Mr. Hubert. In any case, it had been broadcast over the public radio that the President was dead, at the time you spoke to Captain King and he told you what you just stated?
Mr. Waldo. Yes, sir. I don’t believe anything of significance happened between that and the time that I noticed a little flurry of activity. I should say, incidentally, that in the interim, which would be approximately 35 to 40 minutes during which time I was talking to my desk, I might add that the girls in the office were extremely cooperative. One of the girls even said, “Well, you’ll want to be in here,” the pressroom being at the far end of the third floor corridor from there, “Just use my desk. I’ll move away. Use my telephone.”
I had talked to my desk at the Star-Telegram, and then I noticed a little flurry of activity, and as I say, during this time several of the high ranking officers, none of whom I knew by name at that time, had come in, and I asked a girl who had been standing with them in Captain King’s office, as I recall, just a few minutes, and then came out, “What’s going on?” and her answer was, “They found a rifle.” I asked, “Where?” and she said, “On the roof of the School Book Depository Building.” Of course, I stress this is secondhand information. She is giving it from what she heard from a high ranking official who undoubtedly was told by somebody else. In any case, that information was telephoned to my newspaper and I believe was used in at least one edition. Later it was officially stated, of course, that the rifle had been found on the sixth floor.
I think it is probably worth mentioning that I was present at the time that Officer McDonald and the other detectives brought the man who was subsequently identified to me as Lee Harvey Oswald in. In fact, by then there were two Dallas radio reporters and I cannot tell you who they were or what they represented. We were moving too fast at that time. Those were the only others. The three of us interviewed Officer McDonald in the hall immediately after he had delivered Oswald into the hands of the people in homicide. In fact, blood was still trickling down McDonald’s chin from the cut lip where he said he had been struck by Oswald, and at that time he gave us a version of the capture of Oswald, which was substantially in all details but one as it has subsequently been repeated on numerous occasions, including the sworn testimony at Jack Ruby’s murder trial.
The one difference was that at the trial and in other accounts that I have heard, it has been stated that when the house lights in the Texas Theatre were turned up and the officers approached Oswald, that he jumped to his feet, crying, “This is it!” and reached for the gun in his belt. Officer McDonald, at the time of that interview in the hall, moments after he had delivered Oswald into custody, was that what Oswald said when he jumped up was, “It’s all over!” That’s the only difference.
Mr. Hubert. I assume that shortly after that the press began to crowd up into the third floor?
Mr. Waldo. They did indeed, sir.
Mr. Hubert. Not merely the press, but other news media?
Mr. Waldo. And people who were not news media. Access to that third floor for a number of hours thereafter appeared to be enormously easy.
Mr. Hubert. Can you describe that—I know that you are describing it in that way—a negative way—but to put it this way, were there no guards on the elevators or the other means of access to the third floor for a number of hours?