The testimony of John G. Graef was taken at 9:20 a.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. Would you rise and be sworn, please, Mr. Graef?
Mr. GRAEF. Certainly.
Mr. JENNER. Do you solemnly swear in your testimony to tell the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Mr. GRAEF. I do.
Mr. JENNER. Mr. Graef, I am Albert E. Jenner, Jr., and I am a member
of the legal staff of the Commission appointed to investigate the
assassination of President Kennedy, our President, and I think Mr.
Rankin of the Commission sent you, or you have received from Mr.
Rankin, a letter together with copies of the Senate Joint Resolution
137, creating the Commission, authorizing its creation, and President
Johnson's Executive Order 11130, appointing the Commission and fixing
its power and also a copy of the procedural regulations adopted by the
Commission with respect to the taking of testimony.
Mr. GRAEF. That's correct.
Mr. JENNER. And you appear here voluntarily?
Mr. GRAEF. Yes; I do.
Mr. JENNER. The Commission, as you know from those documents,
is appointed to investigate the circumstances surrounding the
assassination of President Kennedy, and particularly any facts and
circumstances respecting the involvement of Lee Harvey Oswald, and that
tragic event, and seeks to gain information from those who had some
touch with his life, and we understand you had some connection with
him with respect to an early employment, in 1962, by Mr. Oswald, in
your company--Jaggars, J-a-g-g-a-r-s [spelling], Chiles, C-h-i-l-e-s
[spelling], Stovall, S-t-o-v-a-l-l [spelling].
Mr. JENNER. Off the record.
(Discussion between Counsel Jenner and the witness, Graef, off the
record.)
Mr. JENNER. Our information is that Lee Oswald was an employee of
Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall in October 1962; is that correct?
Mr. GRAEF. That's correct.
Mr. JENNER. Now, you lived at 522 Browder, B-r-o-w-d-e-r [spelling]?
Mr. GRAEF. No; that is the address of the firm--Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall.
Mr. JENNER. You reside where?
Mr. GRAEF. At 7304 Turtle Creek.
Mr. JENNER. Here in Dallas?
Mr. GRAEF. That is correct.
Mr. JENNER. And you have been a resident here in Dallas for about how
long?
Mr. GRAEF. Approximately 18 years.
Mr. JENNER. And you are a married man and have a family, I assume?
Mr. GRAEF. That's correct.
Mr. JENNER. And how long have you been employed or associated with
Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall?
Mr. GRAEF. About 10 or 11 years; perhaps a little longer.
Mr. JENNER. Since your earlier answer that Oswald was employed at
one time in October 1962, by this company, do you have knowledge or
reasonably direct information as to the circumstances leading up to his
employment, and what kind of an employee he was?
Mr. GRAEF. Yes; I do.
Mr. JENNER. Would you, in your own words, just tell us about it?
Mr. GRAEF. Certainly.
Mr. JENNER. Start at the very beginning, as best you can, so I can get
the whole story of the matter.
Mr. GRAEF. Fine. About that time--it was, I believe, October, I don't
have any written information in front of me that I recall----
Mr. JENNER. This is 1962?
Mr. GRAEF. That's correct--I'll have to recall as best I can.
In about October 1962, as director of our photographic department we
found ourselves in need of another man, so at this time I called the
Texas Employment Commission and spoke to them about sending me someone
having as close as possible the abilities that might work out in our
photographic department.
Mr. JENNER. Would you tell us what you told her in that connection, as
best as you can reconstruct it, giving us her name--it was a her?
Mr. GRAEF. I believe I remember--yes--Louise Latham.
Mr. JENNER. What your normal practice is in that respect?
Mr. GRAEF. Yes.
Mr. JENNER. And, particularly what you did on this occasion?
Mr. GRAEF. Being the director of the photographic department for some
time, on numerous occasions it has been necessary for me to call and
ask the Texas Employment and other sources for help in the normal
turnover of employees that come up in any business.
Mr. JENNER. Could you tell me something about those normal sources,
because we may wish to look to them and see if we can find anybody else
who had any possible contact with this man?
Mr. GRAEF. Surely. I can't name other employment agencies, but I will
say, private employment agencies who occasionally have called us and
told us that they had someone they thought had ability along our line,
but this hadn't been as successful to us as the Texas Employment
Commission. They seem to have a bigger repertoire of personnel needing
jobs.
Mr. JENNER. Is that a public agency?
Mr. GRAEF. Yes; it is.
Mr. JENNER. State or local?
Mr. GRAEF. State; it is a State agency.
Mr. JENNER. It is here in Dallas?
Mr. GRAEF. It is here in Dallas.
Mr. JENNER. The office you called?
Mr. GRAEF. The office I called--that's correct.
Mr. JENNER. I assume it has offices in other cities in Texas?
Mr. GRAEF. I believe so; so I called--but to reiterate--mainly our best
source of employees has been the Texas Employment Commission. They have
a larger pool to draw from, so I called--in the course of my dealing
with them--they have various departments and in the course of dealing
with them, I became familiar with one person.
