Reclaiming History (259 page)

Warren: “No, I don’t understand that.”

Ruby: “Would you rather I just delete what I said and just pretend that nothing is going on?…I won’t be living long now. I know that. My family’s lives will be gone…Saturday I watched Rabbi Seligman. Any of you watch it that Saturday morning? He…eulogized that here is a man that fought in every battle, went to every country, and had to come back to his own country to be shot in the back.” Ruby starts to cry. “I must be a great actor. I tell you that. That created a tremendous emotional feeling for me, the way [Seligman] said that…

“Sunday morning [I] saw a letter to Caroline, two columns…The most heartbreaking letter…Alongside that letter…was a small comment in the newspaper…that Mrs. Kennedy may have to come back for the trial of Lee Harvey Oswald. That caused me to go like I did…I don’t know, Chief Justice, but I got so carried away. And I remember prior to that thought, there has never been another thought in my mind. I was never malicious toward this person.
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No one requested me to do anything. I never spoke to anyone about attempting to do anything. No subversive organization gave me any idea. No underworld person made any effort to contact me. It all happened that Sunday morning.”
*

Ruby speaks about driving downtown to send the money order to the stripper in his club, but first stopping in Dealey Plaza to see the wreaths “and I saw them and started to cry again.” He then “walked…from the Western Union to the ramp. I didn’t sneak in…There was an officer…talking to a Sam Pease in a car parked up on the curb…There was no one near me when I walked down that ramp…and there was the person that—I wouldn’t say I saw red—it was a feeling I had for our beloved President and Mrs. Kennedy, that he was insignificant to what my purpose was.” He says that since he had just left the Western Union a few minutes earlier, “you wouldn’t have time enough to have any conspiracy…as it was told about me. I realize it is a terrible thing I have done, and it was a stupid thing, but I was just carried away emotionally. Do you follow that?”

Warren: “Yes, I do indeed, every word.”

Ruby: “I had the gun in my right hip pocket, and impulsively, if that is the correct word here, I saw him, and that is all I can say. And I didn’t care what happened to me.”

Addressing himself to the allegation that he called mob figures in the days before he killed Oswald, he says, “I knew persons of notorious backgrounds years ago in Chicago. I was with the union back in Chicago, and I left the union when I found out the notorious organization had moved in there…Then recently, I had to make so many numerous calls that I am sure you know of…because of trying to survive in my business. My unfair competition had been running certain shows [in violation of] all the rules of the union…and consequently I was becoming insolvent because of it. All those calls were made…in relation to seeing if they can help out with the American Guild of Variety Artists…Every person I…called, and sometimes you may not even know a person intimately, you sort of tell them, well, you are stranded down here and you want some help—if they know of any official of the American Guild of Variety Artists to help me. Because my competitors were putting me out of business. I even flew to New York to see Joe Glazer, and he called Bobby Faye. He was the national president. That didn’t help…All these phone calls were related not in any way…with the underworld because I have been away from Chicago 17 years down in Dallas. As a matter of fact I even called a Mr.—hold it before I say it—[He]…headed the American Federation of Labor…in the state of Texas…Miller. Is there a Deutsch I. Maylor? I called a Mr. Maylor here in Texas to see if he could help me out.”

After Ruby denies knowing Oswald, he speaks of his close friend “Mr. McWillie,” a gambler. “He is a pretty nice boy, and I happened to be idolizing him.” McWillie, he says, was a “key man” at the Tropicana nightclub and casino in Havana that was owned by “the Fox brothers” from “Miami, Florida.” He says McWillie was always asking him to visit him in Havana. He says McWillie finally sent him some tickets and he visited McWillie in Havana but Ruby says he “was bored with the gambling because I don’t gamble.” He speaks of McWillie calling him from Havana once to try to get “four little cobra guns” from a local gun seller, Ray Brantley, who owned Ray’s Hardware, and who knew McWillie, because he felt uneasy with Castro’s new regime and wanted protection. Ruby says he called Brantley and asked him to send the guns to McWillie, saying he didn’t know if this was illegal (Warren said he didn’t either), and says Brantley later denied that Ruby called him, Ruby believing he did this because perhaps it was illegal.

