Senator COOPER. To determine whether they are a risk to become Soviet
or Communist espionage agents or in fact become dangerous?
Mr. HOOVER. We have taken steps to plug that gap.
Prior to the assassination of the President, a defector, before he came
back was always cleared for return by a representative of the State
Department or the military abroad. When he came back we immediately
interviewed him if he was a civilian. It had to be done promptly to
determine whether he could be a potential intelligence agent.
Now, in December of last year, following the assassination, we expanded
the criteria of what should be furnished to the Secret Service, and all
defectors automatically go on the list to be furnished to the Secret
Service.
There are 36 defectors that we know of in this country who have been
under investigation. Some of those men may have changed their views
sincerely. Some of them may not have. But as a matter of general
precaution, as a result of the Oswald situation, we are seeing that all
go to the Secret Service.
Mr. DULLES. That includes military defectors, does it not?
Mr. HOOVER. Military defectors and defectors from any private agency,
after they return to the U.S. and become civilians. Some have defected
to China, to the satellite nations and to Russia.
Senator COOPER. Just one other question, because I have to go.
In the course of this investigation, as you know so well, there
have been a number identified who were very close, at least to Mrs.
Oswald, and a few, I can't say that were close to Oswald yet they had
association with him, such as the man who drove him back and forth,
Mrs. Paine, with whom Mrs. Oswald lived, and others, has there been
any credible, I won't say credible because if you had you would have
presented it to us in your report, has there been any claims by persons
that these people are in any way related to the Communist Party?
Mr. HOOVER. We have had no credible evidence that they have been
related to the Communist Party in this country.
Now, as to Mrs. Oswald, the wife of Oswald, there is no way of knowing
whether she belonged to the Russian Communist Party in Russia. She
is a rather intelligent woman, and notwithstanding that you have to
talk with her through an interpreter, we have had no indication of her
association with Communists in this country, nor have any of her close
friends or relatives.
As to his mother, we found no indication she is associated or closely
associated with the Communists. She is the only one of the group that
we have come in contact with that I would say is somewhat emotionally
unstable. Our agents have interviewed her. She sometimes gets very
angry and she won't answer questions. As to the rest of the group who
had been friends of his, or worked with him in the Texas School Book
Depository, none of them have indicated any Communist associations of
any kind.
Senator COOPER. Thank you.
Mr. HOOVER. Thank you.
Mr. RANKIN. Mr. Hoover, I hand you Exhibit 863 and ask you to examine
that and state whether or not that is the letter that you referred
to in which you answered questions of the Commission concerning the
National Enquirer magazine or newspaper?
Mr. HOOVER. This letter of May 8 addressed to the Commission is
the letter that dealt with our interview with Chief Curry and was
predicated upon the article which appeared in the National Enquirer of
May 17, 1964.
Mr. RANKIN. I ask you if you would care to add anything to that letter
except what you have already testified to?
Mr. HOOVER. No; I have nothing to add to that. Chief Curry was very
specific, I am told by my agent in charge at Dallas, that this article
is an absolute lie; that none of these things set forth in the article
occurred; that he received no phone call or any request of any kind
oral or by phone or in writing from the Department of Justice or from
the FBI. As I stated earlier, the report from the Department of Justice
indicated that they made no request.
Mr. RANKIN. Mr. Chairman, I offer in evidence Exhibit 863, being the
letter just referred to.
The CHAIRMAN. It may be admitted.
(The document referred to was marked Commission Exhibit No. 863 for
identification and received in evidence.)
Mr. RANKIN. Mr. Hoover, is Exhibit 837 the article that you referred to
in the National Enquirer?
Mr. HOOVER. Yes; that is the one.
Mr. RANKIN. I call your attention to Exhibit 836 and ask you if that
is the letter that you referred to which describes the criteria in the
handling of the security of the President that you have described in
your testimony.
Mr. HOOVER. This is the letter. It sets forth the criteria which were
adopted, originally about 1942 and later incorporated in the manual
of instructions in 1954. It also includes the amended instructions to
our field offices, prepared in December of 1963, which extended the
criteria.
Mr. RANKIN. Does that Exhibit correctly set forth the information you
had in regard to those matters?
