* * *
After reading through the FBI report, Ford did not want to compromise. He wanted the thirty-eight-year-old law professor off the commission’s staff entirely. If Redlich refused to resign, Ford wanted him fired. He insisted that the commission hold a special meeting to discuss the issue, which Warren and Rankin scheduled for Tuesday, May 19. The situation was considered so grave that all seven commissioners showed up for the session.
Warren opened the meeting, then immediately turned it over to Rankin. The commission had gathered, Rankin said, to consider the results of the new, intensive FBI background checks on both Redlich and Joseph Ball. The reinvestigation of Ball had been prompted by complaints from right-wing activists in California who were still angry over his public criticism years earlier of the House Un-American Affairs Committee for its campaign to hunt down Communists among lawyers on the West Coast. Rankin reported that there was nothing in the FBI report to suggest Ball had any subversive ties, and the commissioners agreed that he should stay. “We need him very badly,” Rankin said.
The real debate, the commissioners knew, was about Redlich. Rankin opened the discussion by admitting that he felt some guilt over the controversy since “I am the one who hired Norman.” He reminded the commissioners of Redlich’s stellar legal credentials, first as a student at Yale Law School, where he finished first in his class in 1950, and now as a professor of constitutional tax law at NYU. “All I knew of him is good.” But Rankin’s choice of the verb in the past tense—“knew”—might have been deliberate. Rankin said that while “personally I feel there is no question of Mr. Redlich’s loyalty as an American citizen or his dedication to the commission,” his involvement in controversial groups had come as an unwelcome surprise. “I did know that he was very much interested in civil liberties and civil rights,” Rankin said. “I didn’t know he was a member of the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee.”
He warned the commissioners how difficult it would be to replace Redlich and how his departure would be a logistical disaster for the commission because Redlich was meant to be the principal writer and editor of the final report. “He has worked long hours, longer than anyone,” Rankin said. “I think he is more familiar with our work than anybody else.” Redlich had continued to read every investigative report that arrived in the commission’s offices—tens if not hundreds of thousands of pieces of paper—and his firing would mean the loss of all that knowledge. Rankin also urged the commissioners to consider how Redlich’s departure would damage morale. His colleagues were “very much disturbed about the attack on him.… They have worked intimately with him and are fully satisfied of his compete loyalty.”
It was then Ford’s turn, and he began by praising the man he wanted fired: “I would like to state for the record that I have been tremendously impressed with Professor Redlich’s ability. I think he is a brilliant man. And in the work I have seen in the commission, I think he has contributed significantly to what we have done. He has been very diligent.”
Ford insisted that he wanted to be fair to Redlich and not overstate the case against him: “As I read the report of the FBI, there is not a scintilla of evidence that he is a member of the Communist Party or has been a member of the Communist Party.” But Redlich, he said, was still tied to many controversial, potentially subversive left-wing groups. “I think it is regrettable that somebody as intelligent as he, and as nice a person as he, appears to get involved in some of these causes.” He reminded the others that he had attempted months earlier to head off just the sort of awkward situation the commission now faced—how he warned against hiring any staff member associated with “the radical right or the radical left.” And yet Redlich was hired anyway. “I think the facts are clear that we shouldn’t continue his employment,” Ford said, calling for a formal vote to dismiss him. “I would move that under the current circumstances, that the employment of Norman Redlich be terminated as of June 1.”
As the conversation moved around the table, Ford had reason to believe that he would win the vote. The three other lawmakers on the panel—Russell, Cooper, and Boggs—and Allen Dulles spoke up to suggest they agreed with Ford. Russell said the FBI files depicted Redlich as a “born crusader—and I think he is going to be controversial as long as he lives.” He continued: “I am not saying anything against his character or patriotism … but he has been tied up with a lot of fellow-traveling groups. For my part, I don’t want to take the responsibility of employing him.” Boggs said he was hearing criticism of Redlich from Democrats and Republicans alike. “This has been a matter of concern to those of us who serve in the Congress,” he said. “And it is not something that can be brushed aside. It has to be answered.”
