EXECUTIVE SESSION - BUSINESS MEETING
Originator: HSCA
Document date: 8/3/78
Document type: PAPER-TEXTUAL DOCUMENT

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JFK Assassination System

Identification Form

Agency Information

Date:

10/14/20

AGENCY: HSCA

RECORD NUMBER :

180-10116-10331

RECORD SERIES: TRANSCRIPTS OF EXECUTIVE SESSION HEARINGS

AGENCY FILE NUMBER :

Document Information

ORIGINATOR:

FROM:

TO :

TITLE:

HSCA

EXECUTIVE SESSION - BUSINESS MEETING

DATE: 08/03/1978

PAGES: 108

SUBJECTS :

ACOUSTIC ANALYSIS

BARGER, JAMES E.

NEWS MEDIA

HSCA, METHODOLOGY

HSCA, TESTIMONY BEFORE COMMITTEE

HSCA, ADMINISTRATION

DOCUMENT TYPE: TRANSCRIPT

CLASSIFICATION: Unclassified

RESTRICTIONS: Open in Full

CURRENT STATUS : Redact

DATE OF LAST REVIEW: 08/17/1993

OPENING CRITERIA :

COMMENTS : Box 1. Folder title: Executive session business meeting.

v9.1

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Select Committee on Assassinations

House of Representatives

Washingtor, D. C.

August 3, 1978

Page

3

Motion carried that meeting be held in

executive session

Motion carried for an immunity order

concerning three witnesses

Motion carried that would finalize the

committee's decision to bring James Earl

Ray before it and authorize the committee

and counsel to use in the public hearings

materials that would require committee

approval before they are used and authorize

the printing and release

at the time of Mr.

Ray's testimony a compilation of his prior

statements

Motion carried to accept the ticket policy

stated in the memorandum

Discussion of suggested public information

policy

Discussion of security matters

Discussion of acoustical matter

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EXECUTIVE

5412

CAS

Business Meeting

- I-

1248

-(THURSDAY, AUGUST 3, 1978

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House of Representatives,

Select committee on Assassinations,

Washinaton, D.C

I The committee met, pursuant to call, at 9:45 a.m., in room

H-140, the Capitol, the Hon. Louis Stokes (chairman of the com-

mittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Stokes, Preyer, Fauntroy, Burke,

Dodd, Fithian, Edgar, Devine, McKinney and Sawyer.

Staff Members present: G. R. Blakey, E. Berning, I. W.

Svendsen, P. Beeson, J. Wolf, B. Morrison, P. Miller, Ella P.

Powers (Congressman Edgar) and Hank Spring (Congressman McKinney).

Mi. Preyer (presiding). The committee will come to order.

The matters under discussion today are to be matters that

would be more properly discussed in a closed session, I understand.

Mr. Blakeys: That is correct, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Preyer. Do I hear a motion that this session be closed?.

MI. Dodd, I so move.

Mr. Preyer. MI. Ratner wanted to take one picture before we

went into closed session. Ask him if he would come in in a great

hurry.

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I Mr. Edgar:

Mr. Chairman, are we going to be permitted to

have members of our staff in today's session for the issues that

are not related to secret information?

Mr. Blakey. There is only one part of the subject matter,

Mr. Chairman, that probably ought not to include members of the

staff and that will probably be later this afternoon.

Mr. Preyer. All right.

Mr. Chairman, I move that the session be closed in accordance

with our rules and the regulations of the House.

Chairman Stokes. The motion having been properly made that

our committee go into executive session at this time, the clerk

will call the roll.

Mus so Berning.

Mr. Stokes.

Chairman Stokes. Aye.

Miss Berning.

Mr. Devine.

No responsed

Miss Berning. Mr. Preyer.

Mr. Preyer. Aye.

MisSoBerning. Mr. McKinney.

Mr. McKinney. Aye.

Miss, Berning.

No response!

Missy Berning.

No responsel

Mr. Fauntroy.

Mr. Thone.

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MissaBerning.

MrS.

Burke.

MrS. Burke.

Aye.

MiSS Berning.

Mr. Sawyer.

Mr. Sawyer.

Aye.

Missy Berning.

Mr.

Dodd.

MI. Dodd. Aye.

MissaBerning.

Mr. Ford.

No responsel

Mis 5 Berning. MI. Fithian.

Mr. Fithian.

Aye.

Muss, Berning. MI. Edgar.

Mr. Edgar. Aye.

MisS Berning. Eight Ayes, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman Stokes. Eight members having voted in the affirma-

tive, this session of the committee is now in executive session.

All members of the public are requested to leave the room.

At this point all unauthorized persons left the room?

Chairman Stokes. Mr. Blakey.

Mr. Blakey. Mr. Chairman, you have before you four written

resolutions. The first which we probably ought to vote on at this

time or the committee ought to vote on since it requires at least

seven members to be present deals with a request for an immunity

order. It is the staff's suggestion that the committee authorize

it to apply to the court for an order conferring immunity upon

John Paul Spica, JI., and Anna Lee Sutherland in the King inves-

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tigation and Balmes Barney Hidalgo in the Kennedy investigation.

An explanation is attached to the resolution and I would be glad

to respond to any questions.

%/ Chairman Stokes. Are there any questions?

Mr. Edgar. Mr. Chairman, when do we plan to bring these

witnesses before us?

Mr. Blakey. Next week.

Mr. Dodd. Mr. Chairman, I would make the appropriate motion

for the adoption of the proposed resolution.

Chairman Stokes. We have before us a motion that the resolu-

tion be adopted. The clerk will call the roll.

Mass Berning. MI. Stokes.

Chairman Stokes. Aye.

MiSS Berning.

Mr. Devine.

No response!

MisSaBerning. Mr. Preyer.

MI. Preyer. Aye.

Mars So Berning. Mr. MeKinney.

Mr. McKinney. Aye.

Misso Berning. Mr.

Fauntroy,

(No responsel

Mis So Berning.

Mr. Thone.

No responsed/

MissyBerning.

Mrs.

Burke.

MIs. Burke. Aye.

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I MissyBerning.

MI. Sawyer,

MI. Sawyer.

Aye.

Miss Berning.

MI. Doda.

MI. Dodd. Aye.

MisSoBerning. Mr. Ford.

Chairman Stokes. Aye by proxy.

Misso Berning. Mr. Fithian.

MI. Fithian. Aye.

Miss Berning. Mr. Edgar.

Mr. Edgar. Aye.

MisSoBerning. Nine Ayes, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman Stokes. Nine members having voted in the affirmative,

the resolution is adopted.

MI. Blakey.

Ms. Blakey. Mr. Chairman, you have also before you three

separate resolutions. The first is a formal resolution that would

finalize the committee's decision to bring James Earl Ray before

it. The two resolutions that follow are subsidiary and depend

upon the decision in the first. The second one would authorize

the committee and counsel to use in the public hearings coming up

in August materials that require committee approval before they

are used and the last authorizes the printing and release at the

time of Mr. Ray's testimony of a compilation of MI. Ray's prior

statements. I would suggest that the three resolutions might

appropriately be considered en bloc and I would be glad to respond

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to anyone's comments or questions.

I I might add that we have available to us today three gentlemen

from the Marshal's office that would be more than pleased to

discuss with the committee the general question of Mr. Ray's

security.

Chairman Stokes. Without objjction, we will consider the

three resolutions en bloc.

Does the committee desire to talk with the persons who will

provide security? I had asked MI. Blakey to make those indivi-

duals available so that if you have questions we might pose those

questions to those persons who will have direct custody over Mr.

Ray while he is here.

Mr. Fithian. Mr. Chairman.

Chairman Stokes. Mr. Fithian.

MI. Fithian. Mr. Chairman, I am all in favor of hearing that

although I think my own personal priority for this committee,

having gotten this very, very late start, is to discuss the press

policy first in the event that the committee does not hold together

long enough to do everything. I would like to have that taken

care of.

Mr. Blakey. MI. Fithian, we really need these resolutions

passed.

MI. Fithian. I mean pass these resolutions but I am talking

about having the briefing on Ray's security.

Mr. Edgar. Will the gentleman yield?

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Mr. Fithian. I yield.

MI. Edgar. On our visit with James Earl Ray the security

question was part of their concern about bringing James Earl Ray

before our committee. I think you would have to agree that we

have to make that decision that he is going to come before hearing

the specific witnesses who would tell how secure that security is.

Do you understand what I am saying? If they are willing to not

listen to the security issues first before passing these resolu-

tions, it makes some sense but I got the impression that one of

the reasons we decided not to make the decision to offer the

invitation was that there were questions about security.

Chairman Stokes. Mr. Sawyer.

Mr. Sawyer. I am totally open on the thing, Bob, because I

would like to hear what they are going to do security wise keeause

I am concerned about it but I don't need to put the cart before the

norse of the horse before the carto lt doed not make any differ

ence.

Chairman Stokes. I think I feel the same way. I just want

to have on record all matters relating to the security but I don't

condition voting for the resolution upon that.

Mr. Fithian. Well, to do the whole thing expeditiously, I

withdraw my suggestion.

Mr. Edgar. If there is agreement between counsel and Mr.

Stokes, then I would move that we pass the resolution authorizing

James Earl Ray's appearance before the committee.

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I chairman Stokes. Now, you were asking that we consider all

three en bloc..

Mr. Blakey. In the interest of time, they are interrelated

and could be passed en bloc although I notice that the second

resolution for the release of information in connection with the

up and coming hearings applies both to king and Kennedy. It is,

nevertheless, basically a technical resolution.

Mr. Edgar. If I may make one point before we move on that

issue. I had made the suggestion to our chairman and to Bob

Blakey and perhaps we should discuss it before we have a final

vote on the resolution and that is that we might consider changing

a previous decision that we had made to interrogate Mr. Ray only

Erom nine o'clock to endle o'choes on the liest do days and then!

eight hours on the

thild day. In line with some of the security

concerns I was making the suggestion that we try to get the inter-

views over in the first typ days, perhaps doing the eross examina-

tion over tip days, the l6th and l7th, holding the l8th as an

option day. If we finish on the 17th, Ray could be returned. If

we need the l8th, we could use it.

I think there is going to be a lot of pressure in terms of

legislative pressure and pressure to get out and the 18th may not

be the most receptive day to have the eight=hour session. Also,

if we did two 8-hour sessions, that would give us 16 hours. If

we do it as presently determined, we would have only 14 hours of

cross examination of Ray. I just think that the public and the

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press is going to be interested in

what. Ray has to say and that

we ought not to shape the appearance of Ray simply because of

public/press input. I guess what I am suggesting is that the

first two

days we go with the threeshour time commitment and the

second to days we go with an effit hour time commitment.

" I also think that we may run into some public perception if

we have the preliminaries and Ray's statement, etc., and we get

the hour of elefyen o'clock and we are just then beginning to

cross examine fay and then all of us get up and leave at tuffe

o'clock on the first day. It is going to look silly in my

opinion.

Mrs. Burke.

Mr. Chairman, may I get this straight?

Chairman Stokes. Mrs. Burke.

Mrs. Burke. The first day is going to be a summary briefing.

Is that on the 14th?

Chairman Stokes. The first day.

Mr. Blakey. If I might outline the entire week.. The first

day the primary witness is DI. Abernathy and he basically will

set the crime scene in terms of one who was there as an eyewitness.

The second witness who will take part of the first day and part

of the second day will probably be Mr. Eddie Evans, our chief

investigator, who will summarize the evidence that was in the

possession of the Memphis Police Department and set the scene in

terms of the dimensions of the buildings and description of the

buildings. The third witness will be the head of the medical

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panel that will go into the details of DI. King's death from a

medical point of view.

I Those three witnesses should cover about the six hours of

the first to days, the assumption being that we should be able

to get in a full half day each day. The third day would be the

first day that Mark Lane and MI. Ray would appear. Mr. Lane and

Mx. Ray have tentatively agreed to have an opening statement not

to exceed an hour. Realistically it will probably take an hour

and a half. That would then give us on the current schedule about

an hour and a half of initial cross-examination on the first day

with some flexibility that the tipire o'clock period is not somer

thing like from Cinderella that everybody turns into a pumpkin at

empire.

Then the fourth day would be the continuation of the basic

cross examination, the hope being that the Chairman's work could

be done in two

days and the committee would then begin on the

third day of the cross-examination and go the full day. That last.

day the Congress is not in session and it should not be subjected

to interruptions at any time.

The Chairman has graciously indicated that he would be will

ing to continue his cross examination for the first tho days

without regard to the state of the floor. That would then give

us an uninterrupted basically cross-examination for thige days.

The thought that militates against running tib full days the first

to days is if you run those days there will be interruptions on

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the flcor. The floor will cause people to come in and go out

with just heavy voting and that will break the continuity and

character of the cross-examination.

I/Mr. Fithiar.

Mr. Chairman.

Chairman Stokes. MI. Fithian.

MI. Fithian. Two quick observations. One, I am not arguing

for or against, I go with either way. I don't think we have any

assurance that given the legislative pressure we are not going to

start at the house at nihe of t o'clock on some of those days.

Second, just an observation. Gratuitous as it may seem, I

have spent probably fife or sit hours this year waiting for

this committee to get started. This morning is an example that

if we conduct ourselves in the public hearing the way we have this

year, I think we will go a long way to convince the American

people that we don't give very much of a damn for this investiga-

tion. I would hope that we would keep in mind that when we are

going to start at nine o'clock and the flook is going to go in at

th o'clock that the nihe to to hour is the most productive hour

we have. If we have someone like Mark Lane and James Earl Ray

before us or any other witness before us and the national media

or other media want to give this serious attention and we kind of

9:30

straggle in to get this off at nine thirty of ten or whatever, I

just think there are some very reluctant to participate in that

scene, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman Stokes. Mr. Fithian, let me apologize to you and

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the committee for my having been late this morning.

I Mr. githian I was not aiming this at any person.

Chairman Stokes. I do want to personally apologize to you

and the committee for being late this morning and it is certainly

entirely my fault. This is the first committee business meeting

that

since this committee started I have ever been late for and I just

want that on the record.

Ms. Fithian. I just want to underscore the schedule that we

set for ourselves for these public hearings I just think we really

have to have every member impressed with the necessity to really

kick it off; otherwise, the whole schedule is just going to go

right down the tubes.

Chairman Stokes. Any other further questions?

Mr. Edgar has a motion before the committee.

Mr. Blakey. I make the suggestion that that might be an

appropriate thing to take up in a kind of executive session as

the cross-examination matures and each person's role in it is

clarified. Those people who are directly participating might

want to sit in and see how that works out.

Mr. Edgar. I guess I have difficulty. If the American

people are watching and Ray makes an hour or an hour and a half

statement, let's say we have fifteen minutes or tenty minutes

before de even begins swearing him in and getting everything ready,

and I am sure the Chairman would have an opening statement since

this is the beginning of our lengthy hearings and we might want to

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put in some of the statistical data as to how often we met and

what we are going to be about and then Ray speaks and then we have

an hour of so of an hour and tiffen minutes of cross-examination

and we whet Ray's appetite and our appetite and then we get up and

leave. Itsjust-seems-torme-that-that-kindofsplan-lockedwinearly

If

ame, we wait until then to make the decision to go longer, I think

it is too late. That kind of plan locked in at this point I think

will make us look silly.

