article was written in December of 1963?
Mr. OLIVER. It was--I did most of the work in that during the Christmas
vacation which, of course, would run into January.
Mr. JENNER. Well, except for the runover into January the article was
prepared by you in December, in the Christmas holiday period, school
holiday period which commences, well, usually around December 20 and
runs over into New Year’s Day?
Mr. OLIVER. Yes; I very unwillingly sacrificed my holiday which I
needed for a quite different purpose. I do not exclude the possibility
that I might possibly have made some changes by telephone, but I do not
recall any. I wouldn’t want to swear that I did not, however.
Mr. JENNER. I take it then that after you prepared the article during
the Christmas holidays you submitted it to American Opinion for
publication?
Mr. OLIVER. Yes; sent it in.
Mr. JENNER. You may have made some telephone changes or editorial
modifications?
Mr. OLIVER. I would not want to swear that I had not, I do do that
sometimes.
Mr. JENNER. But they were not of a character that you can recall at the
moment?
Mr. OLIVER. No.
Mr. JENNER. Commencing in the right-hand column on page 26 you relate a
series of numbered paragraphs, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, to the conclusion
of the article on page 28. Do you have those?
Mr. OLIVER. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. Are those deductions rather than statements based on
newspaper or other sources of the nature and character you have already
related?
Mr. OLIVER (conferring with counsel). Those are deductions.
Mr. JENNER. May I call your attention to the footnote on page 27 which
reads:
“I understand that full report on this and other known activities of
Rubenstein will probably appear in a future issue of the Herald of
Freedom, Box 333, Staten Island 1, N.Y.” Do we have that?
Mr. OLIVER. That is the Herald of Freedom to which I have already
referred as being a publication edited by Mr. Frank Capell.
Mr. JENNER. Do you happen to have this particular issue with you?
Mr. OLIVER. I believe I do. Yes; the issue, of course, was still in the
future at the time that I wrote----
Mr. JENNER. You indicate that clearly in your article.
Mr. OLIVER. And consequently the report is not so full as I had perhaps
anticipated.
Mr. JENNER. I take it when you say the issue was in the future that
the essential aspects of the issue had been communicated to you by Mr.
Capell?
Mr. OLIVER. That is right. You will find the references to Rubenstein
on, I believe, pages 2 and 3 rather than the first page, if I recall
correctly.
Mr. JENNER. All right. We will mark as Oliver Exhibit No. 6, an issue
of the Herald of Freedom, volume 4, No. 12, January 17, 1964, and the
reference, Dr. Oliver, that you have, would you locate that for the
record, please?
(The document referred to was marked Oliver Exhibit No. 6 for
identification.)
Mr. OLIVER. The reference to Rubenstein begins at the bottom of the
second column on page 2, and runs into the first column on page 3, and
then there are some addenda which are more or less pertinent to the
subject although they do not mention Rubenstein. I had anticipated a
considerably fuller report of Rubenstein’s activities.
Mr. JENNER. Is the issue of the Herald of Freedom, volume 4, No. 12,
January 17, 1964, now marked Oliver Exhibit No. 6, one of the sources
upon which you relied in preparing your article, and one of the sources
upon which you have relied in making your subsequent talks?
Mr. OLIVER. No; the issue itself was not published until after I wrote
the article. The information contained in it as communicated to me by
Mr. Capell, with some additions, was the information on which I relied
when I wrote that footnote, and paragraph to which it is appended.
Mr. JENNER. You are a lecturer, are you not?
Mr. OLIVER. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. And you have--you have journeyed about the country during
which you have made lectures dealing with the subject matter of your
article in American Opinion and such additional matters as have come to
your attention since then?
Mr. OLIVER. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. In making and giving those lectures, have you relied on
Oliver Exhibit No. 6 as one of your sources?
Mr. OLIVER. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. What other documents have you brought with you in addition
to those you have produced or identified upon which you relied in
preparing your article in American Opinion?
Mr. OLIVER. Oh, I have a miscellaneous collection of such things as I
could find on short notice.
Mr. JENNER. Why don’t you relate them into the record.
Mr. OLIVER. We are still on the subject of the article?
Mr. JENNER. Yes, sir.
