Mr. Oliver. Yes.
Mr. Jenner. Would you identify more particularly the subsequent confirmation reference you just made about Mr. Henshaw?
Mr. Oliver. The chief of the Washington Bureau of the National Enquirer published in the issue of that newspaper for——
Mr. Jenner. If you have a copy of it I would appreciate having it.
Mr. Oliver. Yes; for May 17, 1964, this article with which you are doubtless familiar.
Mr. Jenner. The document to which Dr. Oliver has reference, we will mark as Oliver Exhibit No. 5.
(The document referred to was marked Oliver Exhibit No. 5 for identification.)
Mr. Jenner. It is entitled “National Enquirer, the World’s Liveliest Newspaper,” volume 38, No. 36, May 17, 1964, and as submitted to me it consists of pages 1—numbered 1 and 2, pages 15 and 18 and the reverse of those two pages which happen to be unnumbered. I take it, Doctor, that this issue of the National Enquirer dated May 17, 1964, volume 38, No. 36, was composed of additional pages but that none of those additional pages contains any matter upon which you relied in this connection.
Mr. Oliver. That is right.
Mr. Jenner. Then you go on to say, “In November, Oswald was sent back to Dallas” and I take it your source of his being sent back by the Communist group or conspiracy to which you have reference, was the same as you testified you relied upon in connection with your statement of his having been sent to Dallas in the first place?
Mr. Oliver. Right.
Mr. Jenner. And I continue the quote, “Where a job in a suitably located building had been arranged for him.” What did you intend to imply by the statement that a suitably—“where a job in a suitably located building had been arranged for him.” Who arranged it and what is the source of your information?
Mr. Oliver. The statement that this building is suitably located is an inference from the fact that it was, (a) on what proved eventually to be the route of Presidential procession and, (b) that it was one of the very few buildings to be found in any town in which a man on the upper floor could be virtually certain of being unobserved because those upper floors were storage spaces, and the storage spaces so arranged that there would be no clear view from one end of the floor to the other.
Mr. Jenner. I take it the source of your information, that is upon which you base the statement was again newspaper reports or——
Mr. Oliver. Concerning the building and newspaper reports concerning the arrangement of the job for him, newspaper reports plus reports from Mr. Capell, I believe that is all.
Mr. Jenner. By whom had the job been arranged? What was your source as to that?
Mr. Oliver. It appears that the intervention which procured the job for him is attributed to a Mrs. Paine. There were——
Mr. Jenner. Mrs. Michael R.; Ruth Paine.
Mr. Oliver. Ruth Paine; yes. There were some earlier rumors concerning the way in which he obtained the position, but I believe that at the time I wrote those had been superseded by the knowledge that Mrs. Paine had—by the report that Mrs. Paine had given him a very strong recommendation for the job.
Mr. Jenner. What are you advised as to how that took place, Doctor, and when?
Mr. Oliver. As I recall, it took place 2 or 3 days after Oswald failed to obtain a job in a printing firm whose name does not come to my mind at the moment. He was refused a job there, as I understand it, because he naturally had to present his social security papers which contained his correct name, and the proprietor ascertained that Oswald had Communist connections and, therefore, refused him the position. As I understand it, he got the position in the School Depository, I believe 3 days later.
Mr. Jenner. What is the source of your information?
Mr. Oliver. Here I believe I rely on Mr. Capell and some confirmation from a number of people in and about Dallas with whom I discussed the matter. However, as I recall, those discussions took place after I wrote the article. I can’t be quite certain but I believe they did.
Mr. Jenner. When you refer to Mr. Capell, I take it you are referring to——
Mr. Oliver. To Mr. Frank Capell.
Mr. Jenner. Mr. Frank Capell, and in particular to releases or bulletins or writings of his which came to your attention as distinguished from personal conferences?
Mr. Oliver. I would rely primarily on personal conferences. Mr. Capell is the publisher of a periodical called the Herald of Freedom.
Mr. Jenner. The Herald of Freedom?
Mr. Oliver. Right.
Mr. Jenner. Where is that published?
Mr. Oliver. In Staten Island in New York.
Mr. Jenner. Are you a subscriber to the Herald of Freedom, did you say?
Mr. Oliver. Yes; I subscribe to a considerable number of periodicals, in fact too many.
Mr. Jenner. I wouldn’t doubt it.
Mr. Oliver. But Mr. Capell does serve as a research consultant for me.
Mr. Jenner. But at the time you made the statement as published in your article you were relying on what source and what source alone?
Mr. Oliver. I would not say on any source alone. There were news reports as to how Oswald had obtained his job. There were further the reports from Mr. Capell and quite possibly some of these conversations with people in Dallas.
Mr. Jenner. When you say people in Dallas, who are they, are they people who had any firsthand knowledge of this?
Mr. Oliver. Most of them residents of Dallas whom I knew in one way or another in speaking and so on, but none of them had any personal knowledge of the assassination, so far as I know.
Mr. Jenner. My question related to your statement that he was sent in Dallas in November of 1963 where a job in a suitably located building had been arranged for him. Did any of these people purport to have any personal knowledge of that matter?
Mr. Oliver. Only what they had heard concerning the way in which he obtained his employment; yes.
Mr. Jenner. Their sources, in turn, were newspaper reports and rumors and things of that nature at large in the community.
Mr. Oliver. I would think so; yes.
Mr. Jenner. Proceeding to page 14, I won’t read all of the paragraph, it begins at the bottom but you just glance at it, you refer to the fact that he shot the President from ambush, and then he escaped and you surmised that he would have reached Mexico but for some mischance and the intervention of Officer Tippit, and you conclude that paragraph with a sentence, “He was accordingly liquidated before he could make a complete confession.” The implication of that sentence is that he was killed, his death was procured by some evil source, being, I take it, the Communist conspiracy or Communist Party to which you have had reference. Am I correct about that?
Mr. Oliver. That is what I regard as a reasonable inference from the facts; yes.
Mr. Jenner. It was an inference that you drew.