Our particular photographic department is not one that we find
experienced personnel readily, and the work we do is, I would say,
quite different in various ways from ordinary photography, as most
people know it. I will enlarge on that slightly by saying we do many,
many things with letters. For example, we can take a straight line of
type and we can curve it or bend it or twist it or put it in a circle,
for example, and so, rather than just taking pictures of people as
ordinary photographers do, this work which we perform for advertising
agencies and artists in this area is a matter of training, learning
first to use the equipment we have which takes some time, and then the
differences in the material that we use.
For example, the characteristics of photographic paper, the
characteristics of chemicals that we use, and it is only after learning
and becoming familiar with the equipment and the materials that then
you find out whether an employee will produce the work properly, on
time, and well, and so, it is usually some time before an employee
develops into or either becomes the kind of employee you want.
In other words, after this training period, and you have spent time
with him teaching him the equipment and the material, perhaps at this
late date, many months by now may have gone by--perhaps he can't--he
isn't careful enough in the job--he begins producing, but perhaps we
will say he doesn't work as hard as you would like, so quite often we
spend a great deal of time teaching someone, only to find out after
some months have passed that he isn't a desirable employee, but is just
one of those things.
We must, of course, in order to find out if they will do the job,
go through the process of teaching him the equipment and about the
materials, so I've gone into this because it will help later on in
explaining the termination of Lee Oswald with us, but because of these
various facts that I have mentioned, I became familiar with one person
in particular down at the employment office, the Texas Employment
Commission--the agency.
I, of course, had never met this person, but through phone
conversations I explained after many times what I needed, the type
person I was looking for--perhaps with an artistic background, perhaps
with photographic experience somewhere, in the Army or elsewhere, and I
told her the various attributes that I thought a person should have in
order to make a success of our work.
Mr. JENNER. Would you try to reconstruct this now--just assume you are
on the telephone now.
Mr. GRAEF. Okay.
Mr. JENNER. And carry yourself back out there to a year and a half ago?
Mr. GRAEF. Yes; I'll try to do that. So, I called this person
repeatedly--after the first call or two--this has gone on now over
several years and she knew the type person I was looking for and the
type of experience that I was looking for, so I called her, and her
name was Louise Latham.
Mr. JENNER. Is she still employed by the Texas Employment Agency, do
you know?
Mr. GRAEF. I don't know--I really don't know--a very charming person
over the phone.
Mr. JENNER. And, had you put in this call, let's say--how long before
she sent, if she did, Lee Harvey Oswald over to see you--when did you
start out to seek this employee, is what I am getting at?
Mr. GRAEF. Let me refer to this employee questionnaire.
Mr. JENNER. Does that have an exhibit number on it?
Mr. GRAEF. Yes, No. 427.
Mr. JENNER. Commission Exhibit No. 427.
Mr. GRAEF. Now, it says here he was employed October 12, 1962, so I
would say probably 2 weeks prior to that time, roughly about the 1st of
October was when I placed the call.
Mr. JENNER. Do you recall whether anybody other than or in addition to
Lee Oswald had been sent you before he came?
Mr. GRAEF. Yes. I don't remember the sequence--whether Lee was first or
whether Lee was last. As I recall, there were about two or three--all
of them young men, average young men--Lee Oswald was average.
Mr. JENNER. Would you have in your files--what do you call that that is
marked "Commission Exhibit 427"?
Mr. GRAEF. I am holding in my hand this same Commission Exhibit No.
427, and it's an employee identification questionnaire of our firm
Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall.
Mr. JENNER. Would you have had a card, would it still be retained in
your files for the other people you might have interviewed?
Mr. GRAEF. No. No--I wouldn't. Normally, when the Texas Employment
Commission sends someone over for an interview, I meet them and we sit
down, of course, and discuss their past history, employment history,
and the various personal histories of that person. The Texas Employment
Commission sends a card over from them, telling who the bearer is and
it also has a space on it that says "Was this employee hired?", which
you will mail back to them and "Not hired," and the reason why you
didn't hire them, and in every case, as I recall, the people whom I did
not hire, I would just mark it in the appropriate space and drop it in
the mail and it is returned to them.
So, of these two or three young men who came to me after--at this
period, about October 1, Lee was one of them and seemed to me to be the
most serious and a shade--I'm searching for the right word--when I say
"serious" and just a shade more determined, perhaps--he seemed like he
had had a slight edge on the other one or two fellows that came there,
and I thought--well----
Mr. JENNER. I take it that you personally did the interviewing of all
of these?
Mr. GRAEF. That's correct.
Mr. JENNER. Including Lee Harvey Oswald?
Mr. GRAEF. That's correct. I had talked with this Mrs. Louise Latham,
it's Mrs.--also--each time she would call. Of course, I would notify
her that I could use another employee and perhaps 3 or 4 days would go
by until she saw, knowing these various things that I needed--she would
call me and say, "I believe I have a young man who looks like a pretty
good prospect," and so I would say, "Thank you." And she would send him
over.
Mr. JENNER. Have you now recited all of the things you indicated to her
in connection with this particular employment or in employment need?