Senator COOPER. Start out with the first one, his name.
Mr. WADE. If anybody would mention the lawyer's name, I know him--he
has run for the legislature a number of times.
Senator COOPER. A lawyer who lives in Dallas?
Mr. WADE. A lawyer in Dallas, and he has--we have, he made a four-page
affidavit about this thing, and mailed it to J. Edgar Hoover.
Senator COOPER. You can supply his name.
Mr. WADE. We can supply his name and I would supply you with copies of
his affidavit which I think you have.
Don't you have it, isn't that up here?
Senator COOPER. Without going into that in a moment, you can refresh
your recollection and supply to the Commission the name of this lawyer.
Mr. WADE. Yes, sir.
Senator COOPER. Had he talked to you?
Mr. WADE. Yes, sir.
Senator COOPER. What did he say? Did he make a written statement to you
or just talk to you?
Mr. WADE. He handed me a written statement. He said, "The day after
this happened I made this," it was a copy of a written statement, he
said, "I sent this to J. Edgar Hoover in Washington." I am talking to
him, we will say, the 10th to the 20th of February, the first time I
talked with him.
He said, "I sent this to the FBI, to J. Edgar Hoover, special delivery
air mail within a day or two after the assassination," and he left that
and as far as I know I have got a copy of that, he left it with me.
He talked to me at length there at my house, just us, and I would say
at 11 o'clock at night, it was on a Sunday night I know, but what
Sunday night I don't know. It was on a Sunday night in February. I read
that statement over. It is a rather startling thing. It didn't ring
true to me. It all deals with a conversation between Oswald and Ruby
about killing John Connally, the Governor of Texas, over, he says, they
can't get syndicated crime in Texas without they kill the Governor.
I know enough about the situation, the Governor has practically nothing
to do with syndicated crime. It has to be on a local, your district
attorney and your police are the ones on the firing line on that, and
they discussed at length killing him, how much they are going to pay
him, "He wants five thousand, I believe or half of it now, and half of
it when it is done."
Don't you have this memorandum?
Mr. RANKIN. Yes.
Mr. WADE. There is no use of me trying to give it to you.
Senator COOPER. I was just personally trying to get your recollection
about it.
Mr. WADE. He told me this is what happened, and I said, "I can't put
you on the stand without I am satisfied you are telling the truth
because," I said, "We have got a good case here, and if they prove we
are putting a lying witness on the stand, we might hurt us," and I
said, "The only thing I know to do I won't put you on the stand but to
take a polygraph to see if you are telling the truth or not."
He said, "I would be glad to." And I set it up and I later ran into
him in the lawyers' club there and he handed me another memorandum
which amplified on the other one, which all have been furnished to the
attorney general or if we didn't lose it in the shuffle.
This was during the trial actually, and then when the man called me he
took a lie detector. There was no truth in it.
That he was in the place. He was in the place, in Ruby's Carousel, but
that none of this conversation took place. He said he was in one booth
and Ruby was in another booth.
Senator COOPER. Did anyone else tell you that they had seen Ruby and
Oswald talking together?
Mr. WADE. No one else personally has told me this.
Senator COOPER. You mentioned a girl.
Mr. WADE. No, I never talked to her but we had the Dallas Police take
an affidavit from her and so did the FBI of that which is in all your
files. What her name is, I just know it is a waitress out at the B&B
Cafe. She lived in Mesquite, Tex., and some of my people interviewed
her and she told them the same thing she told the FBI.
The other information was in your FBI reports of where people or
somebody who claimed he had seen them together in a YMCA, if I recall
correctly, and another one in a store.
The report indicated these, all these people were homosexuals as I
believe, or there was an indication of that.
I have an interview, in answering your question, in Lynn's first, but
this is the only one I have talked personally about it. But the rest of
them I got from reading the FBI and police files.
Senator COOPER. Lynn?
Mr. WADE. I believe that is his first name, and he is a lawyer there.
Senator COOPER. He is the lawyer?
Mr. WADE. That is the lawyer I am thinking about, I am trying to think
of his name while I sit here.
Senator COOPER. Have you ever talked to anyone or has anyone ever
talked to you or in your presence about Oswald and named any other
person, other than Ruby, who they claimed were connected with Oswald in
the assassination of President Kennedy?
Mr. WADE. Senator, I don't believe anyone has talked to me. I have
received, I guess 5,000 letters about this thing from all over the
country, which I have down there. I remember somebody wrote me from
West Virginia and said that in West Virginia that Oswald was in a used
car business and Ruby was across the street from him.
Well, I furnished this information to the investigative agencies but
as far as personally, I don't know of any. I have had a lot of letters
that said they were connected but not based on anything.