Mr. Oliver. Yes.
Mr. Jenner. Now you state in the next sentence, “There are many other significant data but I have stated the essentials.” What other significant data are there or were there at the time you made that statement. I might interject as you are pondering that, to a learned man such as you, at the word “data” as you used it meant your sources?
Mr. Oliver. Yes; facts. It would be difficult for me at the moment to remember and reconstruct completely what was in my mind, the list of data there.
Mr. Jenner. Give me the best; just do the best you can, sir.
Mr. Oliver. However, I would have particularly taken into consideration as significant data the various indications of contacts between Oswald and Rubenstein, known as Ruby, the man who killed him, prior to the assassination. That would include such matters as a statement made by a, should I say, the announcer or director of a program called “Open End.”
Mr. Jenner. Open End?
Mr. Oliver. Open End, on a local Dallas station—this is not the national program as I understand it—to the effect that he had seen Rubenstein behind the Depository shortly after the assassination. The statement of the owner of a tourist lodging, should we say, in Waco, that a man whom she identified as Oswald had stayed at her place and had been joined by a man whom she identified as Rubenstein. By the statement of a mnemonics expert in Rubenstein’s club that he had seen Oswald.
Mr. Jenner. When you say “club,” you mean the Carousel Club?
Mr. Oliver. Carousel Club, actually a striptease joint, that he had seen Oswald in the club shortly before and as he later stated the day before the assassination.
Mr. Jenner. Whom did you say this was that made this report?
Mr. Oliver. This was a man named Bill Crowe.
Mr. Jenner. Crowe?
Mr. Oliver. C-r-o-w-e.
Mr. Jenner. Where did you see that report or how did you see it?
Mr. Oliver. That was reported in the press at the time. And was later confirmed by a special interview with him that was published in the National Enquirer.
Mr. Jenner. Do you have that issue of the Enquirer with you?
Mr. Oliver. I do not but I believe you will find a reference to it in the issue that I have given you there.
Mr. Jenner. That is Oliver Exhibit No. 5?
Mr. Oliver. That is correct.
Mr. Jenner. Would you locate it for the record, please?
Mr. Oliver. Yes; “The Enquirer traced DeMar, and that is the stage name of this man Bill Crowe to an Evansville, Ind. nightclub and questioned him on April 11. He told our reporter that he had seen Oswald sitting in the Carousel on the night of November 21, the night before Oswald assassinated President Kennedy.” DeMar said “I gave the FBI a statement about seeing Oswald in the club and that was it. I told them the same thing I am telling you. I have signed it and have heard nothing more about the incident to this day.”
Mr. Jenner. Had you read all of the article by, either by, or referring to DeMar from Oliver Exhibit No.——
Mr. Oliver. Yes; I did finish the excerpt.
Mr. Jenner. What is the number of the Exhibit?
Mr. Oliver. No. 5. And there were other indications of contacts between Oswald and Rubenstein before the assassination.
Mr. Jenner. And I take it your assumption was at the time you published the article that Rubenstein himself was a Communist agent.
Mr. Oliver. That seemed a reasonable inference; yes.
Mr. Jenner. And your source of that was the sources you have just indicated?
Mr. Oliver. Yes; plus, of course, the fact that he either executed or murdered Oswald.
Mr. Jenner. Your statement in the right-hand column that “It required a gunman from outside to do the job,” in which you are referring to Rubenstein, was based on what, that is a gunman from outside.
Mr. Oliver. Well, Rubenstein was not a member of the Dallas police.
Mr. Jenner. I see. Someone other than the member of the Dallas police is what you meant to imply.
Mr. Oliver. Yes.
Mr. Jenner. You go on in a subsequent paragraph to say, “As was to be expected a few moments after the shot was fired in Dallas the vermin probably in obedience to general or specific orders issued in advance of the event, began to screech out their disease hatred of the American people and, long after the facts were known to everyone, went on mechanically repeating, like defective phonograph records, the same vicious lies about these ‘radical right’ until fresh orders reached them from headquarters. But the significant fact is that there were enough honest American newsmen, in the United States and abroad, to make it impossible to conceal the conspiracy’s connection with the bungled assassination.”
“That is very encouraging.”
Now, your statement “probably in obedience to general or specific orders issued in advance of the event” I take it that is an inference or an implication you drew from the sources of information already related to us.
Mr. Oliver. Right, from the rapidity and the concert, both, of these attacks on patriotic Americans.
Mr. Jenner. Yes. This is a conclusion or a deduction on your own part of conclusions you reached from the information sources you have indicated, is that correct, sir?
Mr. Oliver. That is right. I trust that the Commission will inquire into the phenomenal rapidity with which the special bulletin of The Worker was distributed in New York.
Mr. Jenner. Yes, sir; but I would urge you to drop the future tense.
Mr. Oliver. Very good. I am glad to see that it has been done.
Mr. Jenner. Then commencing on page 15 you say, “There were two basic”—I am reading the first full paragraph—“There are two basic reasons why the American people were shocked and grieved by the assassination. Neither has anything to do with either the personal character of the victim or the identity of the assassin.” Do you find the place?
Mr. Oliver. Yes.
Mr. Jenner. And then you relate (1) and (2). I take it that (1) and (2) were conclusions and reasoning to which you resorted, is that correct, sir?
Mr. Oliver. That is right. On the basis, of course, on my knowledge of human history.
Mr. Jenner. Your knowledge of human nature and history and the sources of information you have already told us about?
Mr. Oliver. That is right.
Mr. Jenner. Were there any others, that is sources?
Mr. Oliver. No.
Mr. Jenner. Now, we will pass to page 18. There is a column headed “Three Explanations”. Do you find it?
Mr. Oliver. Right.
