Warren Commission (15 of 26): Hearings Vol. XV (of 15)

by United States. Warren Commission

Mr. Hubert. You don’t know who it was?

Mr. Kaufman. No.

Mr. Hubert. But she represented to you that she was calling on behalf of Eva Grant?

Mr. Kaufman. That’s correct, and at that time I recommended Fred Brunner, not that I recommended him on just this case, but we have had other clients who have had problems. In fact, I have recommended one to Fred within the last 2 or 3 weeks. I didn’t call him. I said, “To me, I think Fred Brunner is a very able lawyer who could probably help them,” and the next thing I get a call from Sam Daugherty who is in Fred Brunner’s office and Sam says that the lady had called and that Fred was out on his farm and said for me to call back and tell them that Sam Daugherty was going to help them. Well, I tried to call back but their phone was so busy I never was able to get back in touch with them, but I was informed that Sam Daugherty and Fred Brunner went down, but there was so much confusion down at the police station that they left and that they went over to that office across the street where Colley Sullivan has his office and watched it on TV. They figured—“we can’t find out anything going on over here, but we can through this news.” Now, we’ve talked about it since that time, in fact, I talked to Mr. Brunner when I got my subpena. I asked him if he wanted to come over and relate any of this to me, and I’m sure if anybody wanted to talk to him, Brunner would be happy to relate what the situation was, but all the lawyers were trying to get in on the act, that he just felt, “Boy, this thing is so confusing, I’m taking off” and he apologized to me about it, Mr. Hubert. He, as I say, is a very fine attorney, and to him, he just didn’t know what was going on and neither did I nor did anyone else, and so I just dropped the thing.

Mr. Hubert. You never were contacted by anybody further as a matter of fact?

Mr. Kaufman. Well, Tom Howard, I think, talked to me several times about this Rubenstein deal. I would call Tom Howard and say, “The Jewish community is in an uproar about this, I had a call from so-and-so,” and this was true—this is true. In fact, I had a call from Julius Schepps and some of the most responsible and influential people we do have in Dallas too, and they said to me, “I hope you are not going to get involved in this case,” and to Julius I remember I said, “Well, Julius, you know—” he heard my name mentioned, and I said, “Julius, if I were able to represent the man I would” and I told him how I felt, and in my conversation about it he indicated that the whole country was concerned about it. So, I would keep on to Tom Howard about this—I said, “Man, this is just wrong that these people here in Dallas feel that someone is trying to just incite a bunch of prejudice into this and that’s not right.” I told him that Jack Ruby should be tried as Jack Ruby and not anything else. So, I would get in touch with Tom and did on many occasions, and I’ll say to you this quite frankly, that I talked with Tom and when they cited him to go before the Grievance Committee, that I would personally appear voluntarily to tell them that there had been a great deal of pressure put on about this Rubenstein deal and I so advised the FBI at the time and told them that I had been bothered, molested, called and so on about the Rubenstein part, and that people didn’t like it and they didn’t know why it was injected into it, and that Chief Curry apparently had started it when they made this announcement on TV when he told them that his name was Rubenstein, alias Jack Ruby, and that this was not a reflection on Henry Wade and it was not a reflection on anybody that I knew, except somewhere along the line someone had either in error or either intentionally started this business about Jack Rubenstein.

Now, the reason I say this—later, if you recall, there were a number of TV stories on a Jack Rubenstein who is supposed to have been, and these are things that I didn’t even know about but I read about it in the paper, and heard it on TV that he was supposed to have been a questionable character that had been cited by the House Un-American Activities Committee, and Tom Howard even indicated to me that he had gone to the trouble of going to the public library and looking it up or had someone do it, of checking all the Jack Rubensteins in all the major cities, that there were many, many Jack Rubensteins, and where they got this business he didn’t know and why they were trying to do this, he didn’t know.

Yes, sir; I was contacted and contacted by others and I will say this: Mr. Ted Freedman from the southwestern regional office of ADL came up to Dallas and he was in my home and he wanted to know whether or not I felt that the antisemitism had been injected into this case and I told Ted that as far as I knew it had not been, that this was not intentional, that it was an accident perhaps, and in talking with Tom Howard, he had talked to some of the major newspaper writers who were in Dallas at the time and some of the major magazines that had been here at the time, and they felt likewise that there was no antisemitism that had been purposely injected into the matter, but the damage was already done, Mr. Hubert.

Mr. Hubert. Yes.

Mr. Kaufman. If there was any damage, it was already done, and there was no way of erasing it, and believe me, this was a great concern of many, and I could go on and on and on and tell you the concern that many had for it.