J. Edgar Hoover on the JFK assassination to Billy Byars, Jr. in summer, 1964: "If I told you what I really know, it would be very dangerous to this country. Our whole political system could be disrupted."

 

Hoover speaking to Billy Byars, Jr. at the Del Charro Hotel in the summer of 1964 from Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover by Anthony Summers

Anthony Summers:

"I was there for one or two weeks," Byars recalled in 1988. "They would eat together, my father, Murchison, and Hoover, and the others. Hoover seemed to be in a very strange frame of mind. He was having a better relationship with Johnson, evidently, than he had with President Kennedy - by a long shot. His relationship with Bobby Kennedy had apparently almost driven him over the edge. He used to talk about that constantly, and once I had the chance to ask him directly about the assassination. I asked him, 'Do you think Lee Harvey Oswald did it?" And he stopped and he looked at me for quite a long time. Then he said, 'If I told you what I really know, it would be very dangerous to this country. Our whole political system could be disrupted.' That's all he said, and I could see he wasn't about to say any more. [The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover, Anthony Summers]

Sid Richardson (who died in 1959) to J. Edgar Hoover:

"One evening while dining on "cavier of chili" a Dallas millionaire had flown in from Ike's Chili Parlor in Tulsa, Sid Richardson spied Hoover sitting quietly by the buffet. Suddenly Richardson's booming voice rang out across the poolside crowd: "Goddamnit, Hoover, get your ass out of that chair and get me another bowl of chili!" [Brian Burroughs, The Big Rich, p. 227]