- memorandum prepared by Walter Jenkins to President Johnson, reflecting
  a phone call with J. Edgar Hoover

- text of exhibit begins below line
----------

                       November 24, 1963

4:00 P.M.

Mr. J. Edgar Hoover said as follows:

There is nothing further on the Oswald case except that he is dead.
Last night we received a call in our Dallas office from a man
talking in a calm voice and saying he was a member of a committee
organized to kill Oswald.

We at once notified the Chief of Police and he assured us Oswald
would be given sufficient protection.  This morning we called the
Chief of Police again warning of the possibility of some effort
against Oswald and he again assured us adequate protection would
be given.  However, this was not done.

They brought him out of the City Jail and were taking him to the
County Jail when a man stepped out and shot him in the stomach.
This man was arrested at once.  He goes under the name of Jack
Leon Ruby but his real name if Rubenstein.  He runs two night
clubs in Dallas and has the reputation of being a homosexual.
Immediately after the shooting, he (Oswald) was moved to Parkland
Hospital and died about 45 minutes ago.  We had an agent at the
hospital in the hope that he might make some kind of a confession
before he died but he did not do so.

Ruby says no one was associated with him and denies having made
the telephone call to our Dallas office last night.  He says he bought
the gun about three years ago and that he guessed his grief over the
killing of the President made him insane.  That was a pretty smart
move on his part because it might lay the foundation for a plea of
insanity later.

I dispatched to Dallas one of my top assistants in the hope that he
might stop the Chief of Police and his staff from doing so damned
much talking on television.  They did not really have a case against
Oswald until we gave them our information.  We traced the weapon,
we identified the handwriting, we identified the fingerprints on the
brown bag.

We were able to identify the bullets as coming from that gun.  All
the Dallas Police had was three witnesses who tentatively identified
him as the man who shot the policeman and boarded a bus to go home
shortly after the President was killed.  He got on a bus to go home
to get a shirt and the bus conductor tentatively identified him as the
man who boarded the bus.

Oswald had been saying he wanted John Abt as his lawyer and Abt,
with only that kind of evidence, could have turned the case around,
I'm afraid.  All the talking down there might have required a change
of venue on the basis that Oswald could not have gotten a fair trial
in Dallas.  If they keep on talking, perhaps the same will be true
of Ruby.

Chief of Police Curry I understand cannot control Capt. Fritz of the
Homocide (sic) Squad, who is giving much information to the press.
Since we now think it involves the Criminal Code on a conspiracy
charge under Section 2-11, we want them to shut up.  Furthermore,
I have ordered the evidence be secured by the Police Department.
We sent most of the evidence back to them.  We still have the
bullets that were fired and will keep them.

The thing I am concerned about, and so is Mr. Katzenbach, is having
something issued so we can convince the public that Oswald is the
real assassin.  Mr. Katzenbach thinks that the President might
appoint a Presidential Commission of three outstanding citizens
to make a determination.  I countered with a suggestion that we make
an investigative report to the Attorney General with pictures,
laboratory work, etc.  Then the Attorney General can make the
report to the President and the President can decide whether to make
it public.  I felt this was better because there are several aspects
which would complicate our foreign relations.

- at his point deletion at bottom of page 2 (1-2 lines), and deletion
  at top of page 3 (max. 10 lines), marked 'SECRET' horizontally
  on right margin

And since this has nothing to do with proof that Oswald
committed the murder, I made the suggestion to Mr. Katzenbach
that instead of a Presidential Commission, we do it with a Justice
Department report base on an FBI report.

Oswald having been killed today after our warnings to the Dallas
Police Department, was inexcusable.  It will allow, I am afraid,
a lot of civil rights people to raise a lot of hell because he was
handcuffed and had no weapon.  There are bound to be some elements
of our society who will holler their heads off that his civil rights
were violated -- which they were.

We have no information on Ruby that is firm, although there are
some rumors of underworld activity in Chicago.  Of his two night
clubs, one is a strip tease joint and the other is a liquor place.










WJ:yb
                                  DECLASSIFIED
                                  FBI letter, September 1, 1978
                                  By Trudy Peterson NARS, Date 9-18-78