Mr. RANKIN. Do you know whether anything was done about that?
Mr. WADE. Yes.
Mr. RANKIN. What?
Mr. WADE. They got ahold of Louis Nichols who is the president of
the Dallas Bar Association. They got ahold of the president of the
Criminal Bar Association, but they had started a Tippit fund in the
meantime, and practically every lawyer was scared they were going to be
appointed, you know, and they had gone and subscribed to that fund so
they were having much trouble getting a lawyer appointed.
Now, I must go a little further and tell you that under Texas law that
is an improper time to appoint them. The only one who can actually
appoint him is the judge after indictment under the Texas law, no one
else has really authority.
Louis Nichols, I talked to him, the president of the bar, and he was
trying to get some criminal lawyer to go down there with him, and I
said, "Go down there yourself and talk to him because they are raising
just so much cain about it and see what they want and tell him you will
get him a lawyer."
Senator COOPER. You are speaking now about a lawyer for Oswald?
Mr. WADE. Yes; for Oswald.
This was around noon or some time on Saturday, noon, early afternoon.
This went on all day. He called me back and said, "I have talked to
him and told him I would get him a lawyer, that I would represent him
or get him a lawyer." Louis Nichols is a civil lawyer, not actually a
criminal lawyer.