(Testimony of J. W. Fritz)
Mr. Fritz.
No, sir; we let them talk to anyone they want to. If they are allowed to use the telephone, of course, they are allowed free use of it. Sometimes they do a little better than that. Sometimes they place a long distance call and charge it to the city.
Mr. Mccloy.
When you went in, Captain Fritz, and you saw the site which Oswald is alleged to have fired the shot from----
Mr. Fritz.
Yes, sir.
Mr. Mccloy.
Did you see any signs of a lunch there, a chicken there?
Mr. Fritz.
No, sir; I will tell you where that story about the chicken comes from. At the other window above there, where people in days past, you know had eaten their lunches, they left chicken bones and pieces of bread, all kinds of things up and down there. That isn't where he was at all. He was in a different window, so I don't think those things have anything to do with it. Someone wrote a story about it in the papers, and we have got all kinds of bad publicity from it and they wrote in telling us how to check those chicken bones and how to get them from the stomach and everything.
Mr. Dulles.
What was Oswald's attitude toward the police and police authority?
Mr. Fritz.
You know I didn't have trouble with him. If we would just talk to him quietly like we are talking right now, we talked all right until I asked him a question that meant something, every time I asked him a question that meant something, that would produce evidence he immediately told me he wouldn't tell me about it and he seemed to anticipate what I was going to ask. In fact, he got so good at it one time, I asked him if he had had any training, if he hadn't been questioned before.
Mr. Dulles.
Questioned before?
Mr. Fritz.
Questioned before, and he said that he had, he said yes, the FBI questioned him when he came back from Russia from a long time and they tried different methods. He said they tried the buddy boy method and thorough method, and let me see some other method he told me and he said, "I understand that."
Mr. Dulles.
Did you ask him whether he had had any communist training or indoctrination or anything of that kind?
Mr. Fritz.
I asked him some questions about that and I asked him where he was in Russia. He told me he was in Russia, first I believe he told me, first I believe he said in Moscow, and then he said he went to Minsk, Russia, and I asked him what did you do, get some training, go to school? I suspected he had some training in sabotage from the way he talked and acted, and he said "no, I worked in a radio factory." He acted like a person who was prepared for what he was doing.
Mr. Dulles.
Have you any views of your own as to motive from your talks with him? Did you get any clues as to possible motive in assassinating the President?
Mr. Fritz.
I can only tell you what little I know now. I am sure that we have people in Washington here that can tell far more than I can.
Mr. Dulles.
Well, you saw the man and the others didn't see the man.
Mr. Fritz.
I got the impression, I got the impression that he was doing it because of his feeling about the Castro revolution, and I think that he felt, he had a lot of feeling about that revolution.
(At this point the Chief Justice entered the hearing room.)
Mr. Fritz.
I think that was the reason. I noticed another thing. I noticed a little before when Walker was shot, he had come out with some statements about Castro and about Cuba and a lot of things and if you will remember the President had some stories a few weeks before his death about Cuba and about Castro and some things, and I wondered if that didn't have some bearing. I have no way of knowing that other than just watching him and talking to him. I think it was his feeling about his belief in being a Marxist, I think he had--he told me he had debated in New Orleans, and that he tried to get converts to this Fair Play for Cuba organization, so I think that was his motive. I think he was doing it because of that.
Mr. Dulles.
Did he express any animosity against anyone, the President or the Governor or Walker or anybody?
|