It was left to Warren, then, to rescue Redlich. Warren had a well-earned reputation—first in California politics, then on the Supreme Court—for forcing onetime opponents to his side, and he was about to demonstrate to the commissioners how he went about it. Years later, Rankin would still be marveling at his performance at the meeting.
Warren’s disdain for Ford was well known to the other commissioners and to much of the staff. And so the chief justice began his defense of Redlich by feeding Ford’s own words back to him. “I have observed Professor Redlich here, and I have the same opinion of him that Congressman Ford has expressed,” Warren said. “I think he is an able man. And I have come to believe that he is a man dedicated to the work of this commission, also. I know the staff, every member of it, feels the same way about him, and they feel that a great injustice has been done by reason of this attack that has been made upon him in the Congress by a very few members.” Warren did not need to remind the other commissioners that Ford was among those “very few.”
If the commission gave in to pressure to fire Redlich, “it would be branding him as a disloyal individual—and that is a hurt that can never be remedied as long as a man lives,” Warren continued. “It affects his wife, it affects his children.… I am told that one of the commentators, in reporting on what went on over in Congress, even gave his home address in New York, and I am just sure for the sole purpose of harassing his wife and his children. And I am told that they have been harassed by this thing, and they will be harassed, just as long as the injustice remains.”
Warren then boxed in Ford. The chief justice declared that if Ford and the others really wanted to force out Redlich, the commission would hold a tribunal in which Redlich could defend himself. “The least we could do would be to give him a trial, where he can defend himself, and where he can show that he is a good American citizen and is not disloyal,” Warren said. “That is the American way of doing things.”
At first, only one commissioner stood with Warren—John McCloy. Characteristically, McCloy’s argument was less passionate than practical. Redlich, he said, was “a man who is definitely somewhat addicted to causes,” but he was no security risk. “I think if I had known about this at the beginning, I would have raised my eyebrows,” McCloy admitted. “But there is no use crying over spilled milk.” If the commission fired Redlich, it would be perceived as giving in to pressure from right-wing critics, which would then open the investigation to attacks from the left. “I don’t see how it is going to help us one single bit to remove him,” McCloy said. “This is a good man, he has an honest approach, even though he leans in this direction.”
Then Rankin spoke up with a pair of additional warnings for the commissioners—both of them seemingly ominous. With Redlich gone, he said, the commissioners would face the prospect of having to write the report themselves, or finding someone as hardworking to do it as the man they had just fired. “I did not conceive that you wanted the task of trying to make the draft yourself,” Rankin told the commissioners, as if that would be the only option left to them. The commissioners, he said, also needed to be reminded that if they dismissed Redlich as a security risk, they would effectively be admitting that they had allowed a possible subversive to spend months rifling through some of the government’s most classi
fied national-security files. Those allegations would be “the worst thing that could happen to this commission.”
Russell was the first to back down. “We are in a predicament either way,” he said.
And then a humbled Ford—not eager to take the job of chief prosecutor at the “trial” that Warren was now proposing for Redlich—withdrew his motion entirely. “I would not have employed anybody that was affiliated with any organization or any cause of one extreme or the other,” he said. “But I don’t want to belabor the question. I think I have rather extensively, on the record, expressed my view.”
Warren hurriedly ended the meeting. Redlich’s job was safe, and he would be at work within days drafting the commission’s final report.
Word of the commission’s decision was met with delight—and relief—among Redlich’s colleagues. It quieted some of the criticism that was becoming common on the staff about the chief justice. Warren had redeemed himself; certainly it renewed some of the young lawyers’ faith in the chief justice as a champion of fair play and decency.
