William Walter

William S. Walter was a security clerk of the FBI's New Orleans field office in 1963.¹

The Files

Walter told the House Select Committee on Assassinations that he was on duty on August 10, 1963, when Special Agent John Quigley went to the parish jail to interview Lee Harvey Oswald at Oswald's request, that Quigley asked for a file check, and that "he had determined that the New Orleans FBI office maintained both a security file and an informant file on Oswald." Quigley, who had sworn to the Warren Commission in February 1964 that Oswald was no informant, told the committee's investigator on March 12, 1978, with his lawyer present and after asking to see the notes: "It would not have been Walter. It would have been an Agent." The indices, he said, showed "Security Investigation assigned to Kaack" and no informant number. "I am and I can state there is no truth to his statements." Special Agent Milton Kaack and the special agent in charge, Harry Maynor, said the same. "The committee could find no independent basis for verifying Walter's testimony about an Oswald informant file."¹²

The Teletype

In his deposition Walter said that on the night of November 17, 1963, he received a teletype from headquarters "warning of a possible assassination attempt against President Kennedy during the forthcoming trip to Dallas on November 22 or 23, 1963," addressed to all special agents in charge and instructing them "to contact criminal, racial and hate group informants," and that it was removed from the office's files soon after the assassination. He first said so publicly in 1968, when Jim Garrison repeated the story on the Johnny Carson show. The bureau then interviewed more than fifty employees of the New Orleans office and found none who knew of it. In 1975, after Walter produced what he called a replica, the bureau found that it "varied in format and wording from the standard," searched all 59 field offices, and again found nothing; its file that autumn records interviews of Walter by J. B. Adams, information from Tom Johnson of the Dallas Times Herald, inquiries of Kaack, Thomas Cecil McCurley of Jackson, Mississippi, and Special Agent Harold Ratchford, and a further allegation by Walter of a second teletype of November 10. His former wife, Sharon Covert, who had also worked in the office, "advised the committee that she could not support any of Walter's allegations against the FBI and that Walter had never mentioned his allegations to her during their marriage." Maynor denied that Walter had told him of a threat.¹³

"The committee found it difficult to believe that such a message could have been sent without someone 15 years later, a special agent in charge or an employee who might have seen the teletype, coming forward in support of Walter's claim." It "concluded that Walter's allegations were unfounded." The Church Committee's 1976 report on the FBI's handling of Oswald does not mention him. His 70-page testimony of March 23, 1978, has not been placed online by the National Archives.¹⁴