Mr. Jenner. It reads in part, “Why was Kennedy murdered by the young Bolshevik? With a little imagination it is easy to excogitate numerous explanations that are not absolutely impossible. For example, (a) Oswald was a madman who acted all alone just to get his name in the papers; (b) Oswald was a poor shot who was really trying to kill Governor Connally or Mrs. Kennedy, and hit the President by mistake; (c) the person killed was not Kennedy but a double and the real Kennedy is now a guest aboard a flying saucer, on which he is heroically negotiating with Martians or Saturnians to save The World, cap ‘T’ cap ‘W’. With a little time and a fairly wide reading in romantic fiction anyone can think of 60 or 70 fantasies as good or better than those that I have mentioned.”
And the next paragraph:
“On the evidence, however, and with the consideration of human probabilities there are only three explanations that are not preposterous, viz:”
To what did you refer when you used the reference “On the evidence.”?
Mr. Oliver. On the evidence that I had already stated.
Mr. Jenner. You mean that which you have stated here in the course of the testimony?
Mr. Oliver. Yes; and also stated in this article. That is, the evidence that has been stated; my testimony has related to the previous parts of this article.
Mr. Jenner. That is pages 13 through 17 and up to this point on page 18?
Mr. Oliver. Yes.
Mr. Jenner. You were using the term “evidence” in the general or loose sense?
Mr. Oliver. Yes, not in the sense of sworn testimony as a lawyer would use it.
Mr. Jenner. Yes, not in the sense of primary sources, is that correct?
Mr. Oliver. Yes. Of course, we run into a curious question, the definition of primary sources. There are many modern historians who would list the newspapers, for example, as primary sources.
Mr. Jenner. Depending on their use, yes.
Mr. Oliver. As distinct from, let us say, textbooks which would be secondary sources. I am here assuming primary sources means some direct positive evidence other than the printed reports, et cetera.
Mr. Jenner. I don’t wish to compromise you, of course. When I use the term “secondary” or “primary” sources I am using it in a sense that a lawyer uses it. Newspaper reports we would generally refer to as secondary sources. We would have to go to the primary source on which the reporter based his article in order to get something in evidence.
If we were trying to prove a general milieu, newspaper accounts as to an atmosphere at a particular time or something of that nature they would be admissible. But as to your sources here, I understand the term secondary sources means newspaper reports, articles or even books on which you retired, as distinguished from personal knowledge.
Mr. Oliver. That is right. I just wanted to be sure this was no misunderstanding of the term.
Mr. Jenner. I don’t wish it misunderstood either. I am not going to read your three suppositions, they are your conclusions rather than statements of fact. I use the word supposition in the sense that I am thinking in terms that they are your conclusions.
Mr. Oliver. That is right.
Mr. Jenner. Your conclusion first is, and I quote, “Kennedy was executed by the Communist conspiracy because he was planning to turn American.”
What was it, your source of that statement?
Mr. Oliver. Well, as I have indicated; what I called there the comforting hypothesis that one heard so frequently since Kennedy’s inauguration, and which one still hears, that he had in his mind a secret plan, that his policies and the people with whom he surrounded himself in the opening years of his administration were intended to provide a demonstration of their fatuity and probable disloyalty—the fatuity of the measures and the probable disloyalty of the many persons involved; that he was planning to execute, as I said here, a volte-face and make a dramatic gesture and espouse a policy of national independence instead of “interdependence.”
Mr. Jenner. You follow the statement I have quoted, with this statement, Doctor, “For this comforting hypothesis there is no evidence now known.” As of this moment is there any “evidence now known” to you?
Mr. Oliver. None that is known to me. So far as I know that is still conjecture and what is sometimes called wishful thinking. I may say if there is any evidence of it I should be very happy to hear it.
Mr. Jenner. Point No. 2 appears in the right-hand column, and I read, “That the assassination was the result of one of the rifts that now infrequently occur——”
Mr. Oliver. Pardon me, “not infrequently.”
Mr. Jenner. Pardon me—“not infrequently occur within the management of the Communist conspiracy whose satraps sometimes liquidate one another without defecting from the conspiracy, such as Persian satraps.”
Would you read the rest of it, you have a couple of words in there I am not——
Mr. Oliver. “Just as Persian satraps, such as Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus made war on one another without revolting or intending to revolt against the King of Kings.”
Mr. Jenner. This point No. 2 is as in the case of point No. 1, a rationalization on your part.
Mr. Oliver. I would prefer to call it deduction on my part.
Mr. Jenner. I will accept the amendment.
You then say, “Now, it was generally suspected for some time before the assassination that Khrushchev and Kennedy were planning to stage another show to bamboozle the American suckers just before the election next November.”
What is your source, if any, for the statement that Khrushchev and Kennedy were planning, as you put it, another show?
Mr. Oliver. The frequent reports of preparations for an invasion of Cuba planned, it would seem, to substitute for Castro a less-well-known Communist.
Mr. Jenner. Here again this was a statement of deduction on your part?
Mr. Oliver. Yes.
Mr. Jenner. From newspaper accounts and radio broadcasts and general information that was abroad?
Mr. Oliver. General information, rumors you pick up, what you are told by various analysts and so on.
Mr. Jenner. Would you turn to 3 which appears on page 20? This is your third deduction, I gather:
“That the conspiracy ordered the assassination as part of a systematic preparation for a domestic takeover. If so, the plan, of course, was to place the blame on the ‘rightwing extremists’ (if I may use the Bolshevik’s code word for informed and loyal Americans), and we may be sure that a whole train of “clues” had been carefully planted to lead or point in that direction as soon as Oswald was safe in Mexico.”
What was the source of that statement in your article?
Mr. Oliver. This again is deduction.
Mr. Jenner. From the sources you have already related in your testimony?
Mr. Oliver. Yes.
Mr. Jenner. You then in the right-hand column proceed to discuss “two objections to this explanation” and I interpolate, “but neither is cogent”. You continue on then with deduction again, do you, sir?
Mr. Oliver. That is right.
Mr. Jenner. Based on the same sources?
Mr. Oliver. Yes.
