Part 47

Mr. BOUCK. That is right. These referrals from the FBI are all through here. Page 8 is another one where they picked up information and gave it to us. The first four sections relate to the cases in the four offices of Texas during a 2-year period. The very final one illustrates just a little sample of the kind of cases we received in Texas which we did not think warranted investigation. That will give you an idea of what those cases amounted to. Why we didn't go into them.

Mr. McCLOY. Let me ask you this: Are your records and equipment modern in the sense that you have got punchcards on all these, have you got the type of equipment that you would think that extensive files and extensive information and quick access to them might be very important. Do you have IBM machines and do you have punchcards, for example, so that you can have quick cross references?

Mr. BOUCK. No, sir. Our files are conventional, card indexes, conventional folders. We do not have machine operation in that sense.

Mr. McCLOY. Don't you think that with all this mass of information that comes in that that would be an asset to you?

Mr. BOUCK. If I might defer to Mr. Carswell again, I believe that is in the document you are handling, discussion of that, am I right, Mr. Carswell, or in the studies that are going on.

Mr. CARSWELL. Yes.

Mr. BOUCK. This is part of this big overall consideration again.

Mr. McCLOY. It just seems to me this is almost a typical case of where that type of thing can do you a great deal of good. You have it in industry to a very marked degree. I wonder whether it could be--I don't know enough about the flow of these things.

Mr. BOUCK. This is under a great deal of consideration as a part of this post-Dallas study that Mr. Carswell referred to and I am quite sure that it will be contained in the final results.

Mr. McCLOY. Very well. Go ahead.

Mr. DULLES. Could I ask one question in that connection? You say at the bottom of the page, this introductory table page, that the total exceeded 32,000 items.

Mr. BOUCK. Yes.

Mr. DULLES. Does that mean now you have cards on 32,000 people?

Mr. BOUCK. Oh, no; we have cards on close to a million people.

Mr. DULLES. A million people?

Mr. BOUCK. Yes.

Mr. DULLES. This total then is 1-year total?

Mr. BOUCK. This is a 2-year total--no, wait a minute. I beg your pardon.

Mr. McCLOY. 1963.

Mr. BOUCK. This is a 1-year total for 1943, 1-year total for 1953, and 1-year total for 1963.

Mr. DULLES. That is just the number, and these figures are cumulative that you have here?

Mr. BOUCK. No; everyone is a year.

Mr. DULLES. That is what I mean, you have the total you have to add this up for previous years, but you don't keep them forever, you take some of these out.

Mr. BOUCK. These are not all cards, but these are items of information. In 1-year cases we might get 40, 50 items in a particular case, and these items would go in the case files.

Mr. DULLES. Do you know how many names you have carded now, approximately?

Mr. BOUCK. We have not counted them but we think in the vicinity of a million but they are not all active, you see. We have no way of knowing when people die in some cases and things like that. So we don't know just how many of these million are now active. Certainly very much less than a million.

Mr. DULLES. But you have a million names carded?

Mr. BOUCK. Yes. In the indexes.

Mr. STERN. In the files which you describe as basic files, I believe, how many cases are current, either in your office or within easy access?

Mr. BOUCK. About 50,000.

Mr. STERN. About 50,000. So that 950,000 are in some other storage?

Mr. BOUCK. Not all of these cards, you see, will represent cases because we have some cases in which many people are involved. There would be considerably less cases than there would be card indexes, but we do have a very sizable storage of cases under National Archives, some of the older ones having gone to places like the Roosevelt Library.

(At this point Representative Ford left the hearing room.)

Mr. STERN. These are your basic files which now have something in the order of 50,000 active cases?

Mr. BOUCK. Yes.

Mr. STERN. And some of these involve more than one individual?

Mr. BOUCK. Yes.

Mr. STERN. In these cases?

Mr. BOUCK. Yes.

Mr. STERN. A case might be an organization, as I understand it, rather than an individual?

Mr. BOUCK. That is right.

Mr. STERN. And the members of that organization would be collected under that one case?

Mr. BOUCK. Yes.

Mr. STERN. Would they also be listed individually?