Mr. HOOVER. It does.
Mr. RANKIN. Do you care to add anything to it?
Mr. HOOVER. No; I have nothing to add to it at all.
Mr. RANKIN. Now, in light of what happened. Mr. Hoover, I think the
Commission would desire to have your comments or whatever you care
to tell them, concerning the reasons why you did not furnish the
information you had concerning Lee Harvey Oswald to the Secret Service
prior to the time of the President's assassination.
Mr. HOOVER. Well, I have gone into that very thoroughly because that
was obviously one of the questions that I had in my mind when the
tragedy occurred in Dallas.
In going back over the record, and I have read each one of the reports
dealing with that and the reports of Mr. Hosty who had dealt with
the Oswald situation largely in Dallas, we had the matter that I
have previously referred to, the report of the State Department that
indicated this man was a thoroughly safe risk, he had changed his
views, he was a loyal man now and had seen the light of day, so to
speak.
How intensive or how extensive that interview in Moscow was, I don't
know. But, nevertheless, it was in a State Department document that was
furnished to us.
Now, we interviewed Oswald a few days after he arrived. We did not
interview him on arrival at the port of entry because that is always
undesirable by reason of the fact it is heavily covered by press, and
any relatives generally are there, so we prefer to do it after the man
has settled down for two or three days and become composed. We do it
in the privacy of our office or wherever he may be, or in his own home
or apartment. We interviewed him twice in regard to that angle that we
were looking for. We had no indication at this time of anything other
than his so-called Marxist leanings, Marxist beliefs.
We wanted to know whether he had been recruited by the Soviet
government as an intelligence agent, which is a frequent and constant
practice. There is not a year goes by but that individuals and groups
of individuals, sometimes on these cultural exchanges, go through
Russia and recruits are enlisted by the Russian intelligence, usually
through blackmail. The individual is threatened that if he doesn't come
back to this country and work for them they will expose the fact that
he is a homosexual or a degenerate or has been indiscrete.
Pictures are usually taken of individuals who become implicated in that
sort of thing, so the individual is really desperate. Such blackmail
has occurred year after year for some time.
In Oswald's case we had no suspicion that any pressure like that had
been brought to bear on him because he had gone voluntarily and had
obviously wanted to live in Russia and had married a Russian woman.
After those interviews had been completed, the next incident was the
difficulty he had at New Orleans. We were concerned there as to whether
he was functioning officially for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee
which was financed and supported by Castro and Castro's government, and
if he was, where he obtained money and with whom he had dealt.
He apparently had the leaflets printed himself on plain ordinary paper.
There was no reason for us, then, to have any suspicion that he had any
element of danger in him.
However, we did not ignore or forget the fact that he was still in the
country. We kept track of him when he went from New Orleans to Dallas,
and that was one of the reasons why Hosty went to the home of Mrs.
Paine. She told us where Oswald was working, at the Texas book house.
Hosty gave her his telephone number and his name so that if there was
any information or any contact she wanted to make she could phone him
at the Dallas office.
Mrs. Oswald, the wife, took down the license number of Hosty's car
which was incorrect only in one digit. The name, the telephone number,
and the automobile license were later found in Oswald's memorandum book.
However, that in itself was not significant because many times we will
go to see a person and tell him now, "If you think of anything you want
to tell us or you have any information you want to give us, here are my
name and address, telephone number, and call me," and that is what was
done with Mrs. Paine because Hosty wasn't there at the time. He was at
work.
Incidentally, those items in Oswald's notebook requiring investigative
attention were first set out in an investigative report of our Dallas
Office dated December 23, 1963. This report was not prepared for this
Commission but rather for investigative purposes of the FBI and,
therefore, the information concerning Hosty's name, telephone number
and license number was not included in the report as the circumstances
under which Hosty's name, et cetera, appeared in Oswald's notebook were
fully known to the FBI.
After our investigative report of December 23, 1963, was furnished to
the Commission, we noted that Agent Hosty's name did not appear in the
report. In order that there would be a complete reporting of all items
in Oswald's notebook, this information was incorporated in another
investigative report of our Dallas Office, dated February 11, 1964.