Mr. Jenner. I notice that three-quarters of the way down in the right-hand column on page 20 you state, “For that matter, a potentially serious and quite unnecessary mistake was made when the Communist Party’s official publication, The Worker, yelled for the appointment of Earl Warren to investigate ‘the assassination’ before (italicized) the appointment was made, or at least, before the appointment was disclosed to the public.”
I take it that statement was based on some news report?
Mr. Oliver. On the actual publication in The Worker of this article calling for the appointment of Warren.
Mr. Jenner. I know we have that.
Mr. Oliver. I am sure you must have. It is a well-known publication.
Mr. Jenner. Yes. But the statement I have just read was based upon that issue of The Worker to which you have now made reference.
Mr. Oliver. That is right.
Mr. Jenner. You made a deduction from that fact of publication?
Mr. Oliver. That is right.
Mr. Jenner. Proceed to page 21. The lower right-hand corner of page 21 commences a paragraph the first few words of which or the first sentence of which reads “Careful observers were aware of the feeling of crisis in conspiratorial circles before the assassination.”
On what was that statement based, or to be more accurate what was the source from which you made that deduction, if it is one.
Mr. Oliver. My conversations with fairly numerous observers of the conspiracy and its operations in this country.
Mr. Jenner. Are you using “conspiracy” in a general sense rather than a particular conspiracy directed toward this event?
Mr. Oliver. The Communist conspiracy as a whole; yes.
Mr. Jenner. You then go on to state what appears to be a statement of fact or you represent it to be.
“In June of 1963 an experienced American military man made a careful analysis of the situation at that time, and in his highly confidential report concluded, on the basis of indications in Communist and crypto Communist sources, that the conspiracy’s schedule called for a major incident to create national shock before Thanksgiving.”
Who is that experienced American military man to whom you had reference?
(Conferring with counsel.)
Mr. Oliver. The observer mentioned there is Col. Chesley Clark, retired.
Mr. Jenner. Clark.
Mr. Oliver. C-l-a-r-k, of the American Air Force.
Mr. Jenner. Did he publish—this is a new name to me—did he publish something on which you rely in making that statement?
Mr. Oliver. This he told me not with a pledge that it was confidential, but with the implication that I would not disclose his name in a publication. I see no bar to disclosing it for the purpose of these hearings. If I may say, his estimates were made entirely from, what should we say, experience in psychological warfare and in reading the indications in the sequence of events and the form the propaganda was taking, and that he obviously had not, so far as I know, no inside information.
Mr. Jenner. This conversation or conversations that you had had with Colonel Clark, did it or they occur between the time of the assassination and the time of the publication of your article?
Mr. Oliver. No, before the assassination, I am sure. I would say perhaps—it is hard to recollect but I would say a month or 6 weeks before.
Mr. Jenner. I take it, I don’t even like to say this because I don’t want you to take it wrong, certainly there was nothing in Colonel Clark’s statement to you, sir, that carried any implication of any anticipation of a possible assassination of President Kennedy?
Mr. Oliver. No. Of a, however—it did astutely anticipate some event that would create a national shock.
Mr. Jenner. When I say I hesitate to say it but I know what you would have done, I think I know what you would have done, had there been any implication, you would have alarmed the authorities.
Mr. Oliver. There was no——
Mr. Jenner. I am correct about that, am I not?
Mr. Oliver. You are correct about that. The nature of the event that would create this shock was, of course, necessarily speculative.
Mr. Jenner. All right. Then you discuss the feeling of men like you, that there was some crisis about to take place, and this feeling was communicated to you by men like Colonel Clark and others?
Mr. Oliver. Yes.
Mr. Jenner. Who felt that the Communist conspiracy as you call it had reached a point at which it needed some shocking event.
Mr. Oliver. That is right.
Mr. Jenner. Or as you say at the bottom of page 21 and the top of page 22, “The conspiracy’s schedule called for a major incident to create a national shock before Thanksgiving.”
Mr. Oliver. Yes.
Mr. Jenner. At the bottom of page 22, right-hand column, you say: “In summary then, there is not a single indication that the conspiracy did not plan and carry out the assassination of President Kennedy. On the other hand, there is evidence which very strongly suggests that it did.”
Would you please relate what evidence there was at the time you published the article which “very strongly suggests that it did.”
Mr. Oliver. You begin with the fact that the assassin was a Communist and added the strong probability, in my judgment, that he must have had accomplices, very, very probably including Rubenstein.
Then the results which would have occurred but for the mischance of Oswald’s apprehension would have been very strongly in their favor. It is the old doctrine of Sui Bono. In substance the considerations that I have stated in the earlier part of the article indicating that (a) there undoubtedly was Communist participation and (b) that the act was to their advantage.
Mr. Jenner. Here again then I take it that your use of the word “evidence” in the portion I have quoted from your paper, at the bottom of the right-hand column of page 22 is the use of the word in the loose sense or the broad sense.
Mr. Oliver. That is right.
Mr. Jenner. The broad sense meaning deductions from the sources you have indicated in your testimony?
Mr. Oliver. That is right.
Mr. Jenner. Would you glance at page 23 with a view in mind of my inquiring of you as to whether the statements made on that page likewise are deductions based on the sources you have indicated heretofore in your testimony?
Mr. Oliver. That is right.
Mr. Jenner. Is that likewise true of page 24?
Mr. Oliver. Yes.
Mr. Jenner. At the bottom of page 24, the right-hand column you say:
“The first expedient was primarily defensive. In a hasty and thus far successful attempt to thwart an investigation by legally constituted authorities, the Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security and the attorney general of the State of Texas, both of whom had already announced their determination to conduct an impartial inquiry, an illegal and unconstitutional ‘special commission’ was improvised with the obvious hope that it could be turned into a Soviet-style Kangaroo court. The best known members of this packed ‘commission’,” and then you give some vignettes of the various members of the commission.
I am not seeking to probe into your thinking on the subject. You have a right to think whatever you do think, and the right of free speech and publication permits you to publish. As I told Mr. Unger yesterday I was seeking only sources.
What is the source of that statement?
