The testimony of Robert L. Stovall was taken at 3:30 p.m., on March 30,
1964, in the office of the U.S. Attorney, 301 Post Office Building,
Bryan and Ervay Streets, Dallas, Tex., by Mr. Albert E. Jenner, Jr.,
assistant counsel of the President's Commission. Robert T. Davis,
assistant attorney general of Texas, was present.
Mr. JENNER. Mr. Stovall, would you please rise and be sworn. Do you
swear in your testimony that you will tell the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth?
Mr. STOVALL. Yes; I do.
Mr. JENNER. You are Robert L. Stovall?
Mr. STOVALL. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. That's [spelling] S-t-o-v-a-l-l?
Mr. STOVALL. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. You are president of Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall, 523 Browder,
here in Dallas, is that right?
Mr. STOVALL. Right.
Mr. JENNER. Mr. Stovall, my name is [spelling] J-e-n-n-e-r, Albert E.
Jenner, Jr., and I am a member of the legal staff of the Commission
appointed to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy. You
received from Mr. Rankin, the general counsel of the Commission, a
letter in which he enclosed, three documents--Joint Resolution 137
authorizing the creation of the Commission, Executive Order 11130 of
President Johnson, creating the Commission, and then the Rules of
Procedure of the Commission itself.
Mr. STOVALL. Right.
Mr. JENNER. And you appear voluntarily in an effort to assist the
Commission in its work?
Mr. STOVALL. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. We are investigating as you notice in those papers all the
possible pertinent facts and circumstances surrounding that horrible
event, to see if we can enlighten the citizenry of the country and at
least get all of the facts recorded, and in the main, as a matter of
fact, get rid of a lot of rumors that keep cropping up here and there,
and since Lee Oswald was employed by your company, we would like to
make some inquiries of your company, if we may.
Mr. STOVALL. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. Are you a native of Dallas, Texas?
Mr. STOVALL. Dallas; yes.
Mr. JENNER. How old are you, by the way?
Mr. STOVALL. Forty-three.
Mr. JENNER. And is this your company--is it a corporation or a
partnership?
Mr. STOVALL. It is a corporation.
Mr. JENNER. Are you the principal shareholder?
Mr. STOVALL. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. Did you organize the company?
Mr. STOVALL. No; this is the second generation of the company. The
original founders disposed of their holdings about 3-1/2 years ago.
Mr. JENNER. Disposed of them to you and your family?
Mr. STOVALL. And several of our employees.
Mr. JENNER. And you have been with the company how long?
Mr. STOVALL. Twenty-five years.
Mr. JENNER. That has been, I gather then, considering your age--your
entire business career has been spent with Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall?
Mr. STOVALL. Well, except while I was in the Navy and I worked summers
while I was going to college.
Mr. JENNER. Where did you attend the university, by the way?
Mr. STOVALL. I went to Texas Tech and SMU. I attended SMU at night and
worked in the day.
Mr. JENNER. What does your company do?
Mr. STOVALL. We are in the typographic services. We serve advertising
agencies, advertising departments, and the graphic arts industry as a
middle supplier for type services. We also produce newspaper mats for
duplication throughout the United States.
Mr. JENNER. Do you do any work for any federal agency?
Mr. STOVALL. Yes, sir.
Mr. JENNER. Is it secret or confidential work or classified work of any
kind?
Mr. STOVALL. On occasion we do. Most of it is not, but we do on
occasion. We are cleared through the Navy Bureau Materiel here,
although I believe it now has been incorporated under the Department of
Defense as a single unit.
Mr. JENNER. Without disclosing any secrets in that connection or
classifications, what is the nature of that work?
Mr. STOVALL. Generally speaking, the nature of the work is charting
and mapping, and actually all we do is set words, letters, and
figures. We have no correlation of what they refer to.
Mr. JENNER. It's charting of coastal areas, sea bottoms, and some land
areas or what?
