Mr. JENNER. And are you familiar in fact with what it purports to be?
Mr. STOVALL. Yes; this is the employment card that we had on him.
Mr. JENNER. And that is part of your original books and records of your
company, kept in the usual and regular course of business?
Mr. STOVALL. Right--this was picked up by the Secret Service and
somewhere I have a receipt from them, well, there is a negative--I
destroyed the positive.
Mr. JENNER. Now, you are showing me a receipt and if I could read
backwards, I would be able to read this.
Mr. STOVALL. If you have a mirror, you can look at it and read it.
Mr. JENNER. Off the record.
(Discussion between Counsel Jenner and the witness, Mr. Stovall, off
the record.)
Mr. JENNER. Are you able to tell me whose handwriting that is in the
extreme upper right-hand corner of Exhibit 427?
Mr. STOVALL. That is one of the personnel--in our bookkeeping and
payroll department, and I could not tell you who it would be, but it
would be one of three people.
Mr. JENNER. But it is an entry by an employee of your company made in
the usual and regular course of business, is it?
Mr. STOVALL. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. And it records the date of termination of Oswald's
employment?
Mr. STOVALL. Right.
Mr. JENNER. The sixth day of April 1963?
Mr. STOVALL. He was given notice the latter part of March, and our
company's procedure is to give a fellow a week or 10 days notice prior
to the termination.
Mr. JENNER. Was his termination prospectively or otherwise discussed
with you prior to it?
Mr. STOVALL. Oh, probably it was--I would not say for sure whether it
was or wasn't. I'm pretty much of a dog around there when things don't
go right I'm the one that has to do all the yelling, and if a guy
doesn't produce, I say, "Let's do something," and from this basis I
feel the responsibility to say that I probably had something to do with
this termination, not as an individual, but only on his performance as
far as the work standards were concerned.
Mr. JENNER. What was this man's skill to the extent that you recall, in
these areas in which you sought to train him?
Mr. STOVALL. He had no skill. He had no training whatsoever. You see,
we employed him only as a trainee and I think we probably started him
at $1.25 or $1.35, or something like that, and automatically we give
a youngster a 10- or 15-cent raise quarterly, but within 6 months, if
they have shown no aptitude, we give up on them and have a parting of
the ways.
Mr. JENNER. And that is what happened here?
Mr. STOVALL. Yes; because we give them a raise doesn't mean that the
person is competent, it means that it is just a system of employment we
have when we start someone on minimum, or generally a 90-day basis, and
we give them a nickel or dime, and then within a maximum of 6 months,
if they have shown no aptitude, we just have to terminate them.
Mr. JENNER. That's in fairness to them as well as to your company?
Mr. STOVALL. Right.
Mr. JENNER. You also turned over to the Secret Service the application
for employment that Oswald made with Padgett Printing Co.?
Mr. STOVALL. Yes. I do not have that receipt with Padgett.
Mr. JENNER. How did you come to have that, by the way?
Mr. STOVALL. The Secret Service on Saturday--I made contact with
them--Mr. DePrato--this is his signature and I don't recall the other
gentleman's name, and in our discussion, I mentioned the fact that I
thought this fellow had sought employment with another company, but I
didn't know what disposition had been made of it, and they asked would
I call there, so while they were in my office I called, but there was
no one there and I knew this fellow and I called his home and he is an
astronomer as a hobby and he was giving a lecture to some students,
so I made a contact with the person who was on the phone out here at
the Astronomy Auditorium at the Fair, and he called me and I asked
him could I get hold of this application for the Secret Service and
he said "Yes," he would get it and bring it by, and in the meantime
these fellows had gone somewhere else and I told them I would meet them
Sunday in my office, so I did and gave it to them. The reason I had
it--they asked me to secure it for them.
Mr. JENNER. And you did?
Mr. STOVALL. And I did.
Mr. JENNER. The expression "microdots" does that mean anything to you?
Mr. STOVALL. No; we have never gotten any microfilming processes
whatsoever.
Mr. JENNER. Mr. Stovall, your able employee, Mr. Graef, has given me
a good deal of detail and has been very helpful and likewise you have
been. Is there anything that I have failed to bring out here because I
don't know about it or haven't been stimulated to do so that you think
might be helpful to the Commission in its investigation?
Mr. STOVALL. I don't believe so. There was such a short period of time
this fellow worked for us and he was a constant source of irritation
because of his lack of productive ability, that----
Mr. JENNER. Would you elaborate on that, please?
Mr. STOVALL. We would ask him to reduce a line to 4 inches in width,
that happened to be 6, and he might make it 4-1/4 or 3-7/8, and this
was a loss in labor and materials both, and it had to be redone.
Mr. JENNER. Did this occur with greater frequency than you
thought--than your people thought was permissible, having in mind the
progress which you would expect of him or a man in his position to have
attained?
Mr. STOVALL. Yes; that's true.
Mr. JENNER. What about his relations with others in the company--other
employees--how did he get along, or did that come to your attention?
