Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI, Inc. 2006 Interview of Former Special Agent of the FBI Gibbon E. (G.E.) McNeely (1951 1980) Interviewed by David W. Holmes On Edited for spelling, repetitions, etc. by Sandra Robinette on February 22, 2007. Final edit with Mr. McNeely s corrections by Sandra Robinette on March 13, 2007. David W. My name is David W. Holmes. On behalf of the Oral History Program of the Society of Special Agents, we are here today to interview Gib McNeely. Today is December 30th, 2006, and we are at Saint Simons Island in Georgia. Gibb would you please read aloud the Copyright Release? Gibbon E. We, the undersigned, convey the rights to the intellectual content of our interview on this date, which is, to the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI. This transfer is in exchange for the Society s efforts to preserve the historical legacy of the FBI and its members. We understand that portions of this interview may be deleted for security purposes. Unless otherwise restricted, we agree that acceptable sections can be published on the Worldwide Web and the recordings transferred to an established repository for preservation and research. Can you give us some biographical information concerning yourself, such as your date of birth, date and place of birth, and a little background on your education? I was born January 9, 1925 in Waxhaw, North Carolina. I attended the high school there; later I went to the University of North Carolina, obtained a BS Degree in Commerce, and, after that, went to law school at George Washington University in Washington, DC. Prior to that, I was in the Army Air Corps, now the U.S. Air Force, during World War II, and served in China and India, after serving time in the United States. What got you interested and what made you decide to apply for the FBI?
Page 2 Well, it s kind of almost accidental. During my freshman year in college, I wrote a term paper on the FBI. I don t know why; I didn t know anybody in the FBI at the time. But one morning I had coffee with a jeweler in Albemarle, North Carolina. His wife s uncle was the sheriff, and had mentioned that the FBI was recruiting for Agents. My jeweler friend said that I qualified, even though he did not, and asked me to go apply. I called the Charlotte Office and asked for the Office Manager. The receptionist told me I probably meant the SAC. Subsequently, I went in to the Charlotte Office, saw the Assistant Agent in Charge; took a written test, was fingerprinted and interviewed. Later, I got an appointment to come to Washington, to the FBI Academy. Are there any special people or incidents that you remember during your first days when you went up for training? No one in particular. Well, I just went to Washington. At that time, we had the old Academy and we slept eight men to a room. And part of the time, when we were at the Identification Building, we stayed in the Harrington Hotel and I think there were three of us to a room. We had to get out of bed just one at a time. Did you ever have an opportunity to meet Mr. Hoover, at that time? Yes. I met Mr. Hoover when the New Agents Class went through to meet him. And I met him on two separate occasions after that. I met him once just by my request to go in and talk with him. You could always tell what was on his mind for that month. And I also met him when I was admitted to the Supreme Court. Most of the Agents who were admitted to the Supreme Court were introduced by the Solicitor General. After I finished that, I was assigned to the Boston Office for my first office. 2
Page 3 We were then working a regular six-day-a-week, a six-day week. We worked a number of Bank Robberies up there, including the Brinks case. We had Squad conferences and Brinks conferences in the evening after a days work. They had special Indices set up for the Brinks case and a number of Agents assigned just to that particular case. As you know, it was subsequently solved and the Bureau turned this information over to the State, so it was a State prosecution for the Brinks case. When I was a New Agent I had a rather embarrassing situation for me. I was to go out and photograph the signatures of a subject on a case. I took the old fingerprint camera, something like the Brownie box camera, and went into the place of business and the proprietor provided me the paper with the signature. I took three shots of the signature; thanked the man; went out to the car and realized that I d forgotten to pull the slide. I went back into the business and I told that man I needed three more shots. And he provided the paper, he got the signature again. I was transferred to the Baltimore Office in April, 1952; and to WFO in 1954. My Supervisor in Baltimore was shot and killed while apprehending a Parole Violator from California who was in a phone booth in a theater. And the fugitive was also killed. Two days later I was sent to the morgue to examine the fugitive s bloody clothes for anything that might be in the seams of the clothing. It was about noon when I was there, and the man at the morgue asked me if I wanted some watermelon. He reached into one of the coolers where they kept the bodies and got a nice melon; and I declined to partake of it. (Both laughing) While in WFO, I worked on a case that could have become an international incident. The Air Force Association held its annual meeting at the Sheraton Park Hotel. They had a daily newspaper during the meeting, which was all week. A man in a British uniform was shown at the registration counter. A Major from the Pentagon was in a conversation with this individual, whose name was Flight Commander Hyde-Hobson. The Major said the Flight Commander didn t seem to give the right answers to certain questions in the conversation. So the Major went back and told a Colonel at the Pentagon, who called the British Embassy. 3
