Senator COOPER. Will you raise your hand?
Do you solemnly swear the testimony you are about to give this
Commission will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth, so help you God?
Mr. WADE. I do.
Senator COOPER. You are informed about the purposes of this
investigation.
Mr. WADE. I know it, generally.
Senator COOPER. Do you desire a lawyer?
Mr. WADE. No, sir.
Senator COOPER. Thank you very much.
Mr. RANKIN. Mr. Wade, we are going to ask you generally about the time
of Mr. Oswald's, Lee Harvey Oswald's, arrest, what you had to do in
connection with the entire matter, and the press being there at the
jail, and the scene and seeing what happened there, and the various
things in regard to Mr. Dean and other witnesses in connection with the
matter.
Will you state your name?
Mr. WADE. Henry Wade.
Mr. RANKIN. Where do you live?
Mr. WADE. I am district attorney, or criminal district attorney of
Dallas, Tex.; my home is in Dallas.
Mr. RANKIN. Will you tell us briefly your qualifications for your
position and profession?
Mr. WADE. Well, I am a graduate of the University of Texas Law School,
1938, with highest honors. I was county attorney at Rock Wall, Tex.,
another county for 1 year. I resigned on December 4, 1939, and became
a special agent of the FBI. As a special agent of the FBI--I was there
until August of 1943, these were rough months--when I resigned and
became an apprentice seaman in the Navy.
Later I became a lieutenant, junior grade, served in the Pacific 2
years, about 2 years.
Then after the war I got out of the Navy on the 6th of February 1946,
ran for district attorney in Dallas and was not elected at that
time. I hadn't ever lived in Dallas prior to that. You see there was
another county. I was assistant district attorney and then was Federal
prosecutor from January 1, 1947, up until December 1949, when I
resigned and ran for district attorney.
I was elected district attorney in 1950 and have been criminal district
attorney of Dallas County since January 1, 1951.
Mr. RANKIN. Have you handled many of the prosecutions of that county
since that time?
Mr. WADE. Well, my office or I have handled all of them since that
time. I have had quite a bit of experience myself. I have a staff of
41 lawyers and, of course, I don't try all the cases but I have tried
quite a few, I would say 40, 50 anyhow since I have been district
attorney.
Mr. RANKIN. Do you have any particular policy about which cases you
would try generally?
Mr. WADE. Well, it varies according to who my first assistant has been.
It is varied. If I have a first assistant who likes to try cases, I
usually let him try a lot and I do the administrative. At the present
time I have a very fine administrative assistant, Jim Bowie, whom you
met and I try a few more cases.
I guess I have tried four in the last year probably but two to five a
year are about all the cases I try myself personally.
Mr. RANKIN. Do you have any policy about capital cases as to whether
you should try them or somebody else?
Mr. WADE. I don't try all of them. I try all the cases that are very
aggravated and receive probably some publicity to some extent, and
I don't try all the capital cases. I think we have had quite a few
death penalties but I don't imagine I have been in over half of them,
probably half of them.
Mr. RANKIN. Do you remember where you were at the time you learned of
the assassination of President Kennedy?
Mr. WADE. Well, they were having a party for President Kennedy at
Market Hall and I was out at Market Hall waiting for the President to
arrive.
Mr. RANKIN. How did you learn about the assassination?
Mr. WADE. Well, one of the reporters for one of the newspapers told
me there had been a shooting or something, of course, one of those
things we were getting all kinds of rumors spreading through a crowd
of 3,000-5,000 people, and then they got the radio on and the first
report was they had killed two Secret Service agents, that was on the
radio, and then the press all came running in there and then ran out,
no one knew for sure what was going on until finally they announced
that President had been shot and from the rostrum there the chairman of
the----
Mr. DULLES. Who was the chairman of that meeting, do you recall?
Mr. WADE. Eric Johnson. Eric Johnson.
Mr. RANKIN. Was he mayor then?
Mr. WADE. No; he wasn't mayor, he was the president of Texas Industries
and I believe was president of the Dallas Chamber of Commerce. I may
have been wrong on that but he has been president of the chamber
of commerce. He is president of Texas Industries, and this is not
particularly important but he is--that was sort of a bipartisan deal,
in that he is one of the leading Republicans of Dallas and he was
chairman of the meeting.
Mr. RANKIN. What did you do after you heard of the assassination?
Mr. WADE. Well, the first thing, we were set up in a bus to go from
there to Austin to another party that night for President Kennedy, a
group of us, 30 or 40. We got on a bus and went. I went back to the
office and sent my wife home, my wife was with me.
And the first thing that I did was go check the law to see whether it
was a Federal offense or mine. I thought it was a Federal offense when
I first heard about it. We checked the law, and were satisfied that was
no serious Federal offense, or not a capital case, anyhow.
