Dallas in November of 1963 where a job in a suitably located building
had been arranged for him. Did any of these people purport to have any
personal knowledge of that matter?
Mr. OLIVER. Only what they had heard concerning the way in which he
obtained his employment; yes.
Mr. JENNER. Their sources, in turn, were newspaper reports and rumors
and things of that nature at large in the community.
Mr. OLIVER. I would think so; yes.
Mr. JENNER. Proceeding to page 14, I won’t read all of the paragraph,
it begins at the bottom but you just glance at it, you refer to the
fact that he shot the President from ambush, and then he escaped and
you surmised that he would have reached Mexico but for some mischance
and the intervention of Officer Tippit, and you conclude that paragraph
with a sentence, “He was accordingly liquidated before he could make
a complete confession.” The implication of that sentence is that he
was killed, his death was procured by some evil source, being, I take
it, the Communist conspiracy or Communist Party to which you have had
reference. Am I correct about that?
Mr. OLIVER. That is what I regard as a reasonable inference from the
facts; yes.
Mr. JENNER. It was an inference that you drew.
Mr. OLIVER. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. Now you state in the next sentence, “There are many
other significant data but I have stated the essentials.” What other
significant data are there or were there at the time you made that
statement. I might interject as you are pondering that, to a learned
man such as you, at the word “data” as you used it meant your sources?
Mr. OLIVER. Yes; facts. It would be difficult for me at the moment to
remember and reconstruct completely what was in my mind, the list of
data there.
Mr. JENNER. Give me the best; just do the best you can, sir.
Mr. OLIVER. However, I would have particularly taken into consideration
as significant data the various indications of contacts between Oswald
and Rubenstein, known as Ruby, the man who killed him, prior to the
assassination. That would include such matters as a statement made by
a, should I say, the announcer or director of a program called “Open
End.”
Mr. JENNER. Open End?
Mr. OLIVER. Open End, on a local Dallas station--this is not the
national program as I understand it--to the effect that he had seen
Rubenstein behind the Depository shortly after the assassination. The
statement of the owner of a tourist lodging, should we say, in Waco,
that a man whom she identified as Oswald had stayed at her place and
had been joined by a man whom she identified as Rubenstein. By the
statement of a mnemonics expert in Rubenstein’s club that he had seen
Oswald.
Mr. JENNER. When you say “club,” you mean the Carousel Club?
Mr. OLIVER. Carousel Club, actually a striptease joint, that he had
seen Oswald in the club shortly before and as he later stated the day
before the assassination.
Mr. JENNER. Whom did you say this was that made this report?
Mr. OLIVER. This was a man named Bill Crowe.
Mr. JENNER. Crowe?
Mr. OLIVER. C-r-o-w-e.
Mr. JENNER. Where did you see that report or how did you see it?
Mr. OLIVER. That was reported in the press at the time. And was later
confirmed by a special interview with him that was published in the
National Enquirer.
Mr. JENNER. Do you have that issue of the Enquirer with you?
Mr. OLIVER. I do not but I believe you will find a reference to it in
the issue that I have given you there.
Mr. JENNER. That is Oliver Exhibit No. 5?
Mr. OLIVER. That is correct.
Mr. JENNER. Would you locate it for the record, please?
Mr. OLIVER. Yes; “The Enquirer traced DeMar, and that is the stage name
of this man Bill Crowe to an Evansville, Ind. nightclub and questioned
him on April 11. He told our reporter that he had seen Oswald sitting
in the Carousel on the night of November 21, the night before Oswald
assassinated President Kennedy.” DeMar said “I gave the FBI a statement
about seeing Oswald in the club and that was it. I told them the same
thing I am telling you. I have signed it and have heard nothing more
about the incident to this day.”
Mr. JENNER. Had you read all of the article by, either by, or referring
to DeMar from Oliver Exhibit No.----
Mr. OLIVER. Yes; I did finish the excerpt.
Mr. JENNER. What is the number of the Exhibit?
Mr. OLIVER. No. 5. And there were other indications of contacts between
Oswald and Rubenstein before the assassination.
Mr. JENNER. And I take it your assumption was at the time you published
the article that Rubenstein himself was a Communist agent.
Mr. OLIVER. That seemed a reasonable inference; yes.
Mr. JENNER. And your source of that was the sources you have just
indicated?