Both of the above-mentioned reports were furnished to the Commission
prior to any inquiry concerning this matter by the President's
Commission.
There was nothing up to the time of the assassination that gave any
indication that this man was a dangerous character who might do harm to
the President or to the Vice President. Up to that time, as has been
indicated.
Mr. RANKIN. Mr. Hoover, may I interrupt, you said Hosty was not there
at the time, he was at work--did you mean Mr. Oswald?
Mr. HOOVER. That was my mistake. I meant Mr. Oswald. Hosty talked with
Mrs. Paine and Mrs. Oswald. Mrs. Paine speaks Russian and she could
interpret for her.
Oswald was at the Texas Book Co., and then, as I say, Hosty left his
telephone number and name, and Mrs. Oswald for some reason took down
the license number. I don't know whether she was convinced this was an
agent of the FBI, or why she did it.
But, anyway, that was in the book that was later found, and which
contained many other things that Oswald had entered in the book.
Now, as I say, up to that time, there had been no information that
would have warranted our reporting him as a potential danger or hazard
to the security or the safety of the President or the Vice President,
so his name was not furnished at the time to Secret Service.
Under the new criteria which we have now put into force and effect,
it would have been furnished because we now include all defectors. As
to the original criteria, which we felt were sound and sufficient and
which we felt no one, not even the most extreme civil rights proponent
could take exception to, we limited the furnishing of names to S.S.
to persons potentially dangerous to the physical well being of the
President. We included emotionally unstable people who had threatened
the President or Vice President.
At my office during the course of a week there are sometimes three or
four callers who have to be taken to a Hospital because of their mental
condition. They claim they are being persecuted by radio beams and they
want to see me or the President to have those beams stopped. Now you
never know what tangent they are going to take. If such a person is
living in some part of the country where the President may be going his
name would be furnished to the Secret Service.
One car last year, I think, crashed through the gates of the White
House; the person driving wanted to see the President. The guard
wouldn't let him in and so the car crashed through and got within 20
feet of the first door. The guards, by that time, had their revolvers
out and took him into custody.
Last year a gentleman drove all the way from Arizona to see me. He
drove up the marble steps of the Department of Justice, and by that
time the guards had come out and took him into custody. I think he was
incarcerated in Arizona.
People of this type are among those we would have furnished to the
Secret Service. They have the potential to harm somebody.
We get names from members of Congress, of people who come to the
Capitol and try to threaten them or harass them. They let us know about
it, and we make the investigation or advise the police. If we can get
the family to have the person put into an institution, we try to do so.
If they don't, we may take steps to have him incarcerated through other
legal means.
Mr. DULLES. How many names, Mr. Director, in general, could the Secret
Service process? Aren't their facilities limited as to dealing with
vast numbers of names because of their limited personnel?
Mr. HOOVER. I think they are extremely limited. The Secret Service is a
very small organization and that is why we are fortifying them, so to
speak, or supplementing them by assigning agents of our Bureau which
is, of course, quite a burden on us. Our agents are assigned about 24
to 25 cases per agent and cover such involved matters as bankruptcy and
antitrust cases.
Now, the Secret Service has a very small group and I would estimate
that the names we have sent over number some 5,000. I would guess there
are about another 4,000 that will go over in the next month to them.
Frankly, I don't see how they can go out and recheck those names. We
keep the records up to date; if additional information comes in on
these names we furnish it to the Secret Service. They will have to call
upon the local authorities, unless the Secret Service force is enlarged
considerably so that they can handle it entirely on their own. I think
the Secret Service is entirely too small a force today to handle the
duties that they are handling. The great crowds that are at the White
House all the time, around the gates, that go to church where the
President goes, all of those things, of course, have to be checked over
by them. They always check in advance and just recently, a few Sundays
ago, they found some individuals in the basement of St. Mark's church
in Washington, where he was going to attend on Sunday morning. His
arrival was held up until they could ascertain who they were. They were
deaf mutes whose identity had not been cleared with the Secret Service.
Now, the Presidential party was delayed about 5 or 10 minutes in
reaching the church by reason of the radio call to the White House to
hold it up.