Mr. OLIVER. I have here a clipping from the Rocky Mountain News of
this month noting that the CIA has been found giving money to the
J. M. Kaplan fund. And many clippings like that. It would take--I have
photostats, for example, from reports of the Dies committee identifying
Rubenstein, one or more persons named Jacob or Jack Rubenstein, as
active in Communist organizations. The most significant one, of course,
is the one in which a Jack Rubenstein appears as an organizer in one of
the Communist youth movements. If this man has given his age correctly
he would have been 19 at the time which would make him just right for a
youth movement.
Mr. JENNER. Are you associating the Jack Rubenstein mentioned in that
article with the Jack Rubenstein who is now charged and been found
guilty of the murder of Oswald?
Mr. OLIVER. I am using that as the basis for my contention that that
should be investigated.
Mr. JENNER. In view of that could I see the article, please? I think we
had probably better identify it.
Mr. UNGER. Let me say a copy of Martin Dies’ article is in the same
issue of American Opinion for March that you have already used as an
Exhibit.
Mr. JENNER. Would you identify the page number?
Mr. OLIVER. Let me look at it.
Mr. JENNER. Is that Oliver Exhibit No. 1 you are looking at?
Mr. OLIVER. Oliver Exhibit No. 1 contains on pages 1 through 10 an
article by Congressman Martin Dies on the assassination in which he
raised the question of the identity of Jacob or Jack Rubenstein.
Mr. JENNER. Was that article available to you at the time you wrote
your article which was published in the same issue? That is part II.
Mr. OLIVER. Not the finished typewritten text of the article but the
contents of it; yes.
Mr. UNGER. Excuse me, can I interrupt for just a minute?
(Discussion off the record.)
Mr. JENNER. Referring to your article, did you rely on any source that
we may describe as being a confidential source as distinguished from
public sources, that is, various published matters?
Mr. OLIVER. In this entire article?
Mr. JENNER. Yes, sir.
Mr. OLIVER. No; except as I have said, I had the estimate made by
Colonel Clark which could be regarded as semiconfidential.
Mr. JENNER. And you have so indicated already.
Mr. OLIVER. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. Do you recall being interviewed either by telephone or
personally by an agent of the FBI on the 2d of September, 1964, that is
last week, I guess, wasn’t it, or this week?
Mr. OLIVER. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. Last week.
Mr. OLIVER. September what?
Mr. JENNER. September 2.
Mr. OLIVER. That would be right; yes.
Mr. JENNER. It is reported to us you stated and I will quote “that all
of” I interpolate the pronouns “that all of his material used in his
articles was obtained by him from public sources and he added that he
had no confidential sources.”
Mr. OLIVER. I believe that I was referring specifically to the speech
concerning which they inquired and not to the articles.
Mr. JENNER. That was the speech that you made on the evening of August
28 at the Santa Ana Valley High School?
Mr. OLIVER. That is right.
Mr. JENNER. Do I properly infer from that response of yours that you
had sources, one or more, for your article, that was or were other than
public sources----
Mr. OLIVER. No; I merely am trying to keep the record clear by stating
the FBI people, I believe, spoke to me only about the speech.
Mr. JENNER. I see. This report of the FBI, if directed to your article
in American Opinion would be equally applicable to it?
Mr. OLIVER. Yes. With, of course, the exceptions that I have already
mentioned, Colonel Clark, reports from----
Mr. JENNER. With whatever exceptions you have already placed on record
in this examination.
Mr. OLIVER. That is right.
Mr. JENNER. The report of your Santa Ana Valley High School speech on
the evening of August 28, 1964, at least as reported in the Washington
Post, on page 19, the issue dated August 30, 1964, purports to quote
you as having said, “I don’t know whether Oswald was paid by the CIA or
by the Soviet secret police--and it is just a matter of bookkeeping
anyway.” Did you make that statement in the course of your speech to
the Santa Ana Valley High School audience?
Mr. OLIVER. Not in that form, and not in all probability in the context
in which I am quoted there.
In the speech I referred to a book which I believe is on your desk
written by a Mr. Joesten, Joachim Joesten; entitled “Oswald: Assassin
or Fall Guy?” in which, in the course of many arguments intended
to prove or suggest that Oswald was “framed” by wicked American
conservatives, he makes much of Oswald’s supposed connection with the
CIA. In my speech I made the point that if it were established that
Oswald was in the employ of the CIA that would not by any means exclude
the possibility that he was also in the employ of the Soviet and that
therefore the argument in the book is completely fallacious. I think I
can tell you precisely what I did say.