I The second thing I am concerned about is, knowing Ray, just

from reading some of his 28 hours before us, he is going to spend

time during the night trying to figure out what he said wrong and

trying to make sure he has opportunities the next day to change

his testimony or to get himself out of something. We give him two

evenings to restructure his story before we get to the open ques-

tioning of Congress whereas if we try to get the 16 hours done in

the first to days and if we need him on Friday we can meet; 1f

not, we could send him back and bring him back in November if we

need additional information after we have tested out his story.

We only give him one night to correct his story and that just

mentally seems better in my opinion.

I think we are going to be laughed at. I think a lot of

people are going to say, well, that is the way the Congress

operates; it operates three-hours a day. It is sort of like the

court system where they take for hour lunches. Congressmen are

going to just get up and leave, it is not important to them, they

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are not investing time. Particularly with somebody like James

Earl Ray, I think we would be legitimate to sit there, breax for

cour conversation,

lunch, come back within a quick hour and continue through the dayo

our conversation

MT.

Sawyer.

would the gentleman yield?

MI. Edgar.

I yield.

Mr. Sawyer. The cout systems do not take for hour lunches,

or anything like that,but I basically agree with the gentleman's

position.

Mr. McKinney. Three hour lunch.

Mr. Sawyer. I think you have two advantages. One is you are

not giving an additional recess to restructure, which witnesses do

and their counsel do, too. Also, there is

some advantage of

getting a witness a little tired, too. Near the end of a day, when

a witness has been on the stand very often, you can get much more

production than you can earlier when the witness is fresh and

combative. It is really a grueling thing to be subjected to some

six hours or eye hours of crossrexamination, and a witness gets

less agile and less able to dodge and duck, than he is earlier.

Mr. Mckinney. My question is I don't care how you do it but

I think you ought to front load one of those days with the eight

hours because it seems to me what we have done is put ourselves

in the position where on the last day that is it. If we had the

last day tentatively set as a thige-hour day, we have the extra

time to go along rather than being up against the wall.

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I My only other problem is Mr. Lane is going to be a thorn in

all of our sides. There are ladies present. I hate to give the

dingbat time to run around these halls and put on a press show

every afternoon which is what I think he is going to do. I think

he is going to head for the door at one o'clock in the afteznoon

and run an all afternoon press show.

Mr. Blakey. Could I suggest again that this decision is made

by say those people who are directly participating in the cross

after all of the considerations can be brought in? I perceive

that that discussion could go on for a considerable period of

time. The committee does not now have before it all of the

considerations that can lead to have a tentative decision on the

other schedule and I am concerned that if the decision were made

now it would be made without the full and fair discussion of all

of those considerations and it might be detrimental to the ability

of the committee both to do a good cross-examination and appear to

do one, both of which are very important.

Mr. Fithian. Would it be out of order, Mr. Chairman, to move

the previous question before we vote on this?

Chairman Stokes. No. The Chair will entertain a motion.

MI. Blakey. On the schedule?

Mr. Fithian. On the three resolutions.

Chairman Stokes. Does the gentleman move the previous ques-

tion?

Mr. Fithian. If there is no objection, I would move it.

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I chairman stokes. At this time the notion is for the adoption

of the three resolutions now before the committee.

The clerk will call the roll.

MisSoBerning. Mr. Stokes.

Chairman Stokes. Aye.

MisS Berning. Mr. Devine.

No response]

Missy Berning. MI. Preyer.

Chairman Stokes. Aye by proxy.

Miss Berning. Mr. Mekinney.

Mr. McKinney. Aye.

MisS Berning. ME. Fauntroy.

MI. Fauntroy. Aye.

Misso Berning. Mr. Thone...

No response!

MisS, Berning. Mrs.

Burke.

MIS. Burke. Aye.

Miss, Berning.

Mr. Sawyer.

Mr. Sawyer. Aye.

MisSoBerning. Mr. Dodd.

Chairman Stokes. Aye. by proxy.

Miss Berning.

Mr. Ford.

[No response!

Misss Berning.

Mr. Fithian.

Mr. Fithian. Aye.

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I MissoBerning.

Mr. Edgar.

Mr. Edgar. Aye.

Mr. McKinney. Just before we pop upstairs now, are we open-

ing this meeting to our staff people except at some point later

on today?

Chairman Stokes. Yes.

Miss Berning. Nine Ayes, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman Stokes. Nine members having voted in the affirma-

tive, the motion is agreed to.

Mr. Edgar. I would like to have that as an executive deci-

sion. I think we ought to have that as a committee decision

because I really feel strongly that it is a policy decision that

we have to make as a conmittee whether we have Ray for three hours

of sight hours of six hours on the first day. I would hopa that

if we don't do it at this meeting that at some future meeting

prior to his visit we make the decision one way or the other

whether to accept the sixhour day, the eight-hour day or the

three-hour day for the first visit of Ray.

them

Chairman Stokes. Why don't we go up and vote, and we with

come back, and your exception will be taken up at that time.

(whereupon, at 10:10 a.m., the committee recessed until

10:22 a.m.]

Chairman Stokes. Can we begin?

Mr. Blakey. Mr. Chairman, there are several additional items

that can be discussed but two of which really require decision

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from the committee and it might be appropriate to do those first

and then go into the briefings. We have two brifings scheduled

for today, one on the security considerations involving MI. Ray

and the second one involving the acoustical project. I, might add

it is only the acoustical project that we can present with staff

members being present.

" The two issues that might require some committee discussion

are the ticket policy, a memorandum of which has been circulated

to all members of the committee, and the second is the press

policy.

I would think that the press policy may occasion more

discussion than the ticket policy; therefore, it might be useful

while most of

the members are present to do very quickly the

ticket policy and then go into the question of press policy.

The ticket policy is outlined in a memorandum to you dated

yesterday. The memorandum summarizes the basic ticket policy

pursued by the impeachment hearings, the Tongson Park hearings,

the ERA hearings and the Senate Watergate hearings and then it

suggests a comparable ticket policy for our own upcoming hearings

both in August and September. The basic issue is one of the

allocation of scarce resources.

We have roughly 68 tickets

available.

Mrs. Burke. Where will the meeting be held?

Mr. Blakey. It will be held in room 2172 which is the

International Relations Committee hearing room.

Perhaps it would be most useful to have Elizabeth Berning,

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the chief clerk, to go down the list and tell how we arrived at

the numbers for August.

41

Fithian. Before we do that may I ask a question, MI.

Chairman?

Chairman Stokes. Yes, Mr. Fithian.

Mr. Fithian. Is it for security that we are meeting in the

Rayburn building or convenience?

Mr. Blakey. Well, a little of both. The Rayburn building

has an entrance in the basement and it has a room upstairs and it

has an access to the back room by the back door and it is a little

more easier to control inside the room. In addition, it was the

only room available. Since the last reason was sufficient,

probably we could have given you that one first.

The hearings in September will be in the Caucus Room and it

would be a little more appropriate there to have a full open

hearing.

MI. Fithian. There is a freight elevator I think that was

unknown to the committee in the Cannon House Office Building that

would serve the same purpose. I don't know what they are doing

with the Cannon Caucus but obviously I suspect all the witnesses

would bear interest on James Earl Ray on the part of the press

and everything else and every other single witness so I would

defer to anybody's judgment in the case of security if that case

can be made.

MI. Blakey. The security case can really be made. One of

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the things that the ticket policy assumes is that for James Earl

Ray there will be no general public invited. Everybody would be

admitted with a ticket and we will know the name and address of

every person who is in the room those thrge days. on the other

days there will be rotating public seats so that even if we had

the Caucus Room for James Earl Ray it is unlikely for security

reasons that we would want to admit the general public.

Mr. Mckinney. Also I might add that as a member of the

Cannon crowd the going and coming time from Rayburn is a lot

faster than it is from Cannon.

Mrs. Burke. No question.

Mx. Mckinney. By the middle of September when we are going

zonkers here on the floor you are going to rue the day because I

do it every day. You can make it a lot faster from Rayburn. So

that whole issue we have of everyone just sitting there while we

vote, it is going to go a lot smoother.

Miss Berning. The Caucus Room is scheduled for renovations

on the loth 17th and Isth of August.

Mr. Fithian. Is that a bureaucratic device?

MisSoBerning. They don't release the room when it is due

for renovations. That is the word we got.

Mr. Blakey. The only two points on the ticket policy that

should be brought to your attention is that it assumes that only

two tickets will be given to each member and that I thought was

kind of small until Miss, Berning indicated that that looked rather

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generous compared to the policy followed by most of the other

committees in similar situations and second is that it assumes

that only two tickets would be given to the witness. Now generally

suspect that won't present any problems with us; nevertheless,

we can reasonably anticipate that Mr. Lane is probably going to

insist on up to fiften tickets. In other words, if we give him.

ty?, he will ask for sofar: is we give him fiftden, he would ask

for they and use them as a method of having various people in

I don't know quite how to put this without apparently appearing

to put him down, nevertheless to have more than members of Ray's

immediate family present for symbolic reasons.

I Mr. Devine. Jury selection.

Mr. Blakey. That may be a good way of putting it so that no

matter what block we give him we are going to hear that it was not

enough in which case this policy which gives everybody two. My

suggestion is over the strenuous objection of Jim Wolf and some

of the other people on the staff who said we are going to carry

the heat for not giving him enough so we might as well give him

the same as we give everybody else and carry that heat. Nonethe-

less, those are the two issues it seems to me that are involved

in the ticket policy which you ought to have your attention

focused on.

Chairman Stokes. Any comments?

Mr. Mckinney. I move we accept the ticket policy stated in

the memorandum.

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I chairman stokes:

It has been properly moved that we accept

the ticket policy set forth in the memorandum.

Any discussion?

All those in favor will say Aye; those opposed No.

The motion is carried. So ordered.

Mr. Blakey. Me. Chairman, you also have before you a cover

memorandum dated August 2 from me that has attached to it a draft

No. 2 of a suggested public information policy. It is draft No. 2

because prait No. I was circulated among the press members or

people on your staffs who have some dealing with the press and

they had an opportunity to have some input to it.

There is one central point of information that I would draw

your attention to in the memorandum. It assumes that as we go

from a period of investigation into a period of public hearings

that there ought to be some change in the committee's releasing

its information and to do that there should be a dissemination

desk within the committee offices that will act as a central

repository of that information and we will make an effort to make

available to your staffs all of the public information and serve

really as a research library for your staffs having everything

that is required.

Most of what would be possessed by the information desk would

also be possessed by each

Member's office and the information desk

function in part will be to keep up the information in your

office. Apart from that the only other major issue that should

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be brought to your attention is as follows. The committee up

until now has followed a press policy of no comment on anything.

As we get into the public hearings it probably is not possible to

maintain that policy across the board though candidly it would be

my preference to see that policy adopted.

I What this memorandum suggests is that the committee draw a

distinction between issues of substance and issues of procedure

and the committee members be authorized consistent with the

policy of the cormittee itself to make any comment that they felt

desirable about procedure and when hearings were scheduled, the

number of witnesses we have heard, the kind of work we have done

in the past from a statistical nature. Nevertheless the suggestion

in the memorandum is that the committee members themselves refrain

either on

a background basis or a public basis from making any

comment outside of the hearings themselves on what is going on in

the hearings; that is, no comment on a witness is going to be

called, no comment on the credibility of a witness, no corment on

what you expect to prove or what you think you have proven.

I know that this suggested policy is different than what is

traditionally followed in public hearings of a congressional

character. My argument to you would be that what we would be

doing in exploring Martin Luther King's death in the public

hearings and exploring President Kennedy's death in the public

hearings is something very different from what congressional

hearings are traditionally all about and that you will be playing

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essentially the roles of judges and jurors in passing on the facts

brought to you and because it is grossly improper for a judge or a

jury to comment on evidence as it is being developed before them I

would suggest to you that it may well be perceived as improper for

the members of this committee to comment on the evidence as it is

going along and being presented to you.

H In addition, I would raise the following consideration which

I think probably is the most significant. It is unfortunate that

this committee has had in the past a bad press image. There was

some thought in the early life of the committee that the chief

counsel was making an effort to explore either or both of these

deaths for personal gain and of a publicity character. I think

that if the public perceives this committee as in any degree

making use of either of these deaths for political or personal

gain it will cast the whole committee in such disrepute and call

into question all of your integrities that we ought to do every-

thing possible to avoid even the charge of an effort to exploit

either of these deaths.

Therefore, if each committee member refrains from any

private comment and in addition when publicly asked a question

simply responds that frhe evidence is being presented to me and

I think it would be inappropriate or improper for me to comment

on it until it is all presented and then what comments I will

have on it I will share with the American

people in December in

a full, open and fair conversation in public where I will vote

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my convictions, fI think the press would understand it and the

general position of the committee would be one that would be

eminently defensive.

I Chairman stokes.

Any discussion on this point?

MI. Edgar.

Mr. Edgar. Mr. Chairman, I have three points that I would

like to make on the press policy. I think that in light of some

of the things that Mr. Blakey has just said that there ought to

be another subheading put in the press policy which implies that,

because of the negative press that the committee had in its open-

ing months that we wish to suggest to the press that the policy in

opening up our sessions now to the public and to the press is going

to be much more open and friendly and that we in fact are beginning

a process of working with the press and saying something to the

press in our memorandum that we know the difficult job that the

press has in covering an issue like this and that we want to be

as open and as cooperative as we can.

I make my comment because I think the press can make or

break the success of our committee and I think we ought to try to

approach the hearings not with a chip on our shoulder that we are

keeping information but to fully explain to the press what it is

we would like to do and what our plans are and to try to work as

harmoniously with the press without losing our integrity as is

publicly possible. To that end I would suggest that the Thursday

before the l4th that there be'a press briefing, not for the purpose

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of outlining to the press the specific witnesses that would appear,

but that on the Thursday before the l4th the meeting and briefing

with the press could set the stage for what we are about to do in

opening public hearings and we could share the committee's press

policyoand le could explain it in a very detailed fashion and give

some background information. I think that this kind of a setting

is not really outlined in the second draft of the press policy but

makes some sense to meand then when we go into the 14th with our

public hearings we will have already let the press know in an open

setting and in a friendly setting perhaps lad by you, Mr. Chairman.

how cooperative we want to be with the press. That is the first

point that I would like to make.

I Just two subsequent points. One is to raise the question of

whether or not we have explored the possibility of having a closed

circuit IV hookup for our hearings that would go to each

Amber's

office. This might help in our credibility before those fembers

if they could turn the channel and find us. I don't know whether

it is technically possible but I know that all the offices have

IV coverage of the floor debate. I don't know whether we are

hooked up to have closed circuit IV coverings of our hearings.

We cannot get the House thing in the Cannon.

Mr. McKinney.

Mr. Sawyer. I get them in the Cannon.

Mr. Edgar. You have to make application for it.

Mr. McKinney. Ah, so.