Page 4 The British Embassy checked with England, and came back and said there was nobody named Commander Hyde-Hobson; there never was a Flight Commander Hyde-Hobson in the British Air Force. He was told at the time that this individual was going to appear at the awards breakfast the next day, at the hotel. The representative from the Embassy said if that individual appears on the podium, he would come down and denounce him from the stage. You can imagine what that caused. Of course, the Supervisor called my partner and me right at quitting time as usual to go ferret out the real story here. We went to the Sheraton Park; found out that this individual was down at the Shoreham Hotel. We went to the Shoreham Hotel; went up to the room where this fellow resided, and knocked on the door. He came to the door dressed just in skivvy shorts and with a big cigar. And I said, Are you Flight Commander Hyde Hobson? And, in a British accent, he said, Well, yes. Come in. I identified myself and I said, We re with the FBI. And in his best Indiana accent he says, Come in, Gentlemen. (Laughing) The story was that someone from, I think, Northrop Aircraft Company, had arranged for this fellow who was an actor in Hollywood to come out there and put on an act for the Air Force Association, which [the act] was not in favor of the United States. It was not supposed to be an upsetting type thing he was going to do, and it was supposed to have been funny. We looked in the closet and saw that he had the uniform of a Flight Commander and my partner, who was Homer Hauer, at the time, called the Assistant U.S. Attorney and the Assistant U.S. Attorney said you can tell that gentleman if he wears that uniform here again, the fine is one thousand dollars. And the man says, That will not happen. I ll be leaving. (Both laughing) That was the end of that incident, but it could have been a lot different had the program gone through, with the British Embassy being represented. 4
Page 5 Probably the most thorough investigation I was involved in was when I went to Dallas after President John Kennedy was killed. The wrapping paper that Harvey Oswald used to wrap up the rifle had been examined by the Laboratory. They needed someone to take it back to Dallas to show to Mrs. Oswald and to others who saw Oswald on the day of the shooting. I played the part of Oswald and followed his steps on the day of the assassination. We went to the Book Depository and took a piece of paper wrapping paper from one of the rolls; wrapped up some blocks of wood in it and had to keep measuring it until it was the exact same length as the package that Oswald carried, with the rifle in the paper. We interviewed Mrs. Paine, where Oswald had stayed and the boy he had ridden into work with that day; along with some police officers. At that time, just before that, someone had fired a shot through the library window at General Walker. Missed him, of course, but the bullet was imbedded in the wall. And my partner and I went by the police department and picked up the bullet, but it could not be examined couldn t have a ballistic examination on it due to the fact it was smashed too much. But while there, I talked to a police officer who had gone to the theater to arrest Oswald and he and his partner walked down a row of seats where Oswald was sitting. This one individual walked down a row just behind where Oswald was. As he got down there, Oswald stood up, pulled out his pistol to fire at one of the police officers, and this officer on the row behind, leaped over and grabbed his gun. But in doing so, he ripped the tendons in his leg and when I was talking to him, he had a cast on from his ankle up to his hip. But that s just a sideline of the assassination you don t hear people talk about much. They ll be writing speculative stories about that assassination for many, many years to come. Were you satisfied with the results of the Warren Commissioner Report? The Warren Commission Report. Yes, I am. People have asked me similar questions before and I ll put it this way that we did thousands of interviews and we never found any evidence which was other than Oswald involved with it. 5
Page 6 There will be speculations many years to come about whether there was a conspiracy, but we can never prove that. We can only go by what we found out and the facts that we found. And I think it was a fair investigation and I think the results, as shown in the report, were correct. Very good. Let s take a break here at this point. I want to make sure that we have everything going. In 1967, I was transferred to the Bureau to the original Management Science Unit. We traveled throughout the United States about two weeks out of each month training police officers in various departments. We made studies of management principles used in business and applied them to law enforcement agencies. I learned that General Marshall said, There s no limit to what a man can do if he does not care who takes the credit. I stayed with that unit from 1967 to 1972. At that time, I was asked to send out bids and develop a contract for the food service at the new FBI Academy. Many do not know it, but that food service at the Academy has been run for many, many years on a handshake between Henry Sloan and the former Colonel who had the food service. I could never find a signed contract. But I did send out the bids like the code for Federal Regulations require and I had 11 responses. I made recommendations that we use five or six of our people on the management team to review the bids. And we did. We reviewed them independently and came out with the decision to award the contract to Marriott Corporation. That was a little over a million dollars and, when the memorandum went up to Mr. Hoover, it was the first time he d seen it, and Hoover, in the margin [wrote], Don t ever handle a situation this big without letting me know about it first. After the contract was let for food service, I was called by Tom Jenkins to say that he wanted me to be the new Unit Chief for the FBI Bomb Data Center, which didn t exist prior to that time. The International Association of Chiefs of Police had run something called a Bomb Data Center, but the Bureau took it over and it was funded by LEAA, Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. The Army, at Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey, initially provided assistance, technical assistance, writing technical bulletins for us. 6
