J. Lee Rankin, the son
of Herman P. Rankin and Lois Gable, was born in Nebraska in 1907.
A member of the Republican Party,
Rankin worked for Thomas Dewey during
the 1948 presidential campaign. Later he chaired a state committee
for President Dwight Eisenhower. Rankin
joined the Justice Department and eventually became a U. S. Solicitor
General (August, 1956 - January, 1961).
In 1963 he became chief
counsel for the Warren
Commission.
Apparently this was against the wishes of Earl
Warren who wanted
Warren Olney as chief counsel. Rankin's main role was to work with
the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central
Intelligence Agency.
Rankin appointed Norman Redlich as his
special assistant.
Gerald
Ford provided
J.
Edgar Hoover with
information about the activities of staff members of the commission.
Hoover ordered that Redlich's past should be investigated. He discovered
that Redlich was on the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, an organization
considered by Hoover to have been set-up to "defend the cases
of Communist lawbreakers". Redlich had also been critical of
the activities of the House Committee on Un-American
Activities.
This information was leaked
to a group of right-wing politicians. On 5th May, 1964, Ralph
F. Beermann, a Republican Party
congressman, made a speech claiming that Redlich was associated with
the Fair
Play for Cuba Committee.
Beermann called for Redlich to be removed as a staff member of the
Warren
Commission.
He was supported by Karl E. Mundt who said:
"We want a report from the Commission which Americans will accept
as factual, which will put to rest all the ugly rumors now in circulation
and which the world will believe. Who but the most gullible would
believe any report if it were written in part by persons with Communist
connections?"
Gerald
Ford
joined in the attack and at one closed-door session of the Warren
Commission he
called for Redlich to be dismissed. However, Rankin and Earl
Warren both supported
him and he retained his job.
Rankin had doubts about
the Warren Report. In 1978 he told Michael
Ewing, staff member of the
House
Select Committee on Assassinations, that the CIA/Mafia
plots to kill Fidel
Castro would
have had a “very direct bearing on the areas of conspiracy which
we tried to pursue.” He also asked Ewing, “Are you looking
into the plots on the basis of whether they were covered up by the
CIA because some of the very people involved in them could have been
involved in the President’s assassination?”
(1)
John
McCone,
interviewed by J.
Lee Rankin
on behalf of the Warren
Commission (1964)
J. Lee Rankin: Are you familiar with the records and how
they are kept by the Central Intelligence Agency as to whether a man
is acting as an informer, agent, employee, or in any other capacity
for that Agency?
John
A. McCone:
Yes; I am generally familiar with the procedures and the records that
are maintained by the Central Intelligence Agency. Quite naturally,
I am not familiar with all of the records because they are very extensive.
J.
Lee Rankin: Have you determined whether or not Lee Harvey Oswald,
the suspect in connection with the assassination of President Kennedy,
had any connection with the Central Intelligence Agency, informer
or indirectly as an employee, or any other capacity?
John
A. McCone: Yes; I have determined to my satisfaction that he had no
such connection...
J.
Lee Rankin: Will you tell us briefly the extent of your inquiry?
John
A. McCone: In a form of affidavit, I have gone into the matter in
considerable detail personally, in my inquiry with the appropriate
people within the Agency, examined all records in our files relating
to Lee Harvey Oswald. We had knowledge of him, of course, because
of his having gone to the Soviet Union, as he did, putting him in
a situation where his name would appear in our name file. However,
my examination has resulted in the conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald
was not an agent, employee, or informant of the Central Intelligence
Agency. The Agency never contacted him, interviewed him, talked with
him, or received or solicited any reports or information from him,
or communicated with him directly or in any other manner. The Agency
never furnished him with any funds or money or compensated him directly
or indirectly in any fashion, and Lee Harvey Oswald was never associated
or connected directly or indirectly in any way whatsoever with the
Agency. When I use the term "Agency," I mean the Central
Intelligence Agency, of course.
Gerald
Ford: Does that include whether or not he was in the United States,
in the Soviet Union, or anyplace?
John
A. McCone: . Anyplace; the United States, Soviet Union, or anyplace...
Gerald
Ford: Mr. McCone,
do you have full authority from higher authority to make full disclosure
to this Commission of any information in the files of the Central
Intelligence Agency?
John
A. McCone: That
is right. It is my understanding that it is the desire of higher authority
that this Commission shall have access to all information of every
nature in our files or in the minds of employees of Central Intelligence
Agency.