Mr. Blakey. I am sure

Miss, Berning can check on that.

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I MI. Edgar. Just one point of emphasis. I think on page 2

where it says, "The committee should avoid giving out the names

of witnesses before they appear," I think that should be under-

scored and be an absolute policy because if some of the members

give out the names and others don't I I would really think that

that has to be an absolute kind of thing. I guess my only major

point is the suggestion that we hold prior to the 14th a major

press briefing;

Mrs. Burke. Would this be to discuss the witnesses or what

would the press briefing cover?

Mr. Edgar. I think the press briefing would be to say we

are beginning(on the 14th our public sessions. We plan to have

public hearings and then go into the September and October time

frame.

I think we could share with them kind of an overall theme

of what we are about without giving specifics. I think we could

go through the third draft of this memorandum point by point so

that the press fully understands and we can have some dialogue

back and forth with them. Fourth, it would be to try to get them

feeling that we want to harmoniously work with them. We might be

able to announce at that time, the first week of activities, what

we see as a step by step because it does not seem to me that our

first week is that secretive in terms of f

Mrs. Burke. Has it been announced to the press?

Mr. Blakey. The themes were mentioned in remarks by the

chairman on the floor when the dates were announced.

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9 Mr. Edgar. I think that serves as a kind of opening statement

to the press.

I guess I just want to see us in a setting with the press

where we are smiling and where we can talk about the kind of work

that we have done and the reasons why we have had to be in execu-

tive session and the reasons why we are now going to open session

and the reasons now why we are going to not be able to comment on

the substance of the investigation because we are still receiving

input but that we will be able to comment on structure and we do

now have a press policy that would give them information in enough

advance time for them to be prepared to cover our hearings and we

urge them because of the interest of the American people to cover

our hearings.

MI. McKinney. If the gentleman will yield, I would like to

emphasize that. It seems to me even though this would not be the

policy for later on that since the first week I think one is in

prison and the others we know they are the kind that we would set

a better mood if we did announce on Thursday exactly what the

schedule was going to be.

Mr. Blakey. Except for the witness James Earl Ray.. For

example, you know exactly what would happen if we announce the

witnesses in advance.

Mr. McKinney. There is nothing confidential.

Mr. Blakey. They will go to them and interview them in

advance and then the focus of attention will be what they said

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before they came and what they said after they left rather than

what they said before the committee.

Edgar.

The only witness that they could interview would

be DI. Abernathy.

Mr. Blakey. They could interview DI. Baden, they could not

interview James Earl Ray.

Mr. Sawyer. I think it is very important, though, what Bob

said, that we make it clear to them that we are not going to

comment on the thing as it is developing because your local

press is going to take umbrage at this if that is not explained

in advance, and the reasons for it.

MI. Blakey. That is an excellent suggestion.

Mr. Edgar. The other problem I have is that the press can

go and interview DI. Abernathy already.

Mr. Blakey. But they don't know he is coming here and

therefore they have not gone to him and asked him questions about

what we have talked about with him or what he may testify about

up here. If they go to him, I am sure he will talk to them.

Mr. Edgar. Well, I can understand that not naming names

other than James Earl Ray the first week and that Monday and

Tuesday will be setting a stage for James Earl Ray's visit, andy.

cananderstandsthat but I guess my feeling is that the press

briefing that we would have would be not just to get the IV

cameras focusing on the chaiman but also to educate the press

as to the style and the way we are going to operate with the

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intention of trying to help them understand we want to work with

themybecause I think in the past they have had the feeling that

we have tried to manipulate them or we have tried to put them in

a boy and I think our new policy is we are going to now try to

work with them in a harmonious way so we get the facts as I

previously described to the American public as well as possible.

I| chairman stokes. I think the gentleman's suggestion is an

excellent one. Just to comment on one phase of it, it does seem

to me that the press could probably accept some standardized policy

with reference to not releasing the names of witnesses. I think

the

if we explained it in tipt

thạt

them

contexty wait, we cannot tell tok about

witnesses

them

some,and not tell yay about others without it being too onerous,

that they probably can accept that k weuld thinks I think your

suggestion is excellent.

Mr. Fithian. Mr. Chairman.

Chairman Stokes. Mr. Fithian.

Mr. Fithian. We are working on it, I hope, within the perimeters

of reality and that is that any witness that Mark Lane is bringing

before this committee, or a number of other witnesses, will indeed

make it known to thepress that they are coming, so I hope we are

not assuming that we will be able to walk a well known American

into our hearings without the press already knowing it.

Mr. Blakey. I think that is true. For example, somebody

like Governor Connelly if he comes on the Kennedy side, I am sure

he will tell the world he is coming first and there is nothing we

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can do about that anyway but there is very little that he could

say to the press that he has not already said anyway. If I said

anything about Governor Connelly's appearance it would be questions

we ask him in the context of the evidence to be shown when he

appears and that is something that it is unlikely that he would

be able to comment on until he gets here although there will be

a pre-appearance interview with the Governor.

Mur. Edgar. When will be the first time the press will know

the name of the witness?

MI. Blakey. That morning when they receive the background

booklet which will contain the narration, the name and address

of the witness and the exhibits of that day.

Mrs. Burke. When will we receive that material, the day

before?

Mr. Blakey. The committee will get it as soon as we know.

The actual booklet will be prepared and given to your staff the

day before. Indeed the whole staff should know just as soon as

it is finalized ar to which witnesses are appearing on which days

but that actual booklet will be given to the staffs the day before.

Mr. Sawyer. Are you making

any differentiation between the

press and the electronic media? You know, the press have deadlines

and they don't like to publish something mind od a day aiter every-

body has seen it on TV. They like to kindron come out with their

evening paper with the same thing.

Mr. Blakey. They will get it at eight in the morning with an

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embargo as of the time the witness appears and that they tell us

is adequate to get it in the evening papers.

I Mr. Fagar. Let me ask you a question abot whether the

electronic media will have sufficient time to receive it and

identify that this is an important witness that they should covero

andbe, therets. that sufficients times

Mr. Blakey. The situation with the electronic people is as

follows, meaning by electronic ABC, NBC and CBS. Their management

people have had contact with me and I have had contact with them

in a general sort of way. The way in which this is normally

handled is there would be a very private conversation with them

probably on Sunday evening, just the three management people, in

which they would expect us to honestly tell them what was going

to happen that week. They think that if three management people

know it only that they would then make management decisions

about

what to cover; that if we expanded that group beyond three it

would be like issuing it to the world. Yes; those people have to

make a greater commitment of equipment than simply to send some

person and it may be possible to work out an arrangement with them

where they get the information sufficiently in advance that they

can make an intelligent decision about what to cover and when.

Mr. Fithian. Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Blakey. Excuse me. That is not something we can put on

this piece of paper because The New York Times and the Post go

out of their minds if the electronic media even on a management

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level will get some advance notice. In fact, this is what is done

regularly by the White House now and has been done by some other

congressional committees.

Tur. Mexinney. Let's not prey too heavily on the white House.

Press problems are legion.

Mr. Blakey. Perhaps I should say it has been traditionally

done by White Houses, including this one.

Chairman Stokes.

Mr. Fithian.

MI. Fithian. Mr. Chairman, I support the direction we are

going and I think we had such briefing as Congressman Edgar

suggests and that the real underlying theme that you have men-

tioned is one which I think is absolutely crucial to establish

our credibility and our reason for not saying, you know, "I am

making a comment" or "He was telling a lie today" is that juage-

juror role and how improper it would be for we sitting in that

capacity to make any comments on the evidence until it is all in

and then we sift it and so on. A lot of future cross-examination

should be determined whether or not I accept or reject what some

witness said too

weeks earlier.

The second question I have has been answered, I guess. At

one time I thought that you had said that we are going to prepare

kind of a narrative of the information, the kinds of questions

going to be asked and so on. Now is that what you visualize of

Is that not visualized in the eight o'clock packet?

M. Blakey, the effht o'clock packet is what we know is

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going to happen. For example, we know that the narration will

be given to set the stage for that day's hearing. We know what

the witness's name and background will be and we know what

exhibits we intend to introduce. That would be given to the

media immediately. I think we have to prepare approximately 150

copies of that each morning. Since we don't know what the witness

is going to say until he takes the stand, we cannot tell them

beforehand anything about that but that they will get at eight

o'clock that morning.

This will pernit them to understand that day's hearings by

having an opportunity to get an advanced reading of the narration.

They can begin filing their stories on that or at least start

writing them. They will have a prehearing look at our exhibits.

It should be a very intelligible proceeding, far different from

what is typical of a congressional hearing and is less structured.

Fithian. The next point I wanted to make is I think we

should consider, Mr. Chairman, that at the close of each day's

hearings you know and I know what will happen. We are going to

bring down the gavel and we will start walking out and every good

reporter is going to try to corner Mrs. Burke for a comment of

somebody else for a comment or whatever. I think that is abso-

lutely inevitable, any way that we pique the interest of the

press. I am wondering in light of that inevitability if the

Chair or/and the person who is working on the cross examination

especially for that day ought not to make a few minutes available

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to the press not to interpret the evidence, etc. i

UNt. Blakey. Bust what will you say, Mr. Fithian? That is

precisely what you really should not do. A judge does not go out

in the hall and make himself available for what happened that day,

the jury doesn't. If you do, what you will guarantee is what you

say in the hall and not what has been carefully worked out in the

hearings will be reported in the press.

Mr. Edgar. They are waiting I think/in the hall to find out

whether ray is coming. Isn't that what they are set up for out

here now?

Mr. Blakey. It could be. Let me say that presents another

very interesting problem. Should Ray learn from the committee

directly? Should Mark Lane learn from Jim Wolf, our legal

counsel, or should they learn from the media who is coming? If

they learn from the media that we are going to invite him, that

will be one of the issues Mark Lane will raise, our exploitation

of the media, and for that very reason.. Mark Lane is not reach-

able until sometime this afternoon.

The committee really ought not comment on whether Ray is

coming or not until ray and his lawyer know. Really, Mr. Fithian,

if we cannot concentrate everything on the hearings in which we

have an opportunity to think about it beforehand and structure it

out, then the hearings will speak for themselves. If the committee

members find out outside of the hearings what will happen will be

what spontaneously occurred in the hall and you will not be able

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say each day, "Well, I can't comment on whether I believe him,

I can't comment on the direction of the testimony, I can't comment

on who else we may call," what would you then say to him? Try to

summarize in

minutes what occurred in three hours?

Mar. Esthian. No. I think you could stay with the no comment

on the testimony, the substance, but a good reporter is apt to want

to know from Lou whether or not the committee has looked at what

he considers a crucial document beroze.

Mr. Blakey. How can you say that? I mean if you are given

the document that perhaps you have not seen before, honestly the

staff has seen before, it was not included in the materials that

were available to you for good and sufficient reasons and some

reporter asks you about it and you say, well, I am not aware of

that document, then that is what goes in the public domain and not

the thousand researchers who know about it.

One of the things that happened to the Warren Commission that

we are living with now on the autopsy is that the autopsy surgeons

walked out and talked to the press. The press found out what

happened at the various places and all the statements were then

WaS

made in the press, none of which

wee accurate. The autopsy surgeons

said, "We saw a bullet hole coming out in the front," and that is

where the whole theory of the grassy knoll comes in. The real

doctors, the forsenic pathologist, there is no hole in the front

and the photographs clearly show no hole in the front so the myth

of the bullet hole in the front was created by the people talking

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to the press.

I/we should learn from that. What we say as a committee should

be said as a committee in the whole and not outside. We will be

perceived as exploiting the press. Somebody will say something

that isn't accurate and then we will create one more piece of myth

that if that myth had not been created the committee would not

have been created.

MrS.

Burke.

Mr. Chairman.

Chairman Stokes. Mrs. Burke.

Mrs. Burke. Mr. Chairman, maybe what we could have as a

policy is that one person talk to the press, the chairman, and

' in

that event at least you have one person that you can control. If

no one else gives comments and we agree we will give no comments,

we won't be faced with this kind of thing if someone makes an off-

hand comment to the press and it is blown out of proportion. Any

comments that would be made in terms of future plans or the

direction of the conmittee would be made by the Chairman. I think

in that way you can contzol.

I have a question. What press corps will cover the hearings?

Will each newspaper cover the hearings? How are we determining?

Will it be the Capital press corps? Will it be a matter that we

will select particular newspapers? How will we determine what

press will be included in these tickets?

Mr. Blakey. The tickets will be assigned to the accredited

press here.

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/Mrs. Burke.

The Capital?

MI. Blakey. The ones accredited to the House press corps.

Then whoever wants to will come and they will get enough tickets

roughly for everybody to come but it is up to them to come or not.

Mrs. Burke. How many seats is that?

MasSoBerning. The press people are not included in these

tickets.

These tickets are

preserved seats.

Mrs. Burke. How many press seats?

1000

Miss Berning. Approximately onehundred That is for the

writing press i the writing press and the periodical press. All

press people have to be approved by the House gallery"

that is in

the House rules. They either carry a press card, because all of

the major newspapers have made application to and gotten approval.

for that, or they apply on a one-time basis and get a temporary

card. We expect a lot of that for this particular hearing.

is

One determination that has to be maded they expect to give

out as many passes as can possibly fit into the room

this block

of 100 seats or 80 seats, I forget how many there are.

Eighty or

ninety seats. Anyone who is accredited has a right to come and it

is only space that would keep them out. The people who are not

and raho

accredited but that may be a problem are the minority owned weekly

newspapers and that is something that has to be determined because

if they are not accredited if there is no room for them and they

cannot be accommodated because

a major newspaper or any of the

others that are accredited are there firat, they come back to any

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to know

of you and we need i determination what you are going to do. Will

you back up the House press gallery?

Mrs. Burke. Well, of course we go through this all the time.

can't we in arriving at this y for instance, do we havera tist

shet we send out the press releases and the announcements, the

dates and all of those things, to a particular press list?

Miss, Berning. The wire services.

Mrs. Burke. The wire services.

Mr. Blakey. There is a book that you can enter an entry or

a log saying we have things available and then anybody can come.

For example, Tass, the Soviet news agency, came to see what our

photographic releases were in the Kennedy case.

Mrs. Burke. I am certain we are going to have a lot of

foreign press applying for Capital press passes. Of course the

minority press will be interested in the king case. I do hope

that we work out some kind of a policy. Maybe the policy would

be those obvious press people should be advised that they need a

gapital clearance. I think that is the way it has worked out,

for instance, in inaugural events. They don't use the traditional

press corps for this.

Miss Berning. No; these will be people coming from all over

the United States. When we refer to the house press gallery it is

not people assigned to capteal tes, They put out that there 1a

an event going on and anyone khanis interested from all over the

pation, all over the world actually, can apply to them.

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Mckinney.

Have those gone out yet?

Mis soBerning. I don't know. I know it has been discussed.

Mr. Blakey. I am sorry, Congressman.

Mr. McKinney. For instance, I have a feature writer who is

an assassination buff for the Bridgeport Post and it was my

intention to have him here as a guest, just to let him sit in one

day so he would have been there. If he comes as a guest, he does

not need any kind of press clearance, does he?

