50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: Mayor Earle Cabell and The Dallas Civil Liberties Uniion On Nov. 22, 1963

According to The Death Of A President by William Manchester, "Mayor Earle Cabell's first reaction to the arrest" of Lee Harvey Oswald "was sanguine" and "that Friday he expressed confidence that the assassination `would not hurt Dallas as a city.'"

According to The Day Kennedy Was Shot by Jim Bishop, "Oswald had told the [Dallas police] officers that if he could not locate [Emergency Civil Liberties Lawyer] Abt, he would consult the American Civil Liberties Union" and "he had also declared that he was a member of the ACLU."

When Dallas Civil Liberties Union President Olds and other local ACLU officials met in Dallas's Plaza Hotel in the late evening of Nov. 22, 1963--after Dallas Police Captain Will Fritz had refused Olds' telephone request to be allowed to meet with Oswald--"someone suggested `Call the Mayor,'" according to The Day Kennedy Was Shot.

Coincidentally, when Dallas Civil Liberties Union President "Olds got on the phone again and asked for Mayor Earle Cabell" and "gave his name and rank," he "was told that the mayor was busy" and he "wondered what could keep a mayor busy after 11 p.m.," according to The Day Kennedy Was Shot.

Dallas Mayor Cabell's Nov. 24, 1963 Call To Dallas Police Chief Curry

At the very moment Lee Oswald was silenced by Jack Ruby, "Chief Curry, ludicrously, was upstairs in his office, responding to a phone call from Dallas mayor Earle Cabell, and had not checked for himself to see if orders were being carried out properly in the basement," according to Who Was Jack Ruby? by Seth Kantor.

And according to High Treason by Robert J. Groden and Harrison Livingstone, "Jesse Curry, the Chief of Police, was about to go down to the basement of the police station to supervise the transfer of Oswald to the County Jail when his phone rang, and the mayor, Earle Cabell, kept him on the line until Oswald had been shot by Ruby."

Yet according to Cabell Exhibit No.1 of the Warren Commission, "Copy of an FBI Report of an interview with Mayor Earle Cabell dated Dec. 12, 1963," former CIA Deputy Director Cabell's brother originally told the FBI Special Agent that after Ruby shot Oswald:

"He received a telephone call from a friend of his, whom he did not name, that Oswald had been shot and to turn his television set on, which he did. He then received a call from Chief Curry advising that Oswald had been shot. Mayor Cabell relates that he then told Chief Curry that he was watching television regarding the incident at that moment.."

And when he testified before the Warren Commission on July 13, 1964, former CIA Deputy Director Cabell's brother again claimed that Dallas Police Chief Curry telephoned him at the very moment Oswald was being transferred:

Mr. CABELL: "He called me...I was in the den where I was sitting and taking these telephone calls and then just as I get it turned on, they still had not removed Oswald at the time because this was just a matter of a minute or two from the actual shooting. Then Chief Curry called and said, `They have just shot Oswald.' And I said, `Yes, I have it on tv now'..."

Why do you think Dallas Mayor Cabell apparently didn't want to admit that just prior to Oswald's silencing, he just apparently happened to telephone Dallas Police Chief Curry?

(Downtown 3/11/92)