Gerald
Ford: On the basis
of that authority, you or the Agency have made a full disclosure?
John
A. McCone: That is
correct.
J.
Lee Rankin: Mr.
McCone, if I may return to you, I will now ask you if you have any
credible information that you know of or evidence causing you to believe
that there is any or was any conspiracy either domestic or foreign
in connection with the assassination of President Kennedy?
John
A. McCone: No; I
have no information, Mr. Rankin, that would lead me to believe or
conclude that a conspiracy existed.
Gerard Ford:
Did the CIA make an investigation of this aspect of the assassination?
John
A. McCone: We made
an investigation of all developments after the assassination which
came to our attention which might possibly have indicated a conspiracy,
and we determined after these investigations, which were made promptly
and immediately, that we had no evidence to support such an assumption.
Gerard Ford:
Did the Central Intelligence Agency have any contact with Oswald during
the period of his life in the Soviet Union?
John
A. McCone: No; not
to my knowledge, nor to the knowledge of those who would have been
in a position to have made such contact, nor according to any record
we have.
Gerard Ford:
Did the Central Intelligence Agency have any personal contact with
Oswald subsequent to his return to the United States?
John
A. McCone: No.
J.
Lee Rankin: Mr. McCone,
your Agency made a particular investigation in connection with any
allegations about a conspiracy involving the Soviet Union or people
connected with Cuba, did you not?
John
A. McCone: Yes,
we did. We made a thorough, a very thorough, investigation of information
that came to us concerning an alleged trip that Oswald made to Mexico
City during which time he made contact with the Cuban Embassy in Mexico
City in an attempt to gain transit privileges from Mexico City to
the Soviet Union via Havana. We investigated that thoroughly.
J.
Lee Rankin: Do you
also include in your statement that you found no evidence of conspiracy
in all of that investigation?
John
A. McCone: That
is correct.
J.
Lee Rankin: And
also the investigation you made of the period that Lee Harvey Oswald
was in the Soviet Union?
John
A. McCone: That
is right.
Allen
W. Dulles:
Could I ask one question
there? Does your answer, Mr. McCone, include a negation of any belief
that Oswald was working for or on behalf of the Soviet Union at any
time when you were in contact with him or knew about his activities?
John
A. McCone: As I
have already stated, we were never in contact with Oswald. We have
no evidence that he was working for or on behalf of the Soviet Union
at any time. According to his diary, Oswald did receive a subsidy
from the Soviet Red Cross which we assume had the approval of the
authorities. Such a payment does not indicate to us that he even worked
for the Soviet intelligence services. Furthermore, we have no other
evidence that he ever worked for Soviet intelligence.
Gerard Ford:
Is the Central Intelligence Agency continuing any investigation into
this area?
John
A. McCone: No, because,
at the present time, we have no information in our files that we have
not exhaustively investigated and disposed of to our satisfaction.
Naturally, any new information that might come into our hands would
be investigated promptly.
(2)
J.
Lee Rankin was interviewed by Michael Ewing, staff member of the House
Select Committee on Assassinations (1978)
Though I stated that I
didn’t want to go into his past work over the phone at this time,
he went on to make several points. First, he stated that he believed
that “hindsight makes it clear that both Hoover and the CIA were
covering up a variety of items” from the Commission and he personally.
He said that the had been continually saddened over the years by “all
the disclosures about Hoover’s performance in our area and a
number of others.” I commented that he (Rankin) was apparently
not one of Hoover’s favorite people and he laughed and said “That
is now abundantly clear, though I’ve never read my dossier.”
He said that he finds the FBI performance “quite disturbing in
hindsight. We would have found their conduct nearly unbelievable if
we had known about it at the time.” He commented that the destruction
of the Hosty note was “a crime—a crime committed by the
FBI, and one which directly related to the assassin’s most important
actions and motivations during the final days” before the murder.
He again said that he finds the Hosty note destruction “almost
beyond belief, just unconscionable.” I commented that we have
heard testimony to the effect that if the staff had known about it
at the time, that the decision to use the FBI for investigative work
might have changed. He agreed, saying, “We couldn’t have
used the people involved in any further way, that’s clear. The
FBI would have to have been regarded as a suspect in that instance
and that in turn would have affected everything.” He indicated
that he would have gotten his own investigators at that point.
He further stated that
“Hoover did everything he could” to get the Commission to
adopt the earliest FBI report on the shooting, which Rankin said “we
of course finally rejected.”
He then made a point of
inquiring about our work relating to the CIA-Mafia plots against Castro.