Miss, Berning. No; but if he comes as a guest he cannot take

rechaina

pictures of carry a device with him. All you need do is have him

contact the press-gallery.

MI. Devine.

Have you considered a pool arrangement? A pool

of TV cameramen for all three networks and the wire services?

Mr. Blakey. From what we understand it is not likely that

ABC, NBC will carry the first two days live. It is likely that

CBS will have somebody there every day although probably not live.

I think the decision has not yet been made as to whether to cover

Ray live. If one or more of the networks decide to cover Ray live,

that could be done by a pool arrangement but that is something that

they do. The PBS carries it live. My understanding is that CBS

or NBC will also have a camera there since they don't consider PBS

kosher.

Mrs. Burke. If there are members of the committee that wish

to have a filming of a part of the proceedings, we do have a

private company that we can work out a filming arrangement with,

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Fion't know If I guess it would have to be cleared through

the press gallery, but there is a private company that would do it,

for it is not that expensive, if some members of the committee

wanted filming.

Hur. pithian. Mr. chairman.

Chairman Stokes. Mr. Fithian.

Mr. Fithian. I don't know how readily available clearance is

up there. That is the kind of point of information, I will just

take Mrs. Burke's case, if the San Francisco Examiner decided just

for the heck of it they would like to cover if they are not going

to cover the whole thing but they are going to contract somebody

to go over and cover

days of the hearings and then they are

going to talk about not only the hearings but Mrs. Burke's role

in it, would they pretty automatically get a press pass from the

gallery up there?

MisS Berning. There would not be a problem with that partic-

ularly if it is concerning one of the members.

Mr. Fithian. Then if they didn't get in because the press

seats were taken, is our policy that she could or could not admit

them on one of her tickets?

Mr. Blakey. She could admit them on one of her tickets.

The

San Francisco Examiner would have no problem getting in. If Ray

is here for thise days, I suspect that the tickets are probably

adequate. It is clear that in the Kennedy hearings in November

when the Caucus Room will be used there will be no trouble getting

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the press in.

I MissyBerning. The number of seats we have set aside for the

with

press came fron discussions that we have had from the

three

superintendents of the press gallery and it is their experience

they can normally expect "x"

number of people who want to come in

so there has been discussion with them.

Mr. Fithian. That number includes a lot more than the

Washington press corps in the first place.

Miss Berning. Yes. The Washington press corps is sues a

very small part of that.

MI. Blakey. I might add that Elizabeth has spent a great

deal of time in the last weeks, month or so, talking with the

people on the other committees learning their experience, sitting

with various members of the House press gallery and trying to

figure out how people have done it in the past and what the

experience has been. Remarkably, there is a real body of infor-

mation about how to do this. Elizabeth has been more absorbed in

this. If we have specific questions and we want all these details,

there is a good library on it and she understands it very well.

Miss Berning. I might say if any of you do have specific

newspapers or papers you are interested in, it might be good to

and

let me know and I will pass it on flet the press gallery know

so they can feed it into their system. The more information we

have beforehand, the better it is.

Chairman Stokes. There is one question in terms of the

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minority newspapers. What is the procedure for them to be able

to get whatever accreditation is necessary?

I wane ferning. Any minority daily, there is no problen. The

concern I was asked to pass on to you is for the very, very small

weekly newspapers. The problem with letting them in is, number

one, they would probably come at the last minute rather than

letting anyone know ahead of time because they would not be wired

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a daily." They could get this information from the wire services

and they could pick up their stories through other sources rather

than being at the hearing Liven person.

If your determination is that you want these small weeklies

that would have a very limited circulation to be there, the press

gallery will try to work it out

but it will pose a major problem

for them. Their policy would be to turn them down unless you tell

them otherwise but they don't want them to be turned down and then

have them come back to you with the complaint.

Chairman Stokes. Maybe we had better arrange to have a

meeting with them on this point because in the king matter,

particularly, we know that there is going to be a great deal of

interest and it will create a real problem if we don't have some

kind of accommodation for then.

Mr. Mckinney. Will the Chairman yield?

Chairman Stokes. I yield.

Mr. McKinney. Is there a list of minority weeklies?

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I/ chairman

Stokes.

There probably is, yes.

Mr. McKinney. It seems to me a letter could be sent out to

them.

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MusS Berning. To what effect?

Mr. McKinney. Telling them the dates, the problems.

Chairman Stokes. Through the NNPA, the National Negro,

-Publishing Associationg We probably can communicate with all of

them;

Mr. Blakey. I will see that that is done, Mr. Chairman. We

will get to them and tell them what they have to do. That is no

problem.

Mr. Edgar. You might want to explore the possibility of

closed circuit TV and then

There is plenty of room.

Chairman Stokes. We are pretty much agreed in terms of the

dialogue and discussion we have had regarding the policy. We are

pretty much agreed then that we develop a policy where there would

be

commen

type of situation.

Mr. Blakey. Mr. Chairman, there is one aspect of it that is

now unclear. Mrs. Burke has suggested that the comment on procedure

be limited to you. The memorandum indicated the comment on proced-

ure be by anyone. I don't know what the status of that difference

is.. I take it on everything else there is agreement.

Mr. Devine. It puts a pretty heavy burden on the chaizman if

he has to say,

No conment?

Mr. Edgar. MI. Chairman, I would go with what is in the

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memorandum. I think the Chairman will get the most questions and

each of us will get questions. I think we are old enough now

after a year and a half of infancy to be able to respond to non-

substantive questions and procedure that are in the public arena

particularly in light of your comments in the Congressional

Record and others about where we are going from here. A lot of

that stuff is public and Then on substantive questions in the

hearings we just say no comment.y

I think that is spelled out.

Tur. Fithian. Of we could say, "The chairman speaks for the

committee and go talk with him."

Chairman Stokes. I think the recommendation is that members

be permitted to make comments regarding procedure.

Mr. Blakey. I will rework this memo.

Ms. Edgar. Is there agreement on Thursday or so of a press

briefing in light of what I had suggested?

approsed

chairman Stokes. I think that that washby fort ot unanimous

consent.

Mr. Edgar. That might be a good day to practice at least

partially putting together a packet for distribution atathatetime

make

and making sure that our staffs get copies of it for distribution

to our press.

Mr. Blakey. There is no problem setting up a frank and clear

background briefing for them of what is going to happen live.

Again I would suggest that that briefing might be on the record.

I mean no cameras coming in and kind of announcing what we are

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going to do next week but just talk to them and let them know.

If we want to begin creating a good working relationship with

them, we can do that on a background basis where they can talk to

us and we can talk about it without having to expect to see the

comments appearing in The Washington Post the next morning, It

might be a very useful thing.

Mr.

Edgar. I guess I misunderstood that. I must have been

on the telephone when you said that. I saw it as background

information but not something that would be confined so that they

could not write a story about it.

Mr. Blakey. They could write it but not for distribution.

I don't think it would be appropriate, for example, for me to

come out and see my name in

the press saying what is going to

happen this week. If the whole thing goes all the way through

and my name never appears in the press, that is the way it ought

to be.

Mr. Edgar. I envision, and I may be mistaken, an my vision

Lou and Sam and anyone else coming and sitting around the table

oK

auch If the press cameras wanted to come in, olay, and lou starts

off by saying, "I invited you to talk about press policy," and for

Lou to have an agenda and to go down specifically through the

policy and then say, "Do you have any questions?" and not say to

the press, "We don't want you to use any of this in a particular

way." I think what we need to say to the press is that our policy

Is now moving to a way of cooperation and working with the over

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this information. I would hate for us to get into a bind of

having them say, "Well, at our first opportunity for discussion

after a year long absence from discussion you somehow tried to

45

censor

me."

Mur. plakey. Mr, Edgar, let me suggest something to you. Is

the Chairman and Mr. Devine or even one or two others of you were

to walk into a room now and begin having a conversation with the

press, you would get only substantive questions and if you did not

respond to them immediately you would have the very hostility

which you are concerned about. My suggestion to you z

Mr. Edgar. Edent thinkso at almig I can respectfully

if

disagree. I think that, we announce that we are having a press

briefing on the following issues and we list out those issues very

carefully and de say to them that we are now moving to open hear-

ings and the chairman elearly makes it clear in the beginning

there will be no substantive discussion, we are talking about

moving from an executive

session to an open dialogue with you.

I don't think you will get the angry comments. I think you will

get the angry comments if we try to say to them, "Here is a press

briefing but you can't really report on it." I think what we will

get on Friday of next week is a headline in the newspaper:

Assassination Committee Set to Have Public Hearings. At a press

briefing yesterday led by lou Stokes they laid the ground rules

for press policy and they talked about the procedure which they

are planning to operate under in the upcoming hearings.

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/ Mr. Blakey. I think that is precisely what you don't want

to do.

What you want is to share with them what your reasoning

is and you don't expect to see that in the newspapers. The

hearings really ought to speak

for themselves. They will read

that as an effort to manipulate them, MI. Edgar.

Chairman Stokes. It appears, Bob, you are not objecting to

a briefing

session; in substance, you are objecting to the type of

briefing session that Mr. Edgar suggests, right?

Mr. Blakey. Maybe I can't say that I have a great deal of

experience compared to the Chairman of Mr. Devine or what have

you but I really live around this very press pool that is covering

us for the better part of alnost twahly years and I have done it

in the context of the criminal

justice type issue, I have done it

in the committee

hearings in the Senate, I have done it in the

context of the judicial committee hearings in the Senate, I have

done it in the context of the Watergate hearings in the Senate and

the kind of trouble this

I really know

at least I think I do

committee is in on its press policy and the real danger we have of

blowing it. Maybe I am being unduly rigid or concerned about it

but I really think that everything we do other than what is

directly in the hearings, having the hearings speak for them-

selves, any publicity we create outside of that, unless it can be

immediately tied to an investigative purpose or a public explana-

tion purpose of what is in the hearings pushes us into a category

that makes us like other congressional hearings and if we do that

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I really believe we are lost, MI. Edgar.

9/ Mr.

Edgar.

Except that you have now given us permission to

have public comment on the process and style of the committee as

opposed to the substance of the committee and we have already put

in the Congressional Record a whole series of things which in your

memo indicate we now can go with the press release indicating how

etceteras

many hours we work, etes I think the press would see it as a

responsible thing to do at the beginning of substantive hearings.

Mr. Blakey. As a practical matter those kinds of press

releases I have suggested would be covered in your home districts,

they would not be covered nationally.

Mr. Edgar. If I could respectfully interrupt again, the

point that I am making is that the Chairman at the launching of

months and one week of open public hearings could logically

you and I,

come before the press corps and say, you know, we are going to

have a difficult task on amate over the next to

months and

week and we would like to sit down with an agenda here today

and explain to you what our press policy will be.

MI. Blakey. Why not do that off the record then. The people

you want to explain it to are the press people and not the general

public. If you explain it off the record, the likelihood is that

you will get communication with them. If you go on the record

Mr. Edgar. But I think the public does not know that we are

going to start on the l4th of the month with hearings and I think

the public may be interested in the conment of the Chairman about

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thefact that we are now moving into a different

Tur, pevine. What do you mean the public does not know we

are going on the l4th? It will be in every paper and on TV.

Chairman Stokes. Everybody knows.

Mr. Edgar. We put out the press release but the general

public's appetite &

MI. Blakey. Because of the coverage in the New York Times

today, because of the coverage in News Week, all of which is

legitimate

coverage of what we are doing, none of which we have

stimulated in any way. We will

lose the ability to maintain our

independence when we create news as opposed to news growing out

of what we do.

Mr. Fithian. If I may interrupt, are you saying that you

would prefer that lou or none of us should try to lay out for

them this judge/jury role that we are moving into?

Mr. Blakey. On a background basis where the time and place

in which you discuss that with them is for their information and

their understanding as they cover the hearings but if you make

that in itself a matter of publicity and an occasion of stories

where you will quote the chairman, you will get a story written,

House Assassination Committee today begins its process of exploi-

tation in the manipulation. It may not come out so harsh in words

as stark as that but that is what they think we are about.

MI. Mckinney. I have another concern, too, Bob. I really

don't want to get in the middle of this. Our colleagues upstairs,

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some of them, have said to me, "Well, when do you start your dog

and pony show?" "How many correspondents have you hired and where

is the stage?"

"When does your re-election television broadcast

start?" Subtle, nasty, on our side. And on Sam, I think.

П Ar.

Devine. Yes.

Mr. Mckinney. I would like to walk into the hearing room the

first day with my dark shades on and proceed.

Chairman stokes. We may have permission under the fie =

minute rule to sit.

Mr. McKinney. We don't have to.

Chairman Stokes. As a full committee we do. In fact, we

should have had it this morning in order to be sitting now.

...Mr. Devine. Let me make a point of order.

Of course, I think maybe we are borrowing trouble. I may

underestimate it,but I don't think we are going to have the media

beating down the doors to get in to witness this great hearing

other than the Ray end of it. I think otherwise they will lose

interest. If we have more than a handful of reporters, I will be

surprised.

Mr. Mckinney. I don't think they will be dropping in for

Abernathy and the others.

Mr. Blakey. If they don't and we have a press conference

in effect about what we are going to do the following week, it

will appear in effect to stimulate interest in the first part of

the hearings. I really believe the inherent value of what we are

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doing is so intense that if we do it well, what we do will be

covered and that we ought not to have any media event outside of

that.

Il chairman stokes. Bob, if I understood your point this morn-

so that

ing, the purpose of it was

tophor the press, who had been kept

away from us and who have left us alone as a result of it would

now fully and completely understand what we are trying to do and

how we are going to try to present it, and so forth, and it would

seem to me that the purpose which you have in mind is not really

2

inconsistent with the way

Mr. Edgar. That is true. Mi. Chairman, I am willing to

withdraw my concern about having it open. I would caution us

though in shaping it so that we

don't give the press the impres-

sion that we are trying to censor them.

it

Chairman Stokes. Right.: I think thil can be done that way.

Mr. Blakey. Mr. Chairman, that concludes the two issues that

require some sort of decision from the committee.

I would propose now that we make availabla the Marshals to

answer any questions that you might have and when the Marshals

are finished to make DI. Barger available to you to talk about

the acoustical matter.

Chairman Stokes. One other question. We never did dispose

of the exception taken by Mr. Edgar with reference to the

scheduling of Ray. How do you propose that we resolve that issue?

Mr. Blakey. Let me suggest this to you. Why don't we get a

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working committee of those people involved in the cross-examination

together, let them go over the cross-examination and then come back

to the full committee with the suggestion at some time before MI.

Ray appears. Our schedule is really flexible and it is not neces-

sary to make the decision now either way. It does not commit us

finally and we decide to change on Wednesday. We can announce at

any time how late to have the hearings. In fact, we can decide

on Wednesday as it is going that this is not the time to cut it

off, it is to continue on, and that if we keep ourselves flexible.

we can but once the kind of executive committee is doing the cross=

examination we will get together, thrash it all out and put in all

the considerations.

Then we can bring back to the full comnittee

the thoughts. I would note in that connection that you are on

that committee.