Senator COOPER. But leave Ruby out now for a moment, did anyone ever
tell you that Oswald was connected with persons other than Ruby in the
assassination of President Kennedy?
Have you heard the names of any other persons who it is claimed had
something to do with the assassination of President Kennedy?
Mr. WADE. I don't know of any names. Of course, like I said there
was the head of the Fair Play for Cuba, whatever his name was, was
mentioned. Everything I know on that score was from the police. When I
went up there Friday night and again I believe it was Saturday night
or Sunday, they told me that they just talked like he was the biggest
Communist, they had all kinds of evidence that he was a Communist, and
that he was working with other people.
I believe Captain Fritz told me once that he showed at the time that
Oswald bristled most was when they would talk about Castro. Apparently
he was more friendly to Castro than he was for instance to Khrushchev,
I am using those in broad terms.
Senator COOPER. Of course, once Oswald was killed, then your duties
were connected with the prosecution of Ruby.
Mr. WADE. Yes, sir.
Senator COOPER. And there wasn't any occasion for you then to search
out----
Mr. WADE. I had this, Senator.
Senator COOPER. Other persons.
Mr. WADE. I had this, Senator, I had this, when he was killed and they
tried to give me the files. I told them no, to give them to the FBI
because we couldn't try him, and I went to work on Ruby and actually
wouldn't know it.
From what I picked up it appeared to me there was no question that he
received his inspiration on this and maybe other help from somewhere.
Senator COOPER. That is what I am driving at here. You know there have
been statements made that other persons could have been connected with
Oswald in the assassination of President Kennedy.
Do you have any facts to give the Commission which would bear upon that
question that any person other than Oswald was in any way connected
with the assassination of President Kennedy?
Mr. WADE. I have no facts that I can give you on it. It is one of these
things, and the reason I gave you what my opinion on the thing was, I
have read what the U.S. World News and Report said the Commission is
going to say, and also this deal out in Japan, you know, where they
said that he was not instantaneous, impulsive, I believe, killer of the
President, which sounded silly to me.
I mean he planned the thing. He practiced shooting, and he had his
inspiration from somebody else. Whether he had a--was working with
someone, I don't know. I never did know, it was rumored all over town
that they had an airplane there to carry him out of town. I am sure you
all have checked into that but I never know whether they did or not.
There seemed to have been something misfired in the thing if there was
anybody tried to get it. I don't think there was anybody with him in
the shooting but what you are getting at is if there was anyone back of
him.
I always felt that the minimum was an inspiration from some cause, and
the maximum was actual pay, but like you asked for evidence, I don't
have any.
Senator COOPER. Did you ever hear about any evidence that there was an
airplane stationed any place there?
Mr. WADE. They ran it in the newspapers that an airplane was supposedly
to pick him up but nobody ever found the airplane, so far as I know.
You have had every kind of rumor, this has been a thing that has been,
that the press has been most inaccurate in a lot of things they have
reported, and it is because of the pressure from their offices to get a
Ruby story.
We have reporters down there coming down and said, "My office said to
write something on Ruby today, what are we going to write."
And it has been so very irresponsible.
Like I said, I have no evidence and the only thing where I get my
impression is reading and hearing people talking but I haven't actually
figured it wasn't any of my business on Oswald, that I had a problem,
a big one of trying Ruby and I have concentrated all of my efforts on
that and when we had anybody of this nature we would refer them to the
FBI or some other agency.
Senator COOPER. Thank you.
Mr. DULLES. You referred, Mr. Wade, to some testimony or some evidence
that Oswald was at one time in the Carousel when Ruby was there.
Was that solely from this lawyer whose testimony you have mentioned?
Mr. WADE. The only one of my personal knowledge that I talked with
was from the lawyer. He told me he was there with a certain girl, a
stripper, and Ruby and Oswald were in an adjoining booth. There is
lots of other people, I think your master of ceremonies, they had him
on television and said he had seen them there but later on said he
hadn't when they got to interviewing him. But my own personal knowledge
that you are all interested in was that one man who told me that.
Mr. RANKIN. Was there anyone either from the State or Federal
Government that urged you not to state a crime of international
conspiracy if you found one was present?
Mr. WADE. No; not in that light. It is like I mentioned to you what
Mr. Carr and Mr. Sanders both inquired, said they had heard on the
radio about this or talked with someone in Washington about it, and
I told them right off that whether it was so or not doesn't make any
difference. It wouldn't be alleged. I mean if I had known he was a
Communist I wouldn't have alleged it. I mean, suppose I knew he was a
Communist, and signed a statement he was a Communist. That was a time
when the press blew up when they had nothing else to talk about at the
time, actually.