He said: “One thing which I think is very important, and I don’t
know if you are getting into this - and I don’t know if it is
proven or not - is whether the CIA used the Mafia against Castro.”
He said that there were reports in recent years that this was true
and that it involved an assassination conspiracy against Castro. He
said, “Do you know if this has been proven?” I said yes
it had, and briefly explained the history of the plots and their concealment
from anyone higher than Helms at the time. Rankin then responded,
“Ah yes. I’ve been very afraid that it was all true. But
I haven’t followed all the books and reports in recent years.”
He went on to say, “I would find the plots with the Mafia - the
Mafia being mixed up with the CIA and these Cubans - frightening.
You’ve got to go after that.” He went on to say “That
again is something that would have been beyond belief at the time.”
He said Helms’ role in the plots and his concealment of them
from the Commission “would have been just unconscionable.”
He expressed great anguish over hearing that the plots were in fact
confirmed. It seemed strange that he has not followed public developments
on the plots more carefully, but he indicated that he simply does
not follow these areas and has not read “any of the Church Committee
reports.”
When I said that we were
devoting considerable time to investigating the CIA/Mafia plots he
said, “Good, good. That is crucial.” He went on to say “that
would have changed so much back then” if he had known of the
plots. He said that he found the plots all the more disturbing in
light of the fact that Robert Kennedy was pushing his investigations
of the Mafia so heavily during that same period.
He repeatedly expressed
the view that both the FBI and CIA had concealed important material
from the Commission, and that the CIA/Mafia plots would have had a
“very direct bearing on the areas of conspiracy which we tried
to pursue.” He also asked, “Are you looking into the plots
on the basis of whether they were covered up by the CIA because some
of the very people involved in them could have been involved in the
President’s assassination?” I said that yes that was an
area of our investigation, and he replied strongly, “Good. Good.
You have to look at it that way.” I also said that we were looking
into charges that Castro might have retaliated for the plots by killing
Kennedy, and he replied, “Where is any evidence of that? I think
the other approach would be much more logical.” This was apparently
in reference to probing those involved in the plots themselves.
I told him that we would
of course make extensive material available to him in reference to
our questioning of him, noting that we want him to refresh his memory
as to his old memos, etc. as well as other documents that we will
give him in advance. He was very appreciative of this and said he
would like to know more about the CIA/Mafia plots and our work on
them.
He remarked a couple times
that he has nothing to regret about his work on the Commission, and
that he tried his hardest to make it the best investigation possible.
He said he still believes very strongly that he had a good staff of
the finest legal minds. He did of course say that the agency cooperation
and input (FBI and CIA) was and is the key issue to him.
(3)
J.
Lee Rankin was interviewed by Kenneth Klein of the House
Select Committee on Assassinations (1978)
J. Lee Rankin: There were
two on each of the areas.
Kenneth Klein: Would it
be fair to say the the the Federal Bureau of Investigation did most
of the investigation for the Warren Commission?
J. Lee Rankin Well, that
would be accurate as to the proportions, if you mean by most, percentage-wise,
but we used all of the intelligence agencies of the Government before
we got through and sometimes we used one intelligence agency on matters
that we were not satisfied concerning and which were worked upon by
another intelligence agency. Oftentimes we wanted a doublecheck or
felt that there were some inaccuracies or we were not completely satisfied,
and asked some other agency that had no apparent relationship to check
on the matter for us.
Kenneth Klein: Whose decision
was it to use Federal agencies as opposed to hiring investigators?
J. Lee Rankin That was
a decision of the Commission, although I recommended that kind of
a procedure because I described various possibilities of getting outside
investigators and that it might take a long period of time to accumulate
them, find out what their expertise was, and whether they could qualify
to handle sensitive information in the Government, and it might be
a very long time before we could even get a staff going that could
work on the matter, let alone have any progress on it.
Kenneth Klein: In 1964,
at the conclusion of the investigation, what was your opinion of the
performance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation?
J. Lee Rankin Well, as
to their cooperation with us, I thought it was good. We were critical
about some of the things that happened about alerting the Secret Service,
about information that they knew about and we learned they had not
informed the Secret Service about. That was all in the report. But
as far as not being frank and open with us and revealing what information
they had, we assumed that they did that. I did, at least, and I think
the Commission did.
Kenneth Klein: You have
partially anticipated my next question, which is, today, 1978, with
what you learned over the course of the years, what is your opinion
with respect to the performance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation?
