TESTIMONY OF SETH KANTOR RESUMED
The testimony of Seth Kantor was taken at 5:10 p.m., on June 3, 1964, at 200 Maryland Avenue NE., Washington, D.C., by Messrs. Burt W. Griffin and Leon D. Hubert, Jr., assistant counsel of the President’s Commission.
Mr. Griffin. At the outset let me ask you if it is agreeable with you that the oath and the formalities which we went through originally yesterday will continue to prevail at this point in the deposition, that you understand it is a continuation.
Mr. Kantor. I understand I am still under oath.
Mr. Griffin. All right, fine. When we recessed yesterday we had asked you to check on certain notes and documents. I want to ask you before we get into that, however, one final question in respect to what we did cover yesterday, and I want to ask you to search your mind and tell us what doubts, if you have any, that you might have that the man who you have identified as Jack Ruby, Parkland Hospital on November 22 was indeed Jack Ruby.
Mr. Kantor. Well, I would like to say that a little more than 6 months have passed and I think I have doubted almost anything in searching my memory which has happened over a period of 6 months or more in my lifetime. I think if you think about something a good deal you wonder whether it actually happened.
However, I was indelibly sure at the time and have continued to be so that the man who stopped me and with whom I talked was Jack Ruby. I feel strongly about it because I had known Jack Ruby and he did call me by my first name as he came up behind me, and at that moment under the circumstances it was a fairly normal conversation.
Mr. Griffin. Were there any acquaintances that you had in Dallas while you were there, who you in the past had mistaken for Jack Ruby? Have you ever had the experience of seeing somebody else and mistaking him for Jack Ruby?
Mr. Kantor. I see what you mean. No; that never occurred at any time.
Mr. Griffin. Did you know people in Dallas who ran some of the other nightclubs?
Mr. Kantor. I had met Mr. Barney Weinstein who operates at least a couple of strip joints that I know of, and that was on one occasion when I was doing a story on a stripteaser named Candy Barr and that occasion was when I was going down to the State prison where she was living at the time to do a story on her for the paper and that was the only time I had met Mr. Weinstein.
However, there is a booking agent in Dallas whose nickname is Pappy, I have his name in my notes here somewhere.
Mr. Griffin. Is that Pappy Dolson?
Mr. Kantor. D-o-l-s-o-n, that is right. I had done a story on him, and he was well acquainted with Jack Ruby, I knew, and then I saw him while I remained in Dallas after the assassination, spoke to him and interviewed him for a story.
Mr. Griffin. Do either Weinstein or Dolson bear any resemblance to Jack Ruby?
Mr. Kantor. None. None, nothing that close that I would mistake them. Neither one, I don’t believe, either, would stop me in the passageway of the hospital after I had been gone for a year and a half and call me by my first name. I don’t think they would remember me that easily or have any special reason to call me by my first name.
Mr. Griffin. Now, you have brought a series of papers and notebooks with you. Can you work from these one at a time, can you tell us what you have there?
Mr. Kantor. Yes. Initially, I have the notebook I took down with me to Texas from Washington while accompanying the President, and in it are the notes of the trip.
Mr. Griffin. Let me look at it a second.
Mr. Kantor. Sure, I was just going to recommend you skip the first page. Those were notes I made on the plane going down. From then on anything you want to look at is fine.
Mr. Griffin. The notebook that you handed me is a notebook that is a long stenographic type notebook. I would say it is 8 inches long and perhaps 3 to 4 inches wide.
Mr. Kantor. It sounds reasonable, yes.
Mr. Griffin. And it has the label “EFF-JAY Notebook” and it is put out by Fox-Jones Co., Washington 5, D.C., and No. 1419 and there is handwritten on the front of this in pencil “President Kennedy’s Trip to Texas, November 21–22, 1963.”
Does anything in this notebook pertain to your activities at Parkland Hospital?
Mr. Kantor. Yes; several pages in there.
Mr. Griffin. Could you indicate, can you find in here the pages that pertain to that Parkland Hospital episode?
Mr. Kantor. I am going to have to apologize for the writing here. Among other things in addition to being a bad scribbler I did much of this on the run, these pages.