Mr. BOUCK. They would be listed individually if they were of interest to us as individuals. Sometimes we would get the membership of a group of people that attended a lecture, let's say, where very derogatory information was given out about the President, but most of these people seem like ordinary citizens and it doesn't seem like worth investigating. We might have 200 people listed in that, this would not be normal, but it would be a few cases like that.

Mr. STERN. Now, as I understand it you by no means investigate every individual who is in one of these 50,000 cases?

Mr. BOUCK. That is correct.

Mr. STERN. And what are the criteria that you use?

Mr. BOUCK. The criteria for investigation are feelings that there is indeed an indication that there may be a danger to the President.

Mr. STERN. But there has to be some indication of a potential danger to the President to get that individual into a case to begin with, I take it. If it were clear he was not?

Mr. BOUCK. Yes; but not necessarily a current indication. We take many of these where we think an individual is becoming hostile and a little bit disgusted with the President, we take many of those cases to watch these people. We keep getting information here and there along, and frequently after we get the second or third piece of information, we decide indeed this individual is perhaps--does perhaps constitute a menace, and at that point we would investigate it.

Mr. STERN. As I understand it, one of the main purposes of your investigation is to attempt to deal with the dangerous individual at that time?

Mr. BOUCK. Yes, sir.

Mr. STERN. How would you deal with these people whom we are speaking about?

Mr. BOUCK. We deal with them primarily in three ways. First, if a law violation is involved an attempt will be made to see if a prosecution is in order.

Mr. STERN. What sort of law violation?

Mr. BOUCK. Well, we have a threat law, for one, that is under our jurisdiction. Then in the case----

Mr. STERN. This is threats against the President?

Mr. BOUCK. Threats against the President. Then there is----

Mr. DULLES. Is that a local law?

Mr. BOUCK. No; that is a Federal law.

Mr. DULLES. It is a Federal law?

Mr. BOUCK. Yes.

Mr. STERN. And it involves what sort of act?

Mr. BOUCK. It involves making a threat to kill the President or to harm the President.

Mr. STERN. Not necessarily----

Mr. McCLOY. Do you have a citation of that law?

Mr. BOUCK. It is in some exhibit, I am sure.

Mr. McCLOY. I think it is well to put it in the record if we have it.

Mr. DULLES. Yes; I think it would be very good.

Mr. CARSWELL. Can we supply it?

Mr. DULLES. Why don't you supply it?

(It was later supplied as 18 U.S.C., Section 871.)

Mr. BOUCK. If the investigation indicates that the individual is mentally unbalanced, which a high percentage are, then attempt will be made to persuade local authorities to get hospitalization, confinement in an institution.

If neither of those are possible, attempts will be made to get local officers and family, if they will cooperate, to help us keep track of him, and we will institute checkups from time to time when we are investigating. Those are basically the control measures that we are able to use. In some cases we may conduct surveillance, by the way, if we can't do any of those, and we regard the man as very dangerous.

Mr. STERN. I show you a 1-page pink card marked for identification Commission Exhibit No. 765. Can you tell us what that is?

Mr. BOUCK. Yes; this is a card which we have prepared when an individual that we have rated as dangerous is placed in an institution, either a mental institution or a penal institution. We supply that card to the superintendent of the institution. We ask him to put it in the front of the individual's case jacket, and it is all filled in so that the return address and all are on it. The frank portion of it on the bottom is a frank portion, all he has to do is to indicate whether the individual has escaped, transferred or been released and drop it in the mail to advise us on action they may take on letting him out or if he has escaped.

Mr. STERN. That is the control you exercise over persons who are institutionalized in prison or some sort of hospital?

Mr. BOUCK. Yes.

Mr. STERN. When an individual is determined after investigation to present some level of danger but not sufficient to warrant prosecution or not to be a mentally disturbed person warranting commitment, how do you control that individual, keep track of him?

Mr. BOUCK. If we think he is in fact dangerous, he would be in our checkup file which is really a control device by which at least every 6 months we reinvestigate and in between times we try to have arrangements with the family and local officers to let us know if he leaves town or buys a gun or anything.

