(At this point Sheriff Decker entered the room.)
Mr. Decker (addressing Mr. Fowler). Jim Kerr caught you making a 50-yard dash and they are circling around downstairs and Jim Kerr is just going in circles wanting to know what Clayton Fowler is doing up in the jail.
(At this point Sheriff Decker left the room.)
Mr. Specter. Mr. Fowler, as to your last statement, I don’t know what you are referring to specifically, and without taking it up in terms of specific items, I couldn’t comment about it, and I don’t know that it would be really useful to go into it at this time. The material given to the Commission, where the Commission says it will be kept confidential, to the best of my knowledge, has always been honored. There are in these proceedings many chains and it is not possible in some cases to pinpoint responsibility, but the Chief Justice and the Commission have honored every commitment they have made heretofore. If they feel in their judgment—of course they have the paramount responsibility for the entire investigation—that the results of this proceeding ought to be kept secret, you may be assured that it will be implemented to the fullest extent possible.
Mr. Fowler. Well, of course, our request is that this matter be held strictly confidential because it is being given at the request of the Commission and for the benefit of the Commission, and we feel that the Commission and only the Commission should have this information, and before any of it is released for public consumption or private consumption, No. 1, the sheriff’s office, the district attorney’s office, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or any other agency of the Government outside the Warren Commission—that we be told that this is going to be done.
Mr. Specter. That request, I think, can be honored in that you will be notified in advance of any publication, that the Commission will make a publication if in fact it ultimately decides to make such a publication. Now, there is one facet of this matter which is difficult to control and that is the fact itself that a polygraph examination is being administered. I do not know at this time what circulation has been given to this fact, if any, by any of the people who are involved, since it has touched many bases among many parties in this proceeding. That fact itself may have already been disclosed, but with respect to the results of this examination, I propose to keep those within the custody of the Commission through the Federal Bureau of Investigation and its operators, who are conducting this test, and their report will be made available only to the Commission until the Commission decides whether it should be made public.
Mr. Fowler. All right. Now then, I would like for this record to also show that this letter from Mr. Gordon Shanklin has been handed to you and that you are fully appraised of what this letter contains, and I want the record to further show that on this date (1:05 p.m.), not later than 10 minutes ago, I talked with Jack Ruby. I read the letter to him. I explained it to him to the best of my ability. I also advised him that the family legal advisor, Mr. Sol Dann, an attorney of Detroit, had made these requests, and that following these requests that I as Jack Ruby’s attorney advised him not to take the test, and that if he did so he would be doing it against the advice of his attorney, against the advice of his family advisor’s attorney, and against the advice of the family, and that notwithstanding this, Jack said that he had requested this before either Mr. Sol Dann or myself came into this case as attorneys, and that Chief Justice Warren had promised that he would give him this test, and that regardless of what Mr. Dann’s wishes would be, together with his entire family and together with his attorneys of record, that he insisted on this test, but that a further proceeding of it would be against the advice of his lawyers, and at this time we do respectfully request that the Commission not disclose any of the questions that will be submitted to Jack Ruby to any other person other than the operators, the investigator for the Warren Commission, and his attorneys present, Mr. Joe Tonahill and Clayton Fowler; and that more specifically that these questions not be given to anyone connected with the Dallas Sheriff’s Office, the Dallas Agency of the Bureau of Investigation, the Dallas District Attorney’s Office, and more specifically, Mr. Bill Alexander, who is present in the room at this time and representing the district attorney’s office, and Mr. Allan Sweatt, who is present in the room and representing the Dallas Sheriff’s Office. Anything else, Joe?
Mr. Tonahill. I might go back on a little background whenever you finish.
Mr. Fowler. I wish you would.
Mr. Specter. With respect to the notation for the record concerning the contents of the letter from Mr. Gordon Shanklin, special agent in charge of the FBI office here in Dallas, that identical information has been conveyed through the Federal Bureau of Investigation to Mr. J. Lee Rankin, general counsel of the Commission. Having considered those requests and those factors, the general counsel has instructed me to proceed to have this polygraph taken today if Mr. Jack Ruby wants to have this polygraph taken in accordance with his prior request to the Commission on June 7, 1964, and the commitment given by the Commission through the Chief Justice that such a polygraph examination would be given. With respect to the request that none of the questions be made available to anybody from the Dallas Police Department or the Dallas District Attorney’s Office or the Dallas Sheriff’s Office, the Commission’s position on that is that if the questions are to be submitted in advance to the counsel for the defendant, that there is equal standing on the part of the State to have similar treatment.