Mr. Griffin. If you don’t mind I would like to look at them and see again if I can ask some questions from them. Do the notes on the pages which you have separated here follow in chronological order? Is there any way you can tell from looking at these notes when, what time you would have put it down?
Mr. Kantor. Pretty well.
Mr. Griffin. Can you?
Mr. Kantor. Yes.
Mr. Griffin. All right. Can you tell us what portion of those notes you made before the actual press conference with Malcolm Kilduff, if any.
Mr. Kantor. On this page there are written some idle notes as we moved from Love Field into the downtown area.
Mr. Griffin. I am talking about notes made at Parkland Hospital.
Mr. Kantor. Yes; and then starting here, these notes were made immediately outside the hospital as I stood outside talking with Senator Yarborough, and these—from this point on.
Mr. Griffin. You are talking about the bottom of the page of the “Yarb” notes?
Mr. Kantor. Correct. From that point on—the top of that page to the bottom of the following page I made no notes—which would be approximately a half hour while I was on the telephone and talking in the hallway to the Texas Congressman.
Mr. Griffin. The notes which start on the page which said “JFK died at approximately 1 p.m.” Where was that notation made?
Mr. Kantor. It was made in the makeshift pressroom of the second floor where Malcolm Kilduff led us.
Mr. Griffin. So there is one page you refer to here which starts out, “Yarborough—third car back” and winds up with some notes at the bottom of page—which I won’t attempt to read, not because your writing is any worse than mine but just to save time here for the moment, those notes were all made before the press conference but were made at Parkland Hospital?
Mr. Kantor. Yes, sir.
Mr. Griffin. Now, do they—do all of these notes represent things which were told you while you were at Parkland Hospital or do they represent things that you might have learned even before arriving at Parkland Hospital?
Mr. Kantor. No. I am reading this as you were talking, and everything here was gained in conversation with Senator Yarborough standing outside the emergency area of the hospital. That is true, that is right.
Mr. Griffin. Having had a chance to look at those notes again and thinking about our conversation during the last couple of days—is there any indication from those notes that you knew or had a strong idea prior to the time Kilduff gave this press conference that President Kennedy was not going to survive?
Mr. Kantor. No. I don’t know whether it was a matter of not wanting to accept the strong possibility, but really until I went into the hospital and saw the priest in the hallway and the look on Lady Bird Johnson’s face, I had no strong premonition about it.
Mr. Griffin. But did you see the priest and Lady Bird Johnson before the press conference?
Mr. Kantor. Yes; I did, while I was on the telephone talking to my office in Washington.
Mr. Griffin. Right. By the time you got off the telephone what was your—and having seen Lady Bird Johnson and the priest and so forth?
Mr. Kantor. I still didn’t know that the President had been hit in the head, and when Congressman Thomas told me that a brain surgeon had been brought in, I knew then that he had been hit in the head but I didn’t know until that point even where he had been hit.
Mr. Griffin. Now, you have had a chance, I suppose, to talk with other newspaper people and other people who were present at Parkland Hospital since this event, have you not?
Mr. Kantor. Not in depth. I have had some conversations with people who were there.
Mr. Griffin. In your conversations with people who were there, have you gained any information that those who were in the area around Parkland Hospital attentive to what might be going on, had an idea or believed that the President was dead before the announcement was made by Mr. Kilduff?
Mr. Kantor. Well, I am sure I have not asked anybody outside of a couple of Congressmen I have talked to since then who were a lot closer to the situation than I obviously was at that time, and they really knew what was going on. And I haven’t asked anyone, I guess I felt no reason to ask and I don’t recall anyone volunteering that they specifically believed the President was moribund.
Mr. Griffin. I don’t want to push you into saying something——
Mr. Kantor. I am not aware of that.
Mr. Griffin. Now, do your notes here—do you have any notes here which reflect your observations in the Dallas Police Department from the time you arrived there until the time you left Dallas?
Mr. Kantor. Yes; I do.
Mr. Griffin. Can you show us in here where those notes are?
Mr. Kantor. Yes. Just any and all in the police station?
Mr. Griffin. Yes.
Mr. Kantor. Right. Where you have placed the marker here is the extent of notes taken in the police station between Friday afternoon, November 22 and Sunday evening, November 24.
