Captain Talbert. Really, you can erase it. With the normal procedure, the precautions taken were adequate either way, with normal procedure. But capricious, if as this investigation has developed, the entry of Ruby occurred at the time and place in which he said it was, and which apparently is true, capricious fate entered into it on the time element for sure at the exit of a vehicle on an entrance ramp, which is the first time that occurred in a number of years. Something I certainly didn’t foresee, and that is what I was referring to when I said elementary.
Mr. Hubert. In your opinion, what would have been completely adequate security against one-man action?
Captain Talbert. Secret transfer.
Mr. Hubert. By secret, you mean done in such a way and in such a manner that there would not have been a crowd around? Transferred at night?
Captain Talbert. No announcement. We know that now. It is quite obvious now.
Mr. Hubert. What you are saying is, to guard against one-man action you have to do it in such a way that there are not a great many people around?
Captain Talbert. Anybody can be murdered by an individual who is willing to give up his life to do so. I don’t care who it is or where it is, he can be murdered if he wants to give up his life to do it and has adequate time, and the only way to prevent it is to keep him completely away from him and to do it effectively, it has to be a surreptitious action. It can’t be an open action.
Mr. Hubert. It can’t be, in other words, where there are lots of people milling around?
Captain Talbert. That’s right, or where a lot of people have knowledge of it. If a lot of people have knowledge of the action, in itself that constitutes a danger.
Mr. Hubert. Captain Talbert, in your deposition on March 24, 1964, you identified an exhibit which was given Exhibit No. 5066 then, which contains at the very bottom of that page the following sentence, to wit: “He stated in the rush to get into the basement where the loading ramp was located and Oswald was being brought down from the jail, it is highly possible that Jack Ruby may have walked down the ramp with the newspapermen unnoticed.” Now two questions I would like to explore there. What was the rush to get into the basement?