Mr. Dulles. At the lab?
Mr. Paine. Yes.
Mr. Liebeler. Mr. Paine, would you give us the nature of the conversation you were having concerning assassination prior to the assassination. First let me ask you was anybody else present beside you and your companion at the time of the conversation?
Mr. Paine. No, just he and I.
Mr. Liebeler. Tell us the general essence of the conversation as best you can recall.
Mr. Paine. There had been talk, of course, people, I don't get a newspaper, but I do listen to the radio. I know what my news source is, it is mostly magazines. So there was some anxiety about the President coming to Dallas-Fort Worth, and it appeared that this thought was in the minds of several others, I was not singular in this way. It had been expected, of course, that trouble would come from the right-wing, and I was wondering whether there was any danger, I suppose, that is somebody who could be drummed up by local feeling. The number of anti-Kennedy jokes cracked was quite large in Texas, and so I was wondering, you know, what kind of a person would kill a President, and I don't think Dave Noel knew anything about it, so it was just musing or conjecturing on my part. I certainly didn't think of Lee Oswald. I didn't expect it from that cause, from that end of the spectrum.
Mr. Liebeler. When did you first think of Lee Oswald in connection with the assassination?
Mr. Paine. As soon as I heard the Texas School Book Depository Building mentioned. Now, I did not know that—it never occurred to me, I didn't realize, there was a building there on his route. I had seen this warehouse building from the expressway, you can see the name written in large letters, but that is the way from any main thoroughfare. So I had supposed, I never put—except when it was mentioned that that was the building he shot from or was the building that the shot was fired from, then I realized I did know where he worked.
Mr. Dulles. You had not been at Irving that previous night?
Mr. Paine. No, I had not.