Hoover never pulled rank. He never had the authority to do so. The DPD handed the evidence over to the FBI on Nov 22 voluntarily.
So the DPD requested Drain to come and collect the stuff? How did the transfer come about Tim? Someone must have instigated it. Am I correct in believing that this transfer was not widely known about for some considerable time?
Mr. HOOVER. That is correct, When President Johnson returned to Washington he communicated with me within the first 24 hours, and asked the Bureau to pick up the investigation of the assassination because as you are aware, there is no Federal jurisdiction for such an investigation. It is not a Federal crime to kill or attack the President or the Vice President or any of the continuity of officers who would succeed to the Presidency.
However, the President has a right to request the Bureau to make special investigations, and in this instance he asked that this investigation be made. I immediately assigned a special force headed by the special agent in charge at Dallas, Tex., to initiate the investigation, and to get all details and facts concerning it, which we obtained, and then prepared a report which we submitted to the Attorney General for transmission to the President.
"Mr. CURRY - Now, subsequent to that, we felt this, that this was a murder that had been committed in the county, city and county of Dallas, and that we had prior, I mean we had jurisdiction over this. The FBI actually had no jurisdiction over it, the Secret Service actually had no jurisdiction over it. But in an effort to cooperate with these agencies we went all out to do whatever they wanted us to do that we could do to let them observe what was taking place, but actually we knew that this was a case that happened in Dallas, Tex., and would have to be tried in Dallas, Tex., and it was our responsibility to gather the evidence and present the evidence.
We kept getting calls from the FBI. They wanted this evidence up in Washington, in the laboratory, and there was some discussion, Fritz told me, he says, "Well, I need the evidence here, I need to get some people to try to identify the gun, to try to identify this pistol and these things, and if it is in Washington how can I do it?"
But we finally, the night, about midnight of Friday night, we agreed to let the FBI have all the evidence and they said they would bring it to their laboratory and they would have an agent stand by and when they were finished with it to return it to us."
Do you have an opinion why the bag and bottle, "the assassin's lunch' were not included that evening.