Page 7 Shortly after that I became aware of the fact that we were not getting our money s worth; we were paying them a few hundred thousand dollars for a contract to provide technical bulletins for us. I wrote a memo to add several Agents to the Unit and discontinue the contract with the Army. That was approved. And Special Agent David Holmes, and Bill Hinshaw, and Doug Cannon, and Jim Phelan were brought into the Unit. They had previous explosive experience in the military and I told Tom Jenkins that I did not know one end of a bomb from another and he said, It s no problem. This is an administrative job for you. You can go to technical school later. And that s what I did. Later, I went to Redstone Arsenal and obtained a little bit of knowledge so I could understand the reports that came my way. Tell us a little bit about what you did at the Academy or the training programs that were initially set up. I know you initially set up the bulletins, the Special Technician Bulletins, the information bulletins, general information bulletins and so forth. But, tell us a little bit about the classes, which led to the formation of the seven international bomb data centers. Well, in addition to the bulletins that were being sent out, we established a training program and traveled around the country to different places for bomb scene investigations. And David Holmes set up the training equipment for bomb technicians, which involved the disarming of certain IEDs Improvised Explosive Devices. Also, we established a contact for a number of foreign countries. And some of them did not have a bomb data center, as such, but we set up contacts with Canada, England, Germany, and several other countries; which resulted in seven bomb data centers throughout the world. And, also, our unit developed the Terrorist Research and Bomb Data Center, because of terrorist activities in other countries at that time. In addition to just contacts for the training, we did a lot of benefit for the Bureau in establishing liaison just between the Agents in the Unit and foreign representatives. We set up seminars down at Quantico and invited foreign speakers to come in, such as the I think the first one was Deputy Assistant Commissioner from Scotland Yard, Ernie Bond; and, after that, several other people from England who had had experience with the improvised explosive devices in Northern Ireland. 7
Page 8 Like Brigadier McKenzie, Malcolm McKenzie-Orr, I believe, who commanded the 11th Ordinance Battalion Bomb Squad. We had him and others from the Bundes Criminal Ampt (i.e., the FBI of Germany), and so forth. Yeah. Right. And a lot of the good liaison we established was just on personal individual efforts of the Agents in the Unit. Like Holmes, and Cannon and Phalen, and Bill Hinshaw and myself. A lot of people in the FBI Headquarters, at the time, did not really understand or appreciate those liaison efforts by the initial people in the Bomb Data Center. Several other things that I did at the Headquarters: we were involved in helping do interview training for New Agents in the Training Classes, sometimes when we were in town. Sometimes going down the elevator with New Agents, I would say, The compensation you get in this job is not the money, but realizing what you contribute for the services you render. They d just look at me like I was crazy. I also told them, One does not make footprints in the sands of time by tiptoeing. You must be assertive. And that s just about all I have here. Okay. There we go. Gib, is there any advice that you would offer to those who are left behind in the Bureau? Yes. I would say continue in a disciplinary fashion the culture that has been established in the Bureau for many, many years. Mr. Hoover established a disciplinary culture and that is what made the Bureau a success. Mr. Hoover used to say that three things will make a successful organization, and that is good recruitment, good training, and good inspection. He said, It s not what you expect, it s what you inspect. And there s a camaraderie in that culture, in the FBI, that was set up, and it s carried on now in the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI. And, in the Society, we maintain contact with the Bureau through contact in the local offices where our Chapters are located, and I hope that the young Agents as they retire, or resign, will consider joining the Society. 8
Page 9 We need them and they need us to maintain that culture of the quote, FBI family. And I think of the legacy from the Bureau as it was established, I realize certain things change in society. An example of the FBI family and camaraderie I remember times in in Boston and Washington Field Office where Agents became sick and they ran out of their time, leave time and money, and the Agents in the office collected enough money every two weeks to pay their salary, until they died. I realize those were large offices; you couldn t necessarily do it in a small office, but, that s just an example. And, the Society helps out people today. Some through the Foundation and some just through the Society, with their need. So, that camaraderie and culture needs to be carried on and will be carried on through the Society. Thank you very much. You ve listened to Gib McNeely, and we re concluding the interview at Saint Simons Island, Georgia. Gib, following our interview today, I had the opportunity to do some research not only through your records but also through the records in the bowels of the FBI Academy at Quantico. And I was astounded to learn that you and Jimmy Stewart shared the same billing in The FBI Story. Would you care to elaborate on this? I think the men and women of the Bureau would be thrilled to know your experience on this. Yes. Some years ago, in the filming of the movie, The FBI Story, with Jimmy Stewart, a great deal of the filming was done at the FBI Academy at Quantico, Virginia. A number of us were requested parenthesis (required) close parenthesis (chuckling), to participate in the activities with the film at Quantico. We spent three days down there, Saturday, Sunday and Monday, a holiday, while they were filming it. One observation I made was that Jimmy Stewart was I can understand why he was known as one of the kings in the movie industry everybody else had to have two or three takes on their verbal portion of the movie. Yet when they got ready for Mr. Stewart, they called him, he walked through the filming one time, shows what experience will do. It was a great experience to be in and watch the making of a movie; how they dubbed in the sounds with the picture itself. It was also a great experience to see someone of Mr. Stewart s stature involved with the making of that movie. So it was a great experience and I m glad we had it. 9
Page 10 Mr. McNeely provided the following note: I am still in contact with the Bureau through the Background Investigative Contract Service (BICS), and occasionally conduct background investigations when requested to do so. I still feel as though I am a member of the FBI Family, and keeping in contact with the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI helps to maintain that feeling. 10