Mr. BOUCK. That there be some specific indication that a possible
danger to the President existed.
Mr. DULLES. Off the record.
(Discussion off the record.)
Mr. McCLOY. Back on the record.
Mr. STERN. Well, Mr. Bouck, if the pivotal ingredient is his employment
at that Depository, is that because that showed some, to your mind,
some intention, some desire to be on the route, because access to the
route----
Mr. BOUCK. No; it relates him to the President. This, I think if all
the information that was known about him, indicates that he was a
pretty untrustworthy individual, I think there was no indication that
that untrustworthiness might be of a danger to the President until you
associated that he had a vantage point where he might use it toward the
President.
There was nothing previous that indicated that the President might be
an object of this, and----
Mr. STERN. As far as any of us know, any citizen had pretty much the
same sort of access to the parade route. Is there any difference----
Mr. BOUCK. We would feel the same way if we knew this much derogatory
type of information about any citizen if we knew he had a particular
vantage point on a route.
Mr. STERN. But a citizen, possessing all the characteristics you
believe to have been known about Oswald but not having access through
employment or residence or some comparable relationship to the parade
route, would not have been of concern to you under the criteria and
practices in effect at the time of Dallas, is that what you are saying?
Mr. BOUCK. I think a little broader than that. Access of any kind,
working in a hotel or any point where he might have unusual access.
If you broaden the question to that, I would say that is what I am
saying.
Mr. STERN. Unusual access?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes.
Mr. McCLOY. If I might intervene here, if I understand it. I don't know
whether it is good but there is speculation and conjecture in it, I
don't know if you will get far with it. Probably if you had known all
the derogatory information that you now know was accumulated in all of
the agencies of the Government irrespective of where this fellow was in
Dallas you might have kept your eye on him.
Mr. BOUCK. Again, that would be speculation. I don't know. It wouldn't
be normal. It wouldn't fit within our normal category unless we knew he
was--he had a vantage point. We know of tremendous numbers of people
who are bad people that we don't keep an eye on.
Mr. McCLOY. Yes; but suppose you knew these men, or suppose you
encountered some of these defectors. I am told there are 18 others,
wouldn't you have been somewhat negligent if you didn't check up on him
when he got to the vantage point in Dallas?
Mr. BOUCK. If we had checked up, I don't know whether we would have
gone beyond that.
Mr. McCLOY. I don't suggest that but you might have kept him under
surveillance.
Mr. BOUCK. We would have taken note of this.
Mr. STERN. Would that have been true if he had not been known to be
living in Dallas, if his last known address was New Orleans?
Mr. BOUCK. If he had not been living in Dallas we would not have
checked on on him in this trip area even with the other information.
Mr. STERN. Suppose he had been living in Fort Worth?
Mr. BOUCK. Well, if we had known he were living in Fort Worth that
would be the same as Dallas, to us. When we speak of a city we speak of
the driving distance or the commutable distance to a city.
Mr. STERN. We will move very quickly to questions concerning Oswald and
I would like to go back now and cover the details of your file search
and other PRS activity for the Texas trip, the total Texas trip. If
you would start with the first date you heard that the President was
preparing to travel to Texas and tell us what your Section did and what
you found.
Mr. BOUCK. Our first knowledge of the Texas trip was on November 8 when
the advance agent, Agent Lawson, reported to the Protective Research
Section that the President was going to Texas, and that Dallas was one
of the stops. A check at that time was made of our trip index, and no
cards were found on Dallas to indicate that there was an uncontrolled
dangerous person in Dallas.
Two such people were found at the Houston stop. This information was
imparted to Mr. Lawson at that time.
Mr. STERN. Excuse me, could you identify the two Houston cases from
Exhibit 762?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes; they are in here. Case No. 21 is one. This individual
is a local law-enforcement officer that was not considered awfully
dangerous but again because he might have an unusual vantage point we
made arrangements each time to see that he was not used in any way
that he might have a vantage point. Case 26 is the other one, which is
a case that goes back many, many years of an individual who has been
repeatedly threatening but we have been unable to do much about. She
has been in and out of mental hospitals.
Mr. STERN. So these were the two cases?
Mr. BOUCK. The two cases.
Mr. STERN. That were in the trip-index file involving the jurisdiction
of the Houston field office?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes.
A notation was made at that time for the individual in charge of that
section and on the 14th he again checked that file. He pulled out these
two cards, and he checked the checkup file and concluded that these
in the State of Texas were the only two uncontrolled people that we
should alert the field about, and he pulled the case jackets on these
two people and reviewed those, and then caused an alert to be prepared
on these two people, the original being sent to the White House Detail,
and the copy being sent to the field office.
Mr. STERN. These are the same two Houston cases?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes.
Mr. STERN. Was there an additional case added on the 14th?
Mr. BOUCK. No; not by our section. There were just the two. There were
cases picked up in the field on some of these, but we only sent out the
two cases as being in our opinion of protective concern on that trip.
Mr. STERN. Would you look, Mr. Bouck, please, at the first page of
Exhibit 760, the first text page, the third paragraph, the middle of
the paragraph, it says, "On November 14, 1963, the above indicated
clerical employee prepared an office memorandum advising the name of
one PRS subject who had previously been referred to the interested
offices and was still of concern and furnishing identifying data on a
new PRS subject who had not been previously included in the alert."
Mr. BOUCK. These were the two cases. The one we had alerted on a
previous trip, the deputy sheriff one, had not been, that had occurred
since a previous trip and so this was the first time that we had told
the detail and the field office that this individual should be looked
at. Making a total of two.
Mr. STERN. Were there entries in the trip-index file then for the other
cities that the President was planning to visit or the other field
office areas, Dallas, San Antonio, and El Paso?
Mr. BOUCK. No; there were no cards on any of the other three cities,
indicating uncontrolled people.
Mr. STERN. So in the four field offices covering the entire State of
Texas there were in the trip index only two cards both of them residing
in the Houston office area?
Mr. BOUCK. That is correct.
Mr. STERN. Now, do you know what was done in Dallas to supplement this
investigation into potentially harmful people?
Mr. BOUCK. Dallas made contact with the local authorities, they had
contact with the FBI, they had contact with the local police in Dallas,
and also some of the suburbs, particularly Denton, Tex., in which they
received information on several situations and several individuals in
addition to, well, they received this information.
Mr. STERN. Are those cases summarized in Exhibit 762?
Mr. BOUCK. Yes; they are. I think the first one of those is page No. 2
of Exhibit 762, which involved people who had attempted to embarrass
Ambassador Stevenson. Also page 3 is a further one. I believe they
also received information on some scurrilous literature that was being
circulated in Dallas at that time from the FBI.
Mr. STERN. Now, referring to the visit of Ambassador Stevenson in
October, I believe----
Mr. BOUCK. Yes.
Mr. STERN. Was anything done at the time of that visit in October to
identify the people who were participating in the obstreperous conduct
that occurred?