© Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI, Inc. 2008
Interview of Former Special Agent of the FBI
Courtland J. Jones (1941 – 1974)
Interviewed by Stanley A. Pimentel
On February 8, 2008
Edited for spelling, repetitions, etc. by Sandra Robinette on March 9, 2008. Edited with Mr.
Jones’s corrections by Sandra Robinette on March 29, 2008.
Stanley A. Pimentel:
February 8th, 2008, and I’m here with Courtland J. Jones at
his residence in Vienna, Virginia. He has reviewed and
signed the Oral History Heritage Project Copyright Release
and Background Form and I, yours truly, Stanley A.
Pimentel, has also signed that form. It is, right now, 11:06 in
the morning of February 8, 2008, and we will be talking to
Mr. Jones about his life in the Bureau.
Court, why don’t you go ahead and say a few words about
where you were born and raised and your early education.
Jones:
I was born on my maternal grandfather’s farm in Evington,
Virginia.
Pimentel:
How do you spell that?
Jones:
I was raised in Lynchburg, Virginia; attended the Lynchburg
public schools; was graduated from Lynchburg College in
1939. Then I attended George Washington University Law
School, until I entered the Bureau.
Pimentel:
And that was?
Jones:
October 6, 1941.
Pimentel:
Okay. So you went to law school at George Washington law
school and graduated there in ’40 …
Jones:
No. No. I did not graduate.
Pimentel:
Oh. Okay. Okay.
Jones:
I was in my last day of training as a New Agent on Pearl
Harbor Day.
Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
Page 2
Pimentel:
That was December 7, 1941?
Jones:
December 7, 1941. My First Office was Sioux Falls, South
Dakota. I was there for three months; long enough to meet
my late wife, and subsequently marry her.
I was transferred after three months to the Oklahoma City
Office, where I served in two Resident Agencies and at
Headquarters.
Pimentel:
What did you work primarily in Sioux City?
Jones:
As a Resident Agent, well, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota,
which is obviously a small, was, a small town of about 50
thousand and everything was rural. I worked whatever was
in my territory.
Pimentel:
Did you work with an older Agent; a more experienced or did
they throw you to the wolves?
Jones:
I did not work with an older Agent. I guess I should have.
The Agent in Charge was Werner Hanni who was held over
from the old Bureau by Hoover.
Pimentel:
What’s his name?
Jones:
Werner Hanni. He was a character. He knew every cop in
the States of South Dakota and North Dakota. He sent me on
a road trip immediately. He checked on me by calling the
police chiefs in these small towns …
Pimentel:
(Laughing)
Jones:
… and I was smart enough to tell these men that I was new,
that I was learning. He had rules that no Agent could date a
stenographer in his office, which was small, unless they were
going to get married. Well, now you can’t handle that, of
course.
Pimentel:
(Laughing)
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Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
Page 3
Jones:
At any rate, after a short stay there, I went to Oklahoma City,
where I was immediately sent to Tulsa, Oklahoma. I had a
road territory, northeast, covering small towns. I enjoyed
that very, very much. I made lots of friends there.
Pimentel:
Any notable cases?
Jones:
Oh yes. I had one notable case. I had a lead to locate and
apprehend an escaped Federal prisoner. The lead was in the
small town of Osage, Oklahoma. I approached the Town
Marshal, who was the Chief also, and told him of my
mission.
He responded that he had heard that the man was in the area.
I asked if he knew where he lived; he said, “Oh yes.” And he
said, “He probably sleeps in his parent’s home at night and
spends the days in the woods.” I said, “Well, I‘m supposed
to apprehend him, if I can, with your help.” He suddenly said
that he had an idea. So he left me and I saw him a couple of
hours later. And when he arrived he asked me whether I had
fifty dollars.
Pimentel:
(Laughing)
Jones:
I said, “Yes.” He said that he had made a deal with the
fugitive’s uncle that if I allowed him to sleep in his parent’s
home with his wife, undisturbed, that he would have him
available the next morning.
Pimentel:
Uhm-hmm.
Jones:
So the next morning I went through the back door … he went
through the front door. I’m trying to remember whether it
was fifty dollars or ten dollars. It was $10.00!
The Chief and I took him into custody, primarily the Chief,
of course. He put him in the town jail. I sent a telegram to
the office. That’s the way we corresponded in those days;
telephone calls were too expensive. I said, simply, that he
was apprehended and he was in the town jail. In those days,
Resident Agents went to the office about once every three
weeks.
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Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
Page 4
Jones:
Then the next time that I went to Oklahoma City for dictation
purposes, one of the older Agents took me aside and said that
that was a nice job I did up in at Osage. He asked if I had
thought about calling the office.
Pimentel:
(Chuckling)
Jones:
I said, “No.” He said, “Well, you know the SAC is Guy
Bannister.” I knew Guy Bannister’s reputation. He was one
of the early officers from small towns that Hoover took in the
Bureau who were gunmen. And Guy Bannister was in on a
lot of the big raids. The older Agents said it might have been
a good idea if I had called the office and talked to Bannister.