Mr. OLIVER. Yes; plus, of course, the fact that he either executed or
murdered Oswald.
Mr. JENNER. Your statement in the right-hand column that “It required
a gunman from outside to do the job,” in which you are referring to
Rubenstein, was based on what, that is a gunman from outside.
Mr. OLIVER. Well, Rubenstein was not a member of the Dallas police.
Mr. JENNER. I see. Someone other than the member of the Dallas police
is what you meant to imply.
Mr. OLIVER. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. You go on in a subsequent paragraph to say, “As was to be
expected a few moments after the shot was fired in Dallas the vermin
probably in obedience to general or specific orders issued in advance
of the event, began to screech out their disease hatred of the American
people and, long after the facts were known to everyone, went on
mechanically repeating, like defective phonograph records, the same
vicious lies about these ‘radical right’ until fresh orders reached
them from headquarters. But the significant fact is that there were
enough honest American newsmen, in the United States and abroad, to
make it impossible to conceal the conspiracy’s connection with the
bungled assassination.”
“That is very encouraging.”
Now, your statement “probably in obedience to general or specific
orders issued in advance of the event” I take it that is an inference
or an implication you drew from the sources of information already
related to us.
Mr. OLIVER. Right, from the rapidity and the concert, both, of these
attacks on patriotic Americans.
Mr. JENNER. Yes. This is a conclusion or a deduction on your own part
of conclusions you reached from the information sources you have
indicated, is that correct, sir?
Mr. OLIVER. That is right. I trust that the Commission will inquire
into the phenomenal rapidity with which the special bulletin of The
Worker was distributed in New York.
Mr. JENNER. Yes, sir; but I would urge you to drop the future tense.
Mr. OLIVER. Very good. I am glad to see that it has been done.
Mr. JENNER. Then commencing on page 15 you say, “There were two
basic”--I am reading the first full paragraph--“There are two basic
reasons why the American people were shocked and grieved by the
assassination. Neither has anything to do with either the personal
character of the victim or the identity of the assassin.” Do you find
the place?
Mr. OLIVER. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. And then you relate (1) and (2). I take it that (1) and (2)
were conclusions and reasoning to which you resorted, is that correct,
sir?
Mr. OLIVER. That is right. On the basis, of course, on my knowledge of
human history.
Mr. JENNER. Your knowledge of human nature and history and the sources
of information you have already told us about?
Mr. OLIVER. That is right.
Mr. JENNER. Were there any others, that is sources?
Mr. OLIVER. No.
Mr. JENNER. Now, we will pass to page 18. There is a column headed
“Three Explanations”. Do you find it?
Mr. OLIVER. Right.
Mr. JENNER. It reads in part, “Why was Kennedy murdered by the young
Bolshevik? With a little imagination it is easy to excogitate numerous
explanations that are not absolutely impossible. For example, (a)
Oswald was a madman who acted all alone just to get his name in the
papers; (b) Oswald was a poor shot who was really trying to kill
Governor Connally or Mrs. Kennedy, and hit the President by mistake;
(c) the person killed was not Kennedy but a double and the real Kennedy
is now a guest aboard a flying saucer, on which he is heroically
negotiating with Martians or Saturnians to save The World, cap ‘T’ cap
‘W’. With a little time and a fairly wide reading in romantic fiction
anyone can think of 60 or 70 fantasies as good or better than those
that I have mentioned.”
And the next paragraph:
“On the evidence, however, and with the consideration of human
probabilities there are only three explanations that are not
preposterous, viz:”
To what did you refer when you used the reference “On the evidence.”?
Mr. OLIVER. On the evidence that I had already stated.
Mr. JENNER. You mean that which you have stated here in the course of
the testimony?
Mr. OLIVER. Yes; and also stated in this article. That is, the evidence
that has been stated; my testimony has related to the previous parts of
this article.
Mr. JENNER. That is pages 13 through 17 and up to this point on page 18?
Mr. OLIVER. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. You were using the term “evidence” in the general or loose
sense?
Mr. OLIVER. Yes, not in the sense of sworn testimony as a lawyer would
use it.
Mr. JENNER. Yes, not in the sense of primary sources, is that correct?
Mr. OLIVER. Yes. Of course, we run into a curious question, the
definition of primary sources. There are many modern historians who
would list the newspapers, for example, as primary sources.
