Mr. DULLES. May I ask is the passport office under you as Assistant
Secretary and Legal Adviser?
Mr. CHAYES. No, sir; the passport office is under Mr. Schwartz.
Mr. DULLES. Under Mr. Schwartz?
Mr. CHAYES. It is Bureau of Security and Consular Affairs.
Mr. DULLES. And he is directly under the Secretary of State.
Mr. CHAYES. Yes; he is Assistant Secretary. His chain of command goes
through the Deputy Under Secretary for Administration, but he like I
has the rank of Assistant Secretary and he operates a bureau just as I
do. The Legal Adviser's office is a separate bureau.
We did prepare a 10- or 12-page document by dawn the next day which in
fact is the basis of this report, the Commission Document No. 2.
Mr. COLEMAN. We will give that Commission Exhibit No. 950, your first
report.
Mr. CHAYES. The one we did overnight?
Mr. COLEMAN. No; the one that you sent us. It is Commission Exhibit No.
950. It has been given a number.
Mr. DULLES. I wonder if the witness would identify this and verify the
circumstances under which it was prepared?
Mr. CHAYES. This report, Commission Exhibit No. 950, is not the one
that we prepared overnight. This is the report we prepared for the
Department of Justice before the Commission was appointed when the
Department of Justice itself was looking into the matter.
What I say is that Commission Exhibit No. 950 is essentially an
expansion and elaboration of the document that we prepared that night.
Representative FORD. There have been fears expressed by some that
somehow we don't have before the Commission all of the documents
that are in the hands of the Department of State or any other agency
pertaining to Oswald. You can only testify as to the Department of
State. Do you testify that we have been given everything that was at
any time in the files of Lee Harvey Oswald?
Mr. CHAYES. To my knowledge that is the case. However, let me say again
what I said at the beginning of the testimony. We have constantly and
persistently gone around to all the places in the Department, and that
has been done under my supervision, and we have made very aggressive
efforts to assure that every office or subdivision of the Department
that might have documents pertaining to Oswald should give them to the
Commission, through me to the Commission.
I think there was one stage where perhaps that wasn't understood, but
we got that corrected. Then later on, as I say, there was the Moscow
Embassy just sent us a whole load of documents. They said "We think you
have got duplicates of all of these so we didn't send them in earlier"
and it turned out that some of them we didn't have duplicates of. I
now think--as I say, it is very hard to prove a negative, but we have
made all the efforts that I think are humanly possible to get these
documents out of the files, and I think you have them all, with the
exception of some documents originating in other agencies where by
arrangement with the staff they are getting those documents from the
originating agency.
Mr. COLEMAN. Mr. Chayes, at this point could we mark as Commission
Exhibit No. 956, a letter from you to Mr. Rankin under date of May
28, 1964, in which you sent us a complete copy of the files, and in
which you numbered each one of the files from file I through XII,
and then within each file, each document was numbered and there was
also indicated the number of pages which would be in each particular
document? Will you identify that?
(Commission Exhibit No. 956 was marked for identification and received
in evidence.)
Mr. CHAYES. Yes; we sent that letter, a copy of which is Commission
Exhibit No. 956, in response to the request of the staff in order that
we would be able exactly to answer this kind of question.
I should add that I think we sent some additional documents since then,
those that came back from Moscow in response to our last request.
Mr. COLEMAN. I would next like to mark as Commission Exhibit No. 954,
a letter from Mr. Chayes to Mr. Rankin under date of June 4, 1964, in
which you sent us the file which you recently received from the Moscow
Embassy and indicated that that file would be marked file XIII.
(Commission Exhibit No. 954 was marked for identification and received
in evidence.)
Mr. CHAYES. Yes; that is the letter and it contains also the text of
the Moscow telegram explaining that they thought all the documents they
were pouching were duplicates.
Mr. COLEMAN. With the files you gave us or sent us along with
Commission Exhibits Nos. 956 and 954, as far as you know you have sent
the Commission every file which the State Department has, referring to
Oswald?