At that point bells went off and lights flashed …
Pimentel:
(Laughing)
Jones:
… and ever since that time I’ve been well aware that my
biggest job is to make the Agent in Charge look good.
Pimentel:
Jones:
Right. (Laughing) You mentioned he was one of the
gunmen that … we had discussed that at a luncheon last week
…
Yeah.
Pimentel:
… if you recall, …
Jones:
Right.
Pimentel:
… and I had asked you the question, if Hoover did, in fact,
recruit guys who were good with guns because the Bureau
hadn’t gotten the authority to carry firearms until late after
it’s establishment. So I was always curious, especially
during the mob era, you know, the gangster era.
Jones:
Well, they used police officers. Jelly Bryce, who was a
notorious, or an infamous, no, a notorious good shot. An
Oklahoma Indian-type, big, was an Agent. Two other Agents
that I knew in Oklahoma City who had been a police officers
were Clarence Hurt from McAlister, and Buck Buchanan.
They were very helpful to us new Agents.
Pimentel:
They assisted you on the arrests of fugitives?
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Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
Page 5
Jones:
Well, no.
Pimentel:
No?
Jones:
No. We worked singly. They just sort of told us how things
were.
Pimentel:
Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. Do you remember, for example,
how many people, how many Agents were in the Oklahoma
Office?
Jones:
I would say about 35 or 40.
Pimentel:
And that covered?
Jones:
The State of Oklahoma.
Pimentel:
Okay.
Jones:
I liked it very, very much.
Pimentel:
So, any other notable cases in Oklahoma?
Jones:
Yes. Infamous, not notable.
Pimentel:
Infamous. Okay.
Jones:
All of us carried about fifty cases and there were lots of them
we only gave slight attention. I had an IO Fugitive lead in
Northern Oklahoma; the file was very thick, and the lead was
to maintain contact with the Postmaster of a town where the
IO Fugitive lived. I did that every time I went through the
town.
An Agent who was in deep trouble was transferred to
Oklahoma City, his name was Frank Daugherty. He was not
allowed to leave the city; he was under close supervision.
Bannister gave him some old files to review. Among them
was the case of Roy Elmo Wrone. After all these years, I
remember that case.
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Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
Page 6
Jones:
It was my fugitive IO that I checked at the post office where
his parents lived. Frank reviewed the file and found that he
was living in Oklahoma City with his sister and apprehended
him. The next time I went in to the office, Guy Bannister
said to me, “Did you learn anything about the Elmo Wrone
file?” I said, “You betcha!”
Pimentel:
(Laughing)
Jones:
Never forget that.
Pimentel:
So you missed out on capturing an IO but Frank Daugherty
ended up catching him.
Jones:
And he got out of the doghouse. That’s wonderful.
Pimentel:
Yeah. (Chuckling)
Jones:
I did a bit of supervisory work there because they closed my
Resident Agency in Bartlesville. I was moved from Tulsa to
Bartlesville. It’s the home of the City Service Oil Company.
Pimentel:
Hmm.
Jones:
I did the desk work because they closed the Resident Agency
and I could read, I guess.
Pimentel:
(Chuckling)
Jones:
I was next transferred to Cincinnati. Al Belmont was the
Agent in Charge. What a wonderful man. When I walked in,
he said, “Welcome. You’re going to work Communist Party
matters for one year.” I’m certain that my face fell. I learned
a lot though. I learned how to do deep research, deep
investigative work, instead of investigating a kid that stole a
case of beans off of a truck, and was apprehended and the
Bureau prosecuted for Theft from Interstate Shipment.
Pimentel:
Right.
Jones:
After a year, I did criminal work for awhile. And then I was
transferred to the Washington Field Office.
Pimentel:
That was after a year in Cincinnati?
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Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
Page 7
Jones:
No. A couple of years.
Pimentel:
Oh, okay. Do you recall an approximate time you came to
Washington Field?
Jones:
I appeared in the Washington Field just prior to the end of
World War II.
Pimentel:
Oh, okay. And where was the Washington Field Office at
that time?
Jones:
The Washington Field Office was on K Street.
Pimentel:
Okay.
Jones:
I was one of twenty-five Agents transferred into Washington
to form the nucleus of a Soviet Intelligence Investigative
Squad. The result of information supplied by two people,
Igor Gouzenko, spelled as it sounds, a code clerk for the
Soviet Embassy in Ottawa, defected, and named a number of
officials in the government who were sources and who
supplied the information to the Russians.
The other individual was Elizabeth Terrill Bentley, who
walked into the New York Office, I believe, in the fall of
1945 and spoke with Tom Spencer and, maybe, Jack Danahy;
and identified eight or ten ranking officials in the Federal
Government as being sources for the NKVD. She had been
the paramour of Jacob Golos,
Pimentel:
You mentioned NKVD, that was the Russian …
Jones:
Intelligence Service.
Pimentel:
Okay.
Jones:
Golos, who had died a couple of years earlier. Bentley and
he were both members of the Communist Party and
apparently, after his death, she had a turn of heart. She
identified the people who held responsible positions in the
Federal Government. The twenty-five of us Agents began
our duties.
