TAPES OF INTERVIEW W/ WILL WILSON, 5/15/75
Originator: ROCK
Document date: 05/15/1975
Document type: SOUND RECORDING

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JFK Assassination System

Identification Form

Agency Information

Date:

4/22/201

AGENCY :

ROCKCOM

RECORD NUMBER:

178-10004-10389

RECORD SERIES:

ASSASSINATION FILE

AGENCY FILE NUMBER: A-III (C) INTERVIEW TAPES

Document Information

ORIGINATOR :

FROM:

TO :

ROCK

TITLE:

TAPES OF INTERVIEW W/ WILL WILSON, 5/15/75

DATE: 05/15/1975

PAGES:

2

SUBJECTS :

WILSON, WILL

OSWALD, LEE, TRIP TO MEXICO

ORGANIZED CRIME

MAHEU, ROBERT

ANTI-CASTRO ACTIVITIES

HOOVER, J. EDGAR

GIANCANA, SAM

ASSASSINATIONS, FOREIGN LEADERS

KENNEDY, ROBERT

DOCUMENT TYPE: SOUND RECORDING

CLASSIFICATION: Unclassified

RESTRICTIONS: Consulted

CURRENT STATUS : Withhold

DATE OF LAST REVIEW: 08/13/1993

OPENING CRITERIA:

COMMENTS :

Typewritten summary (#1781000210341) unmarked, but may contain classified information.

released under the John F. Kennedy

issassination Records Collection Act

bf 1992 (44 USC 2107 Note).

Base#NW 64578 Date: 12.14-2022

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COMMISSION ON CIA ACTIVITIES WITHIN THE UNITED STATES

Washington, DC 20500

Dictabelt: 178-10004-10389

Transcript: 178-10002-10341

MaY 15, 1975

MEMORANDUM

TO

FROM

SUBJECT

:

The File

: David W. Belin

:

Recorded Interview with Mr. Will Wilson of

Austin, Texas.

MI.

Wilson served as an Assistant Attorney General in the

Criminal Division of the Department of Justice from January 20,

1969 (the actual confirmation date was sometime in February

1969)

until his resignation in approximately October 1971.

Mr. Wilson, prior to coming to Washington, had been a judge

of the Supreme Court of Texas from 1950 to 1956, and he was

Attorney General of Texas from 1956 until 1962, and he practiced

law in Austin, Texas from 1962 until coming to Washington.

Since leaving Washington he has returned to Austin, Texas to .

practice law.

The occasion of his leaving Washington was a resignation which

was an outgrowth of a former client who had been involved in

some banking difficulties in Texas, Frank Sharp, and Mr. Wilson

says that he removed himself from any participation in any

Department of Justice decisions related

to possible prosecution

of Sharp.

Attorney General Kleindienst sought to grant immunity

to Sharp in exchange for testimony which might help convict the

Governor of Texas

(Preston Smith), but according to Mr. Wilson

the matter was bungled and Sharp was granted immunity with vir-

tually nothing gained in exchange by the Department of Justice.

Also, prior to coming to Washington

Sharp had desired to have

an approximate.

$700 engineering bill submitted

to Mr. Wilson's

law firm for payment and in turn have Mr. Wilson's law firm bill

the $700 sum as attorney fees, which Mr. Wilson did.

said

he did not know what the

Mr. Wilson

engineering

fees were

for

at the

•time.

of a

He said that it turned out they were for the installation

was

recording device in a conference room of the bank,which

installed several years prior to his coming to Washington,

and which according to Mr. Sharp as related to Mr. Wilson was

installed because they thought there might be a bank employee

who was taking kickbacks, and according to Mr. Wilson the bank

employee actually was taking kickbacks.

bank

Subsequently Mr. Sharp's

got into financial difficulties, and bank examiners

used

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Mis.

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the conference room.

This was several years after the re-

cording device had been installed. Mr. Sharp, unbeknownst

to the bank examiners, taped their conversation, and when

the bank went into receivership the bank examiners found out

that their conversations had been recorded and

they subsequently

found out that the recording device had been billed through

Mr. Wilson.

Mr. Wilson was asked to resign, and he did this

, and went back to Austin.

In early. May Mr. Wilson contacted our office and said that he

had some information concerning allegations of CIA involvement

in assassinations or assassination attempts against Castro.