Mr. Griffin. Let me ask a few questions about the notes. I notice that you have made the notation and I will read it, “Ruby asked question Friday night at press conference.” Do you remember making that notation?
Mr. Kantor. Yes; I do.
Mr. Griffin. Do you remember who told you that or how you came to learn that?
Mr. Kantor. Yes. I mentioned yesterday that there was a radio reporter from New York City whose name escaped me and I believe I——
Mr. Griffin. Do you have that name now?
Mr. Kantor. I believe I have it in my notes.
Mr. Griffin. All right.
Mr. Kantor. The name of the reporter as I have it in here in these notes is Ike Pappas. And—do you want me to read to you what I have here?
Mr. Griffin. If that is the most accurate thing you can give us.
Mr. Kantor. Yes. This is what I recalled from memory as soon as I got back from Dallas and read into the tape recorder and this is the way I wrote it down from that. This describes the meeting in the assembly room, in the police assembly room, shortly after Friday night going into Saturday.
“Sunday afternoon District Attorney Henry Wade was to say to the press that Jack Ruby was present Friday night during that strange press conference. I understand or I am told.
“A New York City radio reporter, Ike Pappas, corrected Henry and said that he, Pappas, had been talking with Ruby in the assembly room and Ruby had given him a card and had invited him to be his guest in the Carousel when it reopened. Pappas still carried the card in his wallet; said that he brought Ruby over to the District Attorney and that the D.A. seemed to know Mr. Ruby. Henry smiled but gave no answer, after first saying that Ruby was mistaken for being a reporter.”
The time which I referred to here that Mr. Wade smiled was when Ike Pappas reminded Henry Wade on Sunday that he had talked to Ruby on Friday night.
Mr. Griffin. Now, are you saying there that Pappas learned from Wade or that you learned from Wade that Ruby had interrupted him, interrupted Wade at the press conference?
Mr. Kantor. It wasn’t so much that I learned it. This was an announcement made by Wade Sunday afternoon or Sunday evening in that same police assembly room to a gathering of reporters among whom I was present in which he said that he understood that Ruby had been present Friday night, and then Ike Pappas said, “You know that he was present because the three of us were talking.”
Mr. Griffin. I see. What is the reference that you had in there. I thought I understood the reference in there that Ruby interrupted Wade at some point in the press conference. Is that written in there or did I hear it incorrectly?
Mr. Kantor. I think that is something you asked me about yesterday, wasn’t it, about an interruption of which I wasn’t sure?
Mr. Hubert. Yes.
Mr. Griffin. Why don’t we do this: I am going to mark the pages that we are going to photostat here with separate exhibit numbers on your book, and then, if I may, have these pages photostated, and give you the complete notebook back because we are going to take the full notebook. In other words, I would like to write down at the bottom of the page a number, if I could.
Mr. Kantor. You mean you want to remove the page?
Mr. Griffin. No; we are not going to remove the page, but I would like to put a notation on your notebook, with your permission.
Mr. Kantor. All right; please go ahead.
Mr. Griffin. I am going to mark the cover of this notebook in the following manner: “Seth Kantor, Deposition June 3, 1964, Exhibit No. 3.”
(The document referred to was marked Seth Kantor Exhibit No. 3, June 3, 1964, for identification.)
Mr. Kantor. May I say something off the record?
Mr. Griffin. Sure.
(Discussion off the record.)
Mr. Griffin. Then on the page “Yarb-third car back,” I will cross out where I have written the identification in full and I will write “3-A,” so that we are correct here. Does this page which I am pointing my finger to, is that a note that was taken at Parkland Hospital?
Mr. Kantor. At approximately 1:30 during the afternoon.
Mr. Griffin. If you would, could you find the first page in here that you believe was made at the Dallas Police Station?
I am going to mark these pages at the bottom, subletter “3-B,” “3-C” et cetera, the ones he has identified as having been made at the Dallas Police Station, so that we will have subletters in here and in the record a list of the pages which Mr. Kantor indicates were made contemporaneously with his activities at the police station.
Mr. Hubert. Is that correct, Mr. Kantor?
Mr. Kantor. Correct.
Mr. Hubert. And you have picked out the ones that fit the definition just given by Mr. Griffin?
Mr. Kantor. Yes.