The other device is a geographical card file in which we would put a card to let us know about this individual in case the President went to that geographical area so that the office might take a further look and see if he was a menace.

Mr. STERN. At the time of Dallas, do you know approximately how many persons were in institutions under this system where you would be notified if they left or escaped?

Mr. BOUCK. I am sorry, I don't have that.

Mr. STERN. The order of magnitude, any estimate?

Mr. BOUCK. It would be some thousands but I wouldn't really have a close idea. I could get that and supply it. I just would have to guess and it would be a very bad guess.

Mr. STERN. Fine. But you can determine this for us?

Mr. BOUCK. Yes.

Mr. STERN. Good. How many at the time of Dallas would be in your checkup control file system with this periodic review?

Mr. BOUCK. About 400.

Mr. STERN. 400 individuals?

Mr. BOUCK. That is nationwide.

Mr. STERN. Again, at the time of Dallas, how many individuals would have been listed in the trip-index file which you have described?

Mr. BOUCK. About a hundred.

Mr. STERN. One hundred in the Nation?

Mr. BOUCK. Yes.

Mr. STERN. What are the criteria for putting someone's name in the trip-index file?

Mr. BOUCK. The belief on the part of the local field office, with confirmation from the Protective Research Section that this individual would indeed constitute a risk to the President's safety, if he went to that area.

Mr. STERN. This is done, this is organized, on a geographic basis?

Mr. BOUCK. Yes.

Mr. STERN. By Secret Service field offices?

Mr. BOUCK. Yes.

Mr. STERN. Is there any other control device that you employed at the time of Dallas?

Mr. BOUCK. We had at the time a very small device that we call an album which has a few, perhaps 12 or 15 people that we consider very dangerous or at least dangerous and so mobile that we can't be sure where they might be. This is a constant thing. Copies of these are kept before the protective personnel at the White House all the time. This resides in their office.

Senator COOPER. On that point, if this last category represents a group that is so highly dangerous, have any individuals in that group reached the place where they have made such statements as would bring them under the Federal act which would require prosecution?

Mr. BOUCK. No, sir; if they were prosecutable we would seek that solution immediately, and many of them have been taken to the district attorney and it has just been determined they do not quite meet the requirements for prosecution.

Some have been prosecuted, and have served sentences and are out at the end of sentences but still thought to be dangerous.

Senator COOPER. Yes.

Mr. BOUCK. Some have been in mental institutions and discharged, and there isn't ground to put them back but we are still afraid of them.

Mr. STERN. Are the individuals who are listed in the trip-index file, which numbered at the time of Dallas about 100, also listed in the checkup control files?

Mr. BOUCK. Yes. Yes; they would, primarily that 100 would to a large degree be in both places.

Mr. STERN. Then it is a fair summary, Mr. Bouck, that at the time of Dallas the number of individuals that you were concerned with were some thousands, the number you will supply, who were institutionalized either in prison or in mental hospitals, and with such institutions you had an arrangement that would promptly notify you of the discharge or escape of that individual, some 400 on a systematic review, approximately every 6 months by your field offices, of which 400, 100 were separately identified as particularly dangerous in the trip-index file, and some 12 to 15 whose photographs were in the album?

Mr. BOUCK. Yes; I think----

Mr. STERN. As a matter of fact, I would suppose the people in the album would also be in the checkup control file so really we are talking about, are we not, the unknown number in institutions, and about 400 other individuals whom you were actively reviewing and about whom you would be concerned on the occasion of the President's trip?

Mr. BOUCK. That is right.

Mr. STERN. In addition, you had files on, active files on, approximately 50,000 cases involving at least that number and probably more, individuals which were your basic library, as it were, but of reference use only until more information was developed about them?

Mr. BOUCK. Well, I think you are quite accurate except in the last category. In these 50,000 cases would be tremendous numbers of cases that had been given investigative attention, and had been determined that our first thought or our first indications of danger were not substantiated. The investigator, and we concurred, felt that the individual, at least at any particular time, that this particular individual was not really in fact a menace to the President's life.

Mr. DULLES. What was the location of these 50,000 cases? We are talking now about Dallas, is that countrywide?

