could keep it up a little.
Mr. OLIVER. Very good. I didn’t want to seem to be lecturing.
Mr. JENNER. Don’t worry about it.
I see you have before you what looks like a magazine with a colored
cover. Does that happen to be a copy of American Opinion?
Mr. OLIVER. It is.
Mr. JENNER. Would you mind if I looked at it?
Mr. OLIVER. Not at all. That is the March issue of this year.
Mr. JENNER. I take it that the document I have in my hand and the other
that you have before you contain part I and part II of the article to
which I made reference in my opening statement?
Mr. OLIVER. That is right. Will these copies be returned to me?
Mr. JENNER. Are these the only ones you have, sir?
Mr. OLIVER. Those are my file copies.
Mr. JENNER. May I say this to you, any witness who wants the return of
his documents is entitled to them. That is our practice. If we have
to return them, we duplicate them on a Xerox machine. Some of the
material, like the pictures will not be as clear as you will wish.
Whereas if you permit us to retain the original copy, then it will be
photographed and the photograph of the document in evidence will be
quite clear. It occurred to me if acceptable to you, that for purposes
of reproduction, the original is to be preferred. May I suggest that
you probably will so desire, can you not obtain official copies?
Mr. OLIVER. I will take the chance of obtaining additional copies. The
issues were sold out.
Mr. JENNER. I see.
Mr. OLIVER. But perhaps I can find extras. So you may have those.
Mr. JENNER. Thank you.
Mr. Reporter, I will mark the copy entitled “American Opinion, An
Impartial Review, March 1964,” upon which appears the rubber stamp
“R. P. Oliver, File copy,” as Oliver Exhibit No. 1.
(The document referred to was marked Oliver Exhibit No. 1 for
identification.)
Excuse me. Whose picture is that on the cover page?
Mr. OLIVER. Senator Thurmond’s.
Mr. JENNER. I mark the second document which is on its face, the
February 1964 issue of American Opinion, likewise stamped “File copy,
R. P. Oliver” on which appears a picture of General MacArthur.
(The document referred to was marked Oliver Exhibit No. 2 for
identification.)
Mr. JENNER. I take it from the discussion we have had, Dr. Oliver, that
in Oliver Exhibit No. 1 appears part I.
Mr. OLIVER. Part II.
Mr. JENNER. Have I got them reversed?
Mr. OLIVER. I thought of interrupting at the time you marked those
exhibits, and then thought perhaps I should not.
Mr. JENNER. Well, I have got them marked so I will have to leave them
that way.
In Oliver Exhibit No. 1, appears part II at pages 65 through 76 of your
article entitled “Marxmanship in Dallas,” and that in volume 2 appears
part I of the same article at pages 13 through 28.
These two pamphlets, Doctor, are true and correct copies of the issues
of American Opinion of the dates that we have described?
Mr. OLIVER. They are the printed copies, yes.
Mr. JENNER. Now, I will refer to Exhibits 1 and 2 in which are
contained the parts II and I, respectively of your article. I want to
ask you some questions as to the sources of some of the statements made
therein.
But before I do that, I will ask whether you are the author of the
article?
Mr. OLIVER. Yes, that is right.
Mr. JENNER. Part I and part II.
Mr. OLIVER. Right.
Mr. JENNER. The picture representation in each of those issues is your
picture?
Mr. OLIVER. The picture of myself, yes. I may say I did not choose the
other photographs. That was the work of the editor.
Mr. JENNER. I should say that the picture representation on page 13
of Exhibit 2, and the picture representation on page 65 is in each
instance your picture?
Mr. OLIVER. That is right.
Mr. JENNER. I will ask you a general question first. If you want to
particularize you may. I will tell you that I will get into particulars
as we go along. What was the source, or what were the sources, if
there was more than one source, of the statements and claims made in
your article. When I say “your article” I mean both parts, unless I
distinguish.
Mr. OLIVER. Statements which I make as statements of fact or of reports
are taken very largely, perhaps entirely, from printed sources, such as
newspapers, periodicals.
The portions in which I reason from those facts are, of course, the
deductions which I draw.
Mr. JENNER. Do the articles indicate when you are reasoning and when
you are referring to sources?
Mr. OLIVER. I believe so with at least reasonable clarity. It was my
intention to make that clear.
Mr. JENNER. I take it then that none of the portions of the article is
derived from any personal source of information upon your part, that
is personal knowledge as distinguished from reference sources that you
have described to me.
Mr. OLIVER. Certainly nothing concerning the assassination is derived
from any personal knowledge of mine. I was not present, and as a matter
of fact, have seen none of the persons involved. By “seen,” of course,
I mean seen personally, not in pictures or films.
Mr. JENNER. All right.