Ruby again returns in his virtual monologue, without transition, to the John Birch Society, saying it was trying to make people believe he was in on the plot to kill Kennedy, and when Warren asks him “what basis” he has for saying this, Ruby says, “Just a feeling of it.” Later, he says, “I am as innocent regarding any conspiracy as any of you gentlemen in the room,” and returning to his past association in Chicago with criminal types, he says he was “in the livelihood of selling tickets to sporting events,” and in doing this, “your lucrative patrons are some of these people, but you don’t mean anything to those people. You may know them as you get acquainted with them at the sporting events or the ballpark…the prizefights…So when I say I know them…personalities that are notorious, that is the extent of my involvement in any criminal activity. I have never been a bookmaker. I have never stolen for a living. I am not a gangster…I don’t know any subversive people that are against my beloved country.”

When Warren asks Congressman Ford, “Congressman, do you have anything further?” Ruby pipes in, “You can get more out of me. Let’s not break up too soon.”

Ruby once again returns to the “very powerful” John Birch Society, saying that “through certain falsehoods said about me to other people, the John Birch Society, I am as good as guilty as the accused assassin of President Kennedy,” suggesting the Birch Society was doing this because he was of the “Jewish faith.” He says he wished “President Lyndon Johnson would…hear me, not accept just circumstantial facts about my guilt or innocence…before he relinquished certain powers to these certain people.” When Warren says he has no idea what Ruby is talking about, Ruby says, “I want to say this to you. The Jewish people are being exterminated at this moment. Consequently, a whole new form of government is going to take over our country, and I know I won’t live to see you another time…I am used as a scapegoat and there is no greater weapon that you can use to create some falsehood about some[one] of the Jewish faith, especially at the terrible heinous crime such as the killing of President Kennedy…It may not be too late…if our president, Lyndon Johnson, knew the truth from me. But if I am eliminated, there won’t be any way of knowing…I am the only one that can bring out the truth to our president…But he has been told, I am certain, that I was a part of a plot to assassinate the president.” Ruby says that if the president and his people learn the truth from him, “maybe my people won’t be tortured and mutilated.” The president had to learn, Ruby says, “why I was down in that basement Sunday morning, and maybe some sense of decency will come out…without my people going through torture and mutilation.”

Warren: “The president will know everything you have said.”

Ruby: “But I won’t be around, Chief Justice,…to verify these things.”

Ruby’s attorney, Joe Tonahill: “Who do you think is going to eliminate you, Jack?”

Ruby: “I have been used for a purpose, and there will be a certain tragic occurrence happening if you don’t take my testimony and somehow vindicate me so my people don’t suffer because of what I have done.”

Warren: “But we
have
taken your testimony. We have it here. It will be in permanent form for the president of the United States…and for the people of the entire world. It will be recorded for all to see. That is the purpose of our coming here today.”

Ruby: “All I want is a lie detector test and you refuse to give it to me…And then I want to leave this world. But I don’t want my people to be blamed for something that is untrue.” Ruby asks Warren, “When are you going to see the president?”

Warren answers that he has no appointment scheduled but he’ll tell the president what Ruby said when he sees him.

Ruby: “How do you know if the facts I stated about everything I said…are the truth or not?”

Warren responds that the polygraph test might answer that question.

Ruby says that when Warren leaves town, “I am finished. My family is finished,” later repeating, “There was no conspiracy” and “All I want to do is tell the truth, and the only way you can know it is by the polygraph.”