Mr. Griffin. The last page is where I have put the paper clip.
Mr. Hubert. We want all of them between the paper clips. I have marked all of the pages starting with 3-A, Mr. Kantor, and running through the alphabet and then starting another series of 3 using double A and double B and so forth through 3 double R, and I ask you if it is not a fact that all of these pages so marked are in your handwriting.
Mr. Kantor. Yes; they are.
Mr. Hubert. They were notes made by you contemporaneously with the events to which they relate?
Mr. Kantor. Yes; they were made contemporaneously.
Mr. Hubert. All right. We will have these photostated and give the book back to you.
Mr. Kantor. All right.
(The documents referred to were marked Seth Kantor Exhibits Nos. 3-A through 3-RR for identification.)
Mr. Hubert. Now, Mr. Kantor, you have handed me a series of papers which seem to be in order, that is to say, pages running from 1, I think, through 19.
Mr. Kantor. Yes.
Mr. Hubert. Which I am marking for identification on the first page by placing the following at the bottom: “Washington, D.C., June 3, 1964, Exhibit No. 4, Deposition of Seth Kantor,” and I ask you what these documents purport to be.
(The document referred to was marked Seth Kantor Exhibit No. 4 for identification.)
Mr. Kantor. These documents are notes which I made upon my return from Dallas after spending 16 days following the assassination of the President. They are notes which, by and large, I hadn’t written down as events occurred but which I wanted to put down on paper while I still remembered everything in as great a detail as possible.
Mr. Hubert. Were these notes which have been marked as Exhibit No. 4, made all at one time?
Mr. Kantor. No; they were not. They were made over a 1-week period.
Mr. Hubert. What period was that, in point of calendar date?
Mr. Kantor. They were in December 1963.
Mr. Hubert. They were made by you?
Mr. Kantor. They were made by me.
Mr. Hubert. How did you make them in fact?
Mr. Kantor. I rented a tape recorder and spoke all of this into the tape recorder and then played the tape recorder back and wrote it down by means of typewriter.
Mr. Hubert. So that this typing on Exhibit No. 4 is actually your own typing?
Mr. Kantor. It is my own typing.
Mr. Hubert. It is not a stenographer or typist?
Mr. Kantor. No, sir; it is mine.
Mr. Hubert. And it came from the tape, and you dictated into the tape recorder over a week’s time all of this material?
Mr. Kantor. That is right.
Mr. Hubert. All right, sir. Have you read this recently?
Mr. Kantor. No.
Mr. Hubert. But can you state to us that it represents your best recollection of what occurred?
Mr. Kantor. It would be a better recollection than I could give you now on anything which transpired.
Mr. Hubert. All right. With your permission, sir, then we will hold these, have them photostated, and return the originals to you.
Mr. Kantor. Yes; that is all right.
Mr. Hubert. Mr. Kantor, you have handed us a small Penway brand spiral-backed memo book in which there are 9 pages, each page, of course, having a front and a back, and I ask you whether the notes on those pages of this book that I have identified, and now further identify as Exhibit No. 5 of the deposition of Seth Kantor, June 3, 1964, if those notes are in your handwriting.
(The document referred to was marked Seth Kantor Exhibit No. 5 for identification.)
Mr. Kantor. Yes; they are.
Mr. Hubert. Were they made contemporaneously with the events to which they refer?
Mr. Kantor. Yes; they were made contemporaneously with the events.
Mr. Hubert. I think the record shows that it has been identified as Exhibit No. 5 of your deposition. And here, again, with reference to Exhibit No. 5, we will have photostats made of the back and front of all these pages, and then return the book to you.
I notice on the first page of Exhibit No. 5 that you have the name Mrs. Michael R. Paine. Does that indicate that there was an interview with her?
Mr. Kantor. The interview took place at her residence on the outskirts of Dallas late in the afternoon on a Thursday, one week after Thanksgiving.
Mr. Hubert. How many pages of Exhibit No. 5 relate to notes made of the interview of Mrs. Paine?
Mr. Kantor. Twelve pages.