We asked

him to come to Washington for an interview and he

consented and was first interviewed on May 14, 1975. The

following is a summary of this interview.

Mr. Belin:

Mr. Wilson, I believe you said that during the

time that you were with the Justice Department

here in Washington you came across some files pertaining to

possible CIA involvement in assassination attempts against

Castro. Is that correct?

Mr. Wilson: Yes.

B:

And could you just relate what you found?

W:

Yes. I was having

a conference with Mr. J. Edgar

Hoover on the subject of using the grants of im-

munity on racketeers in Chicago and he narrated

of the grant of immunity to a racketeer named Giancana.

had granted immunity, he had refused to testify and he was con-

immunity

the background

They

fined for contempt for a number of months.. That confinement

ran out due to the fact that grand jury expired out of which

the subpoena was issued, and

they had up the question of start-

ing over and they were going --he was going to have the U.s.

Attorney subpeona Mr. Giancana before the grand jury and con-

front him with the

same situation in the expectation that he

would refuse to testify after being granted immunity and that

they would again confine him for contempt.

That was in progress

when Attorney General Bobby Kennedy came around to Mr. Hoover's

office and told him

that they could not go forward with that

because Giancana knew too much. And it was then that Mr. Hoover

learned about the fact that a man named Maheu, who Mr. Hoover

told me he had fired out of

the FBI and who subsequently went

to Chicago and formed an detective agency or investigatory

agency--privater- and that one of Maheu's clients was Giancana,

the racketeer, that he was informed: by Attorney General Kennedy

that the CIA had, through Mr. Maheu, made contact with Giancana

and employed a hit man for the purpose of

assassinating Castro,

and that this Giancana was well

aware of this whole thing, having.

participated in it, and therefore that the Government could not

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';''

go forward with its second contempt proceeding against Gian-

cana.

Mr. Hoover stated Attorney General Kennedy was--seemed

to be rather angry or furious about the fact that a--

racketeers had been involved in this situation but he felt

like he could not do anything else at that time. Subsequently

to that decision made not to go forward with the contempt pro-

ceeding against Giancana Mr.

was released--I think he said--on the basis that he would leave

the country, and Giancana subsequently went to live in Mexico.

After that conversation, my curiosity was piqued, and I went

back to the Department and requested

all the files on the

matter and got a file marked "Secret" and read it twice that

I remember.

I do not remember the specific content of the

file, but it was a rather detailed account of the employment

through Giancana of

a hit man whose name has escaped me now,

but my memory is that he was to be paid $5,000, and was paid

$5,000 in

motel room in, I believe, Miami, Florida--some-

where in Florida.

My memory is that there were at least two

meetings in a motel room in Florida, that the man made at least

one and possibly two trips to Cuba, that the project was aban-

doned and terminated and the file had a rather detailed account

of that, according to my memory.

B:

All right, now, I think we are coming to the end

of this

tape, so I'm going to -- before I ask the

next question change tapes here.. This is the second tape of

this May 15 interview with Will Wilson.

Mr. Wilson, you mentioned the payment of a sum of approximately

$5,000.

Do you know if that was for expenses or if it was for

an actual accomplishing of the goal or, do you have any specific

recollection of that?

W:

B:

Not a very good recollection, but to my recollection

is it was simply a fee for the payment for doing it.

. Do you know when this conversation with J. Edgar

Hoover occurred approximately?

I can't place it, although when I checked out that

file I signed for it and those--being a secret file

the signature should be on that in connection with that file

and I believe that the date I checked it out would show there

and that would have been shortly after the conversation with

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B:

And Hoover in his conversation with you referred

to previous conversations that he had had with

Attorney General Kennedy. Is that correct?

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W:

Yes.

• B:

Is there

anything else that you can think of that

might be

relevant to this subject matter of possible

CIA involvement in assassination attempts against Castro?

W:

I believe that's all of the--that's the basis of

the information I have. Now I might say that I

took that file to General Mitchell and went over it with him

and acquainted him with it and suggested that he make President

Nixon familiar with

did

the matter and it was my imppession that he

so.

B:

W:

Any other thing that you think may be relevant to

the discussion of this

matter?

I believe that's all I know that's directly rele-

vant to the Giancana thing.

B:

Anything else you might know about any other assassi-

nation

attempts so far as Castro is concerned?

W:

B:

W:

No.

Except, do you want me to mention the matter

of the man who resigned in the State Department?