Mr. JENNER. Depending on their use, yes.
Mr. OLIVER. As distinct from, let us say, textbooks which would be
secondary sources. I am here assuming primary sources means some direct
positive evidence other than the printed reports, et cetera.
Mr. JENNER. I don’t wish to compromise you, of course. When I use the
term “secondary” or “primary” sources I am using it in a sense that
a lawyer uses it. Newspaper reports we would generally refer to as
secondary sources. We would have to go to the primary source on which
the reporter based his article in order to get something in evidence.
If we were trying to prove a general milieu, newspaper accounts as to
an atmosphere at a particular time or something of that nature they
would be admissible. But as to your sources here, I understand the term
secondary sources means newspaper reports, articles or even books on
which you retired, as distinguished from personal knowledge.
Mr. OLIVER. That is right. I just wanted to be sure this was no
misunderstanding of the term.
Mr. JENNER. I don’t wish it misunderstood either. I am not going to
read your three suppositions, they are your conclusions rather than
statements of fact. I use the word supposition in the sense that I am
thinking in terms that they are your conclusions.
Mr. OLIVER. That is right.
Mr. JENNER. Your conclusion first is, and I quote, “Kennedy was
executed by the Communist conspiracy because he was planning to turn
American.”
What was it, your source of that statement?
Mr. OLIVER. Well, as I have indicated; what I called there the
comforting hypothesis that one heard so frequently since Kennedy’s
inauguration, and which one still hears, that he had in his mind a
secret plan, that his policies and the people with whom he surrounded
himself in the opening years of his administration were intended to
provide a demonstration of their fatuity and probable disloyalty--the
fatuity of the measures and the probable disloyalty of the many
persons involved; that he was planning to execute, as I said here, a
volte-face and make a dramatic gesture and espouse a policy of national
independence instead of “interdependence.”
Mr. JENNER. You follow the statement I have quoted, with this
statement, Doctor, “For this comforting hypothesis there is no evidence
now known.” As of this moment is there any “evidence now known” to you?
Mr. OLIVER. None that is known to me. So far as I know that is still
conjecture and what is sometimes called wishful thinking. I may say if
there is any evidence of it I should be very happy to hear it.
Mr. JENNER. Point No. 2 appears in the right-hand column, and I read,
“That the assassination was the result of one of the rifts that now
infrequently occur----”
Mr. OLIVER. Pardon me, “not infrequently.”
Mr. JENNER. Pardon me--“not infrequently occur within the management of
the Communist conspiracy whose satraps sometimes liquidate one another
without defecting from the conspiracy, such as Persian satraps.”
Would you read the rest of it, you have a couple of words in there I am
not----
Mr. OLIVER. “Just as Persian satraps, such as Tissaphernes and
Pharnabazus made war on one another without revolting or intending to
revolt against the King of Kings.”
Mr. JENNER. This point No. 2 is as in the case of point No. 1, a
rationalization on your part.
Mr. OLIVER. I would prefer to call it deduction on my part.
Mr. JENNER. I will accept the amendment.
You then say, “Now, it was generally suspected for some time before
the assassination that Khrushchev and Kennedy were planning to stage
another show to bamboozle the American suckers just before the election
next November.”
What is your source, if any, for the statement that Khrushchev and
Kennedy were planning, as you put it, another show?
Mr. OLIVER. The frequent reports of preparations for an invasion of
Cuba planned, it would seem, to substitute for Castro a less-well-known
Communist.
Mr. JENNER. Here again this was a statement of deduction on your part?
Mr. OLIVER. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. From newspaper accounts and radio broadcasts and general
information that was abroad?
Mr. OLIVER. General information, rumors you pick up, what you are told
by various analysts and so on.
Mr. JENNER. Would you turn to 3 which appears on page 20? This is your
third deduction, I gather:
“That the conspiracy ordered the assassination as part of a systematic
preparation for a domestic takeover. If so, the plan, of course, was
to place the blame on the ‘rightwing extremists’ (if I may use the
Bolshevik’s code word for informed and loyal Americans), and we may be
sure that a whole train of “clues” had been carefully planted to lead
or point in that direction as soon as Oswald was safe in Mexico.”
What was the source of that statement in your article?
Mr. OLIVER. This again is deduction.
Mr. JENNER. From the sources you have already related in your testimony?
