I don't know whether he had requested or not, but that was the first time I had seen him. I don't know why he came to my office, but I used it to try to go into Lee Harvey Oswald's background some, and I also told him that there is a lot involved in this thing from a national point of view, and I said, "You appear to be a good citizen," which he did appear to me, "and I think you will render your country a great service if you will go up and tell Oswald to tell us all about the thing." That was part of the deal of my working for a statement from Oswald which didn't pan out, of course. Because I was going to interview Oswald Sunday afternoon when we got him into the county jail and I was going to attempt to get a statement from him.
Mr. Rankin. Did Robert tell you anything about Lee Harvey Oswald's background at that time?
Mr. Wade. He told me about in Europe, how in Russia, how they had had very little correspondence with them and he wrote to them renouncing or telling them he wanted to renounce his American citizenship and didn't want to have anything else to do with him. He said later that one of the letters changed some, I mean back, and then he said he was coming home, coming back and he had married and kind of his general history of the thing and he came back and I believe stayed with this Robert in Fort Worth for 2, 3, or 4 months. Now I say this is from memory, like I don't have—and they had helped him some, and said that Marina, the thing that impressed her was most your supermarkets, I think, more than anything else in this country, your A. & P. and the big, I guess you call them, supermarkets or whatever they are.
And he told me something about him going to New Orleans, but I gathered that they were not too close. I believe he told me this, that he hadn't seen him in close to a year prior to this, or a good while.
Now, it seemed to me like it was a year, and he said their families, they didn't have anything in common much, and he said, of course—I said "Do you think"—I said, "the evidence is pretty strong against your brother, what do you think about it?" He said, "Well, he is my brother, and I hate to think he would do this." He said, "I want to talk to him and ask him about it."
Now, I never did see him. Roughly, that is about all I remember from that conversation. We rambled around for quite a bit.
I know I was impressed because he got out and walked out the front of my office and in front of my office there were 15 or 20 press men wanting to ask him something, and he wouldn't say a word to them, he just walked off.
I told him they would be out there, and he said, "I won't have anything to say."
Mr. Dulles. Was this the morning after the assassination?
Mr. Wade. Yes, sir; Saturday morning.