Mr. STOVALL. Yes; and some foreign areas, too.
Mr. JENNER. That is, other than continental United States?
Mr. STOVALL. Yes; right.
Mr. JENNER. Was any of this work done in the department or area to
which Lee Oswald had access while he was employed by your company?
Mr. STOVALL. Not in the department at all. Whatever secret work we
might have been performing, we do it with the persons who had been
cleared by the regular procedures and they are the only eyes who view
this.
Mr. JENNER. So, anything that is classified is done only by employees
of yours who have been cleared by an appropriate Federal agency?
Mr. STOVALL. Yes, sir.
Mr. JENNER. And then, I gather that as far as Lee Harvey Oswald is
concerned, he had no part in it nor access to any of this work?
Mr. STOVALL. This is correct.
Mr. JENNER. And that your company is at pains to see that no one other
than those who are cleared have access to it?
Mr. STOVALL. That is correct.
Mr. JENNER. And that was true while he was working for you?
Mr. STOVALL. Yes. In fact, at such times as we have any secret work
going, even at the point of being rude, we see that no one has access
to any of this material. I won't say--rude--but we strictly enforce it.
Mr. JENNER. Well, you make it pretty firm, which is right?
Mr. STOVALL. Right.
Mr. JENNER. Do you do any lithography work?
Mr. STOVALL. No.
Mr. JENNER. Do you do any printing of advertisements, papers,
newspapers, periodicals?
Mr. STOVALL. No.
Mr. JENNER. You set type, of course?
Mr. STOVALL. We set type. The only printing we do is a proving process,
and that should we do an ad, let's say some of the Savings Bond
Committee and ship one hundred mats, we would also ship one hundred
proofs.
Mr. JENNER. You pull off proofs but your presses are proof presses, and
that's all?
Mr. STOVALL. Right; we have no printing presses in this regard.
Mr. JENNER. I take it you do a lot of camera work?
Mr. STOVALL. Considerable; yes.
Mr. JENNER. But it is commercial camera work?
Mr. STOVALL. Right; it isn't even photography. It is only the part of
reducing and enlarging printed material that we set in our type shop.
It has to be re-sized and we also make screen veloxes.
Mr. JENNER. Explain for the record what that is.
Mr. STOVALL. A velox is a photographic print that has been screened
by a dot press to separate the tone values in order that a camera can
shoot them in black and white or in any group of colors, but it breaks
it down into minute units that a camera will recognize.
Mr. JENNER. That's like half tones for newspaper printing?
Mr. STOVALL. Right.
Mr. JENNER. Do you do any plate work other than the mats?
Mr. STOVALL. No.
Mr. JENNER. Is the term "microdot printing" or lithographing familiar
to you?
Mr. STOVALL. Lithography is--microdot printing is not.
Mr. JENNER. And you don't do any work of that nature and character?
Mr. STOVALL. No.
Mr. JENNER. Other than the preparation of or use of dot work as you
have already described it?
Mr. STOVALL. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. You personally have no familiarity with microdot reduction
of some image?
Mr. STOVALL. No; we have no equipment and I have no experience in that.
I am familiar with the microfilm as to the advantages of it from the
standpoint of storage and so forth, but as to participating in any
microfilming operation, we don't.
Mr. JENNER. Or any microdot in printing?
Mr. STOVALL. No, sir.
Mr. JENNER. For example, taking a 24 by 24 printed sheet and microdot
reducing it to less than the area of a postage stamp.
Mr. STOVALL. There are several specialty houses here and this is all
done by Recordak and it is a specialty with them and they have the
equipment.
Mr. JENNER. But you have none and you have never done it?
Mr. STOVALL. No.
Mr. JENNER. Do you recall the circumstances under which Lee Harvey
Oswald was employed by your company?
Mr. STOVALL. I know the circumstances only from the statement made
by John Graef, the fellow you interviewed this morning. He made the
interview himself. We were in the market for a trainee to learn this
simple photoprint process. He has had a connection with the Employment
Commission and the State Employment Commission for a quite a few years
in that we use their services. That's what they are for.