I direct your attention to part I, on page 13. You make the statement,
“Lee Harvey Oswald was a young punk who defected to the Soviet taking
with him the operational codes of the Marine Corps and sufficient other
secrets as a fledgling traitor had been able to steal while in military
service.”
What is the source of your statement that Lee Harvey Oswald took with
him or even had the operational codes of the Marine Corps?
Mr. OLIVER. The principal source certainly is a statement made by a
former officer of the Marine Corps and reported widely in the press
at the time, that after Oswald’s defection the Marine Corps found it
necessary to change all of their operational codes, and further had to
make certain other changes evidently involving radar frequencies, and
quite possibly the location of radar stations.
The officer, naturally, was not too explicit on that point. He stated,
however, that this work involved, I believe, many thousands of
man-hours of work.
Well, I think that a reasonable inference is that no organization would
expend without reason the many thousands of man-hours of hard work and
the other effort and expense that would be necessary to make those
changes without good and sufficient reasons to believe that their codes
had been compromised.
Mr. JENNER. I take it then that the source of your information, to
pinpoint it, was a newspaper report?
Mr. OLIVER. That is right.
Mr. JENNER. Of a statement made by an officer of the Marine Corps?
Mr. OLIVER. That is right.
Mr. JENNER. That was your sole source of information?
Mr. OLIVER. To the best of my recollection it was.
Mr. JENNER. Do you happen to have a copy of that newspaper account? Did
you bring one with you by any chance?
Mr. OLIVER. I believe that I have. You people have the American Eagle
reprint of the assassination story, do you not?
Mr. JENNER. Would you describe that more definitely for the record?
Mr. OLIVER. The American Eagle reprint is a reprint by photo offset of
clippings from the two Dallas newspapers and, I believe, possibly two
other sources.
Mr. JENNER. May I interrupt you? Now I know what you are talking about.
Mr. OLIVER. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. It is published by the American Eagle Publishing Co.
Mr. OLIVER. That is right.
Mr. JENNER. Of which Robert A. Surrey is president?
Mr. OLIVER. That is right.
Mr. JENNER. Of Dallas, Tex.
Mr. OLIVER. I believe he is president.
Mr. JENNER. He has so testified. When you first mentioned this document
it didn’t click with me, but now I recall. It is tall, newspaper-sized
yellow-covered----
Mr. OLIVER. That is right.
Mr. JENNER. Document.
(Discussion off the record.)
Mr. JENNER. Mr. Reporter, that has been received in evidence as
Commission Exhibit No. 1015. If you have a copy with you in your bag,
Doctor, would you please get it out and then refer me to the page?
Mr. OLIVER. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. Please make your references to the Commission Exhibit No.
1015 and the record will be much clearer.
Mr. OLIVER. That is, the Commission Exhibit No. 1015 is the American
Eagle reprint?
Mr. JENNER. That is right. You will notice, if you will turn to the
back page Doctor, that Robert Surrey is listed as president of the
American Eagle Publishing Co.
Mr. OLIVER. Right.
Mr. JENNER. Would you have the record show, Mr. Reporter that Dr.
Oliver is now examining a copy of Commission Exhibit No. 1015 to see if
he can locate the news source on which he based the statement in Oliver
Exhibit 2 that Oswald took with him the operational codes of the Marine
Corps and sufficient other secrets as a fledgling traitor had been able
to steal in the military service.
Mr. JENNER. All right, Doctor. Would you identify the page if you have
located it?
Mr. OLIVER. This is the page of reprints from the Dallas Morning News
with the date 12/4 at the very top of the page in heavy writing.
Mr. JENNER. We are now looking at the back of page 12. It has a
dateline Wednesday, December 4, 1963. You are referring, sir, to a
particular item?
Mr. OLIVER. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. Would you read the headline?
Mr. OLIVER. This particular item is an Associated Press Dispatch, and
in this paper is headlined, “Oswald a ‘wise guy,’ ex-Marine officer
says.” And in it, John E. Donovan, a former Marine officer, is
reported as saying, the Oswald’s defection “compromised all our secret
radio frequencies, call signs and authentication codes. He knew the
location of every unit on the west coast, and the radar capability of
every installation. We had to spend thousands of man-hours changing
everything, all the technical frequencies”--“all the tactical
frequencies,” I am sorry--“and verify the destruction of all of the
codes.” That I regard as the significant part of the statement.
Mr. JENNER. Is there any other newspaper clipping contained in
Commission Exhibit No. 1015 upon which you relied in making the
statement in question or to which I have referred in part 1 of your
statement?
Mr. OLIVER. It is possible that the same dispatch is reproduced
from another newspaper also in this document, but to the best of my
recollection it would be the same in both.