Mr. OLIVER. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. You then in the right-hand column proceed to discuss “two
objections to this explanation” and I interpolate, “but neither is
cogent”. You continue on then with deduction again, do you, sir?
Mr. OLIVER. That is right.
Mr. JENNER. Based on the same sources?
Mr. OLIVER. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. I notice that three-quarters of the way down in the
right-hand column on page 20 you state, “For that matter, a potentially
serious and quite unnecessary mistake was made when the Communist
Party’s official publication, The Worker, yelled for the appointment
of Earl Warren to investigate ‘the assassination’ before (italicized)
the appointment was made, or at least, before the appointment was
disclosed to the public.”
I take it that statement was based on some news report?
Mr. OLIVER. On the actual publication in The Worker of this article
calling for the appointment of Warren.
Mr. JENNER. I know we have that.
Mr. OLIVER. I am sure you must have. It is a well-known publication.
Mr. JENNER. Yes. But the statement I have just read was based upon that
issue of The Worker to which you have now made reference.
Mr. OLIVER. That is right.
Mr. JENNER. You made a deduction from that fact of publication?
Mr. OLIVER. That is right.
Mr. JENNER. Proceed to page 21. The lower right-hand corner of page
21 commences a paragraph the first few words of which or the first
sentence of which reads “Careful observers were aware of the feeling of
crisis in conspiratorial circles before the assassination.”
On what was that statement based, or to be more accurate what was the
source from which you made that deduction, if it is one.
Mr. OLIVER. My conversations with fairly numerous observers of the
conspiracy and its operations in this country.
Mr. JENNER. Are you using “conspiracy” in a general sense rather than a
particular conspiracy directed toward this event?
Mr. OLIVER. The Communist conspiracy as a whole; yes.
Mr. JENNER. You then go on to state what appears to be a statement of
fact or you represent it to be.
“In June of 1963 an experienced American military man made a careful
analysis of the situation at that time, and in his highly confidential
report concluded, on the basis of indications in Communist and crypto
Communist sources, that the conspiracy’s schedule called for a major
incident to create national shock before Thanksgiving.”
Who is that experienced American military man to whom you had reference?
(Conferring with counsel.)
Mr. OLIVER. The observer mentioned there is Col. Chesley Clark, retired.
Mr. JENNER. Clark.
Mr. OLIVER. C-l-a-r-k, of the American Air Force.
Mr. JENNER. Did he publish--this is a new name to me--did he publish
something on which you rely in making that statement?
Mr. OLIVER. This he told me not with a pledge that it was confidential,
but with the implication that I would not disclose his name in a
publication. I see no bar to disclosing it for the purpose of these
hearings. If I may say, his estimates were made entirely from, what
should we say, experience in psychological warfare and in reading the
indications in the sequence of events and the form the propaganda was
taking, and that he obviously had not, so far as I know, no inside
information.
Mr. JENNER. This conversation or conversations that you had had
with Colonel Clark, did it or they occur between the time of the
assassination and the time of the publication of your article?
Mr. OLIVER. No, before the assassination, I am sure. I would say
perhaps--it is hard to recollect but I would say a month or 6 weeks
before.
Mr. JENNER. I take it, I don’t even like to say this because I don’t
want you to take it wrong, certainly there was nothing in Colonel
Clark’s statement to you, sir, that carried any implication of any
anticipation of a possible assassination of President Kennedy?
Mr. OLIVER. No. Of a, however--it did astutely anticipate some event
that would create a national shock.
Mr. JENNER. When I say I hesitate to say it but I know what you would
have done, I think I know what you would have done, had there been any
implication, you would have alarmed the authorities.
Mr. OLIVER. There was no----
Mr. JENNER. I am correct about that, am I not?
Mr. OLIVER. You are correct about that. The nature of the event that
would create this shock was, of course, necessarily speculative.
Mr. JENNER. All right. Then you discuss the feeling of men like you,
that there was some crisis about to take place, and this feeling was
communicated to you by men like Colonel Clark and others?
Mr. OLIVER. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. Who felt that the Communist conspiracy as you call it had
reached a point at which it needed some shocking event.
Mr. OLIVER. That is right.
Mr. JENNER. Or as you say at the bottom of page 21 and the top of page
22, “The conspiracy’s schedule called for a major incident to create a
national shock before Thanksgiving.”