Mr. BOUCK. Countrywide.

Mr. McCLOY. International.

Mr. BOUCK. It is worldwide over a period of 20 years.

Mr. DULLES. Yes. Somebody in Thailand, if he was in Thailand wouldn't be of much danger in Dallas.

Mr. STERN. But he would, as I understand it, sir, be included in the basic files if he had come to their attention as a potential danger.

Mr. DULLES. Someone in New Orleans, for example, he could get up to Dallas very quickly or if he were in Houston, but this 50,000 covers the whole world.

Mr. STERN. Yes; and I think the important point here, Mr. Dulles, is that these are 50,000 cases of background information, including people already investigated and found not to represent danger. The number of cases under active scrutiny at the time of Dallas amounted to about 400, who were reviewed periodically, plus a much larger number, in the thousands, of persons committed or imprisoned, and as to those, I expect there would be no problem until they were released.

Mr. BOUCK. That is right.

Mr. STERN. And you had a system to be notified about the release or escape, is that correct?

Mr. BOUCK. That is correct.

Mr. DULLES. So can we get from that about the number of cases you felt to look at in connection with the President's trip to Dallas?

Mr. BOUCK. We actually----

Mr. DULLES. What range would that be?

Mr. BOUCK. We actually looked at a volume of cases approximating 400 in connection with the trip to Dallas.

Mr. STERN. Well----

Mr. BOUCK. That is the total file that we looked into.

Mr. STERN. On a national basis?

Mr. BOUCK. The total two or three files we looked into would encompass about that many people.

Mr. DULLES. All right. That gives me just what I was asking for.

Mr. STERN. In point of fact, Mr. Bouck, when you looked at the checkup control file and the trip-index file before the Dallas trip how many names were reported for the areas in the Dallas field office territory where the President was to visit?

Mr. BOUCK. We found no uncontrolled people in the trip file for Dallas. All of the cases in Dallas were controlled to our satisfaction. We found also in the checkup file no uncontrolled individuals that we thought warranted an alert for Dallas.

Mr. DULLES. Did you ask the FBI or any other local agency for any cases they might have?

Mr. BOUCK. Yes, sir.

Mr. DULLES. In connection with the trip?

Mr. BOUCK. In fact, they referred several cases to us in connection with the trip, right prior to the trip on the local level.

Mr. DULLES. On the local level?

Mr. BOUCK. On the local level.

Mr. McCLOY. Being as objective as you can be under the circumstances, what would you have done if the FBI had told you there was a man named Oswald in Dallas, who was a defector, had been a defector?

Mr. BOUCK. I think if they had told us only that, we probably would not have taken action. If I might qualify it further, if we had known what all of the Government agencies knew together, and knew that he had that vantage point on the route, then we certainly would have taken very drastic action.

Mr. McCLOY. If they had told you that there was a man named Oswald in Dallas, who had been a defector, who was employed at the Texas School Book Depository?

Mr. BOUCK. Yes, sir; we would have looked at that.

Mr. McCLOY. You would have looked at that?

Mr. BOUCK. Yes, sir.

Mr. McCLOY. Knowing that the Texas School Book Depository was on the President's route?

Mr. BOUCK. On the President's route.

Mr. STERN. Would it have made a difference to you if he was a legitimate employee of that institution?

Mr. BOUCK. Well, not from our standpoint of having us look at it. I can't predict too well what the field office would have done after they looked. It would depend on what they found out, but the field office would have checked that. We would has asked them to check it and they would in fact have checked it not knowing what conclusions they would have arrived at, I don't quite--I am not quite able to predict just what measures they would have taken.

Senator COOPER. May I ask a question on this point? Have you examined your records since the assassination of President Kennedy to determine if the name Lee Oswald appears in your files?

Mr. BOUCK. We have never had it prior in any connection, never in our records.

Senator COOPER. I gathered from what you said in response to Mr. McCloy's question you do not keep any special file relating to defectors?

Mr. BOUCK. No, sir.

Senator COOPER. In this country?

Mr. BOUCK. Not unless there is something much more to it than the fact they defected.

