Mr. Lehrer. Yes; in a general way. The desk, or the city desk, which consists of the city editor and the assistant city editor or the rewrite staff—somewhere they got a tip that there was a fellow in Irving who had mounted the sight or knew something about it. It was given to Hunter to check out. I happened to be sitting over there. I do not normally work physically on the city desk, but all of us had been working on the assassination aspects and it had been a lot of my responsibility in particular, because so much of it was on my beat at that time, and somebody said they got this guy and they gave it to Hunter to check out and I was sitting right next to Hunter and when he checked it out—in other words—when he called.
Mr. Liebeler. What did he do—do you remember?
Mr. Lehrer. Well, he just—he was talking to somebody on the telephone and he was given the checkout and he had the man's name before he called and he called somebody on the phone and I was doing something myself—I wasn't writing a story, but I was sitting there and he was talking to this guy, talking to somebody on the telephone, let's put it that way, and when he got through he said something about, "Yeah—this is it; that's right."
Or, it was words to that effect, and then I looked at his notes, you know, and said, "That's a hell of a story," or something like that, and about that time somebody said, "Don't talk about it, write it." So he gave it to, I think it was—I'm not sure about this, but I think it was in a general story of the assassination developments of that day, which we were running every day, and I think a rewrite man may have taken the notes and written the story. I don't recall seeing Hunter write the story.
Mr. Liebeler. Do you know the name of the man that Schmidt was talking to?
Mr. Lehrer. I can only assume it was Ryder.
Mr. Liebeler. What leads you to that assumption?
Mr. Lehrer. Well, it was just circumstantially—I believe it was. I mean, he was given this name and the information that this man is supposed to have mounted the sight on Oswald's rifle.
Mr. Liebeler. And the name he was given was Dial Ryder; is that right?
Mr. Lehrer. That's right; that's right.