We are giving to Secret Service more and more names. The total, in
addition to the names they already had, will reach 10,000. I don't see
how they are going to be able to handle the situation as they would
want to handle it. They have to depend upon local police organizations.
Many local police departments are capable and efficient; some are
not. Many have good judgment and some have not. Wherever you have a
police department of 10,000, 15,000, 20,000 men you are bound to find
a few who will just barge in and do something which better judgment
would dictate should not be done, as in the incident which occurred in
the Midwest where they placed people practically under house arrest.
I think it was very bad judgment and should not have been done but
the Secret Service, of course, turned the names over to the local
authorities, and the local authorities do what they think is right.
Now, I guess their attitude with all justice to them is. "Well, we
will resolve the risk in our favor. If we keep these people under
surveillance and keep them in the house until the President gets out
of town nothing can happen from them." That is what you would call
totalitarian security. I don't think you can have that kind of security
in this country without having a great wave of criticism against it.
There is a great tendency for people to expect the intelligence forces
and the law enforcement agencies to be able to go out and arrest
people and bring them in and hold them endlessly and talk to them. We
can't arrest a person, without probable cause, or unless he commits a
crime in our presence. We have to arraign him promptly and if not done
promptly, the confession that he may have made generally cannot be used
against him.
Just as a collateral matter we faced that problem in California in the
case of the kidnapping of Frank Sinatra, Jr. One of the kidnappers we
arrested near San Diego confessed but we didn't arraign him because
the other kidnappers would have left California and it would have been
difficult to find them. However, the next day after arraignment he made
changes in the confession and signed it so the court held that it was
admissible.
The Secret Service, of course, is faced with the same problem. They
just can't arrest people because they may not like their looks. They
have to have facts justifying detention but the public conception is
that you have a full right to go out and do these things. We have
stressed in the FBI that there must be full compliance with the laws of
this country and with the decisions of the Supreme Court. That is the
law of the country. Now, whether a person likes it or not and there are
some groups that are very violent against the decisions of the court
while others are very much in favor of them, it is not for the FBI to
take sides. We have a job to do and we do it under the rulings of the
courts and we have been able to do it effectively.
I know when the ruling came down on the prompt arraignment, there
was great shouting and some strong editorials claiming that it was
going to wreck law enforcement. It hasn't wrecked us. It has made it
more difficult but I think we have to face up to the fact that law
enforcement in a free country must abide by the laws of that country
irrespective of how difficult it is. Some persons talk about putting
handcuffs on the law enforcement officers and taking them off the
criminals. That is a nice catch phrase to use in a speech or article
but operating within the law has not interfered with our work.
Mr. RANKIN. Mr. Hoover, I ask you about Exhibit 825 which is first a
letter and then encloses certain affidavits of your agents.
Mr. HOOVER. Yes, sir.
Mr. RANKIN. You are familiar with that?
Mr. HOOVER. I am familiar with that. I read all of that and signed it.
Mr. RANKIN. You know those are the affidavits in regard to whether Lee
Harvey Oswald was an agent or connected in anyway with the Bureau that
you have just testified to?
Mr. HOOVER. That is correct; and the affidavits of all agents, who had
any contact with him.
Mr. RANKIN. I call your attention to Exhibits 864 and 865, and ask you
if you have seen those before or, you have seen the original of 864 and
865 is a photostatic copy of your letter to us in answer to 864, is
that correct?
Mr. HOOVER. That is correct; yes. I recall very distinctly.
Mr. RANKIN. Do you recall those letters involved an inquiry as to any
connections of Lee Harvey Oswald with Communists or any criminal groups
or others that might be conspiratorial?
Mr. HOOVER. That is correct; and my letter of April 30 states the facts
as they are in our files.
Mr. RANKIN. Mr. Chairman, we offer in evidence Exhibits 864 and 865.
The CHAIRMAN. They may be admitted.
(Commission Exhibit Nos. 864 and 865 were marked for identification and
received in evidence.)
Mr. RANKIN. Mr. Hoover, do you have any suggestions that you would
like to tell the Commission about of your ideas that might improve
the security of the President, and you might comment upon information
the Commission has received. You have a special appropriation that is
related to that area.