Mr. Griffin. Were you given any instructions as to how you should guard him?
Mr. Graves. As I said, I was—told to hold to the arm and walk close to him and Montgomery was to walk behind us and Captain Fritz, and Lieutenant Swain in front of us and that is the way we started out to the elevator, and out of the elevator door over to the jail office.
Mr. Griffin. Was there any discussion about staying close to Oswald?
Mr. Graves. We were instructed to stay close to him; yes.
Mr. Griffin. All right, now, was there any discussion about protecting Oswald from other people who’d like to get at him?
Mr. Graves. Well, to come down and tell us to do that would be elementary, actually, because, I mean, we just know to do that, and our captain knows that we know to do that. So, actually, we weren’t specifically told, “Now, you just watch this man and don’t let anybody touch him.” Or anything like that. We were told that the way would be open and nobody would be interfering with us. Wouldn’t be anybody there. All we would have to do was walk to the car.
Mr. Griffin. Was there any fear that somebody might come right up in front of him and do something to him?
Mr. Graves. We didn’t have any fear of that because as I said, that—we were told that the security was so that no one would be there but newsmen and officers.
Mr. Griffin. Now, prior to taking Oswald down to the basement, had you learned anything about the threatening telephone calls which the police department had received?
Mr. Graves. I had not. At that time I didn’t know that there had been any threatening calls.