Warren Commission (15 of 26): Hearings Vol. XV (of 15)United States. Warren Commission
History
Warren Commission (15 of 26): Hearings Vol. XV (of 15)
United States. Warren Commission
Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963 -- Assassination; Oswald, Lee Harvey
Mr. FLEMING. Chief Batchelor asked if I had been the person, or rather
if I were the person who had contacted him with reference to Armored
Motor Service, and I stated I had. And he said, “We would like to
borrow a truck from you people for the purpose of transporting this
prisoner.”
Mr. HUBERT. Did you tell him that the truck would be available?
Mr. FLEMING. I told him that the truck, we would be very happy to
oblige, but that it would take me sometime to make it available,
because I had the problem of determining who had keys and how we could
get it.
Mr. HUBERT. Did you indicate to him how long it would be before the
truck would be available?
Mr. FLEMING. No; I did not.
Mr. HUBERT. How did you leave the matter then with him on that occasion?
Mr. FLEMING. I told him that I would get started immediately to locate
the people who had the keys, and parenthetically I might explain that
for security reasons the same person doesn’t have the keys all the
time. And I think neither the manager nor the assistant manager had it.
In other words, to save time, I told Chief Batchelor we had several
sizes of trucks, and asked that he take the measurements of the door
and have them ready so that I could call him when I arrived at the
terminal, to determine what size truck we should bring to transport the
prisoner. And I told him I would call him as soon as I learned how soon
we could be there.
Mr. HUBERT. What did you do next?
Mr. FLEMING. I then attempted to call Mr. Hall by telephone, and Mr.
Paul Leonard, who is our operations manager for Dallas, by telephone.
Neither was in. Then I called Mr. Tom Mastin, Jr., president of Armored
Motor Service in Fort Worth, explained the commitment that I had made,
and asked if he had any suggestion as to whom I might call to find
out who had the keys. He suggested that Mr. Tom James, who is vice
president of Armored Motor Service in semiretirement, lived next door
to the church that Mr. Hall and Mr. James attended, and suggested that
I call Mr. James to get Mr. Hall personally and proceed from there,
which I subsequently did.
Mr. HUBERT. Did you call Mr. James and ask him to go over and get Mr.
Hall from the church?
Mr. FLEMING. Yes; and he had Mr. Hall call me from the church.
Mr. HUBERT. Do you recall about how long after that Mr. Hall called you
in fact?
Mr. FLEMING. It would have been within 5 minutes of my call to Mr.
James.
Mr. HUBERT. Then what did you tell Mr. Hall?
Mr. FLEMING. I asked if he knew where the keys were, and he said he did
not know. He thought Mr. Ed Dietrich had one set, and he would try to
make some calls to find out where the other set was. I suggested that
rather he give me Dietrich’s telephone number, and I suggested that I
would call Mr. Dietrich, and for him to get on the phone and try to
locate the other keys so that we could find somebody and move quickly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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