Mr. Unger. Pardon me, just a minute for interjecting but what relevancy does that have on the inquiry into the death of either President Kennedy or——
Mr. Jenner. It has this relevancy. The doctor is implying in the statement I have quoted that the creation of the Commission was part of a conspiracy, as he puts it, to prevent effective investigation into the assassination of the President by the Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security and the attorney general of the State of Texas, with the appointment of a commission.
Mr. Oliver. Let me confer for just a second.
(Conferring with counsel.)
Mr. Unger. We think under the circumstances that that is beyond the right of the Commission to inquire and beyond the scope of this hearing and, therefore, the witness on my recommendation declines to answer.
Mr. Jenner. All right. Was this statement other than deduction on your part?
Mr. Unger. Well, the same objection. I think if you were to just go through a list of other than you would eventually arrive at the same objectionable conclusion. So we object to that.
Mr. Jenner. All right. What were your sources upon which you based this statement?
Mr. Unger. Same objection.
Mr. Jenner. Did you have any sources other than the sources you have indicated in your testimony up to the moment?
Mr. Unger. Same objection.
Mr. Jenner. Was the paragraph I read deduction only or did you have some source on which you relied.
Mr. Unger. The same objection. Let me say for the record that, despite the hurt feelings of the members of the Commission, I don’t believe they have a proper right to inquire into attacks that were made upon them. I can’t see any relevancy at all to that.
Mr. Jenner. I do wish to say for the record that the Commission, no member of the Commission, has any hurt feelings whatsoever with respect to this article or any statement in it.
On page 26 you state:
“One writer has recently suggested that it was the CIA that arranged the assassination of President Kennedy; I know of no evidence to support that opinion. But obviously Mr. Dulles’ CIA is open to suspicion.”
Who is the writer to which you have reference?
Mr. Oliver (conferring with counsel). I do not recall. I wrote this, of course, in December, I wouldn’t want to recall now who said it. I have the impression that this was in some one of the innumerable magazine articles about the assassination of the President but I would not want to say which one.
Mr. Jenner. All right. Did I gather from your response that your article was written in December of 1963?
Mr. Oliver. It was—I did most of the work in that during the Christmas vacation which, of course, would run into January.
Mr. Jenner. Well, except for the runover into January the article was prepared by you in December, in the Christmas holiday period, school holiday period which commences, well, usually around December 20 and runs over into New Year’s Day?
Mr. Oliver. Yes; I very unwillingly sacrificed my holiday which I needed for a quite different purpose. I do not exclude the possibility that I might possibly have made some changes by telephone, but I do not recall any. I wouldn’t want to swear that I did not, however.
Mr. Jenner. I take it then that after you prepared the article during the Christmas holidays you submitted it to American Opinion for publication?
Mr. Oliver. Yes; sent it in.
Mr. Jenner. You may have made some telephone changes or editorial modifications?
Mr. Oliver. I would not want to swear that I had not, I do do that sometimes.
Mr. Jenner. But they were not of a character that you can recall at the moment?
Mr. Oliver. No.
Mr. Jenner. Commencing in the right-hand column on page 26 you relate a series of numbered paragraphs, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, to the conclusion of the article on page 28. Do you have those?
Mr. Oliver. Yes.
Mr. Jenner. Are those deductions rather than statements based on newspaper or other sources of the nature and character you have already related?
Mr. Oliver (conferring with counsel). Those are deductions.
Mr. Jenner. May I call your attention to the footnote on page 27 which reads:
“I understand that full report on this and other known activities of Rubenstein will probably appear in a future issue of the Herald of Freedom, Box 333, Staten Island 1, N.Y.” Do we have that?
Mr. Oliver. That is the Herald of Freedom to which I have already referred as being a publication edited by Mr. Frank Capell.
Mr. Jenner. Do you happen to have this particular issue with you?
Mr. Oliver. I believe I do. Yes; the issue, of course, was still in the future at the time that I wrote——
Mr. Jenner. You indicate that clearly in your article.
Mr. Oliver. And consequently the report is not so full as I had perhaps anticipated.
Mr. Jenner. I take it when you say the issue was in the future that the essential aspects of the issue had been communicated to you by Mr. Capell?
Mr. Oliver. That is right. You will find the references to Rubenstein on, I believe, pages 2 and 3 rather than the first page, if I recall correctly.
Mr. Jenner. All right. We will mark as Oliver Exhibit No. 6, an issue of the Herald of Freedom, volume 4, No. 12, January 17, 1964, and the reference, Dr. Oliver, that you have, would you locate that for the record, please?
(The document referred to was marked Oliver Exhibit No. 6 for identification.)
Mr. Oliver. The reference to Rubenstein begins at the bottom of the second column on page 2, and runs into the first column on page 3, and then there are some addenda which are more or less pertinent to the subject although they do not mention Rubenstein. I had anticipated a considerably fuller report of Rubenstein’s activities.
Mr. Jenner. Is the issue of the Herald of Freedom, volume 4, No. 12, January 17, 1964, now marked Oliver Exhibit No. 6, one of the sources upon which you relied in preparing your article, and one of the sources upon which you have relied in making your subsequent talks?
Mr. Oliver. No; the issue itself was not published until after I wrote the article. The information contained in it as communicated to me by Mr. Capell, with some additions, was the information on which I relied when I wrote that footnote, and paragraph to which it is appended.
Mr. Jenner. You are a lecturer, are you not?
Mr. Oliver. Yes.
Mr. Jenner. And you have—you have journeyed about the country during which you have made lectures dealing with the subject matter of your article in American Opinion and such additional matters as have come to your attention since then?
Mr. Oliver. Yes.
Mr. Jenner. In making and giving those lectures, have you relied on Oliver Exhibit No. 6 as one of your sources?
Mr. Oliver. Yes.
Mr. Jenner. What other documents have you brought with you in addition to those you have produced or identified upon which you relied in preparing your article in American Opinion?
Mr. Oliver. Oh, I have a miscellaneous collection of such things as I could find on short notice.
