The testimony of George A. Bouhe was taken at 2 p.m., on March 23,
1964, in the office of the U.S. Attorney, 301 Post Office Building,
Bryan and Ervay Streets, Dallas, Tex., by Mr. Wesley J. Liebeler,
assistant counsel of the President's Commission.
Mr. LIEBELER. Mr. Bouhe, before we start I want to tell you that my
name is Wesley J. Liebeler.
I think Mr. Rankin sent you a letter last week telling you that we
would be in touch with you for the purpose of taking your testimony in
connection with your knowledge of Lee Harvey Oswald and his background,
and anything you might know about the assassination or anything
shedding light on Oswald's motive.
I am a member of the legal staff of the Commission, and the Commission
has authorized me to take your deposition pursuant to the power granted
to it by Executive Order 11130 dated November 29, 1963, and Joint
Resolution of Congress No. 137.
I believe we sent you copies of those documents in the letter which
you have, and also we sent you a copy of the Rules of the Commission
governing its proceedings and the taking of testimony.
Now the Secret Service, as I understand, called you on Friday and asked
you to be here this afternoon. You are entitled to 3 days' written
notice, and I suppose that we can say that you have received the notice
since you received it on Friday, but I presume you are prepared to go
ahead at this time?
Mr. BOUHE. I am.
Mr. LIEBELER. Thank you.
Mr. BOUHE. May I ask this? Is this my appearance before the Commission,
or is it another step in the investigation preliminary to my appearance
before the Commission?
Mr. LIEBELER. No. This is in effect your appearance before the
Commission. A transcript of our report will be forwarded to the
Commission, and it won't be necessary for you to come to Washington.
Mr. Bouhe, would you stand and raise your right hand?
Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth, so help you God, in the testimony you are about to give?
Mr. BOUHE. I do.
Mr. LIEBELER. Would you state your full name for the record, Mr. Bouhe?
Mr. BOUHE. George A. Bouhe.
Mr. LIEBELER. What is your address?
Mr. BOUHE. 4740 Homer Street, Dallas 4, Tex.
Mr. LIEBELER. Are you presently employed?
Mr. BOUHE. I am a semiretired accountant. I do not have a regular
job since about early 1963, but I keep a number of sets of books and
prepare tax returns for many people for whom I was doing that in the
last 10 or more years, in addition to my regular job, which I quit on
my own volition after about 10 years, on or about April 30, of last
year.
Mr. LIEBELER. For whom were you employed up to that time?
Mr. BOUHE. For 9-1/2 years I was employed as a personal accountant of
a very prominent Dallas geologist, and probably capitalist if you want
to say it, Lewis W. MacNaughton, senior chairman of the board of the
well-known geological and engineering firm of DeGolyer & MacNaughton,
but I was MacNaughton's personal employee.
Mr. LIEBELER. Where were you born, Mr. Bouhe?
Mr. BOUHE. I was born in what was then St. Petersburg, now Leningrad,
Russia, on February 11 or 24, 1904, and the difference in dates
is because we had the Julian and Gregorian calendar, and I have a
baptismal certificate showing February 11.
Mr. LIEBELER. Under the old Russian calendar?
Mr. BOUHE. Yes.
Mr. LIEBELER. That would be February 24 under the present day calendar?
Mr. BOUHE. Yes.
Mr. LIEBELER. Tell us when and how it came that you came to the United
States.
Mr. BOUHE. During the years 1920 through 1923 back in Petrograd,
Russia, while I was finishing my high school there, which was called
the Gymnasium, although it had nothing to do with athletics, I was
working for the American Relief Commission as an office boy.
It was an association to which the American Congress allocated, I
think, $100 million for the relief of the starving population of Russia.
The Hon. Herbert Hoover was Chairman of that Commission. He sent
American executives to Russia to set up branch offices in several
cities, including what was then already Petrograd, and I, speaking
English, was an office boy.
When we finished that thing, I got a little letter of thanks which
is now here framed, which is my great pride and joy, in which it
says to George Alexandrovich Bouhe, in gratitude and recognition of
his faithful efforts to assist the American Relief Commission in its
efforts to relieve the suffering of the hungry population in Russia.
Mr. LIEBELER. After you worked for the American Relief Commission, did
that lead to your coming to the United States?