Redlich’s gratitude was evident in the way he now dealt with his job. Before then, he had usually been among the lawyers who pushed back against the commission’s demands that they speed up their work and begin writing the final report. After his job was saved, however, some of Redlich’s colleagues found him suddenly eager to do whatever the chief justice wanted—to meet Warren’s demands for the commission to issue a conclusive final report within weeks. “Redlich’s tone changed,” Burt Griffin said. “It made a big difference. My sense was that once his job was safe, Redlich stopped resisting the pressure to get the job done more quickly than the rest of us” believed was possible. “Warren had saved his skin, and he knew it.”
37
THE HOME OF JAMES HOSTY
DALLAS, TEXAS
THURSDAY, APRIL 23, 1964
The phone rang at about ten thirty p.m. in the Dallas home of FBI Special Agent James Hosty. It was Thursday, April 23, and the late-night caller was Hugh Aynesworth of the Dallas Morning News. The reporter had unwelcome news.
“We’re running a story tomorrow,” Aynesworth said, “and I wanted to see if you wanted to make a comment.”
The article would allege that Hosty had known, long before the assassination, that Oswald was potentially dangerous and capable of murdering Kennedy, and that Hosty and the FBI had shared none of that information with the Dallas police department or the Secret Service. The source of the story was Dallas police lieutenant Jack Revill, who claimed that Hosty had walked up to him on the afternoon of the assassination to report that Oswald had been under FBI surveillance for weeks and that the bureau was well aware of the threat he posed. Revill’s account had been recorded in an internal memo that the police had shared with the Warren Commission.
Hosty would later insist that Revill’s allegations were a lie and that he, Hosty, had said no such thing. But he could not tell that to Aynesworth. Under FBI policy Hosty needed permission to speak to a reporter. “No comment” was all he told Aynesworth before hanging up. He tried to go back to bed, hoping that the story was not as “god-awful” as it sounded.
A few hours later, the phone rang again, waking Hosty from a fitful sleep, and this time the caller was his boss in the Dallas field office, Special Agent in Charge Gordon Shanklin. “Listen, Aynesworth called me earlier to say they are running a story about you telling Revill you knew Oswald was capable of killing the president.”
Shanklin ordered Hosty to come to the office that minute to prepare a message that could be sent overnight to headquarters in Washington to try to preempt some of the damage the article might do. Hosty rushed to get dressed. “Walking out to my car I looked at all my neighbors’ homes, wondering what they would be thinking later this morning as they sat in their kitchens, drinking their coffee in their robes, reading the Morning News.”
He arrived in the office at about three fifteen a.m. and noticed a copy of the first edition of the paper on Shanklin’s desk. The bold-faced, front-page headline: FBI KNEW OSWALD CAPABLE OF ACT, REPORTS INDICATE.
“Oh, God,” Hosty groaned. He hurriedly read through the article, convinced it had been planted by the Dallas police in an attempt to shift the blame to him—again—for the law-enforcement bungling that allowed Kennedy, and then Oswald, to be murdered. The information in the story was attributed to “a source close to the Warren Commission.” According to Aynesworth, Hosty had told Revill that the FBI knew Oswald was capable of assassination “but we didn’t dream he would do it.” The police claimed that Revill’s memo was filed within hours of his conversation with Hosty.
Hosty put down the newspaper and turned to Shanklin. “This article has got it all wrong. I don’t understand how they can print crap like that.” It was true, he said, that he had talked to Revill on the day of the assassination and suggested that Oswald was “the guilty party.” But he insisted that he had said nothing about Oswald having a violent streak or being capable of killing the president. Before the assassination, Hosty said, he had no sense that Oswald posed a danger to Kennedy—or to anyone else. That was what he planned to tell the Warren Commission when he testified in Washington in early May, an appointment he already dreaded. Shanklin ordered Hosty to draw up a summary of his version of events, which they would immediately send by Teletype to Washington. They hoped it would land on Hoover’s desk first thing in the morning, before he had a chance to see the Morning News article. Shanklin and Hosty could be sure that Hoover would be incensed about the story—furious with the Dallas police and furious with them.