Mr. Jenner. Why don’t you relate them into the record.
Mr. Oliver. We are still on the subject of the article?
Mr. Jenner. Yes, sir.
Mr. Oliver. I have here a clipping from the Rocky Mountain News of this month noting that the CIA has been found giving money to the J. M. Kaplan fund. And many clippings like that. It would take—I have photostats, for example, from reports of the Dies committee identifying Rubenstein, one or more persons named Jacob or Jack Rubenstein, as active in Communist organizations. The most significant one, of course, is the one in which a Jack Rubenstein appears as an organizer in one of the Communist youth movements. If this man has given his age correctly he would have been 19 at the time which would make him just right for a youth movement.
Mr. Jenner. Are you associating the Jack Rubenstein mentioned in that article with the Jack Rubenstein who is now charged and been found guilty of the murder of Oswald?
Mr. Oliver. I am using that as the basis for my contention that that should be investigated.
Mr. Jenner. In view of that could I see the article, please? I think we had probably better identify it.
Mr. Unger. Let me say a copy of Martin Dies’ article is in the same issue of American Opinion for March that you have already used as an Exhibit.
Mr. Jenner. Would you identify the page number?
Mr. Oliver. Let me look at it.
Mr. Jenner. Is that Oliver Exhibit No. 1 you are looking at?
Mr. Oliver. Oliver Exhibit No. 1 contains on pages 1 through 10 an article by Congressman Martin Dies on the assassination in which he raised the question of the identity of Jacob or Jack Rubenstein.
Mr. Jenner. Was that article available to you at the time you wrote your article which was published in the same issue? That is part II.
Mr. Oliver. Not the finished typewritten text of the article but the contents of it; yes.
Mr. Unger. Excuse me, can I interrupt for just a minute?
(Discussion off the record.)
Mr. Jenner. Referring to your article, did you rely on any source that we may describe as being a confidential source as distinguished from public sources, that is, various published matters?
Mr. Oliver. In this entire article?
Mr. Jenner. Yes, sir.
Mr. Oliver. No; except as I have said, I had the estimate made by Colonel Clark which could be regarded as semiconfidential.
Mr. Jenner. And you have so indicated already.
Mr. Oliver. Yes.
Mr. Jenner. Do you recall being interviewed either by telephone or personally by an agent of the FBI on the 2d of September, 1964, that is last week, I guess, wasn’t it, or this week?
Mr. Oliver. Yes.
Mr. Jenner. Last week.
Mr. Oliver. September what?
Mr. Jenner. September 2.
Mr. Oliver. That would be right; yes.
Mr. Jenner. It is reported to us you stated and I will quote “that all of” I interpolate the pronouns “that all of his material used in his articles was obtained by him from public sources and he added that he had no confidential sources.”
Mr. Oliver. I believe that I was referring specifically to the speech concerning which they inquired and not to the articles.
Mr. Jenner. That was the speech that you made on the evening of August 28 at the Santa Ana Valley High School?
Mr. Oliver. That is right.
Mr. Jenner. Do I properly infer from that response of yours that you had sources, one or more, for your article, that was or were other than public sources——
Mr. Oliver. No; I merely am trying to keep the record clear by stating the FBI people, I believe, spoke to me only about the speech.
Mr. Jenner. I see. This report of the FBI, if directed to your article in American Opinion would be equally applicable to it?
Mr. Oliver. Yes. With, of course, the exceptions that I have already mentioned, Colonel Clark, reports from——
Mr. Jenner. With whatever exceptions you have already placed on record in this examination.
Mr. Oliver. That is right.
Mr. Jenner. The report of your Santa Ana Valley High School speech on the evening of August 28, 1964, at least as reported in the Washington Post, on page 19, the issue dated August 30, 1964, purports to quote you as having said, “I don’t know whether Oswald was paid by the CIA or by the Soviet secret police—and it is just a matter of bookkeeping anyway.” Did you make that statement in the course of your speech to the Santa Ana Valley High School audience?
Mr. Oliver. Not in that form, and not in all probability in the context in which I am quoted there.
In the speech I referred to a book which I believe is on your desk written by a Mr. Joesten, Joachim Joesten; entitled “Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy?” in which, in the course of many arguments intended to prove or suggest that Oswald was “framed” by wicked American conservatives, he makes much of Oswald’s supposed connection with the CIA. In my speech I made the point that if it were established that Oswald was in the employ of the CIA that would not by any means exclude the possibility that he was also in the employ of the Soviet and that therefore the argument in the book is completely fallacious. I think I can tell you precisely what I did say.
Mr. Jenner. Thank you, sir. By the way, do you have a copy of that speech? I spoke to your counsel and he thought you might have one.
Mr. Oliver. I have my one copy and I may say that this speech consists of 39 and a little more typed pages including 2 or 3 inserts here and there——
Mr. Jenner. You might find that section dealing with this precise subject.
Mr. Oliver. And that the first 27 pages deal with questions of the impression produced on the public mind by shownmanship.
Mr. Jenner. Excuse me, what do you mean by that, Doctor?
Mr. Oliver. I mean the ease with which many people confuse actors with the roles they play and so carry from a performance an impression that it has a reality that it did not have.
Actually, I start out by pointing out that whenever anybody goes into a theater to see Hamlet for example, he more or less consciously tells himself that he is going into that theater to undergo an illusion. He knows perfectly well the actors are not Hamlet, and the other characters are feigned—that in real life the actors may not resemble the characters they impersonate at all, and so on.
And then I took up the whole question of the socialist mentality as exhibited in history. I made some comments on the letters of objurgation that I had received, for I was still illustrating that mentality, and I spoke briefly about the general suppositions of the people called “liberal intellectuals.” I did not begin to discuss the facts of the assassination until late on page 27.
In other words, more than two-thirds of my speech dealt with these general—of my pitch, dealt with these general considerations.
Now, the particular passage from which that quotation was taken begins on page 26:
Mr. Jenner. Would you read it into the record, please?