Mr. BOUHE. That is correct. My association with some of the supervisors
which were American executives led to numerous discussions with them,
including, the now deceased Prof. Frank Golder of Stanford University,
Gen. William Haskell, who later commanded the National Guard; one of my
supervisors said, "Why don't you come to America?" So after the office
closed sometime in August 1923, more or less, I applied for a passport
to leave Russia but was refused. Then I went across the little river
separating Soviet Russia from Finland in the middle of September at
night, and it was cold, and got out.
Mr. LIEBELER. You went into Finland and came to the United States?
Mr. BOUHE. Through Germany and then to the United States in April 1924.
Mr. LIEBELER. Did you eventually become an American citizen?
Mr. BOUHE. I became an American citizen on or about June 1939.
Mr. LIEBELER. Did you continue your education when you came to the
United States?
Mr. BOUHE. Not regularly and not formally. I was working for 13 years
for what is now the Chase Manhattan Bank, but it had previous mergers.
I attended the American Institute of Banking, and that is all I did
there, which is not much.
Mr. LIEBELER. Let me ask you where you learned English, Mr. Bouhe.
Mr. BOUHE. At home. At the age of 5 to age of 7, I had a French
governess. At the age of 7 to 9, I had a German governess. At the age
of 10 to maybe 11, I had an English governess.
Mr. LIEBELER. You got your first acquaintance with English through the
English governess, is that correct?
Mr. BOUHE. Yes.
Mr. LIEBELER. Your formal education in the Soviet Union was confined to
the gymnasium, is that correct?
Mr. BOUHE. That's correct, which is slightly over the high school here,
but it was what is called classical, namely because they taught us
Latin and Greek.
Mr. LIEBELER. When did you first come to Dallas?
(Mr. Jenner entered the room.)
Mr. LIEBELER (continued). Mr. Bouhe, this is Mr. Jenner.
Mr. BOUHE. On July 4, 1939.
Mr. LIEBELER. Have you lived in Dallas since that time?
Mr. BOUHE. Yes.
Mr. LIEBELER. It's been indicated to me, Mr. Bouhe, that you are
regarded as the leader of a so-called Russian group here in Dallas
and the Fort Worth area, and I would like to have you tell us briefly
the nature of that group and how you came to be the, shall we say,
so-called leader or its actual leader? Let's leave it that way. And
particularly, Mr. Bouhe, did there come a time when you formed a
congregation of a Russian church here in Dallas? Would you tell us
about that?
Mr. BOUHE. Yes; you have just mentioned some flattering remarks which I
appreciate if it is true from the sources which you obtained it, but I
would say that if I am so called, it means simply because of a process
of elimination, because when I came in 1939, there were absolutely
only three Russian-speaking people in Dallas and they were all married
people, married to Americans, and so on.
So I did not, so-to-speak, associate with any Russians that might have
come or gone through Dallas from 1939 to about 1950.
In 1950, approximately, a great avalanche of displaced persons came
to Dallas from Europe. Among these were probably 30, 40, 50 people,
native of what I would say of various parts of the former Russian
Empire.
By that I mean to say that they were not all Russian. They might have
been Estonians, Lithuanians, Poles, Caucasians, Georgians, Armenians,
and such, but we did have one thing in common and not much more, and
that was the language.
It was a sort of constant amazement to me that these people, prayed
God, for years before coming here while still sitting in various camps
in Germany--they wanted to get to America, and if 1 out of 50 made a
10-cent effort to learn the English language, I did not find him.
So the problem was to help those people to be self-sufficient,
self-sustaining, and as I earnestly hoped, faithful citizens of their
new homeland.
Mr. LIEBELER. You gathered these people together and you formed a
church congregation, is that correct?
Mr. BOUHE. That's correct. Perhaps not all of the people, because
I could not bring a Mohammedan into the Greek Orthodox Church, but
anybody who wanted to come and worship in the Russian or Slovenian
language was welcome.
And as you said, I organized--well, I did the organization work, really.
The godfather of it all to help us with finances was a very prominent
well-known man who still lives here, Paul M. Raigorodsky.
Mr. LIEBELER. These people came together in an effort to help the
people who had just come from Europe and who had difficulty with the
English language become useful members of the community and become
self-sufficient?
