Mr. DECKER. Moore, his body is responsible to you. His body is
responsible to you.
Mr. RUBY. Bill, I am not accomplishing anything if they are here, and
Joe Tonahill is here. You asked me anybody I wanted out.
Mr. DECKER. Jack, this is your attorney. That is your lawyer.
Mr. RUBY. He is not my lawyer.
(Sheriff Decker and law enforcement officers left room.)
Gentleman, if you want to hear any further testimony, you will have to
get me to Washington soon, because it has something to do with you,
Chief Warren.
Do I sound sober enough to tell you this?
Chief Justice WARREN. Yes; go right ahead.
Mr. RUBY. I want to tell the truth, and I can't tell it here. I can't
tell it here. Does that make sense to you?
Chief Justice WARREN. Well, let's not talk about sense. But I really
can't see why you can't tell this Commission.
Mr. RUBY. What is your name?
Mr. BALL. Joe Ball.
Chief Justice WARREN. Mr. Joe Ball. He is an attorney from Los Angeles
who has been working for me.
Mr. RUBY. Do you know Belli too?
Mr. BALL. I know of him.
Mr. RUBY. Ball was working with him. He knows Belli. You know Melvin
Belli?
Mr. BALL. I am not acquainted with him.
Chief Justice WARREN. No association of any kind.
Mr. BALL. We practice in different cities.
Chief Justice WARREN. Five hundred miles away. Mr. Ball practices
in Long Beach, and Mr. Belli practices in San Francisco. There is
positively no connection between anybody in this room, as far as I
know, with Mr. Belli. I can assure you of that.
Mr. RUBY. Where do you stand, Moore?
Mr. MOORE. Well, I am assigned to the Commission, Jack.
Mr. RUBY. The President assigned you?
Mr. MOORE. No; my chief did. And I am not involved in the
investigation. I am more of a security officer.
Mr. RUBY. Boys, I am in a tough spot, I tell you that.
Mr. MOORE. You recall when I talked to you, there were certain things
I asked you not to tell me at the time, for certain reasons, that
you were probably going to trial at that time, and I respected your
position on that and asked you not to tell me certain things.
Mr. RUBY. But this isn't the place for me to tell what I want to tell.
Mr. MOORE. The Commission is looking into the entire matter, and you
are part of it, should be.
Mr. RUBY. Chief Warren, your life is in danger in this city, do you
know that?
Chief Justice WARREN. No; I don't know that. If that is the thing that
you don't want to talk about, you can tell me, if you wish, when this
is all over, just between you and me.
Mr. RUBY. No; I would like to talk to you in private.
Chief Justice WARREN. You may do that when you finish your story. You
may tell me that phase of it.
Mr. RUBY. I bet you haven't had a witness like me in your whole
investigation, is that correct?
Chief Justice WARREN. There are many witnesses whose memory has not
been as good as yours. I tell you that, honestly.
Mr. RUBY. My reluctance to talk--you haven't had any witness in telling
the story, in finding so many problems?
Chief Justice WARREN. You have a greater problem than any witness we
have had.
Mr. RUBY. I have a lot of reasons for having those problems.
Chief Justice WARREN. I know that, and we want to respect your rights,
whatever they may be. And I only want to hear what you are willing to
tell us, because I realize that you still have a great problem before
you, and I am not trying to press you.
I came here because I thought you wanted to tell us the story, and I
think the story should be told for the public, and it will eventually
be made public. If you want to do that, you are entitled to do that,
and if you want to have it verified as the thing can be verified by a
polygraph test, you may have that, too.
I will undertake to do that for you, but at all events we must first
have the story that we are going to check it against.
Mr. RUBY. When are you going back to Washington?
Chief Justice WARREN. I am going back very shortly after we finish this
hearing--I am going to have some lunch.
Mr. RUBY. Can I make a statement?
Chief Justice WARREN. Yes.
Mr. RUBY. If you request me to go back to Washington with you right
now, that couldn't be done, could it?
Chief Justice WARREN. No; it could not be done. It could not be done.
There are a good many things involved in that, Mr. Ruby.
Mr. RUBY. What are they?