The Teletype did the Dallas agents some good. To the relief of Shanklin and Hosty, Hoover came out fighting the next morning, seemingly on their behalf. With Hosty’s denial in hand, the FBI director issued a statement in Washington that categorically denied the allegations being made by the Dallas police. Revill’s assertions, he declared, were “absolutely false.”
Hosty was grateful that “I had kept my job for another day,” even if he was more convinced than ever that his future with the FBI was in doubt. Aynesworth’s article was picked up and reprinted across the country.
* * *
Hosty spent much of the following week preparing for his testimony before the commission in Washington. He began what he remembered as the “tedious but thorough review of everything” that was in the bureau’s Oswald files in Dallas. It was not long, he said, before he realized that two important documents were missing. Both had come from Washington that fall and involved Oswald’s trip to Mexico. One was an October 18 report from FBI headquarters that outlined what the bureau knew about the CIA’s surveillance of Oswald in Mexico. The other was a November 19 memo prepared by the FBI’s Washington field office about the contents of a letter that Oswald had written to the Soviet embassy in Washington, referring to his Mexico trip and his contacts there with a Soviet diplomat; the diplomat had been identified as an undercover KGB agent. Hosty tried to imagine why someone had removed the two documents. Was someone trying to hide them, “hoping that I hadn’t already seen them?”
He had no answer to that mystery when he flew to Washington on May 4, the day before his testimony. He had wanted to get there a day early, to try to get a good night’s sleep before what could be one of the most difficult days of his life. The next morning, he pulled on a dark suit, a well-starched white shirt, and a neutral tie—“the uniform of an FBI agent”—and walked into the commission’s offices at the VFW building on Capitol Hill with two other FBI agents who had also been called to testify. They were accompanied by FBI assistant director Alan Belmont, the bureau’s number-three official, who oversaw all criminal investigations in the FBI. “I couldn’t help that I was starting to sweat,” Hosty recalled.
He was greeted by commission lawyer Samuel Stern, who said he needed to ask a few preliminary questions before Hosty went into the witness room to testify. Stern wanted to clear up confusion about exactly what Hosty had known about Oswald before the assassination. How much had h
e known about Oswald’s Mexico trip? Hosty said he remembered reading two reports about the CIA’s surveillance of Oswald in Mexico—the documents that had since disappeared from the files in Dallas.
Belmont looked stricken at the mention of the reports, Hosty said. “He leaned over and muttered in my ear, ‘Damn it, I thought I told them not to let you see them.’”
Hosty was startled at the comment. “Here was the head of all FBI investigations admitting that FBI headquarters was deliberately trying to conceal matters from me.” What had happened to Oswald in Mexico that the FBI did not want Hosty to know? “I understand the need-to-know policy, but what was going on?”
That afternoon, Hosty was escorted into the commission’s hearing room, which resembled the sort of conference room “you would find in any prestigious law firm, nicely furnished, and against two walls were stacks of what looked like law books.” Off to one corner, he could see the damaged windshield from President Kennedy’s limousine, which the commission had been inspecting as evidence. “I shivered when I looked at it,” he recalled.
Chief Justice Warren and several other members of the commission sat at a large wooden conference table, “all staring at me expectantly.” He was invited to take a seat at the head of the table, with Stern to his left and, next to Stern, the chief justice. On Hosty’s right was Congressman Ford. When the court reporter nodded to Warren that he was ready, the chief justice swore in Hosty and asked Stern to lead the questioning.
Hosty had anticipated most of the early questions—about the history of the FBI’s investigation of Oswald, including the transfer of the investigation in 1963 from the FBI field office in Dallas to the field office in New Orleans and back again to Dallas, as Oswald moved between the two cities. Hosty became alarmed when the commissioners interrupted Stern with questions that seemed designed to show that the FBI had a responsibility before Kennedy’s visit to Dallas—specifically, that Hosty had a responsibility—to warn the Secret Service about Oswald’s presence there.
A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination Page 40