Chairman. Mrs. Oswald, what is your wish?
Mrs. Oswald. Well, Mr. Lane is just here for a few hours, Chief Justice Warren. He flew in just for a few hours. He is catching a 4 o'clock plane out. And I thought—he had asked permission just to sit in for these few hours.
The Chairman. Either he represents you or he does not.
Mrs. Oswald. No, sir, he does not represent me.
The Chairman. Then we will excuse Mr. Lane.
Mr. Lane. Mr. Chief Justice——
The Chairman. Mr. Lane, now really—either you are here as the attorney for Mrs. Oswald or you are not entitled to be in this room—one of the two.
Mr. Lane. May I ask, Mr. Chief Justice, if it is permissible for me to function at Mrs. Oswald's request as her counsel together with Mr. Doyle, just for an hour or two, and then be excused.
The Chairman. Mr. Doyle has said that if you are her attorney he is not. And Mr. Doyle is doing this as a public service. We must respect his views in the matter.
Mr. Lane. I see. I did explain to Mr. Doyle before I came into the room exactly what the situation was. It was not until now that I understood his response.
Under those circumstances, I wonder if I might confer with Mrs. Oswald for just a minute or two.
The Chairman. If Mrs. Oswald wants to, she may.
Mrs. Oswald. Yes, thank you.
The Chairman. All right.
You may take another room, if you wish.
(Brief recess.)
The Chairman. All right.
Mr. Lane. Under the circumstances, since I do have to leave and I will not be able to be here for the rest of the afternoon's session and for subsequent sessions—under those circumstances, since Mr. Doyle will not remain on jointly with me, I will at this time withdraw.
The Chairman. Very well. Now, we will continue. Mr. Rankin, you may continue with the hearing.
Mr. Rankin. Mrs. Oswald, could you tell us first now, while you are fresh, about this conspiracy that you said that you knew about?
Mrs. Oswald. Yes—If you would like me to do it now. I was going to lead up to all the fundamentals, to my way of thinking. I have no proof, because naturally if I did I don't think we would be here.
But I feel like there is a lot of speculation about everything.
My way of thinking is because the involvement of myself at Six Flags and the way I was treated, as I have already put into the testimony, and as I stated yesterday, also, that I was supposed to be under protective custody, and I was not.
I wonder why I didn't have protective custody, why I am not important enough, with papers out of the vault, and appearing before the hearing, that Mr. Sorrels, head of the Secret Service, didn't give me protective custody, even though you, yourself, Mr. Rankin, required it.
These are the things I have to face that to me are very unusual.
Mr. Rankin. Well, it is such a serious charge to say that these two Secret Service men and your son and—I didn't understand for sure whether you included anyone else in your charge—were involved in a conspiracy to assassinate the President.
Mrs. Oswald. No, no——
Mr. Rankin. And your daughter-in-law.
Mrs. Oswald. That is not my statement. I said I thought that we have a plot in our own government, and that there is a high official involved. And I am thinking that probably these Secret Service men are part of it.
Now, I didn't say in a conspiracy—make it as strong as you did. I have made it strong. But I am under the impression that possibly there is a leak in our own government. And when I come to these papers—and I specifically yesterday morning asked about Senator Tower.
Now, I am not throwing any reflection on Senator Tower. But he made the statement in the paper that he had a letter from the State Department saying that Lee had renounced his citizenship.
Now, you see, I don't have that paper with me. I had it yesterday morning. But his whole quotes—the dates and everything of the letter that he was supposed to have had is not in correspondence with the dates that I have from the State Department papers which you gentlemen know that I have all these papers from the State Department. Nothing corresponds with what I have.
So I wanted to know and see this letter that Senator Tower claims he has. It could have been that it was an error in newspaper reporting, and I will say in slang he could have shot his mouth off, because he said he would not help the boy when the boy wrote him the letter.
Representative Ford. Mr. Chairman, I saw the letter that Lee Harvey Oswald wrote to Senator Tower the day after the assassination. And I believe I also saw the response that he received from one of the agencies of the Federal Government. Senator Tower had the original of the letter. If it is not in our Commission files, I am sure it is available for the Commission files—along with, whatever exchange of correspondence he had with the Department of State concerning the matter.
Mrs. Oswald. Well, now, what is of utmost interest to me in this particular case is if there is such a letter, and it does not correspond with anything that I have, I would like to know who in the State Department wrote this particular letter.
Representative Ford. I would not know who in the State Department wrote the letter. I would suspect it was the Assistant Secretary for Congressional Affairs, Fred Dutton, I believe.
Mrs. Oswald. I am not suspecting, because I have many, many letters from the State Department, and I also have something else that I will present that maybe would be another party involved. There is very conflicting testimony.
You must realize that I went to Washington in 1961 and was in conference with three officials. And this was another Administration.
Now, I don't know much about politics, gentlemen. But I do know a little from the news.
Lee's defection was in one Administration—right?
And now this is of another Administration, the Kennedy Administration. And there could be a leak in the State Department. That is not impossible.
So I have two instances that I, myself, am not satisfied.
Mr. Rankin. A leak is so much different from a conspiracy to assassinate the President, though.
Mrs. Oswald. Yes, but this leak this could be the party involved in the assassination of the President—the high officials I am speaking of. I cannot pin it down to one sentence, gentlemen.
Mr. Rankin. Well, you named the Secret Service men, two of them.
Mrs. Oswald. That is right.
Mr. Rankin. Now, do you have anything that shows you that either of those men were involved in the conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy?
Mrs. Oswald. I will answer that emphatically no. What I have stated is the
