Ned Touchstone's Investigation of the Assassination
Our first real break in the case came as the result of a tip to the Dallas District Attorney's office to the effect that Oswald in applying for a job in New Orleans once gave Jack Ruby as a reference. A Mississippian, Elmore Greaves, had heard this in a casual conversation and passed it on.
Someone--I don't know who--told the Dallas DA that Ned Touchstone was studying the assassination and would be a good man to run down the rumor. An assistant district attorney phoned me, and twenty minutes later Courtney Smith (my Watson!) and I were on the way.
We learned in New Orleans that federal agents had jealously and zealously erased parts of Oswald's trail. We picked up a potful of fresh leads an an awesome regard for the way key evidence disappears behing the iron curtain of federal bureaucracy.
More people were working to cover up the facts than were trying to sincerely unmask the assassination plot.
At the state employment service in New Orleans we sought a list of firms at which Oswald had applied for work, and other useful information about his work record. A Mr. Messina showed a handwritten "receipt" dated Nov. 26, 1963, and signed by John B. Lee, a federal who grabbed extensive state records on Oswald.
(If those records are in the Warren Report, I haven't found them.)