Mr. Hubert. I think, with your permission, we ought to number these pages. I will start off by numbering the first page as it appears in the book as “1” on the bottom, and then the reverse of that “2”, and I am putting these numerals in a circle, up to 12. I understand your testimony to be that the notes which appear on pages Exhibit No. 5 which have now been numbered 1 through 12 all relate to the interview of Mrs. Paine taken on the Thursday after Thanksgiving of 1963.
Mr. Kantor. That is correct.
Mr. Hubert. Now, I am marking the rest of the pages as follows, by putting the numbers in a circle at the bottom, beginning with 13 up to and including 17 and ask you the relationship of those notes or those pages to any particular event.
Mr. Kantor. They relate to notes, they are notes, that I made regarding Mrs. Tippit, the wife of the police officer in Dallas who was slain.
Mr. Hubert. When were those notes made?
Mr. Kantor. They were made the day after I spoke with Mrs. Paine, Friday.
Mr. Hubert. Friday of what——
Mr. Kantor. This would be eight days after Thanksgiving, yes. I believe it was December 6th.
Mr. Hubert. I show you a calendar of 1963 and ask you if it is not a fact that Thanksgiving was on the 28th of November, that Thursday after Thanksgiving would have been December 5th, and the day after that would have been December 6th.
Mr. Kantor. That is correct, yes.
Mr. Hubert. Now, you have just referred to notes appearing on pages 12 through——
Mr. Kantor. It is notes on pages 13 through 17.
Mr. Hubert. 13 through 17. Are there any other notes in the book?
Mr. Kantor. No; none.
Mr. Griffin. Now, why don’t you go ahead and read those interview reports that you have in your hands right now and then we can talk about them.
Mr. Hubert. Let the record show I am placing my initials on the lower right-hand corner of the second and subsequent pages of Exhibit 4.
Let the record show, also, that I have placed my initials on the inside cover of Exhibit No. 5 and at the bottom of each page of Exhibit No. 5.
Let the record also show that I am placing my initials on each of the pages of Exhibit No. 3 at the bottom, Exhibit No. 3 consisting of a series of pages numbering 3-A through the alphabet and again until 3-RR.
Mr. Griffin. I am going to hand you, Mr. Kantor, what has been marked for purposes of identification as “Washington, D.C., Seth Kantor Deposition, June 3, 1964, Exhibit No. 6.”
(The document referred to was marked Seth Kantor Exhibit No. 6 for identification.)
Mr. Griffin. This purports to be a copy of a report prepared by FBI Agent Vincent E. Drain, of an interview he conducted with you on December 3, 1963, in Dallas. I will hand it to you and ask you if you have had a chance to read it and whether you have any additions or corrections that you would make to that report from the standpoint of accuracy of the report.
Mr. Kantor. No; it is complete, to the best of my knowledge.
Mr. Griffin. I am also going to hand you what has been marked as “Exhibit No. 7, Washington, D.C., Seth Kantor Deposition, June 3, 1964.”
(The document referred to was marked Seth Kantor Exhibit No. 7 for identification.)
Mr. Griffin. This purports to be a copy of an interview report prepared by Mr. Drain in connection with an interview conducted with you in Dallas also on December 3.
Have you had a chance to read this report?
Mr. Kantor. Yes; I have just looked it over, and it is, to the best of my knowledge, accurate.
Mr. Griffin. I am going to mark another document as “Exhibit No. 8, Washington, D.C., June 3, 1964, Seth Kantor Deposition.”
(The document referred to was marked Seth Kantor Exhibit No. 8 for identification.)
Mr. Griffin. This document purports to be a copy of an interview report prepared by Special Agents Kaiser and Miller, of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the interview taking place with you on January 2, 1964 here in Washington. Have you had a chance to look that over?
Mr. Kantor. Yes; I have.
Mr. Griffin. Are there any changes that you would make in that?
Mr. Kantor. There was something I thought I saw in here.
Mr. Griffin. Take your time.
Mr. Kantor. All right.
Mr. Griffin. Meanwhile, for the record, that Exhibit No. 7 is a document which consists of 5 pages and it is numbered consecutively at the bottom 431 through pages 435.
Mr. Kantor. I have seen something in here which made me think of a letter I have received since the occasion of this interview with the FBI.
Mr. Griffin. Go ahead and tell us about it.