Mr. CHAYES. That is correct.
Mr. DULLES. Were you in general charge, under the Secretary, of
the correspondence which has been carried on with the Soviet Union
inquiring as to Oswald and to obtain such information as we could from
the Soviet Union with respect to the Oswald case?
Mr. CHAYES. Well, I talked with the Secretary about the Commission's
interest in making an approach to the Soviet Union, and then he made
the decision that the Department was willing to proceed with that
approach. I participated in the drafting of the documents, and I
participated in the transmissions to the Commission. But the approach
was made by the Secretary himself, and I did not observe the approach.
Mr. DULLES. Was that made orally as well as in writing or should we ask
that of the Secretary of State?
Mr. CHAYES. You can ask it of the Secretary and I think you would get
a fuller answer from him, but he did make an oral presentation at the
time that he handed the note, and the Chief Justice's letter, to the
Russian Ambassador.
Mr. DULLES. In view of your knowledge of this situation, do you think
that we have got all we can get from the Soviet Union or is there any
other way in which we could get anything additional?
Mr. CHAYES. Well, I think probably, the best respondent to that
question would also be the Secretary. I think it probably has to be
recognized that the decision to give what documents were given was a
carefully considered decision, probably made at very high levels within
the Soviet Government, and not done lightly or without an examination
of alternatives, and therefore, it seems to me unlikely that one would
be able to change any such decision.
But again I say I am really not the best man to ask that.
Mr. COLEMAN. Mr. Chayes, just two other documents I would like you to
identify for the record. One is your letter of May 8, 1964, which has
been marked Commission Exhibit No. 948, which answers certain questions
directed to you by Mr. Rankin, and it is the document that you referred
to several times in your testimony.
Mr. CHAYES. Yes; this is my letter, Commission Exhibit No. 948. It
contains the answers to the questions which were in attachment B to
Mr. Rankin's letter, and concern essentially matters within the United
States and within the State Department here.
Mr. COLEMAN. Your answers to attachment A were in Commission Exhibit
No. 960. We have already identified that in the record.
Mr. CHAYES. Yes; that is correct. There was a delay between the two
letters because attachment A involved questions about activities in
Russia, and some questions about the Soviet Union, and although we
prepared the answers in the first instance in the United States in
the Department, we wanted to send the replies to the Soviet Union
for review by our Embassy there. And that accounted for the time
discrepancy in the answer to the two attachments.
Mr. COLEMAN. Then in the attachment A we also asked you a question in
reference to a memorandum from Mr. McVickar and you under date of April
24, 1964, sent us Mr. McVickar's memorandum which has been marked as
Commission Exhibit No. 958. But I would like to mark as Commission
Exhibit No. 953 your covering letter.
(Commission Exhibit No. 953 was marked for identification and received
in evidence.)
Mr. CHAYES. Yes; this is my letter. It is dated April 24, 1964, and
it is marked Commission Exhibit No. 953, and it clears up a factual
question that was left at large in Mr. McVickar's memorandum.
Mr. COLEMAN. Mr. Chairman, at this time I would like to offer for
admission into evidence Commission Exhibits Nos. 948, 950, and 949.
I would also like to note that the attachment to Commission Exhibit
No. 952 was marked as Commission Exhibit No. 958 and has already been
admitted into evidence.
Mr. DULLES. They shall be admitted.
(Commission Exhibits Nos. 948, 950, and 949 were marked for
identification and received in evidence.)
Mr. DULLES. May I ask this question? Have all of these been previously
identified in the testimony.
Mr. COLEMAN. Yes, sir; they have been identified and marked.
(Discussion off the record.)
Mr. COLEMAN. Back on the record. That is all the examination I have
of Mr. Chayes. I do want to express my appreciation and thanks for
the detail in which he gave us information and the method in which he
answered all the questions.
Representative FORD. I have no further questions.
Mr. DULLES. I have no further questions. Thank you very much. You have
been very full, very frank, very helpful.
Mr. CHAYES. I am glad to do what I can.