J. Lee Rankin Well, I have
been very much disappointed with some of the things that have been
revealed and I have, of course, no personal knowledge about those
matters. I have just read them in the press from the reports of investigations
by the Senate committee and others, but I had a close relationship
with J. Edgar Hoover while I was in the Department of Justice and
it was always friendly, but also professional, and I thought good.
I never believed that he would withhold information or have it withheld
from anybody like the Commission or that the FBI would do that. It
seemed to me from my experiences that they were more professional
than to do anything of that character. When I learned that they were
supposed to have known about plans for an assassination that were
underway in the CIA, according to the investigation of the Senate
committee , and did not report it to us and that we didn't receive
any such information from the CIA, it was quite disheartening to me
to know that that kind of conduct was a part of the action of our
intelligence agencies at that high level.
Kenneth Klein: I only asked
the question as applying to the FBI, but your answer applies to the
CIA and the FBI; is that correct?
J. Lee Rankin I think it
was our experience as it is revealed by investigation on the Senate
committee. With the CIA it is worse than with the FBI because the
FBI apparently did not originate the assassination plans and apparently
the CIA did. So the FBI only happened on to them or were informed
about such plans and then did not convey them to us. But the CIA,
they were apparently involved in them and did not alert us to the
situation at all, give us any opportunity to take the action that
we should have had the chance to, of investigating that type of information.
Kenneth Klein: As General
Counsel of the Warren Commission, you had no knowledge whatsoever
of the assassination plots against Fidel Castro?
J. Lee Rankin That is true,
I did not.
Kenneth Klein: What were
some of the pressures, the political pressures, time pressures, that
were exerted upon the Warren Commission staff?.
J. Lee Rankin We had pressures
from the beginning on the time element because the country was anxious
to know what had happened and whether there was any conspiracy involved.
I was assured by the Chief Justice that it would only take me 2 or
3 months at the outside in this job and that is all the time I would
be away from my law practice, and, of course, I wished to get the
job done correctly and properly, but also to get back to my other
work. On the other hand, the first meeting we had with the staff,
I told them that our only client was the truth and that was what we
must search for and try to reveal. I think we adhered to that, that
we never departed from that standard, any of the Commission or myself
or the staff. We tried as conscientiously as possible to convey the
information explicitly that we discovered.
(4)
J.
Lee Rankin was interviewed by Harold Samuel
Sawyer of the House
Select Committee on Assassinations (1978)
Harold S. Sawyer: Did you
make any effort either as a staff or, to your knowledge, as a Commission,
to determine just where Oswald was going at the time he was intercepted
by Officer Tippit?
J. Lee Rankin We speculated
on it but speculations aren't worth much.
Harold S. Sawyer: Did you
come to any reasonable hypothesis as to where he was going?
J. Lee Rankin We all agreed
that he was on his way to try to escape but where we didn't know,
and everything from that point on was just one person's guess against
another's.
Harold S. Sawyer: Of course,
I presume you were aware that the direction in which he was heading
at the time that he was con- fronted by Tippit kind of led to nowhere
with respect to either escape routes or anything, just out in the
neighborhood?
J. Lee Rankin We didn't
think that was really the complete answer because at that point he
was very hardpressed and we thought he was more in the posture of
just running.
Harold S. Sawyer: Well,
did you find out that Jack Ruby's apartment was about two or three
blocks up the street, also on the direct route he was going?
J. Lee Rankin Yes.
Harold S. Sawyer: Did you
also find out that in the Dallas newspaper announcement of the President's
visit, that on the same page was the identity of an informant who
had substantially destroyed the Communist Party in Texas by informing
to the FBI and he was identified as living just about two blocks up
the street, also on the direct route he was going?
J. Lee Rankin I don't recall
that I was aware of that.
Harold S. Sawyer: But other
than just the fact that on this some 14 or 15 minute walk he had taken
through a neighborhood after leaving his roominghouse, other than
just running or escaping, you had formed no hypothesis on where he
may have been going or what his intent may have been?
J. Lee Rankin That is true,
we did not.
Harold S. Sawyer: With
respect to - as you are undoubtedly aware, much of the criticism of
the Warren Commission report and much the basis of the various critics
who have written extensively on the subject has been centered about
one thing, principally the single bullet theory and the fact that
available time did not permit one assassin. You made a decision or
you and the Commission not to allow access to the autopsy information.
Are you still satisfied with that decision as being a sound one?