I jur. gagar. I just didn't want the working committee to make

a final decision. I think it should be a decision of our commit-

tee.

Chairman Stokes.

Then it will come back to the full commit-

tee.

Proceed, then, with the farshals.

Mr. Blakey. MI. Chairman, could I present to you Marshal

J. Jerome Bullock from the District of Columbia.

Would you introduce the two people with you.

Marshal Bullock. This is Inspeetor Robert Reid who is a

security coordinator for the District of Columbia Marshal's Office.

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This is tex lancaster who is the Southeast Regional commander of

our Special Operational group.

I/chairman stokes, Thank you very much.

These are the members of the committee.

This is Mr. Edgar

of Pennsylvania, Mr. Fithian of Indiana, Mr. Devine of Ohio,

Mr. McKinney of Connecticut, Mr. Sawyer of Michigan, and I am

Chairman Stokes.

Mr. Blakey, how did you want to proceed?

Mr. Blakey. Mr. Chairman, I understood that members of the

committee had some concerns in mind about the security. I asked

Marshal Bullock if he would come to the committee this morning

and indicate a general outline to the committee of their past

experience in moving prisoners of this kind and open themselves

to such questions as the committee might have. I suspect and I

would suggest to you that it might be just as fluid for Marshal

Bullock to proceed how ever he wants to in sharing that informa-

tion with you.

Chairman Stokes. Marshal Bullock, we would be pleased to

have you proceed in whatever way you like.

Marshal Bullock. Thank you, Mi. Chairman.

The United States Marshal Service handles approximately

60,000 prisoners annually; that is, we move that many prisoners

annually. Annually we handle approximately 75 prisoners that we

consider as being very sensitive either from the standpoint of

them requiring some special security arrangement or from the

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standpoint of us taking special precautions to maintain them in

custody. The Marshal Service has been doing this since 1789. In

the District of Columbia office we of course handle a large

percentage of prisoners in both those categories on a daily or

weekly basis.

# Right now we have an individual who is currently testifying

before another committee of the Congress that has been in the news

for the last several days, very sensitive individual, and we are

responsible for maintaining his security both before the committee

as well as while he is not before the committee. So the Marshal

Service generally has had a tremendous amount of experience. We

handled Mr. Tongson Park recently, another sensitive individual

who was in the country.

More specifically on this assignment because of the unusual

nature of the principal involved we have made some special

arrangements and special plans so far as security is concerned.

I have asked a member of our headquarters staff who is the

commander of our Special pperations Group to be in with our office

on the planning and execution of this move so this situation is

getting some rather high level attention.

On

last Friday Joe Weatherton who is the ppecial operations

Group commander and I visited Bushy Mountain State Prison to

review the prison files, to talk with individuals that handle

this principal on a daily basis so that we could get some idea of

the kind of personality generally that we were dealing with. The

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other thing that we wanted to do was to do some sort of recon-

naissance so that we could make an accurate determination as to

how we wanted to carry out the mood of getting the principal from

his current location to Washington. We have a very secure plan

for doing that and I can only say at this point that we will use

a

noncommercial conveyance to get him to the washington area.

4 Now so fax as the housing for the number of days that will

be required while the prisoner is here, we intend to house this

principal outside of the Washington, DJC., area in a facility

whereby there will be physically a 24=hour guard on him and in

fact there will be some security people with him for the entire

time that he is outside of the walls of his place of current

incarceration.

We will move the principal to Washington on the days that

he is required or needed for testimony purposes and in addition

we will maintain security over him during the course of his

testimony and during all times while he is here before the

Congress. We have an excellent working relationship with Chief

Powell and the members of the Capitol Police Force and they have

figured in from day one so far as our planning of the security

arrangements.

The areas that he will be housed in will be secured during

the entire time that he is present and we have taken some other

rather extensive surveillance type precautions. We have made

some arrangements for some additional surveillance activities

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both within and outside of the hearing room itself.

I we will ba using at least two magnacompters. These ara the

kind that you generally see at the airport entrances to detect

weapons and that sort of thing for any persons coming into the

general area of the hearing room, not just the hearing room itself.

It will include the corridor outside.

We will have approximately sevghteen ugated states Marshal

service employees, Deputy United States Marshals, and myself

personally involved in this assignment until its termination.

We plan to use some other security devices and equipment that are

common to us that we prefer not to go into detail at this time

about to maintain security over this principal while he is in

this area.

Chairman

Stokes. I want to give the members any opportunity

they want to ask ens questions of you. It is obvious to us ther

that you are as concerned as we are that this individual be

accorded the greatest amount of security for all of the reasons

that we need not go into here at this time. One of the things

that could be a problem here is in terms of the gentleman who

represents this principal and the fact that he will be asking for

access to himand whatnot we have had, on the record, some discus-

sion with him in which we have acknowledged his right to counsel

with his client but that it has to be done in accordance with

security arrangements and that we will work with him in any way

to be sure that he does have access to his client at all times

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and cannot say he is not getting access. I am sure that you

recognize this problem and you are willing to try and work that

out so that there is no public problem created.

4/ Marshal Bullock. Certainly.

Chairman Stokes. Mr. Fithian.

MI. Fithian. I have no questions.

Chairman Stokes. MI. Edgar.

Mr. Edgar.

The only question that I have is when we talked

with James Earl Ray he indicated he at no time wanted to walk

and

only

several shots

through a battery of photographers,, that he would, permit) at the

sitting down prior to our conversation serend shots as waters

standsitabutshedidn.twantttorget.intouthe.ci.cuns.tancerofchav.rg

o.walkathroigh.a.whoreshositaotiphotoggaghers Can that be

assured?

Marshal Sullock. That can be assured, sir. We have already

figured that into our security planning. The only time that he

will confront photographers would be during the time that he is

in the hearing room and those photographers will have already

been screened by us and they will be present at a designated area

in the hearing room so he won't be confronted in any moves with

photographers or any other media person.

Mr. Edgar. I notice in your security provisions on the

Senate side for the witness that is appearing before that committee

now you have had two marshals sitting behind the witness lcoking

out at the audience. Would that be similar in this instance?

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4| Marshal Bullock. It would be similar. The number will

probably be different in this instance. In fact, I am sure there

will be an increase.

MI. Edgar. Thank you.

Chairman Stokes. MI. Devine.

MI. Devine.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I am impressed with your professional approach to this and

we are secure in knowing that you men have the background,

experience and concerns that we do and think you are aware that

this is an escape prone type of a principal. We the comnittee

and we the Congress just cannot afford to have another Jack Ruby

incident. Of course, that was not in the Congress, as you well

know but that is one thing that we want to avoid at all costs.

I personally don't want to know where you are going to house this

principal; I don't think anybody should know other than perhaps

the man's counsel and that is his responsibility.

Other than that I have no comment, Mr. Chaizman.

Chairman Stokes. Mr. McKinney•

Mr. McKinney. I am very impressed. Thank you.

I just don't think that you can underestimate what a terrible

headache the counsel is going to give you. I would just as soon

that it be worked out to the point where he not be able to run out

to the press every

fiye minutes and say, they won't let me talk to

my client and they won't let me do this and they won't let me do

that. I know he will do it anyway but I am impressea.

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4/ chairman stokes. Mr. Sawyer.

Mr. Sawyer. Yes.

I am impressed, too. This fellow is kind

of a double hazard in that he is escape prone. I guess if I were

serving 99 years with a 30-year minimum I might be, too, if I had

any chance, but he has been somewhat successful at it and is a

fairly intelligent guy, tood plus,you have the other side of the

coing that he would be a very likely target. So it is a conpounded

problem and I am delighted to hear the expertise that went into it.

One thing I am interested in. You said that you made some on

sight investigation down at Bushy Mountain in talking with the

people about what kind of a guy he is. What did you find out

about what kind of a guy he is from the people that you talked

with there, that have daily contact with him?

Marshal Bullock. We found that generally he is a loner and

does not cause any problems and they really view him as a model

prisoner, not difficult to handle. I did get the feeling that he

enjoys a certain degree of attention to himself on the past of the

public. There was even a suggestion that perhaps these escape

attempts and the even more recent successful one he had was the

fact that he had been out of the limelight for a few months, so

I suspect given that information and what I know about prisoners

that there may be some validity to that point. We don't anticipate

any problems in handling him.

You are quite right, it is a two edged situation. He is

likely an individual that we will have to produce many times for

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the Government in a very serious criminal case in addition to that

person being a principal figure. We also have to think in terms

of keeping that individual alive to give that testimony.

Sawyer.

That is all I have.

MI •

Devine. There ara some people out there, as you know, who

would like to get their name in the paper for having eliminated

someone like that,

Marshal Bullock.

Certainly.

MI. Devine. As long as you fellows are aware, we are more

comfortable.

Chairman Stokes, We might share with you the fact when we

were there and posed a question to him about our concern about

his security and whether he had any preferences for perhaps a

hearing taking place in that area rather than bringing him to

that

washingtorole made it very clear he was anxious to come to

washington, só that may figure in his plans in some way.

Marshal Bullock. Yes.

Chairman Stokes. Well, obviously you gentlemen are highly

qualified in the responsibility that you have undertaken, and by

the comments that we have heard as members of this committee we

feel relatively secure in placing this kind of responsibility in

your hands. I can only just re-emphasize what the other members

have said, that the House of Representatives is extremely concerned

about his security and we know that you will keep atl that in mind.

Marshal Bullock. We will, Mr. Chairman.

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Edgar.

Mi. Chairman.

Chairman Stokes. Mr. EdgaI.

ME. Edgar. I would just Glution I know that tine gentieman

will not be involved in this-hut it would be important that no

comment be made when you leave here so that we can notify Ray

and his attorney about this process.

Marshal Bullock. Certainly.

Chairman Stokes. I am sure they follow that all the time.

Marshal Bullock. Certainly.

Chairman Stokes. Thank you very much.

Marshal Bullock. Thank you for the opportunity to appear,

Mr. Chairman.

Chairman Stokes. Thank you.

Mr. Blakey. Mr. Chairman, I understand Mrs. Burke wants to

hear this, too, and she is coming down from the floor. She will

be here in a moment if we can wait for just a second.

Chairman Stokes. All right.

Whereupon, a short recess was taken.

Chairman Stokes. Why don't we ask Mr. Blakey to introduce

the witness.

Mr. Blakey. Mr. Chairman, there is no particular reason to

proceed in a really formal manner but I would like to introduce

DI. James E. Barger who is the chief scientist for Bolt, Beranek

and Newman,. Inc., a firm in Massachusetts that specializes in

various acoustical issues. They have a very impressive background

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and were involved in the tape for Judge Sirica, the famous 18

minutes.

He was also involved in the analysis of sound recordings

at Kent State for the Department of Justice and he has headed up

the group of scientists that have been working for the subcommittee

and for the cormittae in analyzing the Dictafbelt tape that we

found that covers the period of time that the Kennedy assassination

occurred.

HI thought it might be useful for all of you to hear from him

this morning on really what he has done, the status of his work

and what he thinks we have to do bafore final conclusions can be

reached. He would be more than glad to answer any questions that

any of you have as he goes along.

Jim.

Mr.

Barger. Thank you, Bob.

I will try to give you a brief overview before lunch and you

can think about questions perhaps during lunch.

We have analyzed two magnetic tape recordings that were

supplied to us by Mr. Blakey and these were magnetic tape record-

ings nade of the Dictafbelt of the Dallas Police Department:

dispatchers, Channels 1 and 2. Now on Channel 2 we find an

annotation that the presidential motorcade reaches the triple

12:30

underpass at twelve thirty and also that Channel 1 has a motor-

cycle radio that is stuck in the transmit mode. On Channel

do find for

e minutes starting at 12:20 that the

Chairman Stokes. That is an indication that a vote has just

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started on the House floor which means we have fift

een minutes to

go to the floor and vote.

We are very close to the floor so we

take another lige, six, seven minutas befora ie haya to go.

Myr. Barger. A11 right.

For about fige minutes starting at 12:28 according to the

time annotated by the dispatcher on Channel 1, one hears the sound

of a motorcycle principally. At about 12:31, however, that motor-

cycle seems to slow down and the noise level diminishes.

Now we have played these magnetic tape recordings through two

filers.

Each of these filters is realized on a computer. The

first filter filters out everything but the high frequency compon-

ents of the sound on the tape. The second filter is called an

adaptive filter and it filters out noise that is somewhat repeti-

tive and it does not disturb impulsive sounds. In other words,

it learns ahead of time what the noise is like and subtracts that

out. If an impulse comes along, it does not subtract that out.

Mr. McKinney. So in other words it would take out the

motorcycle which is a constant.

Mr. Barger. It diminishes the sound of the motorcycle, it

does not ramove it completely.

Now I have graphical amplitude recordings of the output of

those two filters with me. It might be best for us to examine

them after the vote and let me just give a complete summary

beforehand. Each of these graphical amplitude recordings that

represent the output of these two filters show what I characterize

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as four groups of sound impulses.

I Now these groups of impulses, just to summarize, begin at

12:31 Channel 1 time. We have established that the dispatchers

do not annotate their tapes with greater accuracy than about one

minute so the initial group or pattern of sound impulses occurs

at 12:31 plus or minus a minute.

2.1

The second group of impulses begins two and one-tenth of a

seconds later. The third group of impulses begins at 7.17 seconds

after the first and the fourth group begins at 8.47 seconds after

the first. When initially analyzing these filter outputs with a

less powerful filter than the ones that I will show you the out-

outs of today, I had characterized these four groups as being

three with one of them excessively long in duration. In the

outputs of these two filters that we will discuss today it appears

more like four as I just said.

Now the question is whether these groups of impulses are

caused by gunfire in Dealy Plaza. We have already susjected these

impulses to several analytical tests. First, we have taken the

acoustical waveform generated by an Ml rifle and we have mathe-

matically computed the output of the type of radio that was used

when excited by that impulse. The Ml waveform is an approximation

to the waveform of any other rifle and the characterization of the

radio that was used in our radio was an approximation that is

applicable to the general class of radios that were being used by

the Dallas Police Department at that time.

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I the calculation shows that the shape of the sound impulses

that come out of our filters from the tape recording are similar

to what one would expect from the waveform of

a rifle impulse

transmitted through the radio. We have located a similar radio

in use on the motorcycles of the Massachusetts District Commission

police.

We have obtained sound recordings of rifle impulses fired

by a Mannlicher Carcano and we will introduce those sound impulses

through the radio and measure the shape of the impulse at the

output and see if in fact it continues to resemble the ones that

we have in the analysis of the Dallas Police Department tape.

The second and most powerful test to determine whether these

groups or patterns of impulses might have been caused by rifle

fire is to show that their relative occurrence and that their

relative phases can be replicated in Dealy Plaza whether the

pointed part of the waveform points upward of downward on the

graphic amplitude recording. We have done an analytical calcu-

lation of what the groups of impulses or echos would look like if

a rifle was fired from the Texas schoolbook depository building

in Dealy Plaza and we found that qualitatively these echos should

persist for about one second and there should be about a dozen

impulses visible at a microphone on Houston or Elm Streets.