Mr. JENNER. Thank you, sir. By the way, do you have a copy of that
speech? I spoke to your counsel and he thought you might have one.
Mr. OLIVER. I have my one copy and I may say that this speech consists
of 39 and a little more typed pages including 2 or 3 inserts here and
there----
Mr. JENNER. You might find that section dealing with this precise
subject.
Mr. OLIVER. And that the first 27 pages deal with questions of the
impression produced on the public mind by shownmanship.
Mr. JENNER. Excuse me, what do you mean by that, Doctor?
Mr. OLIVER. I mean the ease with which many people confuse actors with
the roles they play and so carry from a performance an impression that
it has a reality that it did not have.
Actually, I start out by pointing out that whenever anybody goes into
a theater to see Hamlet for example, he more or less consciously tells
himself that he is going into that theater to undergo an illusion.
He knows perfectly well the actors are not Hamlet, and the other
characters are feigned--that in real life the actors may not resemble
the characters they impersonate at all, and so on.
And then I took up the whole question of the socialist mentality
as exhibited in history. I made some comments on the letters of
objurgation that I had received, for I was still illustrating that
mentality, and I spoke briefly about the general suppositions of the
people called “liberal intellectuals.” I did not begin to discuss the
facts of the assassination until late on page 27.
In other words, more than two-thirds of my speech dealt with these
general--of my pitch, dealt with these general considerations.
Now, the particular passage from which that quotation was taken begins
on page 26:
Mr. JENNER. Would you read it into the record, please?
Mr. OLIVER. This entire passage?
Mr. JENNER. Is it very long?
Mr. OLIVER. It is approximately three typewritten pages.
Mr. JENNER. Why don’t you go ahead and read it.
Mr. OLIVER. “The second propaganda line is the one that I mentioned in
the February issue of American Opinion when I was not certain that the
Bolsheviks would dare to use the United States as they were then using
it elsewhere in the world. You will find that line set forth in a book
by one Joachim Joesten, who claims to be a Dane who migrated to Soviet
Russia and later to the United States. It is entitled ‘Oswald: Assassin
or Fall Guy?’ And it is published by a publishing house headed by Aldo
Marzani whom you may know better under one of his aliases as Tony Wales
or Whales.
“He was identified as a member of the Communist Party when he was
employed in our super secret ‘intelligence’ organization, the OSS, and
in the State Department. Of course there was no conflict of interest
there. I can’t remember whether it was under his alias or under his
own name that he served a term in prison for perjury. So you see the
book comes from an appropriate source. If you have any doubts remaining
just note the same firm also publishes puke on Americans excreted by
one Stanley or Sammy Steiner, writing under the alias of Mike Newberry.
Stanley also writes for the Communist Worker. The book ‘Oswald: An
Assassin or Fall Guy’ contains a few preposterous fantasies but for the
most part it operates by taking the facts that are publicly known and
simply turning them upside down. That way you see they will look just
right to liberal intellectuals.”
Mr. JENNER. By the way, he uses--would he be classified as a liberal by
most people or does he claim to be?
Mr. OLIVER. I think he tries to give that----
Mr. JENNER. I am curious now.
Mr. OLIVER. My opinion is that of the people who read that book perhaps
75 percent will say to themselves this man is a great liberal, a
believer in civil rights, et cetera. And a champion of the underdog.
“It starts, for example, with the strange detour in the Presidential
procession that made Kennedy an easy mark for a marksman in the Book
Depository--to which, I believe, I was the first to draw attention. But
the author argues that a sweet little Communist like Oswald couldn’t
possibly have known about it, much less had the target set up for him.
Poor little fellow. The detour must have been arranged so that the
nasty rightwing extremists could frame him for the assassination.
“And the book makes much of the possible activities of our Central
Intelligence Agency. This is designed for readers who have memories
so poor that they will not recall the long list of events from the
fake invasion of Cuba known as Operation Judas because it betrayed
the anti-Communist Cubans into the hands of Castro, to the recent
assassinations in Vietnam in which our Central Intelligence Agency
with its army of 17 to 40 thousand faceless agents and the billions of
dollars with which you taxpayers supply it every year, has evidently
done the work of the Soviet Secret Police. It is designed for readers
who will not remember that a defector from the Soviet Secret Police
has sworn that his colleagues in the Central Intelligence Agency used
your money directly to subsidize, (a) the Soviet Secret Police; (b) the
official Communist Party in Italy; and (c) the official Communist Party
in the United States.”
