Mr. Wade.

And the first thing that I did was go check the law to see whether it was a Federal offense or mine. I thought it was a Federal offense when I first heard about it. We checked the law, and were satisfied that was no serious Federal offense, or not a capital case, anyhow.
There might be some lesser offense. I talked to the U.S. attorney.

Mr. Rankin.

Who was that?

Mr. Wade.

Barefoot Sanders and he was in agreement it was going to be our i case rather than his and he had been doing the same thing.

Mr. Rankin.

Where did you talk to him?

Mr. Wade.

On the telephone as I recall, in his office from my office. I am not even sure I talked with him, somebody from my office talked to him, because I think you can realize things were a little confused and that took us, say, until 3:30 or 4.
I let everybody in the office go home, but some of my key personnel who stayed there. I let the girls or told them they could go home, because they did close all the offices down there. The next thing I did--do you want me to tell you?

Mr. Rankin.

Yes.

Mr. Wade.

I will tell you what I can.
The next thing I did was to go by the sheriff's office who is next door to me and talked to Decker, who is the sheriff. Bill Decker, and they were interviewing witnesses who were on the streets at the time, and I asked him and he said they have got a good prospect.
This must have been 3 o'clock roughly.

Mr. Rankin.

The witnesses that were on the street near the Depository Building?

Mr. Wade.

Yes, sir; and in the building, I am not sure who they were, they had two court reporters there taking statements.

Mr. Rankin.

Did they tell you anything about a suspect at that point?

Mr. Wade.

The Sheriff told me, he said, "Don't say nothing about it, but they have got a good suspect," talking about the Dallas Police.
He didn't have him there. John Connally, you know, was shot also--and he was, he used to be a roommate of mine in the Navy and we were good friends, and are now--and the first thing I did then was went out to the hospital to see how he was getting along.
I must have stayed out there until about 5 o'clock, and in case you all don't know or understand one thing, it has never been my policy to make any investigations out of my office of murders or anything else for that matter. We leave that entirely to the police agency.

Mr. Rankin.

Do you have a reason for that?

Mr. Wade.

That is the way it is set up down there. We have more than we can do actually in trying the cases. The only time we investigate them is after they are filed on, indicted, and then we have investigators who get them ready for trial and then lawyers.

Mr. Dulles.

Have you any personnel for that?

Mr. Wade.

No, sir; I have in my office 11 investigators but that is just 1 for each court, and they primarily, or at least about all they do is line up the witnesses for trial and help with jury picking and things of that kind.

Mr. Rankin.

At this point that you are describing, had you learned of any arrest?

Mr. Wade.

No, sir; Mr. Decker says they have a good suspect. He said that sometime around 3 o'clock. You see, I didn't have the benefit of all that was on the air. I didn't even know Oswald had been arrested at this time. As a matter of fact, I didn't know it at 5 o'clock when I left the hospital.
When I left the hospital, I went home, watched television a while, had dinner, and a couple, some friends of ours came over there. They were going to Austin with us on the bus, and we had dinner and started out somewhere but I said we had better go by the police station.
At that time they kept announcing they had Oswald or I believe they named a name.

Mr. Rankin.

Had you learned about the Tippit murder yet?

Mr. Wade.

Yes, sir; of course, it had been on the air that Tippit had been killed.