The groups of impulses we find on the Dallas Police Department

tape do persist for about a second and there are about a dozen of

them which is proof. They do have phase reversals occasionally

some point up, some point down. The phenomenon of defraction of

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sound by a wedge, the corner of a building in this case, does in

fact allow for that phenomenon to occur depending upon the rela-

tive position of the building to the gunfire. So we find that

the qualitative nature of the groups or patterns of spikes are

not consistent with what might be generated by a rifle fired in

Dealy Plaza.

I This analytical calculation is greatly complicated by the

shockwaves radiated by the bullet. We are dealing with a super-

sonic bullet that radiates a shockwave just as a supersonic

aircraft does. Calculating the defracted and reflected and

scattered sound of a shockwave is an extremely difficult process

and we can't replicate the physical process analytically with any

degree of certainty. In fact, rifle fire is used to simulate

aircraft shockwaves which are called sonic booms when people try

to determine the reflection and defraction and scattering of

sonic booms.

Due to the analytical intractability of the mathematical

calculation of what the echo patteins would look like of a rifle

fired in Dealy Plaza, we recommend to the committee an acoustical

reconstruction of it in order to simulate the shockwave and its

reflections, defractions and scattering. We need to use live

ammunition having the same Mach number as that of a Mannlicher

Carcano, meaning the same speed.

Chairman Stokes. Doctor, I wonder if we might just inter-

Iupt you at that point.

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far. Barger. I have one moze sentence.

Chairman Stokes. All right.

MI. Barger. The groups of impulses that I describe are not

inconsistent with rifle fire but I don't feel we can state that

they are until we can see that pattern of echos that is in fact

generated by the environment of Dealy Plaza.

That is all.

Chairman Stokes. We will go up and vote and we will come

right back.

Mr. Barger. I will be here.

whereupon, at 12:04 p.m. the committee recessed until

12:17

p.m.

Chairman Stokes. At this time we will resume the committee

hearing.

Doctor, if you would like to pick up again on your last

sentence.

Mr. Barger.

Well, I had intended that to be a summary and

I think perhaps the next thing that we might do is look at the

outputs of these filters, these amplitude records. I will show

you the four patterns of groups of impulses and you can talk

about them.

Chairman Stokes. All right.

Mr. Barger. Now these records are rather long. We are

looking at the output of the computer in this case to the adapted

filter which I said is the one that tries to remove continuous

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sounds, repetitive sounds. The time begins at my left and at

that time is about 12:28 on Channel 1 time. Each of these

horizontal lines represents two-tenths of one second and these

would all be placed end to end if it were possible to program the

computer to print it out that way.

I Now this point represents zero time on the record and as I

said that occurs at the instant that the announcer on fhannel 1

says 12:28. We see this characteristic pattern that looks rather

like grass and that is the visual appearance of this motorcycle

noise. We see here about four seconds after the record begins

the amplitude of the noise

namely, the length of the grass i

reduces and by about flye

seconds which is right here. It has

reduced a great deal and now we see only low level noise. This

continues on until 7.33ths of a second after the origin of this

record.

We see that little spike which has that characteristic

shape of a sharp point followed by a lower freguency ringing.

McKinney. Excuse me. What is that other wiggle back

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there?

Mr. Barger. This wiggle is probably the impulse introduced

by another radio pushing down its push button or talk button. We

find those scattered throughout the record and those are audible

to the ear and can be identified as such.

After this initial spike at 7.33ths of a second we see several

other replications of the same shape. Here is one and it is

pointing downward, not upward as that one does. This one is

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pointing upward as that one does.

This is a small one pointing

upward, another small one.

I this is the area of the first group of spikes. After this

time we see a departure from this transient which is the keying

by another radio. We see that little shape occurs again starting

at about 9.36ths of a second and it is followed by a replication

of itself at several other times usually pointing upwards but

occasionally pointing downgards and this group of spikes ends at

this time. There aren't any others after that and the total

length of that group is .loths of a second or in other words one

second.

Then there is a period where that shape of spike does not.

recur until at this time which is 14.69ths of a second and we see

that same shape appear again and it is followed over the next

second by replications of itself, most of them pointing upward but

some of them such as that one pointing downward. Then there is a

short period where there are no more of those spikes and another

one occurs at 16.06ths of a second and that shape again is

repeated from time to time until I would say that was the last

one at about 16.85ths of a second.

Now after this time one can continue to scan the record and

one sees various different kinds of impulsive sounds but none of

them have that same characteristic shape as was seen in the groups

except in a few cases that one, for example, rather closely

resembles the shape of

the impulses but it is not occurring in a

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group and we come down here to the end of this record at 23.30ths

of a second. All of these transients again that occur have

different shapes than those not in the group had and in fact are

much longer in time duration than those short impulses that

occurred in the groups.

I Now one thing that is important to the interpretation of

this record I believe is that at 21.65ths of a second, which is

here, if one listens very carefully to this record one hears a

bell toll and that bell sounds for .35ths of a second. It sounds

from this point to this point. It is so weak that you cannot see

it in this kind of a presentation. However, a bell is composed of

several musical tones and those tones can be made more easily

visible by a different

type of analysis called spectral analysis.

What I am going to show you here is a spectral analysis of that

bell. The computer gave its opinion of what that was which this

is a spectral analysis of the output of the filter that occurs at

21.65ths of a second and lasts for ,35ths of a second.

Now a spectral analysis takes the signal and calculates the

strength of all of the tones that comprise the signal. The

frequency of those tones is plotted along the abscissa and the

strength of those tones is plotted on the ordinary. This fre-

quency is 200 hertz. For your own reference, A below middle C is

440 hertz.

Now this particular spectral analysis shows a spike right

there which is at 220 hertz. It shows a spike right there which

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is at 440 hertz. It also shows this important spike which is at

480 hertz. It shows this spike at about 850 hertz, this spike at

about 1,050 hertz and this spike at about 1,500 hertz. These last

two are extremely prominent as you can see.

4/ Now carillon bells or bell tower bells are designed to have

a fundamental frequency which is called a hum note and this spike

at 220 hertz would be called the hum note. It is demonstrable in

this analysis but it would be hard to hear. The ear does not hear

very well at 220 hertz. This spike here represents the fundamental

tone of the bell as 440 hertz and that is called the strike tone

of the bell. This strike occurs at a minor third above the strike

tone and the presence of that spike is characteristic of power

bells.

These frequencies correspond to the higher overtones of the

hum note and are characteristically loud. This spectrum appears

to be the spectrum of a rather large bell tuned to a c or below

middle C. This bell is heard to peel, as I said, at 21.65ths of

a second on this record which is right there.

Mr. Blakey. What does that bell let you do?

MI. Barger. Wherever the microphone was that was transmitting

the sound that was on the record, it was within earshot of that

bell. So we are going to try also to find a bell like that in

Dallas.

Mr. Blakey. And then you can tell where the bell was?

Mr. Barger. Yes. Ring it.

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Blakey.

That will tell you where the microphone was?

MI.

Barger. Yes.

Now there is the fact of IM radios that I would like to

discuss with you briefly. These radios that the Dallas Folice

Department were using on their motorcycles were FM radios. If

two or more transmitters are transmitting at the same time and

one of those is louder than

all of the others by an amount called

the capture ratio, then the receiver hears only the loudest.

If

there are several radios transmitting at one time and they have

about equal loudness, then the receiver will hear both at once.

It is possible that the sounds that are recorded over the

Dallas receiver were coming from more than one microphone at once

so it is possible that this bell is located some distance from

Dealy Plaza and was being picked up by a different microphone.

By the same token, it is possible that during this period of the

impulses that another microphone had captured the receiver besides

the one in Dealy Plaza and that possibility is the strongest

reason that I offer for reconstructing the event to find out

exactly what the shape of echo patterns is in Dealy Plaza because

in that way we can say whether those patterns of spokes do in fact

correspond to the echo pattern in Dealy Plaza.

Mr. McKinney. We will return.

to

Chairman Stokes. We will gonvote.

Mr. Blakey. Why not recess for lunch?

1: 300

Chairman Stokes.

We will come back at one thirts

Whereupon, at 12:38 p.m., the committee recessed, to recon-

vene at 1:30

p.m.]

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"AFTER-RECESS-S

If lThe committee reconvened at 1:57 p.m., the Hon. Louis

Stokes, Chairman, presiding.)

Chairman Stokes.

We will resume.

Mr. Blakey. Go ahead, Chief.

Mr. Barger.

When I left off we were discussing the

graphical output of the adapter filter and I have now laid out

next to it the graphical output of the band pass filter which

is the filter that I mentioned before. It tends to emphasize

the high frequency sound. Motorcycles are more of a low

frequency noise maker and so it does a pretty good job of

illustrating where the spikes are perhaps even better than the

adapter filter. However, the adapter filter allows one to

look at the shape of the spike pretty much as it is whereas the

high pass filter makes it look like a short ring so as you

look at this putout of the bypass filter you see that there is

a burst of signal at each place where there is a spike. In

fact, it is almost easlier to see on the output filter but

one cannot really see that distinctive shape that the waveform

has.

Now freaking from this output of the band pass filter

one sees almost clearly then in any other filter the group

of spikes that begins at about 7.33 seconds into the record and

lasts for about a second and the other group that begins at

about 9.36 seconds and lasts for about a second and then finally

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the next group that begins at about 14.69 seconds and lasts

for about a second and then

another group that begins at about

16.06 and lasts for about

a second.

41

Edgar. That last grouping that you mentioned, those

are entirely contiguous?

Mr. Barger. There is a period of only two-tenths of

a second between those two in which there are no spikes and

when I first looked at this last group I regarded it to be

a single group for a total of three. However, it persisted

for about thi

ee seconds whereas the others only persisted

for about one second each, and this is one of the reasons that

I feel it is

necessary to recreate

the gunfire. I don't

believe that one can get such a long echo pattern as this, the

third group, if it

is regarded as a single group, but the

only way to be able to tell for sure is to try it.

Mr. Edgar. Would you have to fire live ammunition

given this movement and retraction?

MI. Barger.

I am afraid so. The actual sound pressure

level of the shockwave is a little larger than that of the

muzzle blast so

some of these spikes are almost certain

caused by the shockwave of the bullet. As I mentioned before

lunch, it is an extremely intractable problem to try to

calculate the refracted sound of a shockwave and so I just

don't know how to approach that calculation analytically.

The only way to find out how those shockwaves are refracting

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around the corners of the buildings to hit the corner of the

buildings with a shockwave, and that means a bullet.

I chairman Stokes.

Would the fact that there is a new

building somewhere in the area, now, affect that type of

situation?

Mr. Barger. Only in a very marginal way. Here is a

sketch of the Dealy Plaza.

Really all I have drawn in are

the principal buildings. This is the schoolbook depository

here, the building right across the corner, this is the new

courthouse I believe it is called and the old one has some sort

of terrets on the side.

This large building across the Plaza. This building

I believe is new. There is one there but it is different

than the original one.

Now I have sketched on this graph the sound path of

acoustic rays

from the northwest corner of the schoolbook de-

pository to the various corners that would contribute sig-

nificant echos that would be measured at a point on Elm Street

where the microphone might well have been on the motorcycle

and there are about a dozen of these, only one of which is

from this building which I believe has been replaced. That

is in fact the weakest of all of them being the farthest away

and striking that corner with the sharpest angle so the one

change in the local building arrangement is of virtually no

significance.

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I chairman stokes. What about the type of a scene that

would have to set up in terms of shooting?

You would also have

have a

shot from the grassy knoll, would you not?

Mr. Barger.

Yes.

Chairman Stokes. Which would not be a rifle shot.

Mr. Barger.

Well, I don't know.

Mr. Blakey. That is one of the problems, Mr. Chairman.

MI. Barger. Was that a question?

Chairman Stokes.

I think it was a question.

Mr. Blakey. We have debated that. The question is

should

it be a rifle shot and, if so, what caliber and should

you put a silencer on it or should you not.

Chairman Stokes. And if it is a pistol, what size

pistol and so forth, right?

Mr. Blakey. Right. I don't think we have an answer

to that. Probably the easiest thing to do is simply to go over

and use a Mannlicher Carcano and see what it looks like.

Mr. sawyer. The fact that the last shot the gun would have

been aimed almost at the underpass, which is a depressed

underpass, almost tunnel-liken would that affect the length

of echo or sound that is shown there?

Mr. Barger. It would if the bullet was supersonic. The

bullets

from rifles and the Mannlicher Carcano in particular are

supersonic, the bullet from a pistol is not. If the last shot

let me put it this way. If the second part of this last

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large group were the echo from a pistol shot, if that were

the

case, there would be an absence of shockwave and, therefore,

there would be fewer total spikes in the last group and there

are fewer.

I now there also might be fewer for the reason that

you

gave, if it was fired more at the i

Mr.

Sawyer.

It was very much more fit.

The first shots

would have been more or less parallel to the depressed underpass

or overpass whereas the car had moved quite a bit and, therefore,

the angle shifted much more toward that underpass on

the last

shot and might have had

some echoing effect. I don't know,

I just ask the question.

Mr. Barger. The answegis

yes because if a rifle were

fired from about here (indicating) which is where the knoll

is more parallel to these building facades, and if it were a

rifle so that there was a shockwave, that shockwave would never

even hit these buildings as it would if the rifle had been fired

this way.

Mr. Sawyer. I was talking about the rifle being fired

out, of the sixth story. See, the angle changed from the first

to the last shot which was much more aimed down at the underpass..

Mr. Barger. Yes.

As the rifle becomes aimed more to the

what direction is that?

Mr. Sawyer. It would be west, wouldn't it?

Chairman Stokes.

Yes.

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Barger. There will be fewer echos from the shock-

wave because the buildings behind won't be involved any more

because the shockwave does not go behind the rifle.

Mr. Sawyer. What I was wondering is if that could

contribute to the three second as opposed to the ohe second

grouping of these waves.

Mr. Barger. The firing more toward the underpass would

tend to diminish the number of echos from shockwaves thereby

shortening the total length of impulses, I think, rather than

lengthening

them.

Mr. Sawyer. Can you tell from those series of spikes?

Can you read what kind of a sound it is, or duplicate a sound

from those things?

Mr. Barger. That is very hard to do for a reason that

I have not yet mentioned. The radio has a limiter in it that

is designed so that if you begin to shout at the microphone

the radio still functions. In other words, it takes that

extra loud sound and reduces it down to an acceptable level

for transmission through the radio.

So all sounds that are louder than some threshold of

loudness will appear to have the same loudness. You see all

these spikes have approximately the same loudness. This

indicates that all of them are louder than that threshold

for compression in the radio.. Therefore, to the ear at the

time they would have been very loud relative to the motorcycle

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but as heard through the radio they have been reduced in level

so as to go through the radio and since the motorcycle was

already about as loud as the radio could pass, these spikes

relative to the motorcycle noise have about the same loudness

through the radio whereas an observer would have heard them

above the motorcycle.

I so recreation working backwards from these to what was

heard is virtually impossible because of that distortion in

the radio by the limiter.