J. Lee Rankin Yes, I am.
I think it has been revealed, that the basis of the decision was that
the Kennedy family did not wish to have the pictures of the President,
as shown by the X-rays and the other pictures after the assassination
attempt, be the way that the American people and the world would remember
the dead President. We thought we had good evidence from the doctors
who were involved at the hospital in Dallas and also at the autopsy,
and we did not want the President's memory to be presented in that
manner, and we had already promised the American people that the investigation
that everything that we obtained, except for such matters as involved
national security, would be made available to them, so we would have
had to publish it, if we used it ourselves. In light of that, I think
the choice that was made was correct and I don't think it has done
any harm. I still would hate to have published throughout the world
those pictures as a remembrance of our President.
(5)
J.
Lee Rankin was interviewed by Richardson
Preyer
of the House
Select Committee on Assassinations (1978)
Richardson Preyer: I
have just a couple of questions, Mr. Chairman, relating to the problems
that might have been created by using the FBI as your major investigative
arm. Early on in the work of the Commission, I believe it did come
to your attention, allegations came to our attention that Lee Harvey
Oswald might have been an FBI agent; is that right?
J. Lee Rankin That is correct.
Richardson Preyer: How
were you able to investigate the truth or falsity of that charge?
What did you do to investigate it?
J. Lee Rankin When that
information came to my attention and then to the Commission's, we
were very much shocked about it and the Commission had deliberations
in which they tried to determine what was the best approach to try
to find out the fact. They decided that we should make direct inquiries
to J. Edgar Hoover. The problem was not, as I recall it, whether Oswald
was ever listed as an agent in their records because, as I recall,
we checked that out and he was not. My recollection is that the question
involved whether he might have been a numbered personality that the
FBI had where the name of the individual is not revealed and thus
has a cover, and it could be concealed. We examined the possibility
that we could try to go into their records and examine every person,
identify every person who had a number and we were assured that involved
a large number of personalities. The FBI was greatly disturbed about
the idea of taking the cover off of all those agents that they had
established over a long term of years and revealing their names to
all of the staff as well as the Commissioners. I couldn't assure that
their identity would not become known in that kind of a process. So,
the Commission finally determined that they would accept J. Edgar
Hoover's personal assurance by affidavit that Oswald had never been
an informer or agent of the FBI, and that was given.
Richardson Preyer: But
you were somewhat in the position of asking the FBI to investigate
itself or going to the innkeeper to ask whether the wine was good
or not.
J. Lee Rankin Well, back
at that time, Congressman, that did not seem so impossible as it might
today.
Richardson Preyer: Yes;
I think your answer to an earlier question has demonstrated a certain
fall from innocence that we have all had since that time. Things are
now believable which we would not have thought believable at that
time.
J. Lee Rankin That is correct.
Richardson Preyer: The
threshold of this belief has gone up quite a bit. Let me ask you one
other thing. The FBI reached a conclusion in their report that was
made 17 days after the assassination that Lee Harvey Oswald was the
lone assassin. Don't you think that would have had some chilling effect,
would have dampened the incentive of FBI agents in following out the
question of a conspiracy where his organization had already declared
itself to the effect that there was no conspiracy?
J. Lee Rankin I think that
is true but we always assumed that. We started out knowing the FBI
had already decided who the assassin was and that no one else was
involved, and we knew that was the agency position. It was very evident.
But we did not rely on anything like that. We sought detailed evidence
and if we didn't get the evidence we asked for, we sent back time
after time to get it. We treated their report in which they promptly
found Oswald as the assassin and that was no conspiracy as though
that was just an interesting document, but we are not there to ratify
that; we were to find out if it was true and I think we were probably
quite offensive, especially some of the younger members of our staff
who looked forward to the opportunity of finding that the FBI was
wrong, at least on as much as they could find. So that often times
they were challenging the agents, I had difficulty with some of our
relationships because of that. I do not think it affected our people
at all, but, of course, I recognize that it would have been less majesty
for anybody to tell Mr. Hoover, that the report was wrong.
Richardson Preyer:
Just one final question along the problems that could arise where
you use the FBI as your major investigative arm. You told Mr. Sawyer,
I believe, that you did not know about the destruction of the Hosty
note. Do you think if you had had independent investigators rather
than relying on the FBI that you would have learned about the destruction
of that note?
J. Lee Rankin: There is
always the possibility that we might. It seems to me there is a possibility
it might have leaked out some way from the FBI, but it did not. I
think that it would have been helpful to know that, although I do
not suppose we would have changed about using the FBI and the other
government intelligence forces, if we had discovered the note.
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