Mr. Oliver. This entire passage?
Mr. Jenner. Is it very long?
Mr. Oliver. It is approximately three typewritten pages.
Mr. Jenner. Why don’t you go ahead and read it.
Mr. Oliver. “The second propaganda line is the one that I mentioned in the February issue of American Opinion when I was not certain that the Bolsheviks would dare to use the United States as they were then using it elsewhere in the world. You will find that line set forth in a book by one Joachim Joesten, who claims to be a Dane who migrated to Soviet Russia and later to the United States. It is entitled ‘Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy?’ And it is published by a publishing house headed by Aldo Marzani whom you may know better under one of his aliases as Tony Wales or Whales.
“He was identified as a member of the Communist Party when he was employed in our super secret ‘intelligence’ organization, the OSS, and in the State Department. Of course there was no conflict of interest there. I can’t remember whether it was under his alias or under his own name that he served a term in prison for perjury. So you see the book comes from an appropriate source. If you have any doubts remaining just note the same firm also publishes puke on Americans excreted by one Stanley or Sammy Steiner, writing under the alias of Mike Newberry. Stanley also writes for the Communist Worker. The book ‘Oswald: An Assassin or Fall Guy’ contains a few preposterous fantasies but for the most part it operates by taking the facts that are publicly known and simply turning them upside down. That way you see they will look just right to liberal intellectuals.”
Mr. Jenner. By the way, he uses—would he be classified as a liberal by most people or does he claim to be?
Mr. Oliver. I think he tries to give that——
Mr. Jenner. I am curious now.
Mr. Oliver. My opinion is that of the people who read that book perhaps 75 percent will say to themselves this man is a great liberal, a believer in civil rights, et cetera. And a champion of the underdog.
“It starts, for example, with the strange detour in the Presidential procession that made Kennedy an easy mark for a marksman in the Book Depository—to which, I believe, I was the first to draw attention. But the author argues that a sweet little Communist like Oswald couldn’t possibly have known about it, much less had the target set up for him. Poor little fellow. The detour must have been arranged so that the nasty rightwing extremists could frame him for the assassination.
“And the book makes much of the possible activities of our Central Intelligence Agency. This is designed for readers who have memories so poor that they will not recall the long list of events from the fake invasion of Cuba known as Operation Judas because it betrayed the anti-Communist Cubans into the hands of Castro, to the recent assassinations in Vietnam in which our Central Intelligence Agency with its army of 17 to 40 thousand faceless agents and the billions of dollars with which you taxpayers supply it every year, has evidently done the work of the Soviet Secret Police. It is designed for readers who will not remember that a defector from the Soviet Secret Police has sworn that his colleagues in the Central Intelligence Agency used your money directly to subsidize, (a) the Soviet Secret Police; (b) the official Communist Party in Italy; and (c) the official Communist Party in the United States.”
I should interpolate that this is obviously a reference to Lieutenant Colonel Goleniewski.
Mr. Jenner. Whom you have heretofore identified?
Mr. Oliver. Pardon me?
Mr. Jenner. Whom you have heretofore identified, or at least you made reference to him earlier in the afternoon?
Mr. Oliver. I do not recall that.
“On the contrary, the author of this incredible hogwash like the authors of some other books recently published expects you to believe that the CIA is a rightwing organization probably run by the John Birch Society. I do not know whether Oswald was paid by the CIA, but I hear that there was testimony before the Warren Commission that he was. There would be nothing improbable in that. The CIA worked for Castro in Cuba before he came to power.”
And I will interpolate here that that is a reference primarily to the testimony of Ambassador Earl Smith before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, and also a reference to the testimony of the elected president of Cuba who was driven from Cuba by Castro, and there are some further indications of some significance in at least the second edition of Nathaniel Weyl’s “Red Star Over Cuba,” and still further indications in a recent book that apologizes for the CIA’s fiasco in Cuba and at the same time criticizes them rather severely. I am sorry, the names do not come to my mind at the moment; the authors are two newsmen, I believe, both of them with New York newspapers.
Possibly one from the Times and one from the Herald Tribune. It is just a vague impression.
“It is believed to have instigated and financed the Communist smear against General Walker.” I interpolate here and refer to the——
Mr. Jenner. When you say interpolate, you mean the source from which——
Mr. Oliver. Yes, I am now interpolating from my speech, text of my speech, to say in making that statement I was relying on the considerations that the Central Intelligence Agency may be operating Inter-national Media, the publishers of the “Oversexed Weekly,” as it is generally called, “Overseas Weekly” as it appears on the masthead, the three editions of Drum in Africa, and some other publications. That is partly based on the identity of a stockholder and officer of this supposed corporation with an officer in the fictitious corporation that was set up to cover Radio Swan.
Mr. Jenner. Cover what?
Mr. Oliver. Radio Swan, which has since been admitted to be a CIA operation.
I then continue, “They contrived and financed the assassination of anti-Communists in other parts of the world, notably General Trujillo in the Dominican Republic.”
That is based—I interpolate now,—that is based primarily on the assertions of General Espaillat in his book “Trujillo, the Last of the Caesars.”
I may say at the time of the assassination of General Trujillo I referred from the facts that the only people who could have arranged it were either the CIA or the Soviet secret police.
Then I continue. “And there seems to be no good reason for supposing that it could not use your money to carry out assassinations in the Communist interest in the country.”
Mr. Jenner. The “it” is what, CIA?
Mr. Oliver. CIA.
Mr. Jenner. Is that a conclusion you reach or is that based—what is your source of that statement?
Mr. Oliver. Well, that is a conclusion that I reach primarily on the grounds that if you carry out assassinations abroad you may carry them out at home, and secondarily on the suspicions which obviously can be no more than suspicions, concerning the death of Povl Bang-Jensen.
Mr. Jenner. I will ask you who is he, in my ignorance I will ask you if you can identify him?