Mr. BOUHE. I might have met the first one and maybe helped him to get a
job or maybe took him by the hand and took him to Crozier Tech to learn
English, because I have the great reliance on that.
Some of them were old or very elderly people. "Why do I have to learn
English? All I want to do is get a job."
Well, maybe so, but I think we should look into the English language,
too. And, of course, it was so long ago, maybe nobody realized or
remembers the Crozier Tech, but I was there frequently, I would say,
taking people by the hand and sticking them there.
Mr. LIEBELER. At the time did you meet a man by the name of George De
Mohrenschildt?
Mr. BOUHE. Yes; I did, who was then married to his wife number two, if
my information is correct.
Mr. LIEBELER. That lady's maiden name was Sharples?
Mr. BOUHE. That's right; from the main line in Philadelphia, and a
daughter of a prominent industrialist and oilman.
Mr. LIEBELER. Did you also meet a gentleman by the name of Ilya A.
Mamantov?
Mr. BOUHE. I did meet him. I cannot promise the year, but somewhere
around that time.
Mr. LIEBELER. Did there come a time when you met Lee Harvey Oswald?
Mr. BOUHE. Yes.
Mr. LIEBELER. Tell us the circumstances surrounding that event.
Mr. BOUHE. I met Lee Harvey Oswald and his wife Marina, if my memory
and records serve me right, at approximately on Saturday, August 25,
1962.
Mr. LIEBELER. Where?
Mr. BOUHE. At the home on Dorothy Lane in Fort Worth, Tex., of Mr. and
Mrs. Peter P. Gregory.
Mr. LIEBELER. Who else was there at that time?
Mr. BOUHE. Mr. and Mrs. Gregory, Lee Oswald, his wife and child, son
of Mr. Gregory who was at that time a student at the University of
Oklahoma in Norman, and Mrs. Anna Meller of Dallas, Tex., who was
invited there for that dinner together with her husband who could not
come, so I escorted her with her husband's permission.
Mr. LIEBELER. This was a meeting for dinner, is that correct?
Mr. BOUHE. It was that.
Mr. LIEBELER. Who invited you to the dinner, Mr. Gregory?
Mr. BOUHE. Yes.
Mr. LIEBELER. Did Mr. Gregory tell you how he came to meet Lee Oswald?
Mr. BOUHE. Of course.
Mr. LIEBELER. Has he told you, in effect, that Oswald came to him at
the Fort Worth Public Library and asked him for a letter attesting to
his competence as a translator or interpreter of the Russian language?
Mr. BOUHE. Mr. Gregory did tell me, and maybe I am not a hundred
percent accurate, that he met him at the Fort Worth Public Library
where, if my information is correct, Mr. Gregory teaches, I think, a
free class of the Russian language.
Mr. Gregory is a native of Siberia, and I think a graduate of Leland
Stanford, an educated man who could teach the Russian language, and he
told me that one day Lee Harvey Oswald sort of approached him and they
exchanged a few talks.
Then, if I am not mistaken, Lee Harvey Oswald came to Mr. Gregory's
office in the Continental Life Building. He came to his office, and if
I understood correctly, Mr. Gregory gave Lee Harvey Oswald a test to
evaluate the calibre of his knowledge of the Russian language.
Mr. LIEBELER. Did Mr. Gregory tell you that Lee Oswald asked him, Mr.
Gregory, to help him, Oswald, write a book on his experiences in the
Soviet Union?
Mr. BOUHE. That I do not recall having heard from Mr. Gregory.
Mr. LIEBELER. Did you hear it from anybody else?
Mr. BOUHE. No.
Mr. LIEBELER. No other time? Did you subsequently hear it after the
assassination?
Mr. BOUHE. Yes; I heard that from reading the papers, from the
testimony of the public stenographer in Fort Worth.
Mrs. Bailey, I think her name is, to whom Oswald came with a $10
bill--and that information is from the press--and started dictating the
book.
Mr. LIEBELER. So the only thing you know about Mr. Gregory's supposed
help with Oswald's book is from what you read in the newspapers, is
that correct? About the fact that Gregory was supposed to help Oswald
with his book?
Mr. BOUHE. If he told me before, I swear I don't remember.