There might be some lesser offense. I talked to the U.S. attorney.
Mr. RANKIN. Who was that?
Mr. WADE. Barefoot Sanders and he was in agreement it was going to be
our case rather than his and he had been doing the same thing.
Mr. RANKIN. Where did you talk to him?
Mr. WADE. On the telephone as I recall, in his office from my office. I
am not even sure I talked with him, somebody from my office talked to
him, because I think you can realize things were a little confused and
that took us, say, until 3:30 or 4.
I let everybody in the office go home, but some of my key personnel who
stayed there. I let the girls or told them they could go home, because
they did close all the offices down there. The next thing I did--do you
want me to tell you?
Mr. RANKIN. Yes.
Mr. WADE. I will tell you what I can.
The next thing I did was to go by the sheriff's office who is next door
to me and talked to Decker, who is the sheriff. Bill Decker, and they
were interviewing witnesses who were on the streets at the time, and I
asked him and he said they have got a good prospect.
This must have been 3 o'clock roughly.
Mr. RANKIN. The witnesses that were on the street near the Depository
Building?
Mr. WADE. Yes, sir; and in the building, I am not sure who they were,
they had two court reporters there taking statements.
Mr. RANKIN. Did they tell you anything about a suspect at that point?
Mr. WADE. The Sheriff told me, he said, "Don't say nothing about it,
but they have got a good suspect," talking about the Dallas Police.
He didn't have him there. John Connally, you know, was shot also--and
he was, he used to be a roommate of mine in the Navy and we were good
friends, and are now--and the first thing I did then was went out to
the hospital to see how he was getting along.
I must have stayed out there until about 5 o'clock, and in case you all
don't know or understand one thing, it has never been my policy to make
any investigations out of my office of murders or anything else for
that matter. We leave that entirely to the police agency.
Mr. RANKIN. Do you have a reason for that?
Mr. WADE. That is the way it is set up down there. We have more than we
can do actually in trying the cases. The only time we investigate them
is after they are filed on, indicted, and then we have investigators
who get them ready for trial and then lawyers.
Mr. DULLES. Have you any personnel for that?
Mr. WADE. No, sir; I have in my office 11 investigators but that is
just 1 for each court, and they primarily, or at least about all they
do is line up the witnesses for trial and help with jury picking and
things of that kind.
Mr. RANKIN. At this point that you are describing, had you learned of
any arrest?
Mr. WADE. No, sir; Mr. Decker says they have a good suspect. He said
that sometime around 3 o'clock. You see, I didn't have the benefit of
all that was on the air. I didn't even know Oswald had been arrested at
this time. As a matter of fact, I didn't know it at 5 o'clock when I
left the hospital.
When I left the hospital, I went home, watched television a while, had
dinner, and a couple, some friends of ours came over there. They were
going to Austin with us on the bus, and we had dinner and started out
somewhere but I said we had better go by the police station.
At that time they kept announcing they had Oswald or I believe they
named a name.
Mr. RANKIN. Had you learned about the Tippit murder yet?
Mr. WADE. Yes, sir; of course, it had been on the air that Tippit had
been killed.
I went by the Dallas police, just to let us see what was kind of going
on.
Mr. RANKIN. Was that unusual for you to do that?
Mr. WADE. It was unusual because I hadn't been in the Dallas Police
Department, I won't be there on the average of once a year actually, I
mean on anything. I went by there and I went to Chief Curry's office.
Mr. RANKIN. How did you happen to do that this time?
Mr. WADE. Of course, this is not really, this was not an ordinary case,
this was a little bit different, and I mostly wanted to know how he was
coming along on the investigation is the main reason I went by.
As I went in, and this is roughly 6:30, 7 at night--I said we ate
dinner at home, I believe the couple were out in the car with my wife
were waiting for me to go to dinner with them.
Mr. DULLES. Did you go down to the airfield when President Johnson left?
Mr. WADE. No, sir; no, sir.
Mr. DULLES. You did not.
Mr. WADE. I didn't go anywhere but to my office, then to Parkland
Hospital and then home, and then I was there a while and then I went by
the police station, mostly to see how they were coming along. Papers
were announcing, the radios, I mean, were announcing, television, that
they had a suspect and was even telling them what some of the evidence
was against him.
Mr. RANKIN. About what time was this at the police station?
Mr. WADE. I would say around 7 o'clock. This can vary 30 minutes either
way.
Mr. RANKIN. Who did you see there?
Mr. WADE. Chief Curry.
Mr. RANKIN. Did you talk to him?
Mr. WADE. I talked to him.
Mr. RANKIN. What did you say to him and what did he say to you?
Mr. WADE. Well, it is hard to remember. I know the first thing he did
was pull out a memorandum that you all were interested in, signed by
Jack Revill, and showed it to me and I read it, and said, "What do you
think about that?"