Chief Justice WARREN. Well, the public attention that it would attract,
and the people who would be around. We have no place there for you to
be safe when we take you out, and we are not law enforcement officers,
and it isn't our responsibility to go into anything of that kind.
And certainly it couldn't be done on a moment's notice this way.
Mr. RUBY. Well, from what I read in the paper, they made certain
precautions for you coming here, but you got here.
Chief Justice WARREN. There are no precautions taken at all.
Mr. RUBY. There were some remarks in the paper about some crackpots.
Chief Justice WARREN. I don't believe everything I read in the paper.
Mr. MOORE. In that respect, the Chief Justice is in public life. People
in public life are well aware they don't please everyone, and they get
these threats.
Incidentally, if it is the part about George Senator talking about the
Earl Warren Society, the Chief Justice is aware of that phase, and
I am sure he would like to hear anything that you have to say if it
affects the security.
Chief Justice WARREN. Before you finish the rest of your statement, may
I ask you this question, and this is one of the questions we came here
to ask you.
Did you know Lee Harvey Oswald prior to this shooting?
Mr. RUBY. That is why I want to take the lie detector test. Just saying
no isn't sufficient.
Chief Justice WARREN. I will afford you that opportunity.
Mr. RUBY. All right.
Chief Justice WARREN. I will afford you that opportunity. You can't do
both of them at one time.
Mr. RUBY. Gentlemen, my life is in danger here. Not with my guilty plea
of execution.
Do I sound sober enough to you as I say this?
Chief Justice WARREN. You do. You sound entirely sober.
Mr. RUBY. From the moment I started my testimony, have I sounded as
though, with the exception of becoming emotional, have I sounded as
though I made sense, what I was speaking about?
Chief Justice WARREN. You have indeed. I understood everything you have
said. If I haven't, it is my fault.
Mr. RUBY. Then I follow this up. I may not live tomorrow to give any
further testimony. The reason why I add this to this, since you assure
me that I have been speaking sense by then, I might be speaking sense
by following what I have said, and the only thing I want to get out
to the public, and I can't say it here, is with authenticity, with
sincerity of the truth of everything and why my act was committed, but
it can't be said here.
It can be said, it's got to be said amongst people of the highest
authority that would give me the benefit of doubt. And following that,
immediately give me the lie detector test after I do make the statement.
Chairman Warren, if you felt that your life was in danger at the
moment, how would you feel? Wouldn't you be reluctant to go on
speaking, even though you request me to do so?
Chief Justice WARREN. I think I might have some reluctance if I was in
your position, yes; I think I would. I think I would figure it out very
carefully as to whether it would endanger me or not.
If you think that anything that I am doing or anything that I am asking
you is endangering you in any way, shape, or form, I want you to feel
absolutely free to say that the interview is over.
Mr. RUBY. What happens then? I didn't accomplish anything.
Chief Justice WARREN. No; nothing has been accomplished.
Mr. RUBY. Well, then you won't follow up with anything further?
Chief Justice WARREN. There wouldn't be anything to follow up if you
hadn't completed your statement.
Mr. RUBY. You said you have the power to do what you want to do, is
that correct?
Chief Justice WARREN. Exactly.
Mr. RUBY. Without any limitations?
Chief Justice WARREN. Within the purview of the Executive order which
established the Commission. We have the right to take testimony of
anyone we want in this whole situation, and we have the right, if we so
choose to do it, to verify that statement in any way that we wish to do
it.
Mr. RUBY. But you don't have a right to take a prisoner back with you
when you want to?
Chief Justice WARREN. No; we have the power to subpena witnesses to
Washington if we want to do it, but we have taken the testimony of
200 or 300 people, I would imagine, here in Dallas without going to
Washington.
Mr. RUBY. Yes; but those people aren't Jack Ruby.
Chief Justice WARREN. No; they weren't.
Mr. RUBY. They weren't.
Chief Justice WARREN. Now I want you to feel that we are not here to
take any advantage of you, because I know that you are in a delicate
position, and unless you had indicated not only through your lawyers
but also through your sister, who wrote a letter addressed either
to me or to Mr. Rankin saying that you wanted to testify before the
Commission, unless she had told us that, I wouldn't have bothered you.