Mr. JENNER. So it is a fair statement that the quotation I read into
the record from your article was based upon that news report of Officer
Donovan’s statement or a repetition of that news item in some other
newspaper?
Mr. OLIVER. Right.
Mr. JENNER. And no other source?
Mr. OLIVER. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. No other source meaning yes, there was no other source?
Mr. OLIVER. Meaning there was no other source.
Mr. JENNER. Then, follow me in your article again. You say a sentence
later, “He was then trained” the “he” referring to Lee Harvey Oswald,
“in sabotage, terrorism and guerrilla warfare (including accurate
shooting from ambush) in the well-known school for international
criminals near Minsk, and while there he married the daughter of a
colonel in the Soviet military espionage system (and possible also in
the Secret Police.)”
That is starred, indicating a footnote. The footnote reads, “If you
missed the detail about Mrs. Oswald’s father, see the Congressional
Record for December 4, page 22215.” Have I read it correctly?
Mr. OLIVER. I believe so.
Mr. JENNER. What is the source of your statement that Oswald was
trained in sabotage, terrorism, and guerrilla warfare, including
accurate shooting from ambush in the well-known school for
international criminals near Minsk?
Mr. OLIVER. It would be a number of sources. The first, a radio
broadcast on an international hookup made, as 1 recall, on the Saturday
following the assassination from Vienna by a reporter----
Mr. JENNER. Excuse me, that would be the next day, the 23d of November,
1963. The 22d was a Friday. That is the day of the assassination. The
23d was a Saturday. The 24th was Sunday, and was the day on which Mr.
Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald. All I am seeking to clear up, Doctor, is
I gather, that the Saturday you have in mind is the day immediately
following, or in other words, the day after the assassination, rather
than the succeeding week.
Mr. OLIVER. That is right. In other words the Saturday and Sunday
immediately following that Friday. This was a broadcast from Vienna by
a correspondent for, I believe, the Hearst newspaper named Flieders.
Mr. JENNER. Would you spell it for me, please?
Mr. OLIVER. As I heard it, I would assume that it was F-l-i-e-d-e-r-s
or F-l-i-e-g-e-r-s, I was not quite sure, which. Who stated----
Mr. JENNER. Your understanding, it was a broadcast from Germany?
Mr. OLIVER. No; Vienna.
Mr. JENNER. Thank you.
Mr. OLIVER. The man stated that he had learned from underground sources
that Oswald under cover of employment in a factory at Minsk, was
trained in the school for sabotage and terrorism--that I believe was
the phrase used--at Minsk. That was, of course, an extremely plausible
statement. It has been a matter, I believe, of general knowledge for
some time, that such a school was operated in the vicinity of Minsk. It
is comparable perhaps to the school in the vicinity of Prague at which
Raul Castro was trained. It would be difficult for me to say where I
first learned of the existence of such a school.
Mr. JENNER. When you say “such a,” you mean this particular one? This
one at Minsk?
Mr. OLIVER. It is my recollection it was in connection with some
inquiries I was making into the careers of some Communists in Latin
America, but I do not recall it clearly. I believe that references to
that school are also to be found in the memoirs of some defectors. I am
thinking particularly of Granovsky, the author of a book entitled “I
was an NKVD agent.”
Now, Granovsky himself was trained at Bykova. But my recollection is
not clear in what connection he mentions the school at Minsk, and I
cannot be sure that he mentions it at all. There are a large number
of memoirs, as you know, of people who were associated in one way or
another with the Russian secret police.
Mr. JENNER. Or at least claimed.
Mr. OLIVER. It would take me quite some time because most of those
books do not have indices. It would be quite some time to run down the
references, but the statement that he was trained at Minsk seemed to me
to be a perfectly reasonable statement.
Mr. JENNER. Is this a fair statement of the import of your testimony,
that when you heard the broadcast during the morning or late evening
hours of the 23d-24th from Vienna, that that awakened in your mind so
far as the school at Minsk is concerned, some things that you had read
prior to that time?
Mr. OLIVER. Oh, yes.
Mr. JENNER. Other than having read the memoirs you have mentioned
and hearing the broadcast to which you have referred, did you have
any other source, that is personal in nature, let us say, that there
actually existed while Mr. Oswald, Lee Harvey Oswald was there, or
since or prior, a school for international criminals in which sabotage,
terrorism, and guerrilla warfare was taught?
Mr. OLIVER. No personal knowledge. I never attended the school.
Mr. JENNER. I didn’t mean that, sir. What I am seeking to do is narrow
down the source of your statement. What I am seeking is sources and
to determine whether there is any source of information which this
Commission has not itself investigated and should investigate.
Mr. OLIVER. Again, my recollection will be vague. There was some
discussion several years ago among “Sovietologists”--of a Russian--of a
report from Russian sources that this school had been closed.