Well, I was going to come to that.

Why don't you

talk

about the man that resigned in the State

Department, if you would.

While I was there--

B:

By "there," you mean the Attorney General's office--.

W:

Yes.

While I was in the Attorney General's office

and sometime after this conversation with Mr. Hoover

--and I can't get the juxtaposition of the time

frames in my

mind but--there came across my desk a memorandum--I don't re-

assigned to Mexico City to the Embassy there.

employee of the State Department who was

He was--finished

his tenure and was resigning and he made a rather--memorandum

rather angry in tone in which he stated that as he resigned

as his

nanted to

last act he wanted to put this in the record and stated

that--as near as I can remember, I may not have the facts any-

where close to the way they are

in the

memorandum now, but my

recollection is that he stated that he had been at a cocktail

party in Mexico City at which Oswald had come as

a guest and that

Oswald was in the company of two known agents of Castro, that

they came together and left together, and that he had attempted

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to get that information to the Warren Commission but that he

felt like it had been suppressed by his superiors.

B:

Did he say where the cocktail party took place?

W:

It was in Mexico City.

B:

Did he know who was the host, who had invited

Oswald, supposedly?

W:

It seemed to me that that was in there. Where it

was and all the details of it. But I don't re-

member it that well now.

B:

Do you remember approximately when it occurred?

W:

Well, it was some time before the Kennedy assassi-

nation and beyond that I don't--don't remember

the content of the memorandum.

cont ot tho

B:

Do you have any recollection at all as to what

the first name was or the second name of this

person who signed the memorandum.

W:

Not at all.

B:

Any other facts that you think might be relevant

to that matter?

W:

No, I do not have any other facts on that other

than that one memorandum, and I remember that I

initialed that memorandum and it's probably filed somewhere

in the files of the Criminal Division.

B :

Did you discuss that memorandum with anyone else?

W:

I probably did. I discussed many things with

Henry Peterson.

_don't remember now.

Before you leave Washington today, could you try

to get hold of Henry Peterson and

see if he might

have any recollection of it?

W:

Yes.

I'1l do that.

B :

We tried to --yesterday after our discussion--tried

to run down some informatish@hetenthat file might:

have been and also some information concerning what Castro file

there might have been that you might have

seen, and we were at

least in part successful so far as the Castro file is concernea.

Is that correct?

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W:

B:

Yes.

It's now in the possession of Mr. Jack

Reeney, who is acting head of the Criminal Division.

And Keeney spells his name --

W:

K-e-a-n-e-y or -y. Keany.

B:

And I showed you some documents that we had re-

ceived from the fBI which you said might of might

not have been what you saw.

W:

I perhaps--let me look at those documents again,

I didn't look at them very carefully and let me

look at those and I'll review those again and maybe I can tell

you more about them.

B:

All right. Fine. thine might the in any way rele-

other fact that

you think might be

vant to the inquiries of this Commission, either on the

subject

of Castro or the--what you see as a suppression or possible

suppression of matters going to the Warren Commission or any-

thing else?

W:

B:

No. I don't think of anything right now.

By the way, how was it that you would have seen

a copy of this State Department employee's memo-

randum or letter?

W:

It got to my in basket. I don't know how it got

there.

B:

All right. Well,

I'm going to end the interview

right now, and we'll take a look at those FBI

documents again.

B:

Mr.

Wilson, you have examined some of these docu-

ments and I have shown you one which is addressed

to the Attorney General from the Director of the FBI under date

of March 6, 1967, and you say this may have been one of the

documents you may have seen. Is that correct:

W:

I feel sure

Yes. That probably is. It--what I saw/was the

Justice Department file on the subject and pro-

bably contains the original of that.

B:

All right. Is there anything else you want to

add now for the record here?

W:

No. I don't think of anything now.

B:

All right, well, thank you very much for coming

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here and we would appreciate your still trying

to get in touch with both Henry Peterson and Mr.

you would.

Keaney if

W:.

B:

W:

B:

W:

B:

W:

B:

W:

B:

All right, I shall do that.

By the way, what address should we contact you,

if we want to mail a copy of this on a transcript

to you.

1012 Vaughn Building, Austin, Texas.

Is there a zip code there?

Yes, but I don't remember it.

Do you have a 'phone number there?

Yes.

It's 472-1766.

And what's the area

code?

512.

Thank you, sir.

(END OF TAPE)

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