Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

Western Union Money Order Investigation

The Commission investigated a report that Oswald may have received unaccounted funds through Western Union money orders before the assassination. C.A. Hamblen, an early-night manager at the Western Union office in Dallas, initially claimed to have seen Oswald sending a telegram to Washington and collecting small money orders. Hamblen signed a statement detailing two specific incidents, but during later testimony he could not clearly recall the events and was unsure whether the person involved was Oswald. A second employee recalled one of the incidents but could not identify the man as Oswald, while the employee Hamblen cited in connection with the second incident was certain that no such unusual event occurred and that she never saw Oswald in the office. Federal investigators and Western Union officers conducted an exhaustive search of records in Dallas and other cities for money orders and telegrams in Oswald’s name or aliases, as well as all YMCA-addressed money orders and Dallas-to-Washington telegrams from the relevant period. No matching records were found, and Hamblen himself was unable to identify any such transactions. Hamblen’s superiors concluded that the entire matter was a product of his imagination, an assessment the Commission accepted.

Possible Conspiracy Involving Jack Ruby

This section addresses the widespread speculation that arose immediately after Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald on Sunday, November 24, 1963, in the basement of the Dallas Police Department. Suspicions centered on whether Ruby had acted on behalf of a conspiracy that killed President Kennedy and wanted to silence Oswald, or whether Ruby had accomplices in the slaying of Oswald himself. To evaluate these possibilities, the Commission undertook a detailed reconstruction of Ruby’s movements from November 21 through November 24, 1963, under the premise that conspiratorial involvement would likely have been reflected in his activities and associations. The Commission did not attempt to determine when Ruby first decided to attack Oswald or to resolve the psychiatric and legal questions arising from the assault. Beyond the chronology presented here, the chapter also analyzes rumors that Ruby and Oswald knew each other and examines Ruby’s background and associations for any conspiratorial ties, with a more detailed biographical account provided in Appendix XVI.