Mr. Hubert. What is your estimate of what the number of press people and the general condition created by their presence, contributed to the failure of security? Of what the presence of the news media and the number of them contributed to the failure of security?
Chief Batchelor. Of course if we had taken him out in secret without anyone knowing about it, including the press, it is possible that this might not have happened. But I can’t say that the press caused any breakdown in security. From what we know now, believing that Oswald came in the Main Street entrance——
Mr. Hubert. You mean Ruby?
Chief Batchelor. I mean Ruby came in the Main Street entrance, our weakness in security lay in allowing him to come down that ramp in the first place.
Had the press not been in the basement at all, and assuming that Ruby slipped into the basement, then he might have been detected more readily.
If people had not been standing across the Main Street ramp, there would have been no place for him to screen himself. But the actual fact of the press being there is hard to say that this caused the breakdown in the security, in my opinion.
Mr. Hubert. As I understand it, you were—when I say you, I mean the police department and of course including you—you were aware of threats being made or having been made toward Oswald, isn’t that correct?
Chief Batchelor. Yes; I was aware of it.
Mr. Hubert. As I understand it, the threats were in the nature of mass action rather than single-man action?
Chief Batchelor. Yes; that was what the anonymous report was, and it is my opinion that a hundred men, as suggested by the threats, could not have gotten into the basement, whereas one person slipping in there accomplished it.