Senator COOPER. Then in the case of Lee Oswald from your statement that you do not keep any file on defectors, if you had known about his presence there, what would have been the cause then for you to have taken special notice of him?

Mr. BOUCK. The key there would have been a defection plus a knowledge that he had a vantage point on the route. Those two together would have required action.

Senator COOPER. The point I make is, and this again is arguing after the fact, if the fact he was a defector, plus a vantage point would make you take notice of him it would seem to me it would be very substantial evidence to have in your file that he was a defector, wouldn't you think so?

Mr. BOUCK. Well, again, this is part of this big study that we are in. We never before knew, I think, of a defector who did anything like this so we are not quite sure that defection in itself is a key to an assassin. However, that combined with certain things, knowing that he had a vantage point would have caused us to look.

Mr. STERN. Were there any other characteristics of Oswald that you believe to have been known to other Federal agencies before November 22 that would have been important to you in deciding whether or not he was a potential threat?

Mr. BOUCK. Yes. I think I have supplied you with a list of about 18 things that were known to the Federal agencies, but these, I believe, were spread from Moscow to Mexico City in at least four agencies, so I am not aware of how much any one agency or any one person might have known.

But there was quite a little bit of derogatory information known about Oswald in this broad expanse of agencies.

Mr. STERN. Without respect to any such list, what other characteristics, trying as much as possible to avoid hindsight, do you think were germane to determine his potential danger?

Mr. BOUCK. I would think his continued association with the Russian Embassy after his return, his association with the Castro groups would have been of concern to us, a knowledge that he had, I believe, been court-martialed for illegal possession of a gun, of a hand gun in the Marines, that he had owned a weapon and did a good deal of hunting or use of it, perhaps in Russia, plus a number of items about his disposition and unreliability of character, I think all of those, if we had had them altogether, would have added up to pointing out a pretty bad individual, and I think that, together, had we known that he had a vantage point would have seemed somewhat serious to us, even though I must admit that none of these in themselves would be--would meet our specific criteria, none of them alone.

But it is when you begin adding them up to some degree that you begin to get criteria that are meaningful.

Senator COOPER. I am sure you have answered what I am going to ask but I will ask it anyway. Then it is correct prior to the assassination the Secret Service had no information from any agency or any source----

Mr. BOUCK. That is correct.

Senator COOPER. Relating to Lee Oswald?

Mr. BOUCK. That is correct.

Mr. STERN. I believe you said earlier, Mr. Bouck, that before Dallas you thought the liaison arrangements were satisfactory and that other Federal agencies, in particular, had full awareness of the kind of information that the Secret Service was looking for under the general criteria that you articulated?

Mr. BOUCK. Yes, sir.

Mr. STERN. Why then, do you think you were not notified of Oswald? Was there perhaps something wrong with the system?

Mr. BOUCK. This, of course, is opinion. In my opinion, there was no lack of knowledge of what we should have. Insofar as I know no individual knew enough about Oswald to judge him to meet our criteria of presenting a danger to the President. I know of no individual who knew all about Oswald, including the fact that he had a vantage point on the route.

If that is so, I don't know. I didn't know.

Mr. McCLOY. Somebody in the FBI knew it, didn't they?

Mr. BOUCK. I have no record to know that. They knew certain information. I have no record that would indicate they knew all of the derogatory information.

Mr. McCLOY. I don't know I would say they knew all the derogatory information but they certainly knew the vantage point and they certainly knew the defection elements.

Mr. BOUCK. I know they knew he was in Dallas. Whether they recognized that as being on the route, I don't know that.

Mr. McCLOY. I think the record shows he was employed there, or the deposition shows.

Mr. BOUCK. I don't know that.

Mr. STERN. Is it of key importance to what you say now regarding the information on Oswald before the assassination to identify his vantage point? If you would take that away from the other characteristics does he then not become a threat?

Mr. BOUCK. He would not meet the criteria of a threat as we had it at that time, if you take that away.

Mr. STERN. And the criterion was----

Mr. BOUCK. That there be some specific indication that a possible danger to the President existed.

Mr. DULLES. Off the record.

(Discussion off the record.)