Mr. Oliver. He is the member of the United Nations staff who attempted to communicate to the Central Intelligence Agency the names of certain Soviet agents in the United Nations who were, (A) willing to defect, in fact eager to do that; and (B) willing to identify agents of the Soviet Secret Police in the State Department and CIA. He is reported to have communicated his information in confidence to an officer of the CIA and very shortly thereafter he met his death in what was called a suicide although most improbably such. The CIA is reported to have been shadowing him at the time of his death.
On those principal data, my statement here is an inference. If they can assassinate General Trujillo in the Dominican Republic there is nothing impossible about their doing something similar on American soil.
I continued. “But what Joesten’s poisonous book is trying to tell its readers—and I warn you this is the kind of topsy turvy propaganda is certain to convince liberal intellectuals is that Kennedy was really assassinated by the wicked Fascist police of Dallas, Texas, who then framed sweet little Oswald to conceal their crime. And the author all but says outright that those awful ‘Fascist’ police are agents of the John Birch Society and General Walker.” I think that is sufficient.
Mr. Jenner. As I recall, I am not attempting to quote this, all I did was make a cryptic note, somewhere, in what you have just read the substance is “But I hear that he was” that is, that he was paid by the CIA. Would you find that spot in your quote?
Mr. Oliver. The exact quotation is, “I do not know whether Oswald was paid by the CIA but I hear there was testimony before the Warren Commission that he was.”
Mr. Jenner. And from what source, on what source did you base the statement that you heard that there was testimony before the Warren Commission that he was?
Mr. Oliver. Principally, although not exclusively, an article, again by Henshaw in the National Enquirer at about the time that Earl Warren made his statement that the findings would not be released during the lifetime of the people then living.
Mr. Jenner. If you will pardon my correcting you, even that newspaper account didn’t say that the Chief Justice said that the findings of the Commission would not be released.
Mr. Oliver. That the “full truth” wasn’t that it?
Mr. Jenner. I think not. It will be quoted in the report. This occurred a long time ago, and I have forgotten just what it was.
Mr. Oliver. Yes, this is in the National Enquirer for March 3, 1964.
Mr. Jenner. Could I identify that and then return it to you when we have made a copy?
That is either a photostat or a Xerox reprint that is marked Oliver Exhibit No. 7. It is entitled—The particular article by John Henshaw, “Washington Pipeline by John Henshaw,” and then the heading is “Moscow plotted JFK assassination—U.S. Government financed Oswald,” place-lined Washington, D.C.
Does that summarily describe the exhibit?
Mr. Oliver. Right.
Mr. Jenner. And that is your source?
Mr. Oliver. That is my primary source, and I believe the first source; the statement picked up elsewhere in the press. Of course this is supported.
Mr. Jenner. Is what, sir?
Mr. Oliver. This is supported by the longer article by Mr. Henshaw that has already been placed in the record as Exhibit No. 5.
Mr. Jenner. Oliver Exhibit No. 5?
Mr. Oliver. Wherein it is stated that the reason given either as an explicit statement or by implication for intervening to prevent the Dallas police from arresting Rubenstein and Oswald for the attempted murder of General Walker was that they were agents of the Central Intelligence Agency—which you see confirms the statement in the earlier report.
Mr. Jenner. Now, the news item to which I referred, that is the Washington Post of August 30, 1964, page 19, also states that “Oliver also said that under orders from Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara the Army ‘began to rehearse for the funeral more than a week before the funeral.’” Would you find that, please, in your speech in which you made reference to that subject?
Mr. Oliver. I may say that is typical of the kind of so-called journalism practiced by the Washington Post and similar publications. In the course of my speech——
Mr. Jenner. Would you identify the pages if they are numbered?
Mr. Oliver. On typewritten page, beginning on typewritten page 12, going through to approximately the middle of page 16 and including a little insert 13-A, I discussed the effect of theatrical performances on the human mind, and the way in which illusions may be carried over from the performance to reality. I begin by using a performance of Hamlet as an illustration, analyzing what happens there. In the following paragraph I elaborate on the point that “A great many naive and unreflective people do confuse actors with the roles they play in the performances.”
And I illustrate that with a story which I hope was amusing about an acquaintance of mine who witnessed a brawl in a tavern between two men, one of whom was convinced that an actress who played effectively the role of the pure and virginal heroine must be pure and virginal herself.
I then went on and using a slightly different illustration but developing the same point, I mentioned a television show about a character called Superman, and what was told to me by a vice president of the corporation that wrote and produced the show, to wit, that although this being was represented as a person who could leap a hundred feet in the air, and could bend a railroad rail with his hands, nevertheless many of the viewers thought that he was real and wrote letters to him asking for his help.
And I then went on.
Mr. Jenner. Shades of Orson Welles.
Mr. Oliver. Except that I believe these letterwriters were not financed so far as I know.
Mr. Jenner. I did not mean to imply that.
Mr. Oliver. I then went on “As another example of the ease with which illusions are induced, let us take one detail in the really spectacular show that was put on at the funeral of President Kennedy. That was a mass performance which for sheer technical virtuousity certainly deserves to rank with such spectacles in the cinema as Cleopatra and Ben Hur. Now, I made it a point to talk to many people who had seen that spectacle on television, and I found that all of them very firmly believed that the caparisoned horse named ‘Black Jack’ in the procession belonged to Mrs. Kennedy and was her favorite mount. That is entirely false.
“As most of you may not know for the national press never reported it, the headquarters detachment of our Army under orders from McNamara’s office began to rehearse for the funeral more than a week before the assassination, and ‘Black Jack’ was an old army horse who was selected at the time of the first rehearsal for the role that he played in the real performance. Incidentally, he was a horse who had never been broken to the saddle and consequently never ridden by anyone. That is what was specifically said by the commander of that detachment when he told his hometown newspaper about the rehearsals.” Perhaps I should add that I did not hear of that statement for several days and by the time that I tried to reach him by telephone the commander had been transferred to somewhere in Germany. I mention “Black Jack” and the impression created on television merely as an example of the attention to detail that makes great and impressive performances.”