Mr. RANKIN. With your position in connection with these organizations, would you have such material? Would such information be available to you if it existed?
Mr. DOBBS. Yes. If anybody in the organization would know, I would know. I am the central executive officer of the party.
Mr. RANKIN. You are satisfied that no one had such an association with Lee Harvey Oswald from those organizations?
Mr. RANKIN. Do you know of any other communications, either orally or in writing, between any of those organizations and Lee Harvey Oswald, other than what has been produced here?
Mr. RANKIN. We have some information, Mr. Dobbs, that when Lee Harvey Oswald was about 16 years of age, he communicated with the Socialist Party of America and the Socialist Call. I would like to know whether or not those have any relationship with the organizations that I have just described that you have some connection with?
Mr. DOBBS. No, sir; it is an entirely different organization. Our organization didn't come into being until 1938.
Mr. RANKIN. And these organizations, the Socialist Call and the Socialist Party of America, were not predecessors of your organization?
Mr. RANKIN. Do you have any knowledge of any conspiracy or association with Lee Harvey Oswald by anybody with regard to whatever he did in connection with the assassination of President Kennedy?
Mr. DOBBS. No; I do not, and I would add that it's a matter of historic record, long established, that our organization's philosophy is opposed to individual acts of political terrorism.
Mr. RANKIN. Do you have any additional information beyond what you have supplied here that might be of assistance to the Commission in regard to the assassination of President Kennedy?
Mr. DOBBS. No; we do not. We have sought voluntarily to provide you everything we have in the spirit of giving you whatever cooperation we could, and we have given you all the information we had.
Mr. RANKIN. And that includes anything, either oral or in writing?
Mr. RANKIN. Thank you very much, Mr. Dobbs.
The testimony of John J. Abt was taken at 9:30 a.m., on April 17, 1964, at the U.S. courthouse, Foley Square, New York, N.Y., by Messrs. J. Lee Rankin, general counsel, and Wesley J. Liebeler, assistant counsel of the President's Commission.