I am glad you asked that question because I have to

explain why all of the spikes have about the same amplitude.

Now I have analytically calculated the peak sound

pressure

levels that I would estimate at a microphone on Elm Street due

to the shooting and due to the defracted

sounds from the buildings

of the shooting and at least ten or twelve of these impulses

I estimate to have a sound pressure level in excess of 110

decibels. The maximum sound pressure level that the microphone

and radio combination will pass is about 95_* 100 decibels

so all of those sounds would be limited down to that maximum

level

and they would come out looking the same whereas a

person in the Plaza would hear only a few of them because they

would be so much louder than the others because his ear does

not limit sounds, he would only hear the very loud ones and

the echos that came in one second later would be disregarded

by the ear because they were so low relative to the loud ones.

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The radio does not disregard them, it gives them as much

wait as the loud ones.

Mr.

Sawyer.

Doesn't the average pistol projectal

=

travel faster than 1100 feet per second?

Mr. Barger. There are supersonic in

Mr. Sawyer. I know the 357 and the 44 Mag but doesn't

a regular .38 travel faster?

Mr. Barger. I am not certain. I am fairly certain a .

•45 caliber is subsonic. I don't know about a .38.

Mr. Sawyer. I would be surprised if they were under 1100

feet per second, myself, but I don't know the answer.

Mr. Barger. I can't really answer that question right

now.

I'll look it up.

Chairman Stokes. In the final analysis in order for you

to say with some degree of assurance what this really does

represent insofar as 3 or 4 shots, what would be reguired?

What do you feel would be necessary?

Mr. Barger. In addition to the analysis that I have

done, I feel I need two things. The first is to play or

transmit the sounds of the rifle through the radio that we have

obtained which is similar to the radio that transmitted these

data to see if these shapes are in fact the shapes that that

radio distorts the sounds into. I suspect that they are from

analytical calculations that I have made but I feel I would

have to see it with the real radio, principally because the

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limiting process

I was describing is difficult to determine

mathematically.

I we expect to do that test early next week.

The second

thing I feel that is necessary as a test of

the hypothesis that these groups of spikes

are gunfire echos

is a recreation with firing from the depository window, sixth

floor, to the places

where the car was at the times that these

spikes occur on the assumption that the last one was the head

shot. I think for completeness it would also be prudent to

test fire from the knoll to those same targets and I would

record through a microphone i well, through many microphones

at about every 20 foot intervals up Elm and down Houston.

think it is necessary to show that these patterns of impulses

with the face reversals included were in fact caused in Dealy

Plaza by rifle fire directed in those directions. I believe such

a test will indicate whether these patterns are rifle fire or

are static. Those two things I believe are necessary to state

whether these patterns of spikes are rifle fire and, if so, how

many shots are here.

Chairman stokes. I have one further question and then,

Floyd, I will yield to you.

Are there other persons in the field who have your

stature or close to your stature, that can in some way corroborate

your finding?

Mr. Barger. Yes, there are. Let me just qualify this

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by saying that if you mean in the field of forensic acoustics

I will say there is no such field. I am a scientist that works

at a

research laboratory that has specialized in the study of

acoustical phenomenon and there are other such laboratories.

I think the best one is Bell Telephone Laboratory in Murrayville,

New Jersey There are certain staff members there at that

laboratory that I feel are eminently qualified to understand

the acoustical phenomenon that we are dealing with and also the

communications problems we are dealing with. A lot of this

difficulty is caused by the radio and that is partly why I

mentioned Bell Telephone Lab because they deal in acoustics

and communication.

I I have mentioned to Professor Blakey that I feel that

DI. James Flanagan at BTL, Bell Telephone Lab, is a very

qualified, knowledgeable scientist and I could name others

if requested.

Chairman Stokes.

You have answered.

Mr. Barger. Mr. Chairman, it might be appropriate for the

record to note that I have talked to Mr. James Flanagan who,

incidentally, is the president of the Acoustical Society of

America. I happen to be an Executive Counselor at the Acoustical

Society so he outranks me.

Mr. Blakey. And he has agreed to talk to us on Monday

and will give us a preliminary judgment as to whether he and

one of two other people like him in addition to him or in lieu

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of him would come in and take a look at this material and

decide whether we have enough to know whether to go to dallas

or whether additional tests ought to be run before we go to

Dallas.

We ought to have that.

MI.

=

Sawyer. Doctor, if you perform the tests in Dallas

that you have related, would you expect then to be able to

say with a reasonable degree of certainty that it is or it is

shots,

notpor it is three or it is four?

Mr. Barger. Yes. I would expect to be able to say

with a good deal of certainty that it was or was not shots and

that these patterns were of were not caused by gunfire, and

likewise, whether this last extended pattern could possibly have

been caused by only one or was in fact two shatso

Chairman Stokes. Mr. Fithian.

Mr. Fithian. Doctor, in reading your kent State report

you were able by reconstructing the scene to have the

placement of the van to the dormitory and so on to pin down the

source of the gunfire to within, as I recall, just a very few

feet.

Mr. Barger. Five:

Mr. Fithian. I told somebody today six.

Mr. Barger. I remember it as five, it may be six.

Mr. Fithian. My question is then whether or not the

other end of this equation will be equally precise; that is,

will you be able to place the motorcycle within ten feet?

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4/ Mr.

Barger.

No; I don't believe so. I think it would

require a good portion of a block to do that.

In the Kent State work we had photographs that showed

where each rifleman was standing and I also knew exactly

where the microphone was. It was on a windowsill in a

certain dormitory room and so I fired test shots from each of

the places where riflemen were standing and recorded them at

exactly where the microphone was and this enabled me to determine

which rifleman fired which shot with great precision. We

don't have that kind of pictorial evidence here about where the

microphone was and I am going to seek its location by placing

microphones about every 20 feet.

Mr. Fithian. So you would hope with good luck to locate

the motorcycle within 20 feet?

Mr. Barger. With luck I would get one of those micro-

phones right on the spot.

Mr. Fithian. Or in any event within 20

feet?

Mr. Barger.

Yes.

Mr. Fithian. Now in the event My well, we can have all

kinds of hypothesis about firing from the grassy knoll but in

that case we have neither the origin of the blast nor the

location of the microphone. How many ambiguities get created

by that?

Mr. Barger.

The lack of knowledge of the source is

as detrimental as the lack of knowledge of the receiver, if not

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worse. The patterns that we will obtain in the recreation

will not be identical to these unless we have both the source

and the receiver in the same place.. You will notice that the

average distance between these impulses is about a tenth of a

second. There are about

impulses in a second. The distance

traveled by

sound in a tenth of a second is 110 feet. Since

many of these paths are out to a building and back, that means

an error in the distance to that building of half that or 55

feet. I think we can tolerate, therefore, errors in 55 feet.

Mr.

Fithian. One last question. The flattening of the

spikes, or the shortening of the spikes to be more accurate,

resulted in a radial limited. Will this when combined with the

uncertainty of the direction of any bullets fired from the

grassy

knoll make that data very sketchy?

Let me just give you one background sentence. I presume

that you would correlate the firing, at least point the rifle

toward where the Kennedy car which is in a somewhat generalized

direction.

Mr. Barger. Yes.

Mr. Fithian. The angle would vary depending where the

shot was coming from.

Mr. Barger. That is right.

Mr. Fithian. I was

not sure in your technical explanation

from Congressman Sawyer's question about the possibility of

that getting confused with an echo back from the structure of

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the overpass.

Will there be distinctive characteristics,

discernable characteristics between a shot fired from the

observatory sixth floor angle even though that is at its flatest

point and the kind of impulses you would get from something being

fired from almost directly in the opposite direction?

Ayr. Barger. yes.

Yes. The pattern of echos of the

shockwave

will differ markedly for bullets fired in those two different

directions. As I said, I believe I can tolerate an error of

about 55 feet in the location of where the bullet lands or

where it was fired from. I won't be able to get an exact

match if I have an error as much as 55 feet but I will get

one to one correspondence of spikes. They won't occur at

exactly the same place but there will be the same number of

them and the pluses and the minuses will be in the same order

and that is what I seek.

Now I think in the case of the shots from the depository

we will get better correspondence if these shots are the

echo of gunfire because we know almost exactly where the

rifle is fired at to where it was fired. I can't expect such

good correspondence from anywhere else, if indeed anywhere else

shows any kind of correspondence at all.

Mr. Fithian. My last question, in your diagrams showing

the splitting of the sound, is it only the corner of the

building that counts?

MI.

Barger. No. That is

a good question. The loudest

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sound will be the direct sound, it traveled from the muzzle

to the microphone. All other things being equal, the next

loudest sound would be a reflection. However, the position

of that building

facade is such that a reflection would not

hit that microphone. The only building that would give you a

reflection is this one over here for this location for the

microphone. The next loudest echos are corner defractions and

I have drawn the cornered defractions here.

I weaker still are the surface scanners. This building

has a rough

• face, it has

windows with windowsills and the like

so that the sound that is incident upon that surface not only

is reflected at the angle of incidence but very weakly scattered

in all directions. Those weakly scattered signals are not

going to be heard, they will be at least 20 decibels weaker.

Mr.

Fithian.

Now in the event that you are picking up

=

=

weaker defractions, at what point, if at all, does the impact

become low enough that they would not be limited by the

receiver?

Mr. Barger. My estimate is that sound traveling over the

past that I have sketched here will all have a level at the

microphone that is equal to or greater than the level at which

the microphone begins to limit. The motorcycle noise, the other

noise in the microphone is about top decibels below that. The

sound level or the level of sound

scattered from the

faces of

these buildings would be at least 30 decibels lower than the

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corner defractions and, therefore, it would not be heard.

Mr. Fithian. Now all of your assumptions thus far have

been that the motorcycle was somewhere roughly where you have it

placed. Is there any other hypothesis that could be sketched

out here since at least one motorcycle went off on the wrong

street and one could be somewhere sit blacks away of thie

blocks away?

Mr. Barger. Yes.

Mr. Fithian. I am getting down to the same question if

you were down there would the sounds and the impact and the

echo still exceed the limit drawn here?

Mr. Barger. Yes. There is a range distance from this

point that includes the entire area up these streets half a

block where some of the sounds would be that loud. The pattern

of the echos of course would be grossly different but in order

to do this properly we have to probe all of those places.

So what we plan to do is each time we fire to have 12

microphones operating at once simultaneously. The first time

we fire those 12 microphones will be located one on either

side of the street every 20 feet of Elm Street here because

this is where we feel the motorcycle is most likely to have been

and I am going to be analyzing these data as they appear.

In other words, I will look at these patterns within

ten minutes of the shots on an oscilloscope and I am going to

make overlays of these patterns to the same scale as the

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oscilloscope; that is, hold them up one off the other.

Fithian. Do you still have your computer there

that you run this thing

on?

Mr. Barger. Unfortunately, the computer that did this

is in a room this size. I will just be doing a squiggle

analysis. If none of the patterns that we get on any of those

12 microphones are similar to any of these patterns that we have

here, we will then pick the 12 microphones up and set them along

here. If none of the patterns that we get in the 12 micro-

phones along this street match any of the patterns that we have

in the filtered tape analysis, we will set them along here.

If none match, then we will start putting them in more remote

.-=

locations.

If we are lucky, we will get it the first time.. If we

don't get it within any radius of this area where we exceed

the limit, I will conclude that these patterns are not gunfire

or at least not gunfire in Dealy Plaza.

I have suggested to Professor Blakey that we will be

able to cover the places where motorcycles were known to be;

in other words,

along the route and up this street with four

placements of the microphone arrays and so we would repeat the

gunshots

four times at most, the pattern of gunshots.

I indicated we would want to fire at four targets from

here.

Basically they correspond to where the car was at about

1:58

97, 313

and this curve over here on the south side of

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Main. That was apparently struck and so we would fire from this

location at each of those

four targets with the microphone

where

array in its fire position and then from ehse each of those

then if we get no matches move the location and get the matches.

I Now if

we could recover the known locations of motor-

cycles with such maximum of 4, repeat.

Mr.

Preyer. Could I ask one question?

Chairman Stokes. Go ahead, Mr. Preyer. sues

Mr. Preyer. I understood you to say something about the

pattern of pistol shots a little earlier to the effect that

they had a shorter pattern or fewer sguiggles than a rifle

shot.

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Mr. Barger. Yes. I was hypothesizing when I said that

the pistol in question has a subsonic buttle in which case

all of the impulses caused by the shockwaves would be absent.

Now you pointed out that many pistols have supersonic bullets,

and in that case my argument would not apply.

Mr. Preyer. Did I understand you to also say that in

the second part of the long three second pattern that some

of the indications there were different from the first part

of the patterns that were thre

e seconds, that some had a

shorter pattern?

Mr. Barger. Yes. There are fewer impulses in the

second pattern of this last

long group than there are in the

first pattern or in the pattern that is the second pattern

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than in the first. The second half of the large third pattern

which may be a pattern which itself has the fewest number of

impulses.

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Preyer. And that is the only one in all of the

patterns, that is a unique pattern in that respect?

Mr. Barger. Yes.

Let me refresh my memory.

Mr. Mckinney. If you would yield a minute fa

Mr. Barger. I count top impulses in this fourth pattern.

I count 16 impulses in the third, 16 in the second and 13 in

the first. So there are the fewest in the last but not

greatly so.

Mr. Preyer. That is not a remarkable difference

necessarily, in your art?

Mr. Barger. That idfference I regard as plausible given

the amount of motion of the microphone that I would expect

between the shots, that is right.

Mr. Mckinney. Just on that I didn't know if they were

repeatedly changed and Mr. Barger expanded on it.

Mr. Barger. I don't know the answer to that question.

I suspect that since these sounds that are loud enough to be

seen are severely limited by the radio transmitter anyway

that even if that is true they would come out looking about

the same.

Mr. McKinney. I see.

is

Chairman Stokes. How long def?

the last pattern,

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Last in terms of time?

Mr.

Barger. Let me tell you how long all four

patterns last also, if I may.

Chairman Stokes. I was going to ask that question

also.

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Mr. Barger. The first pattern appears to be 82 hundredths

of a second. The duration of the second appears to be one

and one hundredths of a second. The third one appears

to be 96 hundredths of a second and the fourth one 85

hundredths of a second.

Mr. Sawyer. I thought you said the last one, the

fourth, was three seconds.

MI. Barger. Well, if one considers the last two

to be a single pattern, it lasts thige seconds. It looks

to me like it is more like two and I have been describing

it as two.

Mr. Fithian.

With the second roughly.

Mr. Barger. Yes.

You will observe from the numbers that I have read

that the first and the last are more like each other and

the second and third are more like themselves in terms

of impulses in the duration. I don't apply much significance

to this kind of detail in these patterns without an

opportunity to verify these patterns.

Chairman Stokes. Mrs. Burke.

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MrS.

Burke.

I

came

in in the middle of this.

I don't have any questions. I am sorry

Mr. Barger. You may be behind the middle.

Mr. McKinney. Actually I have to say I have never

felt more ignorant in my entire life.

I never understood sound

transmission to start with.

Chairman Stokes. Anything further, Hal?