I should interpolate that this is obviously a reference to Lieutenant
Colonel Goleniewski.
Mr. JENNER. Whom you have heretofore identified?
Mr. OLIVER. Pardon me?
Mr. JENNER. Whom you have heretofore identified, or at least you made
reference to him earlier in the afternoon?
Mr. OLIVER. I do not recall that.
“On the contrary, the author of this incredible hogwash like the
authors of some other books recently published expects you to believe
that the CIA is a rightwing organization probably run by the John Birch
Society. I do not know whether Oswald was paid by the CIA, but I hear
that there was testimony before the Warren Commission that he was.
There would be nothing improbable in that. The CIA worked for Castro in
Cuba before he came to power.”
And I will interpolate here that that is a reference primarily to the
testimony of Ambassador Earl Smith before the Senate Internal Security
Subcommittee, and also a reference to the testimony of the elected
president of Cuba who was driven from Cuba by Castro, and there are
some further indications of some significance in at least the second
edition of Nathaniel Weyl’s “Red Star Over Cuba,” and still further
indications in a recent book that apologizes for the CIA’s fiasco in
Cuba and at the same time criticizes them rather severely. I am sorry,
the names do not come to my mind at the moment; the authors are two
newsmen, I believe, both of them with New York newspapers.
Possibly one from the Times and one from the Herald Tribune. It is just
a vague impression.
“It is believed to have instigated and financed the Communist smear
against General Walker.” I interpolate here and refer to the----
Mr. JENNER. When you say interpolate, you mean the source from which----
Mr. OLIVER. Yes, I am now interpolating from my speech, text of
my speech, to say in making that statement I was relying on the
considerations that the Central Intelligence Agency may be operating
Inter-national Media, the publishers of the “Oversexed Weekly,” as it
is generally called, “Overseas Weekly” as it appears on the masthead,
the three editions of Drum in Africa, and some other publications. That
is partly based on the identity of a stockholder and officer of this
supposed corporation with an officer in the fictitious corporation that
was set up to cover Radio Swan.
Mr. JENNER. Cover what?
Mr. OLIVER. Radio Swan, which has since been admitted to be a CIA
operation.
I then continue, “They contrived and financed the assassination of
anti-Communists in other parts of the world, notably General Trujillo
in the Dominican Republic.”
That is based--I interpolate now,--that is based primarily on the
assertions of General Espaillat in his book “Trujillo, the Last of the
Caesars.”
I may say at the time of the assassination of General Trujillo I
referred from the facts that the only people who could have arranged it
were either the CIA or the Soviet secret police.
Then I continue. “And there seems to be no good reason for supposing
that it could not use your money to carry out assassinations in the
Communist interest in the country.”
Mr. JENNER. The “it” is what, CIA?
Mr. OLIVER. CIA.
Mr. JENNER. Is that a conclusion you reach or is that based--what is
your source of that statement?
Mr. OLIVER. Well, that is a conclusion that I reach primarily on the
grounds that if you carry out assassinations abroad you may carry them
out at home, and secondarily on the suspicions which obviously can be
no more than suspicions, concerning the death of Povl Bang-Jensen.
Mr. JENNER. I will ask you who is he, in my ignorance I will ask you if
you can identify him?
Mr. OLIVER. He is the member of the United Nations staff who attempted
to communicate to the Central Intelligence Agency the names of certain
Soviet agents in the United Nations who were, (A) willing to defect,
in fact eager to do that; and (B) willing to identify agents of the
Soviet Secret Police in the State Department and CIA. He is reported to
have communicated his information in confidence to an officer of the
CIA and very shortly thereafter he met his death in what was called a
suicide although most improbably such. The CIA is reported to have been
shadowing him at the time of his death.
On those principal data, my statement here is an inference. If they can
assassinate General Trujillo in the Dominican Republic there is nothing
impossible about their doing something similar on American soil.
