Now, are there any others with which you had a measure of disagreement, or any other which you now would not wish to support or, put it, stand back of?

Mr. Weissman.

There was one other that I thought was being a little rough on the President, but which I didn't particularly agree with a hundred percent.

Mr. Jenner.

Identify it, please.

Mr. Weissman.

It was in the question that read, "Why has Gus Hall, head of the U.S. Communist Party, praised almost every one of your policies and announced that the party will endorse and support your reelection in 1964?
I personally thought that the selection of this particular question tended put President Kennedy in a light where he is voluntarily accepting this support---in other words, sort of calling him a Communist, which I felt he was not. And, at the same time, though, I had a reservation about making a big furor over it, because of the fact, if nothing else, if the President did read it, he might realize something, and he just might do something about it, in foresaking the support. So I let it go at that.

Mr. Dulles.

When you spoke, then, of selection from a list--was that the list to which you referred before, which I believe you said came from the Birch Society?

Mr. Jenner.

A list of 50 questions.

Mr. Weissman.

No; as far as I know it didn't come from the Birch Society. It was Just some political material that Larrie had collected rafts of--he had books and folders. It was something he pulled out and said, "Maybe we can use this." And we went through the 50 questions. We were in a hurry, and this seemed to be the easiest way out, as far as getting some text, some composition for the ad.

Representative Ford.

So the final selection rested with Larrie, Mr. Grinnan, and yourself, with the exception of this one contributor who insisted on one?

Mr. Weissman.

Well, let's put it like this. I signed my name to the ad. But you might say the final selection rested with the contributors. I had to go along with them, because if I said I won't go along with it, or I won't sign my name, there would have been an ad anyway--the ad would have been printed anyway. Larrie would have put his name to it.
Now, let me tell you this. It will be a very short story.
Bill and I had decided about a week after we got to Dallas that Larrie was full of hooey, that we could not go along with this guy.

Representative Ford.

What do you mean by that?

Mr. Weissman.

Well, everything he is doing he is doing for himself, and if we happen to fit in, it was fine. And he was getting an awful lot of recognition and publicity. We felt if this guy got any stronger, he would be able to move us out, or control us. So when the idea for the ad came up I said, "Okay, I will put my name to it," because I felt any recognition that came would then be in my favor, and if we took advantage of this, and because these organizations would have to back me personally as representing them, I could then denounce the anti-Semitism, the anti-Catholic, anti-Negro, and they would have to back me up, or else I would just tell the whole story about this thing. And I felt that this was going to be my move to get back to the original philosophy of a completely democratic type of organization.
And I had discussed--Bill and I, I might say, were a partnership unto ourselves. We had decided one way or the other we were either going to get out of Dallas or run the thing ourselves, because we didn't like the way it was going.

Mr. Dulles.

Did Larrie object to your being the one to sign the advertisement?

Mr. Weissman.

No; in fact, Larrie was sort of afraid to sign it, because when he came out and said he was part of the Stevenson demonstration, his life had been threatened, and he had all sorts of harrassing phone calls and so on. And

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