Mr. STOVALL. I don't think anyone liked him or disliked him either
one. He was just one of those people you don't know. If you don't know
a guy, you can't know if you don't like him. That's probably the main
reason we don't like him. Someone made mention in one instance that he
bumped them in a dark room, which is a walkway area, and if a guy's
bent over a tray and somebody else is coming by--he will get bumped,
and it depends on who is doing the bumping, whether you get upset about
it or not.
Mr. JENNER. Well, it can be done without taking offense to one another?
Mr. STOVALL. There's nothing at all wrong in it. There's no pain at all
in saying "Excuse me."
Mr. JENNER. Yes; and apparently he was not inclined to do that.
Mr. STOVALL. It seems that that's so--yes.
Mr. JENNER. Have you had an impression as to whether he was an outgoing
person or a reserved person--keeping to himself?
Mr. STOVALL. I think he must have been reserved, because the fellows
who worked right with him, no one seems to have had any particular
conversation with him. One guy invited him to go to church and he had
such an unpleasant reception to it that that was the end of that.
Mr. JENNER. What incident was that--tell us about that.
Mr. STOVALL. Well, the fellow asked him what his religion was, and he
asked him if he would like to go to church and I don't know what he
said, but that was the end of that.
Mr. JENNER. He made it pretty clear he didn't want to go?
Mr. STOVALL. It seems that's the way it was.
Mr. JENNER. And he didn't want to be bothered by anyone?
Mr. STOVALL. He didn't want to discuss it either.
Mr. JENNER. All right; does anything else occur to you?
Mr. STOVALL. Not that I know of--the fellow had a good record of being
on the job, I mean, he didn't have any absenteeism.
Mr. JENNER. He was prompt and worked every day and had little in the
way of absenteeism?
Mr. STOVALL. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. Mr. Graef said that he sought overtime employment; do you
recall that?
Mr. STOVALL. Only by his statements that he made it known that he was
available to work on Saturday and he simply had a wife and kid and
needed the money and I'm sure that he did, as far as that goes, because
of the rate of pay he was working, living in these times, it didn't go
very far.
Mr. JENNER. Your overall impression is that he was an industrious
person?
Mr. STOVALL. He was inefficient--I wouldn't say he was industrious--if
he would have maybe applied himself at least--he was inept in this
particular craft.
Mr. JENNER. All right. We appreciate this very much. Now, you have the
right to read your deposition, and make any corrections in it you wish
and to sign it.
Miss Oliver ought to have it ready sometime this week, if you wish to
do that. You may obtain a copy if you wish by arrangement with her and
she charges 35 cents a page.
Mr. STOVALL. Well, is it part of your procedure that I sign your copy?
Mr. JENNER. No; you may waive it.
Mr. STOVALL. I don't have any use for it.
Mr. JENNER. You don't have any use for it and you don't care to come
back and read it for purposes of correction, at least your curiosity
might bring you to read it sometime--other than that you have no desire
to come back?
Mr. STOVALL. I suppose it is for the corporation--I should put it with
our papers. That is my only reason for wanting it. That--the same as we
are keeping these.
Mr. JENNER. You have two employees here--Mr. Graef and Mr. Ofstein--do
you want her to write all three depositions or just your own?
Mr. STOVALL. Well, is the writing she does--is this the only reason it
is for us?
Mr. JENNER. No; we have it written up for ourselves and that is why you
can obtain a copy at 35 cents a page.
Mr. STOVALL. If there is some means of getting a copy of it--the only
reason I was wanting it is for the record. I don't care anything about
it otherwise--I suppose it might be of use. If this is out of order or
anything, as far as I am concerned--that's all right.
Mr. JENNER. It's nothing out of order at all--all she does is for the
small price of 35 cents a page is just a matter of preparing an extra
copy, so, you go ahead and prepare a set, then, and I would suggest
that you deliver it under seal to Mr. Stovall. Do you want all three or
just your own?
Mr. STOVALL. If you don't mind I would just put the others in there,
too.
Mr. JENNER. Yes, I understand; some people under the circumstances you
are in do obtain copies, so that they can keep them in the corporate
records.
Mr. STOVALL. Well, it's from the standpoint of corporate records of all
the interviews and questions and so forth that we have been through on
this--we have nothing other than three receipts and somewhere down the
line in the years to come I would like to have it.
Mr. JENNER. You will find along the line in these depositions that they
have covered everything that has been covered before and some more. We
are able to probe a little more than those boys. They knew what they
were after but they didn't have all the information that we have now.
Mr. STOVALL. Well, the men whom I have been in contact with have been
nothing but nice.
Mr. JENNER. Oh, yes; the Secret Service men are always nice.
Mr. STOVALL. They are gentlemen of the first degree.
Mr. JENNER. Well, I can certify to that--they are very fine and very
helpful, and greatly grieved over this as everybody else is.
That's all and thank you very much for coming.
Mr. STOVALL. All right. Thank you.