I had come to Washington to interview Senator Richard Russell and Congressman Hale Boggs. I arrived at Russell’s Senate office at noon, but he was not there. Administrative assistant Bill Jordan told me the interview would have to be rescheduled because Russell had been called away for an “emergency meeting” in Georgia, the state he represented.
I next took the subway to the Sam Rayburn Building, where I had a 2:30 PM appointment with Hale Boggs. A charismatic Democrat from Louisiana, had been elected to Congress at the age of 26 in 1946, making him the youngest congressman in history. He was now House majority whip, charged with rounding up votes. Even though commission records showed that Boggs had attended only a few meetings, I wanted to get his perspective as a politician on how the commission conceived of its job.
Boggs arrived 45 minutes late, shouting orders to his young staff. He told me that he could give me only a half-hour.
I began the interview by asking him whether he could account for the differences between initial reports of the Secret Service and FBI and the Commission’s final report.
“There were none.”
“What about the sequence of the bullets?,” I asked.
He held up a hand as if to stop traffic. “I did not involve myself in the minutiae of the investigation. I left all the conflicts to our very able lawyers,” he said.
I saw there was little point in pursuing this point, so I asked why the commission decided to wrap up its investigation in May 1964.
” We had to get the report out well before the November election,” he answered. “It wouldn't look good to delay until after the election. People would think something was wrong.”
He concluded the interview. “We tried to do the best job possible for the country. If you say something about the commission, you should say something good.”