Mr. JENNER. You personally had nothing to do with Oswald's initial
employment?
Mr. STOVALL. No.
Mr JENNER. That was Mr. Graef?
Mr. STOVALL. Yes; he is the head of that department.
Mr. JENNER. Were you aware of his progress or lack of it?
Mr. STOVALL. Yes--through their information.
Mr. JENNER. Through reports from Mr. Graef?
Mr. STOVALL. Right.
Mr. JENNER. And he kept you advised from time to time?
Mr. STOVALL. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. And you were personally aware of Oswald's progress or lack
of it?
Mr. STOVALL. Right.
Mr. JENNER. And were there any incidents that came to your attention
with respect to Oswald's relations with other employees?
Mr. STOVALL. Not that I personally know of--on occasion one or two
fellows would mention that they didn't have any real liking for him
because he was such an oddball, but as far as I'm concerned, I never
spoke to the fellow.
Mr. JENNER. You saw him in and about the premises, however?
Mr. STOVALL. Yes, sir; I have seen him in and about the premises.
Mr. JENNER. Did any occasion arise in which the subject of his
conversation or his talking about Russia arose or was reported to you?
Mr. STOVALL. Only after he left our employ was any mention made of it.
Mr. JENNER. Tell us about that.
Mr. STOVALL. He sought employment at another company here in town, a
printing company.
Mr. JENNER. Do you recall the name of that company?
Mr. STOVALL. Padgett Printing Co.--Padgett Printing and Lithographing
Co., and the superintendent over there called me and he gave us as a
reference.
Mr. JENNER. Do you know the superintendent's name?
Mr. STOVALL. Ted Gangel.
Mr. JENNER. Would you spell it, please?
Mr. JENNER. G-a-n-g-e-l [spelling], or G-a-n-g-l--I won't be sure.
Mr. JENNER. They are here in Dallas?
Mr. STOVALL. Yes--he's their superintendent. He called me and asked me
and I told him I did not know, but I would check, so I asked John Graef
and they said this fellow was kind of an oddball, and he was kinda
peculiar sometimes and that he had had some knowledge of the Russian
language, which--this is all I knew, so I told Ted, I said, "Ted, I
don't know, this guy may be a damn Communist. I can't tell you. If I
was you, I wouldn't hire him." So, he didn't, but he did come out of
the Marines and supposedly he had a discharge that was satisfactory but
I did not ever see this discharge.
Mr. JENNER. Was anything said in connection with your inquiries at that
time about his having had a Russian language newspaper around your
place of employment?
Mr. STOVALL. One of the fellows mentioned that he thought he might
have, but in further discussion he was unable to pinpoint whether he
was positive of this or whether he just thought it was. This fellow
Ofstein--I think he made mention of it, the fact that he thought he
might have seen one.
Mr. JENNER. Well, he said not only did he see it, but that he read it.
He had some command of the Russian language himself. He was a student
at the Service Language School in Monterey, Calif., when he was in the
service.
Mr. STOVALL. Actually, when I was talking to this fellow Padgett, I was
really just shooting off my mouth, but it seemed the way it turned out,
that maybe there was a little bit of founding to it.
Mr. JENNER. Was there anything that came to your attention about his
discharge from the Marines?
Mr. STOVALL. No; I really didn't know any particulars on it until this
incident happened.
Mr. JENNER. It was subsequent to November 22, 1963?
Mr. STOVALL. No, previous to that.
Mr. JENNER. Did it ever come to your attention of Oswald having any
contact with any of your employees subsequent to the termination of his
employment?
Mr. STOVALL. Not that I know of.
Mr. JENNER. I have here Commission Exhibit 427, which purports to
be the original of an employee identification questionnaire of your
company, with respect to Lee Harvey Oswald, and would you look at it,
please?