Mr. McCLOY. Couldn't you have demanded that your office be cleared so
that you could have a quiet investigation?
Mr. FRITZ. I could hardly tell the Secret Service and the FBI or any
other Federal agency--I had the outer office had Texas Rangers out
there, several of them, and you could understand why they would be in
there because the Governor had been shot and they work directly for the
Governor out of Austin, so you could hardly tell people like that that
you don't want them to help.
Now, if this were just an average case, just an average hijacking case
we have, we could easily, we could handle it with all ease but where
the President of the United States is killed it would be hard to tell
the Secret Service and the FBI that they couldn't come in.
Mr. McCLOY. But you could have told the newspaper people, the media
people that they couldn't come in.
Mr. FRITZ. I didn't let them come in my office or in my part of the
office.
Mr. McCLOY. They never were in your office when you were examining
Oswald?
Mr. FRITZ. Never. I think one of them got inside of the outer office
but someone immediately put him out.
Mr. DULLES. What is the jurisdiction of the city manager as compared to
the chief of police, does he have authority over the chief of police?
Mr. FRITZ. The city manager is our big boss, he is over all of us. He
is over the chief of police and he operates the city. He is responsible
only to the mayor and city council. And I think that they give him a
pretty free hand.
We have got a city manager and he tells, he sets the policies, of
course, maybe I made a mistake when I told you that the chief of police
sets the policies of our police department, but the city manager would
set the policies for the city as a whole.
Mr. BALL. I have no further questions.
Mr. McCLOY. Do you have anything else that you think that is on your
mind that might help us in getting at the rockbottom of either the
Oswald murder or the President's murder?
Mr. FRITZ. I believe that you people know about everything that we
know. We have tried to get everything in this book. We have tried not
to withhold anything, and I will tell you something about this case
that I told some people in the beginning.
I don't know of anything about this case that we can't tell all about,
the truth about it from start to finish now. I think the truth fits it
better than anything we can do to it. I hope I have gotten this story
to you correctly. I hope I haven't made some mistakes in some of my
testimony about time and the dates and things because if I have----
Mr. McCLOY. Are there any further leads that you would like to follow
up or do you feel that the case is from your point of view closed in
terms of--
Mr. FRITZ. We won't ever close it. We never close any murder case and
we won't ever close it. I will tell you what, if anything came up about
this case that we thought we could do to help on it, and it came up
10 years from now we would work on it. We would work on it regardless
of what time it came up. I do think this, that there have been a lot
of things about this case that we won't be able to handle. If we get
any information about anything that involves foreign relations we will
pass that on to the people who know what to do with it. We won't try to
handle anything like that because we might do a very wrong thing. We
would give that to either the FBI or the Secret Service, depending on
the type of information it was, and they would pass it on to wherever
they wanted to.
Mr. McCLOY. Are there any pending leads in this case that you feel that
you would like to follow up beyond?
Mr. FRITZ. Right now?
Mr. McCLOY. Right now.
Mr. FRITZ. I don't believe we have one. Do you think of any lead to
follow up? I can't think of one. If I thought of one we would sure
start on it. But I don't think we have.
Mr. BALL. There is one problem here in your records that we asked
about. Where was Oswald between 12:35 a.m., and 1:10 a.m., on Saturday,
November 23, that is right after midnight?
Mr. FRITZ. Right after midnight.
Mr. BALL. The jailer's records show he was checked out.
Mr. FRITZ. I think I know where he was right after midnight. I think
he went to the identification bureau to be fingerprinted and have his
picture made.
Mr. BALL. You know. You can probably advise him and he can tell us.
What is it?
Mr. FRITZ. I think that, if it is the time that I am thinking about, if
it is the time that after he was, after he had his arraignment, I think
from what we found out since then that he went there for picture and
fingerprints.
Mr. BALL. I have no further questions.
Mr. FRITZ. Maybe you should ask Lieutenant Baker here something that I
don't know anything about, that he knows, that might help to clarify
that question you asked me just then. I thought he went for the
picture, but tell him.