Below is a transcript from a phone call between J. Edgar Hoover and Lyndon B. Johnson November 23 1963, less than 24 hours after JFK was assassinated.
I don't want to debate whether both men could have possibly known all this info in that short a time period, because obviously they did. LNers will never be persuaded that LHO wasn't a lone nut anyway.
However, if you lean towards a conspiracy and Oswald was the patsy, then this transcript demonstrates how far up the ladder it went. Top rung. No wonder Johnson never appointed a VP.
11/23/63
J. Edgar Hoover: I just wanted to let you know of a development which I think is very important in connection with this case -
this man in Dallas (Lee Harvey Oswald). We, of course, charged him with the murder of the President. The evidence that they
have at the present time is not very, very strong. We have just discovered the place where the gun was purchased and the shipment
of the gun from Chicago to Dallas, to a post office box in Dallas, to a man - no, to a woman by the name of "A. Hidell."... We
had it flown up last night, and our laboratory here is making an examination of it.
Lyndon B. Johnson: Yes, I told the Secret Service to see that that got taken care of.
J. Edgar Hoover: That's right. We have the gun and we have the bullet. There was only one full bullet that was found. That was on
the stretcher that the President was on. It apparently had fallen out when they massaged his heart, and we have that one. We have
what we call slivers, which are not very valuable in the identification. As soon as we finish the testing of the gun for fingerprints
... we will then be able to test the one bullet we have with the gun. But the important thing is that this gun was bought in Chicago
on a money order. Cost twenty-one dollars, and it seems almost impossible to think that for twenty-one dollars you could kill the
President of the United States.
Lyndon B. Johnson: Now, who is A. Hidell?
J. Edgar Hoover: A. Hidell is an alias that this man has used on other occasions, and according to the information we have from the
house in which he was living - his mother - he kept a rifle like this wrapped up in a blanket which he kept in the house. On the
morning that this incident occurred down there - yesterday - the man who drove him to the building where they work, the building from
where the shots came, said that he had a package wrapped up in paper... But the important thing at the time is that the location of
the purchase of the gun by a money order apparently to the Klein Gun Company in Chicago - we were able to establish that last night.
Lyndon B. Johnson: Have you established any more about the visit to the Soviet embassy in Mexico in September?
J. Edgar Hoover: No, that's one angle that's very confusing, for this reason - we have up here the tape and the photograph of the man
who was at the Soviet embassy, using Oswald's name. That picture and the tape do not correspond to this man's voice, nor to his
appearance. In other words, it appears that there is a second person who was at the Soviet embassy down there. We do have a copy of a
letter which was written by Oswald to the Soviet embassy here in Washington, inquiring as well as complaining about the harassment of
his wife and the questioning of his wife by the FBI. Now, of course, that letter information - we process all mail that goes to the
Soviet embassy. It's a very secret operation. No mail is delivered to the embassy without being examined and opened by us, so that we
know what they receive... The case, as it stands now, isn't strong enough to be able to get a conviction... Now if we can identify this
man who was at the... Soviet embassy in Mexico City... This man Oswald has still denied everything. He doesn't know anything about anything,
but the gun thing, of course, is a definite trend.
That's a lot to know and do less than a day later. WTF?
