Have you prepared a statement for this inquiry?
No, sir. I wasn’t aware one was required.
We have no requirements, Mr. Eastlake. Some of the witnesses have prepared statements and some haven’t. Now, with reference to the Craycroft case, I wonder, could you give us the time and circumstances of your first participation?
I had a call from the disposal office at approximately half past twelve On May twenty-second?
Yes. They’d had a call from the Merchants Trust. They wanted five million in cash, and the story was they had to have it by three o’clock or those madmen would blow up the city.
“The story was.” Didn’t you believe it?
I suppose I took a little convincing. It was a little farfetched.
This was at about twelve thirty?
I don’t keep time-clock records of incoming calls, but it was around that time, yes.
What did you do?
I tried to put through a call to the president of Merchants Trust.
Mr. Maitland.
That’s right. But he was unavailable. At first my secretary was told he was in conference. I told her to place the call again and tell them it was an emergency. She did so, and she was told By Mr. Maitland’s secretary?
I guess so. She was told he had an emergency himself. I had to tell her to place the call a third time and explain to the damn fools that their emergency was our emergency. They were the ones who had called us in the first place.
And did you finally get through to Paul Maitland?
Eventually.
What time was that?
I don’t know. It may have been a quarter to one, ten to one, by that time.
What was said between you and Mr. Maitland?
I couldn’t give you a verbatim account of that. I don’t have that kind of memory. And anyhow there was an incredible amount of noise. He sounded as if he had fifty people crowded into his office and all of them trying to talk at once. I had trouble hearing him. I could imagine the trouble he must have had hearing me.
What was the gist of the conversation?
I guess the first thing I asked him was whether this wild story was true. He confirmed it. I think he asked me whether Emmett Valkenburg had called me, and I said, no, it had been somebody in my own bank, and we must have wasted a few minutes asking each other to repeat everything so that we could hear each other. I was shouting into the phone and so was he. Finally he said he was between a rock and a hard place. He said he had a lunatic up there and another lunatic in an airplane. If he didn’t come up with the money, they were threatening to bomb New York. He didn’t have the money, and he wanted us to send it up.
What was your reply to that request?
I had no authority to release five million dollars to anyone. I told him that.
Was that all that was said?
Of course not. He pleaded with me. Then he called me names. It was understandable, under the circumstances. I didn’t get angry with him. He simply didn’t understand my position. My hands were tied.
There’s no provision for emergencies in your directives from Washington?
No emergency like this ever came up before. How could anyone have foreseen something like this?
Was anything else said during that conversation?
Maitland was fit to be tied. You couldn’t blame him. He kept pleading with me. I said I’d telephone Washington and do everything I could to get the money released.
And did you call Washington?
Of course. Immediately.
What was the result of that call?
Nothing. They were out to lunch.
O’Brien (Cont’d)
Sergeant, at what time did it become evident to you that there was a good chance the bank might not be able to raise the money in time, despite its best efforts to do so?
Pretty early, sir. We could all see that. It was a hell of a lot of money to get up in a couple of hours. Money doesn’t have habit of moving fast, not unless it’s crime money.
When we were setting up this commission, the Mayor threw out the suggestion that Craycroft and Ryterband must have realized that.
Yes, sir. I think a lot of us thought about that at the time.
Did it lead you to a particular conclusion?
I wouldn’t call it a conclusion. It wasn’t definite.
A speculation, then.
(Laughter) Sir, you don’t have any idea how many times I’ve been stopped dead in court by a lawyer who jumps up and yells an objection about “speculation on the part of the witness.”
We’re not in court, Sergeant. I’d appreciate having your views.
Well, sir, I was talking with Jack Harris-you know, the reporter who was up there with his television film. I know Harris for a long time. He’s a real reporter, one of the good guys. He talks, you pay attention. Now there’s a big crowd of us in the room there, and after Captain Grofeld got there and the FBI was swarming all over Ryterband, there wasn’t a hell of a lot for me to do there. I was over by the window with Harris, we were watching the damned B-17 circle over. We got to talking. You know how it is.
Yes.
Well, they’d worked this caper out in fantastic detail, you know. We could see that right away. They weren’t just bumbling around. They’d figured just about everything. They weren’t dumb.
And?
It was kind of hard to believe that anybody who’d gone to all that trouble would forget an item as important as the time it took to raise that much money.
What did you deduce from that?
Well, sir, we kind of figured maybe they didn’t really expect anybody to come up with the money in time.
Oh?
Yes, sir. They were nut cases, that was self-evident. And it seemed to us it was just possible they didn’t want us to be able to come up with the money in time.
Why?
Because if we didn’t produce the money, it would give them the excuse they were looking for. To bomb hell out of New York.
Azzard (Cont’d)
In terms of enforcement procedures your office decided to handle this case according to the procedures devised for dealing with kidnappings, isn’t that right?
Essentially, yes. A hostage-the city-was being held for ransom. In principle it was the same thing as a kidnapping. A mass kidnapping.
And the FBI is specifically organized to deal with the crime of kidnapping.
That’s right. As a result of the Lindbergh case, kidnapping was made a federal offense and came under the jurisdiction of government authority. We’re the enforcement arm.
Now, you have specific procedures for dealing with such cases?
