(Testimony of Henry Wade)
Mr. Rankin.
On the seven points were any of them that were new that hadn't already been told to the public?
Mr. Wade.
To tell you the truth, I don't know. I think there were some of them that hadn't been but I think most of them had. But I couldn't see at this stage the evidence on this thing, nobody, the situation where you had an assassination, and a dead person and another case pending, and it was against my interest actually, to trying Ruby, it would be a whole lot better trying Ruby if he killed the wrong man than if he killed the assassin of the President but I was trying to establish that this was the assassin of the President.
And I didn't give all the evidence, and I don't know whether there was anything new or not because I didn't see much of television during all this time. I don't actually know everything that was given out, and there was so much in the papers that I didn't have time to read them, so I didn't know for sure what all the police had given out.
Senator COOPER. Substantially then, you were laying out to the public the facts which had led you to issue a warrant for Oswald as the killer of President Kennedy?
Mr. Wade.
That was the purpose of that interview.
You also have to---I don't know where you gentlemen were, but you have to get a picture of what was going on. You had, of course, there in Dallas, you had threats on people's lives everywhere.
As a matter of fact, it ran over the radio that I had been assassinated, for 2 hours, on Monday morning. I wasn't listening to the radio. My wife called me up called me up and I denied it. [Laughter.]
Mr. Wade.
But you had lots of things of that kind. And I thought you needed some type of, somebody--and your whole thing was wrong with this whole deal, you had no one in charge of the thing. You had the police, the FBI, the Secret Service, the Department of Justice, my Department, Waggoner Carr's department, but no one had any say to offer the rest of them.
Mr. Rankin.
Tell us how that affected it. You had the jurisdiction of the crime itself.
Mr. Wade.
Of the trial of the case.
Mr. Rankin.
And the police department, what jurisdiction did they have?
Mr. Wade.
They had the jurisdiction, the primary responsibility for the investigation of the assassination, and--they had the primary job of finding out who did it and getting the evidence. They were assisted, the Secret Service, of course, had the job of protecting the President. The FBI, they have criminal, pretty general, investigation, I am not sure, but they were in on it, they were all there, and assisting. It was a deal where nobody had any actual control over another person.
Mr. Rankin.
Had the State authorities any jurisdiction or effect on the operation?
Mr. Wade.
You mean the State?
Mr. Rankin.
Of Texas.
Mr. Wade.
They actually had none. They had no authority. The Governor has no authority in a situation like this nor the attorney general other than in a vague sort of way, as the police, I guess they had the police powers to some extent of maintaining order but you didn't need the National Guard or anything. I mean this was more dealing with a situation of information. I think this situation is true in many States, in practically all of them.
Mr. Rankin.
Was that confusing, did that make it harder to try to solve the crime and handle the problems?
Mr. Wade.
It did; very much so. Your press was the most confusing thing. I mean you couldn't get in the police station. I mean I just barely could get into the police station myself for stomping over the press and you had a lot of reporters, not like the reporters we usually deal with down there. I mean we don't have trouble usually with the local press, people we pretty well know.
We would tell them what is going on, and they will go on, but these people just followed everybody everywhere they went, and they were throwing police men on the corner, if he made a statement about he saw someone running that way dressed maybe like the killer--they ran all that on. They were just running everybody. There was no control over your public media. It made it
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