Mr. Kantor. The letter was from Jack Ruby, from the county jail in Dallas. I wrote him approximately at the end of January from my office, on Scripps-Howard stationery, telling him that I had made a couple of attempts to see him in Dallas, both in the city jail and in the county jail, and had failed, and asked him if I could ask him some questions. A letter postmarked February 2, I believe it was, in San Francisco, was received by me then from Melvin Belli, who was Ruby’s attorney at the time, thanking me for writing to Jack and saying that he had told Jack to forward on any mail that came from reporters, and that Jack had done the right thing and that he was sure—he being Belli—that I would understand that Ruby could not comment before the trial.
Then I received a letter postmarked the next day which would have been February 3d, from Ruby, from his Dallas county jail cell, telling me he had forwarded on my letter to Belli and apologizing for having done so but he was told to do that. And in the letter he made an offhanded personal remark that he had liked to follow my stories in the Fort Worth Press, which is a Scripps-Howard paper, and was in hopes of seeing me again.
Mr. Griffin. Had you in your letter to Ruby made any reference to the fact that you had seen him at Parkland Hospital on the 22d?
Mr. Kantor. No; I did not.
Mr. Griffin. Did Belli in his letter to you make any reference to your newspaper article?
Mr. Kantor. No; he did not.
Mr. Griffin. I take it Ruby didn’t make any reference to it to you in his letter?
Mr. Kantor. No; he did not, and one of the factors prompting my letter to him was this interview with the two FBI agents here in Washington, because one of them had told me that the FBI talked to Ruby in his jail cell and he had denied being in the hospital on the afternoon of November 22d. This is really what I was angling for, although I didn’t want to write that question directly to Jack Ruby.
Mr. Hubert. Is it not a fact that in the story that you had seen Jack at the Parkland Hospital, had been made public before you wrote to Jack Ruby, I think you said on February——
Mr. Kantor. Late in January.
Mr. Hubert. Late in January?
Mr. Kantor. Yes.
Mr. Hubert. That story had been in the press for some considerable time, isn’t that correct?
Mr. Kantor. It appeared in the press the day after Ruby killed Oswald.
Mr. Hubert. All right. I think the record should show that Exhibit No. 8 consists of 4 pages, numbered in sequence 163 through 167.
Mr. Griffin. I want to ask you at least one question in connection with these interviews generally. Did the FBI agent who originally interviewed you on December 3 tell you how he happened to come to interview you?
Mr. Kantor. He had learned about my statement of Ruby being in the hospital through reading my story or through hearing about the story.
Mr. Griffin. Now, is this something that he told you or is this an inference that you have drawn?
Mr. Kantor. No; he told me that. I know the agent in question, Vince Drain.
Mr. Griffin. I believe you told us yesterday that you were the only Scripps-Howard reporter at Parkland Hospital at the time that you saw Ruby and made the phone calls.
Mr. Kantor. Yes.
Mr. Griffin. Now, how many other Scripps-Howard reporters were there with the White House entourage that originally went down to Dallas?
Mr. Kantor. There was none besides myself.
Mr. Griffin. How many Scripps-Howard reporters who reported back to the Washington office ultimately were in Dallas on the 22d, 23d, and 24th?
Mr. Kantor. There was none besides myself.
Mr. Griffin. So the only—you were the only representative of the Scripps-Howard chain as an entity?
Mr. Kantor. Yes.
Mr. Griffin. And any other reporters who may have been connected with Scripps-Howard there were from newspapers affiliated with the Scripps-Howard chain?
Mr. Kantor. Yes; that is right. Yes.
Mr. Griffin. What kind of coverage or distribution were the stories that you wrote on the 22d and 23d given by the Scripps-Howard chain?
Mr. Kantor. They were widely used, I believe; virtually every paper in the chain used the stories.
Mr. Griffin. Do you have any questions, Mr. Hubert?
Mr. Hubert. No.
Mr. Griffin. I have none. Do you have anything further that you would want to say?
Mr. Kantor. Nothing further.
Mr. Griffin. Thank you very much.
Mr. Hubert. We will have those photostated and if you could call in some time tomorrow we will see if we can’t arrange to get them to you, or mail them, or do something.
Mr. Kantor. If you don’t mind, I would like to pick them up, but wonder if I could pick them up Friday.