Mr. DULLES. Who was it that called you?
Mr. WADE. The inspector at FBI called me in the police station. He
was the one the police had talked to. He was the man from Dallas down
there. It wasn't Shanklin, Shanklin was in charge of the office.
But I told him what my purpose was but apparently someone told him. I
gathered since he had delivered a message, apparently someone had told
him to have me quit talking about it. But my purpose on that was, I
never did think that the people or the television were giving the right
facts on the thing and they were making believe that probably they
didn't have the right one, that the Dallas police had him in there to
kill him, they even had commentators saying practically that, don't you
know.
So, I did that entirely--not anything for me. You may think I wanted to
be on television. I didn't care a thing about being because I don't run
for office in New York and Washington and other places, but I thought
the police needed, because their morale was awfully low and they were
at fault in Ruby killing him.
There was undoubtedly a breakdown on security there in the basement.
Mr. RANKIN. On the seven points were any of them that were new that
hadn't already been told to the public?
Mr. WADE. To tell you the truth, I don't know. I think there were some
of them that hadn't been but I think most of them had. But I couldn't
see at this stage the evidence on this thing, nobody, the situation
where you had an assassination, and a dead person and another case
pending, and it was against my interest actually, to trying Ruby, it
would be a whole lot better trying Ruby if he killed the wrong man
than if he killed the assassin of the President, but I was trying to
establish that this was the assassin of the President.
And I didn't give all the evidence, and I don't know whether there was
anything new or not because I didn't see much of television during all
this time. I don't actually know everything that was given out, and
there was so much in the papers that I didn't have time to read them,
so I didn't know for sure what all the police had given out.
Senator COOPER. Substantially then, you were laying out to the public
the facts which had led you to issue a warrant for Oswald as the killer
of President Kennedy?
Mr. WADE. That was the purpose of that interview.
You also have to--I don't know where you gentlemen were, but you have
to get a picture of what was going on. You had, of course, there in
Dallas, you had threats on people's lives everywhere.
As a matter of fact, it ran over the radio that I had been
assassinated, for 2 hours, on Monday morning. I wasn't listening to the
radio. My wife called me up--called me up and I denied it. [Laughter.]
Mr. WADE. But you had lots of things of that kind. And I thought you
needed some type of, somebody--and your whole thing was wrong with this
whole deal, you had no one in charge of the thing. You had the police,
the FBI, the Secret Service, the Department of Justice, my Department,
Waggoner Carr's department, but no one had any say to offer the rest of
them.
Mr. RANKIN. Tell us how that affected it. You had the jurisdiction of
the crime itself.
Mr. WADE. Of the trial of the case.
Mr. RANKIN. And the police department, what jurisdiction did they have?
Mr. WADE. They had the jurisdiction, the primary responsibility for the
investigation of the assassination, and--they had the primary job of
finding out who did it and getting the evidence. They were assisted,
the Secret Service, of course, had the job of protecting the President.
The FBI, they have criminal, pretty general, investigation, I am not
sure, but they were in on it, they were all there, and assisting. It
was a deal where nobody had any actual control over another person.
Mr. RANKIN. Had the State authorities any jurisdiction or effect on the
operation?
Mr. WADE. You mean the State?
Mr. RANKIN. Of Texas.
Mr. WADE. They actually had none. They had no authority. The Governor
has no authority in a situation like this nor the attorney general
other than in a vague sort of way, as the police, I guess they had
the police powers to some extent of maintaining order but you didn't
need the National Guard or anything. I mean this was more dealing with
a situation of information. I think this situation is true in many
States, in practically all of them.
Mr. RANKIN. Was that confusing, did that make it harder to try to solve
the crime and handle the problems?
Mr. WADE. It did; very much so. Your press was the most confusing
thing. I mean you couldn't get in the police station. I mean I just
barely could get into the police station myself for stomping over the
press and you had a lot of reporters, not like the reporters we usually
deal with down there. I mean we don't have trouble usually with the
local press, people we pretty well know.
We would tell them what is going on, and they will go on, but these
people just followed everybody everywhere they went, and they were
throwing policemen on the corner, if he made a statement about he saw
someone running that way dressed maybe like the killer--they ran all
that on. They were just running everybody. There was no control over
your public media. It made it worse since all television networks were
on the assassination all--24 hours, I mean all day. And there was no
central thing from--there was no central person who had any control
of handling the thing that information was given out. You see they
interviewed some of your patrolmen who were giving out evidence, you
know, some of your foot patrolmen on the corner, they were interviewing
anybody.
Mr. RANKIN. Would it help or hinder the handling of such a crime of the
killing of the President if it was a Federal crime, in your opinion?