Because I know you do have this case that is not yet finished, and I
wouldn't jeopardize your position by trying to insist that you testify.
So I want you to feel that you are free to refrain from testifying any
time you wish.
But I will also be frank with you and say that I don't think it would
be to your advantage to tell us as much as you have and then to stop
and not tell us the rest. I can't see what advantage that would give
you.
Mr. RUBY. The thing is this, that with your power that you have, Chief
Justice Warren, and all these gentlemen, too much time has gone by for
me to give you any benefit of what I may say now.
Chief Justice WARREN. No; that isn't a fact, because until we make our
findings for the Commission, and until we make our report on the case,
it is not too late.
And there are other witnesses we have who are yet to be examined. So
from our standpoint, it is timely. We are not handicapped at all by the
lateness of your examination.
Mr. RUBY. Well, it is too tragic to talk about.
Mr. RANKIN. Isn't it true that we waited until very late in our
proceedings to talk to Mrs. Kennedy?
Chief Justice WARREN. Yes; I might say to you that we didn't take Mrs.
Kennedy's statement until day before yesterday. Mr. Rankin and I took
her testimony then.
So we are not treating you different from any other witness.
Mr. RUBY. I tell you, gentlemen, my whole family is in jeopardy. My
sisters, as to their lives.
Chief Justice WARREN. Yes?
Mr. RUBY. Naturally, I am a foregone conclusion. My sisters Eva,
Eileen, and Mary, I lost my sisters.
My brothers Sam, Earl, Hyman, and myself naturally--my in-laws, Harold
Kaminsky, Marge Ruby, the wife of Earl, and Phyllis, the wife of Sam
Ruby, they are in jeopardy of loss of their lives. Yet they have, just
because they are blood related to myself--does that sound serious
enough to you, Chief Justice Warren?
Chief Justice WARREN. Nothing could be more serious, if that is the
fact. But your sister, I don't know whether it was your sister Eva or
your other sister----
Mr. RUBY. Eileen wrote you a letter.
Chief Justice WARREN. Wrote the letter to me and told us that you would
like to testify, and that is one of the reasons that we came down here.
Mr. RUBY. But unfortunately, when did you get the letter, Chief Justice
Warren?
Chief Justice WARREN. It was a long time ago, I admit. I think it was,
let's see, roughly between 2 and 3 months ago.
Mr. RUBY. Yes.
Chief Justice WARREN. I think it was; yes.
Mr. RUBY. At that time when you first got the letter and I was begging
Joe Tonahill and the other lawyers to know the truth about me, certain
things that are happening now wouldn't be happening at this particular
time.
Chief Justice WARREN. Yes?
Mr. RUBY. Because then they would have known the truth about Jack Ruby
and his emotional breakdown.
Chief Justice WARREN. Yes?
Mr. RUBY. Of why that Sunday morning--that thought never entered my
mind prior to that Sunday morning when I took it upon myself to try to
be a martyr or some screwball, you might say.
But I felt very emotional and very carried away for Mrs. Kennedy, that
with all the strife she had gone through--I had been following it
pretty well--that someone owed it to our beloved President that she
shouldn't be expected to come back to face trial of this heinous crime.
And I have never had the chance to tell that, to back it up, to prove
it.
Consequently, right at this moment I am being victimized as a part of a
plot in the world's worst tragedy and crime at this moment.
Months back had I been given a chance--I take that back. Sometime back
a police officer of the Dallas Police Department wanted to know how
I got into the building. And I don't know whether I requested a lie
detector test or not, but my attorney wasn't available.
When you are a defendant in the case, you say "speak to your attorney,"
you know. But that was a different time. It was after the trial,
whenever it happened.
At this moment, Lee Harvey Oswald isn't guilty of committing the crime
of assassinating President Kennedy. Jack Ruby is.
How can I fight that, Chief Justice Warren?
Chief Justice WARREN. Well now, I want to say, Mr. Ruby, that as far as
this Commission is concerned, there is no implication of that in what
we are doing.