Mr. OLIVER. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. At the bottom of page 22, right-hand column, you say: “In
summary then, there is not a single indication that the conspiracy did
not plan and carry out the assassination of President Kennedy. On the
other hand, there is evidence which very strongly suggests that it did.”
Would you please relate what evidence there was at the time you
published the article which “very strongly suggests that it did.”
Mr. OLIVER. You begin with the fact that the assassin was a Communist
and added the strong probability, in my judgment, that he must have had
accomplices, very, very probably including Rubenstein.
Then the results which would have occurred but for the mischance of
Oswald’s apprehension would have been very strongly in their favor. It
is the old doctrine of Sui Bono. In substance the considerations that
I have stated in the earlier part of the article indicating that (a)
there undoubtedly was Communist participation and (b) that the act was
to their advantage.
Mr. JENNER. Here again then I take it that your use of the word
“evidence” in the portion I have quoted from your paper, at the bottom
of the right-hand column of page 22 is the use of the word in the loose
sense or the broad sense.
Mr. OLIVER. That is right.
Mr. JENNER. The broad sense meaning deductions from the sources you
have indicated in your testimony?
Mr. OLIVER. That is right.
Mr. JENNER. Would you glance at page 23 with a view in mind of my
inquiring of you as to whether the statements made on that page
likewise are deductions based on the sources you have indicated
heretofore in your testimony?
Mr. OLIVER. That is right.
Mr. JENNER. Is that likewise true of page 24?
Mr. OLIVER. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. At the bottom of page 24, the right-hand column you say:
“The first expedient was primarily defensive. In a hasty and thus far
successful attempt to thwart an investigation by legally constituted
authorities, the Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security and the
attorney general of the State of Texas, both of whom had already
announced their determination to conduct an impartial inquiry, an
illegal and unconstitutional ‘special commission’ was improvised with
the obvious hope that it could be turned into a Soviet-style Kangaroo
court. The best known members of this packed ‘commission’,” and then
you give some vignettes of the various members of the commission.
I am not seeking to probe into your thinking on the subject. You have a
right to think whatever you do think, and the right of free speech and
publication permits you to publish. As I told Mr. Unger yesterday I was
seeking only sources.
What is the source of that statement?
Mr. UNGER. Pardon me, just a minute for interjecting but what relevancy
does that have on the inquiry into the death of either President
Kennedy or----
Mr. JENNER. It has this relevancy. The doctor is implying in the
statement I have quoted that the creation of the Commission was part
of a conspiracy, as he puts it, to prevent effective investigation
into the assassination of the President by the Senate Subcommittee on
Internal Security and the attorney general of the State of Texas, with
the appointment of a commission.
Mr. OLIVER. Let me confer for just a second.
(Conferring with counsel.)
Mr. UNGER. We think under the circumstances that that is beyond the
right of the Commission to inquire and beyond the scope of this hearing
and, therefore, the witness on my recommendation declines to answer.
Mr. JENNER. All right. Was this statement other than deduction on your
part?
Mr. UNGER. Well, the same objection. I think if you were to just go
through a list of other than you would eventually arrive at the same
objectionable conclusion. So we object to that.
Mr. JENNER. All right. What were your sources upon which you based this
statement?
Mr. UNGER. Same objection.
Mr. JENNER. Did you have any sources other than the sources you have
indicated in your testimony up to the moment?
Mr. UNGER. Same objection.
Mr. JENNER. Was the paragraph I read deduction only or did you have
some source on which you relied.
Mr. UNGER. The same objection. Let me say for the record that, despite
the hurt feelings of the members of the Commission, I don’t believe
they have a proper right to inquire into attacks that were made upon
them. I can’t see any relevancy at all to that.
Mr. JENNER. I do wish to say for the record that the Commission, no
member of the Commission, has any hurt feelings whatsoever with respect
to this article or any statement in it.
On page 26 you state:
“One writer has recently suggested that it was the CIA that arranged
the assassination of President Kennedy; I know of no evidence to
support that opinion. But obviously Mr. Dulles’ CIA is open to
suspicion.”
Who is the writer to which you have reference?
Mr. OLIVER (conferring with counsel). I do not recall. I wrote this, of
course, in December, I wouldn’t want to recall now who said it. I have
the impression that this was in some one of the innumerable magazine
articles about the assassination of the President but I would not want
to say which one.