Mr. Sawyer. NO.

Chairman Stokes. Anyone have any further questions?

Well, if there is nothing further, we certainly

Mr. Fithian. I guess I do have one question.

Chairman Stokes.

Mr. Fithian.

Mr. Fithian. In your total perspective of looking at

the data, did you ever think that there were more than four?

Have you ever had any reason to?

Mr. Barger. Well, if it is useful for me to tell you the

genesis of what I say, I will. The first time that I realized

there were groups of impulses on this tape at this general

time i in other words at about 12:31 M was when I had

analyzed the tape through a rather primitive band pass filter

and looked at the output not in this computer format but on

an ultraviolet recording format which is nowhere as good as

this. At that time I had the impression that there were three

groups of spikes and that the second group and the third

together might each have been doubles.

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Mr.

Fithian.

I see.

Mr.

Barger. After having filtered the tapes through

these two filters and obtained these two recordings of the

output of the filters, I don't have that impression any more.

Mr. Fithian. Have you done all of the enhancement

techniques that there are extant in your science?

Mr. Barger. Well, the answer to that has to be no.

The graduate schools of America turn out Ph.D. theses on

new ways of filtering noise every day. I have employed the

two most powerful methods of filtering that I know of that

apply to the filtering of transients out in favor of continuing

performance and the most powerful is this adapted filter, it

is a Withrow leased mean square adapted digital filter.

Withrow is a professor at one of the California universities

who is perhaps the leading

scientist in adaptive filtering

and basically knows your filters that go out and find out

what noise

is and strike it out.

The other filter, the band pass filter, is the most

appropriate band pass filter of all other band pass filters

that I can think of based

on the known frequency spectrum of

motorcycle noise and the known frequency spectrum of gunfire

shockwaves. I selected that and not the motorcycle.

So I used the most powerful adaptive filter that I

know and the most powerful band pass filter that I know.

There are several other classes of filters that are known for

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filtering out impulsive noise. These are used in speech

analysis and we will probably use one to try to hear the speech

more clearly than we hear later on in this record in an

attempt to

get a correspondence between radio Channels 1 and 2.

That type of filter is not appropriate really for us to

maintain an impulse. The reason for that is speech is

impulsive so if you use a filter that retains speech you are

retaining impulses and so all of the impulse noise in here

is

unaffected by that.

Mr.

Fithian.

I hate to prolong this.

Chairman

Stokes.

Take your time, Mr. Fithian.

Mr. Fithian. What is the historical chronology of

developments in

your field? Behind that question is what

might have been available at the time of the Warren Commission

or what is now being used that was not even dreamed of at the

Warren Commission date?

Mr. Barger. The bypass filter that I used was

available then.

Mr. Fithian. It was available then?

Mr. Barger.

Yes. I don't believe Withrow had

developed this filter at that time.

Mr. Fithian. This sort of thing that you are doing, has

that been done before 20 years ago, 15 years ago? Did they

do this at all?

Mr. Barger. To my knowledge I am the only person that

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has used ècho pattern analysis to identify the location of or

the

existence of gunfire. I have never read of anyone else

doing it but then no one has read of me doing it either

because I didn't publish those results.

In other words, that report you read was initially

submitted

to a grand jury and only became available when that

proceeding was

terminated.

Mr. Fithian. All right.

Chairman Stokes. Where did you get your training in this

field? Can you tell us something about your educational

background?

Mr. Barger. Well, I have a Bachelor's degree in

mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan, a

Master's degree in mechanical engineering from the University

of Connecticut, a Master of Arts in applied physics from

Harvard and Ph.D. in applied physics from Harvard and I

specialized in acoustics at Harvard.

The use of acoustics for forensic purposes, forensic

acoustics, is not anything that is taught anywhere that I

know of. These techniques that

I.'am applying to this

reconstruction and that I applied at Kent State were simply

applications of acoustical and engineering principles that

I learned over time. My professional background is one of

acoustical research in underwater acoustics, medical

ultrasonics. In the former case I looked at submarines and

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in the latter case I am looking for cancer. Also a

.good

deal of research in the propagation of sound in the environment

1 the abatement of noise from trains, trucks, airplanes,

buses and also the design of concert halls. I do research

in how to make a concert hall sound more like a concert hall.

I so this particular analysis that Professor Blakey has

asked me to do I regard as a research project in

acoustics

that involves the same principles that all those other

projects that I described to you involve day by day but I

don't believe that forensic acoustics or applying acoustics

in this way is a field. It certainly is not taught explicitly.

Mr.

Blakey. And one would

hope that we never have

another occasion to which it might be.

Chairman Stokes. Right. It is extraordinarily

interesting data, though.

Mr. McKinney. It is too bad we don't have a recording

of the shooting of Dr. King; it would solve a lot of the

questions one sometimes asked us whether it was the second

floor window or a grassy knoll here.

Mr. Barger. Since my scientific research does not

include forensic acoustics unless somebody knocks on my

door, I had long thought that if a tape recording existed of

Kennedy's

assassination that it would be extremely simple to

find out where

the shots were fired from and how many there

were,

etc.

At least I thought this since I did the Kent State

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one.

So when our Mr. Sullivan told me that you had called

I thought there must be such a recording; you know, this will

be duck soup. When Mr. Hornbeck of the staff brought the

tape and I listened to it and

realized how much noise there

was on it, I realized it was not going to be simple and it is

not really simple. We have had to filter the tapes rather

carefully and eliminate

as much noise as possible.

Il chairman stokes. It has been very educational for me

and I

am sure all of us this afternoon.

Mrs. Burke.

Mrs. Burke. I just wondered in an area of M particularly

they use it in aircraft in determining directions. Is that

the only place i suppose that we have had that? Was that

state of the art used at any time when you were in a conflict?

Mr. Barger.

Yes.

The Army did a study of the sound

of rifle fire at helicopters from forests in order to help

the people in the helicopter determine where the rifle fire

was coming from. As a matter of fact, my company did

some of the research to develop the instrument

that would do

that. That was a very simple problem compared to this one

because there were no buildings around, it was just a nice

acoustically soft forest with a bullet goming up out of it

so one had only to listen

to the shockwave, one shockwave,

and the muzzle blast, one muzzle blast, and by the timing,

telling the time between the two, he could tell where the gun

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was. In that case the bullet was presumed to have been fired

at the helicopter so it was very loud and there was not much

of a noise problem but to answer your question, yes, they

have gone that far.

4/ Mrs. Burke. I am sorry I came at the end. Is there

a place on here that designates impact of what is analyzed

as impact?

Mr. Barger. The sound of impact?

Mrs. Burke. Yes.

Mr. Barger. No. I have no good knowledge of the sound

of impact. I am quite certain that it is much lower than

the shockwave and the muzzle blast that we have been talking

about but I don't know how much more. It is conceivable that

one of these impulses is an impact but only bearly conceivable

because the impact on a soft object if in other words, not

the curve

i would be described as a thud and heard as a

thud and the sounds we are talking about would be heard as

a crack and a bang. In other words, it is conceivable that

some of these very drawn out low frequency signals are sounds

of impact but I am certainly not considering them in my

analysis.

Mrs. Burke. Just one other thing.

At

• any place on

here with the amount of noise that was ong that recording, do

you measure at a decibel level below what human hearing would

record?

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4/ Mr. Barger.

No.. To the contrary, everything that

we can identify through this radio would have been extremely

audible to the ear.

Mrs. Burke. I see.

Mr. McKinney. Radios are more sensitive than the

ear.

Mr. Barger. Much.

Mr. Mckinney. The only time this gets simple is when

you give a description.

Mr. Sawyer.

Is it possible, just listening with your

ear to this recording, that you can detect a shot sound at all?

Mr. Barger. No. One does not have that sensation.

Since the limiter has taken the loud report and brought it

down to just a bearly audible level and the weak echos are

left at that level, it sounds sort of like dit=dit-dit=dit=dit=

dit-dit. The reason it sounds so inaudible is these impulses

only last

two

or thige miliseconds and the human ear can

bearly hear anything that lasts ty? of thige miliseconds

unless it is as loud as a gunshot but the limiter has made

these quiet so it is so distorted that you don't have the

impression of hearing gunshot. Just to listen to this

filtered tape you hear this tch-tch-tch and it does not sound

like gunfire. The bell on the other hand which is not

limited by the microphone because it is bearly audible, it

sounds like a bell.

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Mr. Fithian. Are those the only two identifiable

sounds that you pick up from that thing except the motorcycle

running?

Mr. Barger. A lot of these large squiggles which occur

occasionally in the outputs of both fielders are identifiably

caused by the depressing of a button on somebody else's

transmitter. They go tic-tic like this to try to get the

attention of the dispatcher. You can see those, they are

different than the impulses we are talking about and you can

audibly detect those as being button clicks.

You can also hear very faintly, as I said, the sound

of speech near the end of this flye minute period when the

button was down and we think that that may have been from

another police radio. Also further down the record about a

minute after these patterns you hear audibly a great number of

sirens in the background I weakly but you hear them.

MI. Fithian. But all other sounds if the sound of tie

crowd, the sound of the cars that might be near the motorcycle

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Mr. Barger. That is correct. When the motorcycle

changes speed, you can hear that. In other words, you hear a

urr-urr-urr-urr-urr-urs-urr-urr, this hammering sound, and

then as the noise diminishes as I said it did there you hear

pulp-ple-pulp and issue measure the time between those pulps,

which sounded to the ear very much like a motorcycle throttling

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down, you can show that the firing rate of the motorcycle is

going down to 150 milisecons

which is the standard item.

Fithian. Do you have any sensation that the motor-

cycle was always on the move from the beginning to the end of

the tape?

Mr. Barger. The speed of the motorcycle engine changes

from time to time. There is no way that I can tell whether it

was in gear or what gear it was in so I cannot really say

anything about the actual speed

over the ground unless and

until we find matches of these patterns with successively

displaced patterns in the recreation, but from the sound of

the tape you can't.

You don't get the impression of motion with at least

the exception of the sirens, they seem to be going past the

motorcycle or the motorcycle is going past them, and it is

probably that they are going past the motorcycle because

somebody would not

be sitting there with a siren.

Chairman Stokes.

Doctor, a twofold question.

Does

the age of the tape have anything to do with the manner in

which you are now able to analyze it? I guesslanalyzel is not

the proper word.

The other is, can you tell whether or not anyone has

ever attempted to do anything with the tape to filter it of

anything?

Mr. Barger. We have the Dictabelt which is the recording

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medium of the police dispatch radio and we are actually

analyzing a tape recording made from that Dictabelt some time

ago. The reason we are doing that is that the Dictabelt has

been blamed many times since this original tape recording

was made and in the process it has become very scratchy,

very noisy, and in fact the needle skips when you play it

now but the magnetic tape recording that we have which was

made of that Dictabelt a long time ago was done before the

Dictabelt was severely distorted and there are no needle

jumps or anything on it. It is quite a good recording.

We

have the capability of listening to the Dictabelt and the tape

to see if they correspond one to the other. We have not done

that. We can, in other words, verify that the original

recorded medium, the Dictabelt, is faithfully and non-tampered

with, recorded, but we have not done it.

Mr.

Fithian. Recorded at proper speeds?

Mr. Barger. The speeds are quite wrong. The time

delays that I gave you are not those that you get by listening

to the tape but have been corrected for the incorrect speed.

We determined the correct speed in two ways. The first way

we did a frequency spectrum analysis like the bell. In fact

the bell is a reasonable illustration of it. This large

spike is caused by a 60 cycle hum introduced in the

Dictabelt recorder and this spike is supposed to be twice

that or 120 cycles. Those are the powerline frequencies

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and are very

accurate in

any city because people run their

electric clocks by them. When we analyze these tapes, I

have analyzed the frequency of this 60 cycle hum at every

contiguous one second interval throughout this period and I

have found that 60 cycles comes out as 57 in every case which

means that the Dictabelt

tape recording process is running

5 percent slow because that 57 should be 60.

I In order to verify that analysis we have listened to

the entire tape, two hours of it, with a stopwatch and every

time the dispatcher gave the annotated time of day we would

note the elapsed time, true elapsed time. So then we get a

graph on the abscissa, the time that the dispatcher claims

it is on the ordinant, the time our stopwatch says it really

is since the time the tape began. If the tape is running at

the right speed, those times will go along the 45 degree line.

It turns out that the tape is not running at the right speed

so the dispatcher is getting more and more out of sync.

We also calculated the average error that the dispatcher

makes each time he annotates the time because he only gives

whole minutes and he does not give the whole minute exactly

when the second hand is at the top, he gives it whenever

he feels like it. We have been able to show that the standard

error of the dispatcher's annotations is 30 seconds. In other

words, he is as likely to be 30 seconds off as not as is to

be expected if somebody is looking at the minute hand and

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not at

the second hand. So by those two methods, tracking

his

annotations

and by calculating, analyzing the frequency of

the powerline, we have determined and corrected for the

incorrect tape.

That is not a very difficult problem.. It

was

a long way to answer it.

Mrs.

Burke.

tape being

made from the Dictabelt?

What was the occasion of the magnetic

Mr. Barger. I don't know. It was a fortunate one.

Mrs. Burke. Was it the Warren Commission?

Mr. Barger.

I don't know because Dictabelts don't

like to be

played very often or they become distorted so

whoever took the precaution of the Dictabelt early on was

doing us a great favor. If we had had to do this from the

Dictabelt we never would have found anything, I am quite

certain.

I mean as it now exists. It has been played too

often.

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Mr. Blakey. What I am giving you is my impression

and don't rely on it as precise.

This material was in the

possession of the Dallas Police Department. There was a

special unit down there established to investigate the Kennedy

homicide and it became the repository of all the evidence

and all of the records of the Police Department obtained in

connection with the Kennedy assassination. It has been and

was largely ignored by everyone.

The FBI and the Archives,

it was only after we had developed the easy relationship with

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the Dallas Police Department that we were made aware of it and

indeed of the records. Those records were obtained, the

Dictabelt. It was rather late in our investigation that we

found it. I would rather have had this thee of tolle months

ago.

He said he could not find a tape for the longest time.

Turs. Bupke, when do you do the experiment?

Mr. Blakey.

We hope to do it at the end of this month.

There are other things before final decisions can be made.

Chairman Stokes. There is another test the doctor

has indicated they are running the first part of next week.

If there is nothing further, Dr. Barger, we certainly

appreciate your having appeared here today. This has been

a very interesting, fascinating experience for us to listen to

you, and you have our appreciation for your appearance.

Mr. Barger. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate

being here on the project, it seems like quite a sensible one.

Mr. Devine. And kind of fascinating from your standpoint,

too, wasn't it?

Mr. Barger. Needless to say, it is not the sort of

thing that one can publish, and scientists like to do that,

but nevertheless it is very unusual.

Chairman Stokes.

Nothing further?

Mr. Blakey. Nothing further.

Chairman Stokes.

There being no further business to

come before the committee, the meeting is adjourned subject to

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the call of the Chair.

4/ whereupon, at 3:15 p.m., the committee adjourned,

subject to the call of the Chair!

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