Mr. JENNER. Was there a publication?
Mr. OLIVER. I am virtually certain it must have been a publication;
yes. I believe it was mentioned in connection with some one of these
stories that the Russians were “mellowing” and so on.
Mr. JENNER. Mr. Unger, I apologize to you, I should have stated for the
record the fact that you are here representing Doctor Oliver. Would you
give the reporter your full name and where you reside and practice law?
Mr. UNGER. Yes; John Unger, in Danville, Ill., is where I practice.
Mr. JENNER. And you appear here as counsel for Dr. Oliver.
Mr. UNGER. Yes.
Mr. OLIVER. You will find that school also mentioned in the statement
that Congressman Ashbrook read into the Congressional Record on the
pages cited there.
Mr. UNGER. May I interject here that I think that what Dr. Oliver is
trying to do is to try to furnish you as many sources as possible for
information about the existence of the school in or near Minsk, because
I was told your conversation with me on the telephone, that you were
not aware of that information but I suspect what you are primarily
concerned about is the information he had of Lee Harvey Oswald
attending that school.
Mr. JENNER. I want his sources for all the statements he has made. I
was about to get to that.
Mr. UNGER. Yes; and I take it that he has answered that question as
fully as he can when he told you about this broadcast which he heard.
Mr. JENNER. You have heard Mr. Unger’s statement, Doctor. Do you
accept that, that your sole source of information as to Lee Harvey
Oswald’s having attended, as you state, in part 1 of your article,
having attended this school, was the broadcast from Vienna the night of
November 23–24?
Mr. OLIVER. No; there was also the statement in Congressman Ashbrook’s
article in the Congressional Record, as I recall. A further statement
by Congressman Ashbrook in an article, a short article, more or less
summarizing what he had read into the record, which appeared in a
publication of the Liberty Lobby.
Mr. JENNER. Liberty Lobby?
Mr. OLIVER. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. What is that publication, sir?
Mr. OLIVER. I believe it was the Liberty Letter, as it is called.
Mr. JENNER. Would you identify it for me, who publishes it?
Mr. OLIVER. The Liberty Lobby is an organization here in Washington
of which I understand Willis Carto is an active member and possibly
officer, I do not recall clearly. Its purpose as stated, is to lobby
for American interests in Congress.
Mr. JENNER. Doctor, I have a copy of the daily Congressional Record
for Wednesday, December 4, 1963, pages 22215 and 22216 (bound volume
109, part 18, page 23331). I have marked it as Oliver Exhibit No. 3. I
hand that to you. Would you tell me if that is the Congressional Record
source to which you made reference?
(The document referred to was marked Oliver Exhibit No. 3 for
identification.)
Mr. JENNER. It may help you that the footnote of your article refers to
page 22215 of the December 4 issue of the Congressional Record.
Mr. OLIVER. Yes; that is the statement by Congressman Ashbrook to which
I referred. I was, of course, referring particularly, to the statement
about his wife.
Mr. JENNER. About Oswald’s wife?
Mr. OLIVER. Oswald’s wife; yes.
Mr. JENNER. I take it, then, that is the portion of the matter I quoted
in which it is stated that “He” meaning Oswald, “married the daughter
of a colonel in the Soviet military espionage system (and possibly also
in the secret police).”
Mr. OLIVER. I have since learned that that statement was somewhat
inaccurate. The girl now known as Marina Oswald, as I understand it,
lost her father when she was about 2 years old. Her mother remarried
and died when Marina was in her teens, and at the time that Oswald
met her Marina was living, evidently, in the capacity of a daughter,
in other words, an adopted daughter for practical purposes, with the
colonel of the Soviet military intelligence.
Mr. JENNER. What is your source for that supposition?
Mr. OLIVER. That I base on a report from a man whose research I use
a great deal in my work, Mr. Frank Capell. Mr. Capell, is a private
expert on Communism and Communistic infiltration, who, I understand,
has the cooperation of many former intelligence officers of the Army
and former members of the FBI.
Mr. JENNER. When you say army you mean the United States Army?
Mr. OLIVER. United States Army; yes. And other very good sources. He
has very elaborate files and among the research workers whose work
I use Mr. Capell’s work has been particularly important to me in
connection with these articles.
Mr. JENNER. I take it then that the sources of the statement which I
have quoted from your article, all portions of it, were, may I use the
term, secondary sources, that is, the broadcast you have mentioned,
newspaper items, research reports of Mr. Capell or either that you saw
published or which he transmitted to you as the case may be, which came
to your attention?
Mr. OLIVER. That is right.
Mr. JENNER. Here again your information was not, if I may use the term,
direct source, of your own?
Mr. OLIVER. No; in the sense that I never met Oswald, knew nothing of
his career.