I continued. “But what Joesten’s poisonous book is trying to tell its
readers--and I warn you this is the kind of topsy turvy propaganda is
certain to convince liberal intellectuals is that Kennedy was really
assassinated by the wicked Fascist police of Dallas, Texas, who then
framed sweet little Oswald to conceal their crime. And the author all
but says outright that those awful ‘Fascist’ police are agents of the
John Birch Society and General Walker.” I think that is sufficient.
Mr. JENNER. As I recall, I am not attempting to quote this, all I did
was make a cryptic note, somewhere, in what you have just read the
substance is “But I hear that he was” that is, that he was paid by the
CIA. Would you find that spot in your quote?
Mr. OLIVER. The exact quotation is, “I do not know whether Oswald
was paid by the CIA but I hear there was testimony before the Warren
Commission that he was.”
Mr. JENNER. And from what source, on what source did you base the
statement that you heard that there was testimony before the Warren
Commission that he was?
Mr. OLIVER. Principally, although not exclusively, an article, again
by Henshaw in the National Enquirer at about the time that Earl Warren
made his statement that the findings would not be released during the
lifetime of the people then living.
Mr. JENNER. If you will pardon my correcting you, even that newspaper
account didn’t say that the Chief Justice said that the findings of the
Commission would not be released.
Mr. OLIVER. That the “full truth” wasn’t that it?
Mr. JENNER. I think not. It will be quoted in the report. This occurred
a long time ago, and I have forgotten just what it was.
Mr. OLIVER. Yes, this is in the National Enquirer for March 3, 1964.
Mr. JENNER. Could I identify that and then return it to you when we
have made a copy?
That is either a photostat or a Xerox reprint that is marked Oliver
Exhibit No. 7. It is entitled--The particular article by John Henshaw,
“Washington Pipeline by John Henshaw,” and then the heading is
“Moscow plotted JFK assassination--U.S. Government financed Oswald,”
place-lined Washington, D.C.
Does that summarily describe the exhibit?
Mr. OLIVER. Right.
Mr. JENNER. And that is your source?
Mr. OLIVER. That is my primary source, and I believe the first source;
the statement picked up elsewhere in the press. Of course this is
supported.
Mr. JENNER. Is what, sir?
Mr. OLIVER. This is supported by the longer article by Mr. Henshaw that
has already been placed in the record as Exhibit No. 5.
Mr. JENNER. Oliver Exhibit No. 5?
Mr. OLIVER. Wherein it is stated that the reason given either as an
explicit statement or by implication for intervening to prevent the
Dallas police from arresting Rubenstein and Oswald for the attempted
murder of General Walker was that they were agents of the Central
Intelligence Agency--which you see confirms the statement in the
earlier report.
Mr. JENNER. Now, the news item to which I referred, that is the
Washington Post of August 30, 1964, page 19, also states that “Oliver
also said that under orders from Secretary of Defense Robert S.
McNamara the Army ‘began to rehearse for the funeral more than a week
before the funeral.’” Would you find that, please, in your speech in
which you made reference to that subject?
Mr. OLIVER. I may say that is typical of the kind of so-called
journalism practiced by the Washington Post and similar publications.
In the course of my speech----
Mr. JENNER. Would you identify the pages if they are numbered?
Mr. OLIVER. On typewritten page, beginning on typewritten page 12,
going through to approximately the middle of page 16 and including a
little insert 13-A, I discussed the effect of theatrical performances
on the human mind, and the way in which illusions may be carried
over from the performance to reality. I begin by using a performance
of Hamlet as an illustration, analyzing what happens there. In the
following paragraph I elaborate on the point that “A great many naive
and unreflective people do confuse actors with the roles they play in
the performances.”
And I illustrate that with a story which I hope was amusing about an
acquaintance of mine who witnessed a brawl in a tavern between two men,
one of whom was convinced that an actress who played effectively the
role of the pure and virginal heroine must be pure and virginal herself.
I then went on and using a slightly different illustration but
developing the same point, I mentioned a television show about a
character called Superman, and what was told to me by a vice president
of the corporation that wrote and produced the show, to wit, that
although this being was represented as a person who could leap a
hundred feet in the air, and could bend a railroad rail with his hands,
nevertheless many of the viewers thought that he was real and wrote
letters to him asking for his help.
And I then went on.
Mr. JENNER. Shades of Orson Welles.
Mr. OLIVER. Except that I believe these letterwriters were not financed
so far as I know.
Mr. JENNER. I did not mean to imply that.