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Warren Commission Hearings: Vol. V - Page 581« Previous | Next »

(Testimony of C. Douglas Dillon)

Mr. Mccloy.
House at 1 o'clock, not with the President, but with Mr. Bundy, who wants to talk with me.
How long do you think we will be with the Secretary and will we resume after lunch?
Mr. Rankin.
I was hoping to get through. I presume he was hoping we would.
Secretary DILLON. I would like to if we could. I have to leave tomorrow to go to Japan.
Mr. Mccloy.
Well, would it interrupt you if I ask a few questions?
Mr. Rankin.
No; go ahead.
The Chairman.
Ask what questions you want?
Mr. Mccloy.
You testified, Mr. Secretary, you felt with these additions that the Secret Service would be competent to cope with the added requirements for the protection of the President which have occurred.
In testifying to that effect, do you include---you include the investigative services of your own which are quite apart, as I understand it, from the information that you may gather from other agencies?
Secretary DILLON. That is correct; yes.
Mr. Mccloy.
We have had the thought that perhaps the Protective Research Section or Division of your organization wasn't as well equipped as it should have been nor as it night have been presumably for the purely preventive investigative work.
Do you feel that with this new plan of yours, that that would be adequately taken care of?
Secretary DILLON. Yes; I do. It was not equipped, I think, adequately in two ways. First, it did not, as is clearly shown by the events in Dallas, receive information on enough dangerous people. At least, they didn't receive the information on Lee Oswald.
So that what is required is the development of criteria, better criteria, that can be circulated to law enforcement agencies generally, and which will insure that adequate information comes in. We are making progress there.
I think you have already seen a document with some criteria that were developed, which has been circulated in Washington. A similar document has now been circulated by the Secret Service Chief to all special agents asking them to write a briefer but somewhat similar letter to all chiefs of police, sheriffs, and State police in their localities which asks them to furnish any such information to the local Secret Service agent. That is being disseminated now throughout the country. It will be completed within the next 6 weeks or so.
In addition, we have established an interagency committee which has as one of its jobs the development of better criteria that will really result in getting the kind of information we want without swamping us. If we are too broad in our criteria and we get a million names, obviously nothing can work.
This committee is holding its first formal meeting next week. It has representatives of the President's Office of Science and Technology, of the Department of Defense, which is the Advanced Research Projects outfit, of the CIA, an in-divicual who is highly competent in their file section and who understands the setting up of complex files and retrieval, that sort of business, and four people from PRS, the PRS head inspector, Mr. Thacker, the head of the research, and development, Mr. Bouck, t.he head of the files section, Mr. Young, and Mr. Stoner, who is now handlng the liaison job.
There will also be, although the individual has not yet been named, a representative of the FBI, and with that I think that we will be able to develop criteria that will both be useful to us and be an improvement on criteria that was so far developed with the help of outside consultants.
Mr. Mccloy.
Mr. Secretary, the impression has been gained, I think, by the Commission that perhaps too great emphasis has been directed to the mero investigation of the threat, of the particular individual, the crank, or the fellow that sends the poison food or the threatening letter, and perhaps not enough in a broader scope, recognizing, of course, that you can't be too broad without defeating your own purpose, but that there are perhaps groups or other areas of ferment that could provoke an attack quite without the threat. Would you comment on that?
Secretary DILLON. Yes; one of the criteria that is presently out is meant to
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