Mr. LIEBELER. Wild speculation?
Mr. GREENER. Very wild. Very wild speculation.
Mr. LIEBELER. Now, you told me before that you had been interviewed
several times by the FBI and by the Dallas police force. Can you think
of any questions that they asked you or things they discussed with you
that we haven't covered here?
Mr. GREENER. No; I can't. It seems that we have gone into it far deeper
than they ever did, the Dallas police or the FBI.
Mr. LIEBELER. Can you think of anything else that I should have asked
you or that you can add that would help clear this situation up?
Mr. GREENER. No; sure can't.
Mr. LIEBELER. I have no further questions at this point, Mr. Greener.
If you can't think of anything else that you think is appropriate to
add to the record, I think we will terminate the deposition at this
point. I want to thank you very much for the time you have given and
the cooperation you have shown. I know you have been talked to about
this a lot of times. I appreciate the cooperation you have shown the
Commission, and I thank you very much.
Mr. GREENER. We have tried to cooperate with them all the way through.
When they continued to come back and ask the same questions and get me
out of bed and all at 11 or 12 o'clock at night and get a tag they had
looked at three or four times, I began to get a little bit aggravated.
Mr. Ryder and I have always been interested in helping them in any way
we could with any information we could give. I don't feel that he is
the type boy to do that. Of course, that again is people are involved.
Mr. LIEBELER. Well, you have known the boy a long time and you should
be in a position to make that kind of judgment?
Mr. GREENER. That is what he is. He has been a mighty fine boy and he
is just an extraordinary boy. There is not many like him, and I would
trust him with anything that I have to be done, and it just never
struck me as him being that kind of boy.
Mr. LIEBELER. Let me ask you a couple of other questions about rifles
and sights. I know you do have a meeting at 12:30.
Mr. GREENER. No; it was 12.
Mr. LIEBELER. I thought it was 12:30. I am sorry you are not going
to make the meeting. You may have read in the newspapers that Oswald
purchased this Italian rifle, or was supposed to have purchased it from
a mail-order house in Chicago, with the telescopic sight mounted on the
rifle at that time?
Mr. GREENER. Yes.
Mr. LIEBELER. In your opinion, based on your experience in this field,
do you think that a rifle that had been purchased from a mail-order
house that is shipped through the mails with a scope mounted on it
would be in a condition to fire accurately at that point without any
further sighting in of the rifle by firing it?
Mr. GREENER. The possibility of it being, especially with this
frail mount is, I am sure that that mount, according to what little
information I have, the possibility of it being real accurate would be
pretty small, I think.
I think the gun would be--I think even a fellow that was going to go
deer hunting would want to take the gun out and shoot it before he went
hunting, and I think that holds very true with this case, regardless of
whether we mounted the scope or who mounted it or it come mounted. I
think the man would fire it before using it.
Mr. LIEBELER. You feel that because you don't think that a rifle would
be able to be fired accurately unless it had been sighted?
Mr. GREENER. The possibility would be small that it would be real
accurate; and you talk to most any of the fellows that go hunting,
regardless of how expensive a mount they may have on the gun, he is
going to take it and fire it before he goes hunting. That holds true in
99 percent of the cases.
The only reason not to would be the fact the man was in a real big
hurry, he picked it up late in the afternoon and he was going to
Colorado and was getting there after the season and he was going to
shoot and just take his chances. Otherwise, he would take the gun out
and fire it, 99 out of 100, and fire it.
Mr. LIEBELER. Would that be true even if it had been boresighted?
Mr. GREENER. Yes; because actually the boresighting with the tools that
we use, the accuracy of the thing on the windage part of it is very
accurate, but as far as distance, different guns will travel a flatter
trajectory than other guns will, and there is no calibration on the
sighting tools that tell us that you can sight the gun in on target,
that it is on 60 or 140 or 270 or 308. There is no calibration for that.
Mr. LIEBELER. No calibration for the boresighting machine?
Mr. GREENER. No; you have the crosshairs and you line the two of them
up, and that is approximately 100 or 125 yards range, but different
guns will vary as to the trajectory, and one might hit the target and
one be a little high and another a little low, so that is the reason
the man takes his gun and shoots it in as far as the elevation is
concerned. He can zero it in to what distance he wants to shoot it at.
Mr. LIEBELER. That would have to be done, as you have indicated, even
if the rifle had been boresighted?
Mr. GREENER. That's right. It would be accurate as far as elevation.
The windage part is usually right on target, but the elevation has to
do with caliber.
As far as your 6.5 Italian gun is concerned, there is only two types.
One is the hand load, and one is the military ammunition. Because there
is none of the major ammunition manufacturers that builds a sporting
load for that gun, so it either has to be a hand load or old Italian or
military ammunition, and the hand load has to do with what size bullet
and the power you get, and it would be more important on that gun to
shoot it than it would any other caliber or of an American make that
you get your larger manufacturers of ammunition loading for.
Mr. LIEBELER. Do you have any 6.5 ammunition in your shop?
Mr. GREENER. Not 6.5 Italian.
Mr. LIEBELER. Have you ever had?
Mr. GREENER. We have a 6.5 Swedish and 6.5 Jap, and I believe that is
all of these 6.5's.
Mr. LIEBELER. Do you do reloading of casings?
Mr. GREENER. No.
Mr. LIEBELER. The fellow has to do that himself?
Mr. GREENER. We sell the components and the loading equipment but we
don't do any loading. The only one that I have been able to find out so
far that hand loads 6.5 Italian--I don't think this is a possibility,
but Ray Acker with Bell Telephone is the only one I know that does any
hand loading on 6.5 Italians.
Mr. LIEBELER. He works for Bell Telephone Co.?
Mr. GREENER. Yes.
Mr. LIEBELER. He does this as a part-time occupation?
Mr. GREENER. Hobby; yes.
Mr. LIEBELER. Have you talked to him about this case at all?
Mr. GREENER. No; I don't guess I have ever called him. How I came to
know that he reloads, and I don't know to what extent that he reloads,
but I called one of my suppliers as to the availability of 6.5 Italian,
and he gave me his name, so that is the reason but I can't say, but as
far as I know, he is the only one that loads 6.5. There may be others
that buy their own dies and hand loading, more especially since there
are more guns coming out, but that would be, oh, a year and a half ago
when I was told that he hand loaded 6.5 Italians.
Mr. LIEBELER. Do you need a particular kind of equipment to reload
shells?
Mr. GREENER. Very definitely.
Mr. LIEBELER. Does the equipment vary with the caliber of the shell?
Mr. GREENER. Very definitely. The presses usually will accept all the
different calibers, and then you have to have your die sets.
Mr. LIEBELER. To pour it?
Mr. GREENER. You've got to have your shell holders, and your die holder
that resizes the brass and inserts the bullet into it, the bullet
seating and there is only one caliber that one set of dies will load.
If you load a 6.5 die, you have to have 6.5 dies. If you load .30-06,
you have to have .30-06, and you can't have any part of the two on the
different calibers of ammunition.
Mr. LIEBELER. Well, thank you again, and we appreciate your cooperation.