Mr. LIEBELER. Now at the dinner at Gregory's, did you converse with Lee
Oswald and his wife, Marina?
Mr. BOUHE. I did.
Mr. LIEBELER. Would you tell us, to the best of your recollection, what
was said at that time?
Mr. BOUHE. They were both very shy in the beginning, and to break the
ice I used the age-old method of starting conversation on the subject
in which the other person is interested, and since I was born in St.
Petersburg, and according to newspaper reports and what you hear,
Marina spent many, many years, or was even brought up in St. Petersburg.
This created in me an extraordinary interest to meet that person,
for no particular political reason, but after you are gone from your
hometown for 40 some odd years you would like to see if your house is
still standing or the church is broken up, or the school is still in
existence, or the herring fish market still smells.
Mr. LIEBELER. You discussed those questions with Marina Oswald at that
time?
Mr. BOUHE. Right. And also I had in my possession a rather large album
of maps published in Moscow and purchased by me through V. Kamkin Book
Store, Washington, D.C., the album being called the "Plans of St.
Petersburg" from the creation by Peter The Great in 1710 to our days,
and there were dozens of maps made at regular intervals, including the
last one made under the Czarist Regime in 1914, which is really what I
was interested in.
Mr. LIEBELER. And you discussed those maps?
Mr. BOUHE. I took the map with me and we sat down on the floor and I
asked Marina, if my school here, or that thing there, and just any
exchange of pleasantries on that subject.
Mr. LIEBELER. Did Marina tell you that she subsequently left Leningrad
and moved to Minsk?
Mr. BOUHE. Yes.
Mr. LIEBELER. Did she tell you why, either at this time or any other
time? Did you learn from Marina why she moved from Leningrad, from St.
Petersburg to Minsk?
Mr. BOUHE. To the best of my knowledge, I do not recall.
Mr. LIEBELER. Did you discuss at that time Oswald's trip to the Soviet
Union?
Let me ask you this, Mr. Bouhe. Did you discuss--let's not just limit
your discussion in this regard to the first meeting, but looking back
over your entire knowledge of Oswald, when I ask you these questions as
to what you discussed at these meetings with him, and let's cover your
discussions with Oswald and your knowledge of his background, and we
will go back and pick up the other times when you met him.
Let me ask you if you at this time or subsequent meetings discussed
with Oswald the reasons for him going to the Soviet Union?
Mr. BOUHE. I did not at that meeting.
Mr. LIEBELER. Did you subsequently discuss with him?
Mr. BOUHE. I did not discuss it because I know I will antagonize
him, and I could get a conclusion of my own, right or wrong, and my
conclusion on that is that he is, if I may so call him, a rebel against
society.
Meaning, even if it is good, "I don't like it." That conclusion came
into my head after maybe a few weeks, and after I first met him,
because I got dizzy following his movements. Either he goes into the
Marines, voluntarily apparently, then he quits. That is no good. He
goes into the football team in his high school, and he quits. He
doesn't like that.
Mr. LIEBELER. Did he tell you that?
Mr. BOUHE. Not about a football team, but in the Marines he said he
didn't like it.
Mr. LIEBELER. Where did you learn about the football?
Mr. BOUHE. In the press after the assassination.
Mr. LIEBELER. Let's confine your conversations just to what you learned
from him or what you inferred yourself from observing Oswald.
Let me ask you specifically if Oswald ever discussed with you the job
that he had while he was in the Soviet Union?
Mr. BOUHE. Only I could pull out fragmentary information, and frankly
I didn't press him because he was sort of reluctant to talk. I don't
remember what he really said, except that he worked in a sheet metal
factory.
But what I was interested and asked frequently is, what is the economic
aspect and the social aspect of life of a man like he in the Soviet
Union.
Mr. LIEBELER. Did you ask him how much he was paid for his work?
Mr. BOUHE. Yes.
Mr. LIEBELER. Did he tell you?
Mr. BOUHE. Well, he certainly did tell me, and I think he said 90
rubles.
Mr. LIEBELER. Did he tell you that that was all the income that he had
while he was in Russia?
Mr. BOUHE. That was all he said, and he even went further when I asked
him, "Well, out of that, what do you have to pay out?"
Well, he says, "The rent was free." So he didn't pay for the rent.