Printed for the use of the Select Committee on Assassinations

SELECT COMMITTEE ON ASSASSINATIONS

LOUIS STOKES, Ohio, Chairman
RICHARDSON PREYER, North Carolina SAMUEL L. DEVINE, Ohio
WALTER E. FAUNTROY, District of Columbia STEWART B. MCKINNEY, Connecticut
YVONNE BRATHWAITE BURKE, California CHARLES THONE, Nebraska
CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut

HAROLD S. SAWYER, Michigan
HAROLD E. FORD, Tennessee
FLOYD J. FITHIAN, Indiana
ROBERT W. EDGAR, Pennsylvania

CONTENTS

Page

1

December 11, 1978:

Opening remarks by Hon. Louis Stokes, Chairman of Full Committee
Statement of William H. Webster, Director of the Federal Bureau of

Investigation .....

AFTERNOON SESSION
Statement of Frank C. Carlucci, Deputy Director, Central Intelligence

Agency ....
December 12, 1978:
Statement of H. S. Knight, Director, U.S. Secret Service ...

AFTERNOON SESSION
Statement of Benjamin R. Civiletti, Deputy Attorney General .... ..
Statement and material supplied to the committee from The American

Civil Liberties Union
Closing remarks by Chairman Louis Stokes .............

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111

oral .............

148 559

LEGISLATIVE AND ADMINISTRATIVE REFORM

MONDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1978

he deate for the COMMIT

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
SELECT COMMITTEE ON ASSASSINATIONS,

Washington, D.C. The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:10 a.m., in room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Louis Stokes (chairman of the committee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Stokes, Preyer, McKinney, Fauntroy, Dodd, and Fithian. Chairman STOKES. The committee will come to order. The Chair would like to make some opening remarks. OPENING REMARKS BY HON. LOUIS STOKES, CHAIRMAN OF

FULL COMMITTEE The time has come for the select committee to shift its attention away from the deaths of President Kennedy and Dr. King and to turn to the general subject of political assassination.

Up until now in these public hearings, the committee has been looking back to the murders of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., to try to work out some meaning for those awful events.

Today and tomorrow the committee will look to the present and the future, taking as its premise the grim reality that political assassinations—the murder of public officials or of private citizens who have become public figures—will inevitably occur again if the past is any guide to the future. For the future may be foretold in the stark statistics of the past. Nine American Presidents, nearly one in four, have been targets of assassin's bullets, and four of them have died as a consequence.

Two U.S. Senators have been fatally assaulted, while four others have narrowly escaped. And with the recent murder of Leo Ryan, our colleague, four Members of the House have been assassinated, while seven others have been targets of unsuccessful attempts.

Sadly, it is, therefore, an appropriate time for this concern. How terribly ironic it is that over the throne of the self-appointed messiah who ordered the murder of Congressman Ryan, there was a sign that paraphrased the words of George Santayana, the philosopher:

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Ten years ago, the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence did a comparative analysis of assassination in this country and elsewhere. It concluded that high rates of

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