Warren: “That we will do for you.”
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Warren would later say that Ruby was “clearly delusional” and refer to him as “the poor fellow,” adding, “I really felt sorry for him, very sorry for him.”
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The next month, July 18, 1964, in Dallas, Ruby was administered the polygraph test he so fervently wanted by the polygraph expert from the FBI lab in Washington, Bell P. Herndon.
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Completely apart from the issue of how accurate a polygraph test is, most lay people, as I imagine was the case with Ruby, believe it can detect a liar. No one asked Ruby to take a polygraph test, so the argument cannot be made that he went along with it because he felt he would look guilty if he refused. It was Ruby who insisted he be given the test, and although this is not conclusive, it very definitely is circumstantial evidence of his innocence on the issue of whether he knew Oswald and whether he acted alone. The following are among the questions Ruby was asked, in no discernible pattern, each of which concerns an issue one or more conspiracy theorists have raised: “Did you shoot Oswald because of any influence of the underworld?” (Ruby’s answer: “No”); “Did any long-distance calls which you made before the assassination of the president have anything to do with the assassination?” (“No”); “Did you know the Officer Tippit who was killed?” (“No”); “Did you ever meet with Oswald and Officer Tippit at your club?” (“No”); “Were you at the Parkland Hospital at any time on Friday?” (“No”); “Did you know Oswald before November 22, 1963?” (“No”); “Did you assist Oswald in the assassination?” (“No”); “Did you shoot Oswald to silence him?” (“No”); “Did you talk with any Dallas police officers on Sunday, November 24, prior to the shooting of Oswald?” (“No”); “Did you walk past the guard at the time Lieutenant Pierce’s car was parked on the ramp exit?” (“Yes”); “Were you on the sidewalk at the time Lieutenant Pierce’s car stopped on the ramp exit?” (“Yes”); “To your knowledge, did any of your friends or did you telephone the FBI in Dallas between 2 or 3 a.m. Sunday morning?” (“No”); “Is everything you told the Warren Commission the entire truth?” (“Yes”); “Was your trip to Cuba solely for pleasure?” (“Yes”); “Did you shoot Oswald in order to save Mrs. Kennedy the ordeal of a trial?” (“Yes”); “Did you first decide to kill Oswald on Sunday morning?” (“Yes”).
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Herndon concluded that “based on the hypothesis that Ruby was mentally competent and sound, the charts could be interpreted…to indicate that there was no area of deception present with regard to his response to the relevant questions during the polygraph examination.”
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Of course, the hypothesis of mental competence on Ruby’s part is a problematic one. Dr. William Beavers, who attended the polygraph session, later testified that he saw Ruby nine or ten times up to a month before the session, and concluded that Ruby was suffering from “psychotic depression” with evidence of “auditory hallucinations” and a “definite delusional system.” At the time of the polygraph test, he felt Ruby’s depression had diminished but he had become more delusional. Despite this, the psychiatrist said, “in the greater proportion of the time that he answered questions, I felt he was aware of the questions and that he understood them, and that he was giving answers based on an appreciation of reality.” However, he felt there was little question on the part of himself and three other psychiatrists who examined Ruby that Ruby was “mentally ill” and should be in a mental hospital, not a prison.
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During the polygraph examination, as was always the situation with Ruby, there were the sadly humorous incidents. In one, Ruby asks his polygrapher (Herndon), “Do I sound like a man with an unsound mind to you?” and Herndon, instead of responding with the almost obligatory and civil “no,” says, “I’m not qualified to answer that question.” At another point Ruby asks Herndon, “Have I been evading any of your questions?” After Herndon says he’s been most cooperative, Ruby says, “But you can’t tell how I stand, can you?” When Herndon says it will take him time to analyze the charts back in Washington, Ruby asks if he “will still be around when the answers come back,” and he is assured he will.

And in a situation that could rise to the dignity of a sick skit or cartoon, Dallas assistant district attorney Bill Alexander, the prosecutor who had asked for and gotten a sentence of death against Ruby so he could “fry” Ruby at Huntsville, Texas, was one of ten people in the room, and the one whom Ruby was the friendliest with. Ruby actually asked Alexander’s assistance in helping to frame the questions, and at one point had a private three-minute conference with him, the two of them referring to each other throughout the several-hour session as “Jack” and “Bill.” At another point, Ruby says to his own lawyer, Joe Tonahill, “Joe, I’d appreciate it if you weren’t in the room. Can I ask you to leave, Joe?…I prefer Bill to you.”

Tonahill responds, “Let the record show that Mr. Ruby says he prefers Bill Alexander being here,…who is the assistant district attorney who asked that a jury give him the death sentence, to myself, who asked the jury to acquit him, his attorney.”
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T
he pitiable Jack Ruby depicted on these pages is the same Jack Ruby whom conspiracy theorists throughout the years have consistently referred to as an important criminal associate of the national syndicate, the Mafia, and someone whom the Mafia ultimately chose to silence Oswald and extricate it from its biggest problem ever. Just a few examples from the conspiracy community: “Ruby was a pivotal contact man for criminal activity in Dallas” and was “closely connected to the mob.”
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“Ruby had known all along what he had to do: silence Lee Harvey Oswald forever…In the Mafia, if you are ordered to kill someone, and you refuse to carry out the order, you pay for your refusal with your life.”
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“Jack Ruby was a Mafia operative…Oswald was shot [by Ruby] to silence him.”
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“Jack Ruby…handled syndicate interests in Dallas.”
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“The murder of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby had all of the earmarks of a gangland slaying.”
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“Ruby had been Chicago’s ‘man in Dallas’ for years, running strip joints, gambling rackets, and narcotics for the Outfit…As the person representing the Outfit in Dallas, the task had quite naturally fallen to Ruby to silence Oswald.”
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Alleging that the Mafia was behind Kennedy’s murder, author David Scheim says that “the star of Oswald’s murder contract was the long-time Dallas mobster and police fixer, Jack Ruby.”
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