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Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
Page 8
Jones:
None of us had any background in Russian matters. On the
other hand, we were pretty seasoned investigators. We
learned that following the exposé of Elizabeth Terrill Bentley
that Ed Tamm, who was the number one man to the Director,
held over an in-service class and put round-the-clock
surveillances on certain people named by Bentley, who lives
in Washington, DC.
Pimentel:
Uhm-hmm.
Jones:
Of course, the Agents were in unfamiliar territory and the
surveillances were quickly made.
Pimentel:
Humph! Well, you mentioned that there had not been, up till
that time, any, I guess you could say, investigative
experience on the part of the Agents …
Jones:
No. No.
Pimentel:
… targeting the Soviets …
Jones:
No.
Pimentel:
… or any type of intelligence agencies, right?
Jones:
Yeah.
Pimentel:
Yeah. So this is all new.
Jones:
The early investigations were exclusively on the people
named by Bentley.
Pimentel:
Uhm-hmm.
Jones:
As we checked files and did our work, the name of Whittaker
Chambers came up. He had been a Comintern Agent, or
NKVD Agent of the sleeper type for a number of years and
became disillusioned and tried to leave the apparatus. In
those days, the Soviets killed a lot of their own people who
defected. Chambers dropped out of his old haunts and took
time to inform the State Department that Alger Hiss, who
held a high position, had been a source of Chambers.
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Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
Page 9
Jones:
He said that Hiss took State Department documents home
and his wife copied them on a typewriter and he, Chambers,
had them photographed and he gave the film to his Soviet
contact.
Pimentel:
Do you recall the name of the Soviet contact?
Jones:
No.
Pimentel:
No. Okay.
Jones:
The State Department paid no attention to Chambers’
allegations. We, in the FBI, did. Chambers was a difficult
person to interview because, like many people who form
friendships, he was reluctant to tattle on his former friends.
Pimentel:
You interviewed him? You interviewed Chambers?
Jones:
No.
Pimentel:
No. Okay.
Jones:
Chambers, by this time, was living in Maryland. He either
was or had been an editor for Time Magazine. The
information supplied by Chambers dove-tailed with that of
Bentley. Of course, the reports from the field office were
sent to the Bureau and the Bureau, in turn, thereafter, sent
them to the various agencies where all these people worked.
Pimentel:
Uhm-hmm. So it got back to the individuals then?
Jones:
So pretty soon, politics reared its ugly head.
Pimentel:
(Laughing)
Jones:
The first one to make hay from it was Joe … what’s his
name?
Pimentel:
McCarthy.
Jones:
Was Congressman Joe McCarthy. He made wild allegations
about the depth of the involvement of the people in the
government that had been named by Bentley, their associates,
and soon became discredited.
9
Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
Page 10
Jones:
The Congress got involved, of course, and the House
Committee on Un-American Activities, which was chaired
by a Democrat, began to hold hearings. The President was
Harry Truman. Friends of the people who had been named
would talk with the press and, all in all, it was a jumble.
Of all the people that we investigated, the best information
for deep involvement was developed concerning Alger Hiss.
The ACUA interviewed Hiss and Whittaker Chambers. Of
course, the information was contradictory. Only one member
of the ACUA appeared interested in pursuing the truth … he
being Richard Nixon.
Pimentel:
Hmm. Who was, at that time, a Congressman?
Jones:
He was, at that time, a Congressman.
Pimentel:
Okay.
Jones:
The ACUA had a couple of good investigators, one of them a
former Agent, and they used lots of subpoenas.
Pimentel:
So subpoenas to get everybody to come in and talk?
Jones:
Yeah. Nixon arranged a confrontation between Hiss and
Chambers. Chambers had said that he used a pseudonym in
his dealings with Hiss and Hiss’ wife; that he stayed in their
home; that he used one of their cars, and that they had
become good friends. The pseudonym that he used was that
of Crosby. At this confrontation, which was held in New
York, Nixon, of course, was present. I don’t know if any
other members of the committee appeared. Hiss denied that
he had ever seen Chambers; said he didn’t know him; that he
had never heard of the name ‘Crosby’ and that he didn’t
know anyone by that name. Of course, this made headlines.
The testimony was apparently privileged since it was being
held by the Congress Committee.
10
Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
Page 11
Jones:
Subsequently, Chambers was talked into making his
accusation public and he did that over the radio. All during
this period, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The
Los Angeles Times, and other liberal publications were giving
Chambers hell. Chambers’s past was not very, very clean.
Early in his life he had been a homosexual; he was unkemptlooking; he made a very poor appearance.
Alger Hiss said he was going to sue Chambers. With his
back to the wall, Chambers recalled that during the heyday of
the time that he collected information from Hiss and other
sources and converted the paper to microfilm, he had placed
a roll of microfilm in the wall of his wife’s brother’s home in
Brooklyn, I believe. Thus, he took a trip up to New York and
checked and found the hole in the wall and found this
canister of film. He brought the film back to his home in
Westminister, Maryland. Still being very careful and fearful
of his life, he decided not to take the film into his home.
Instead he cut the top off of a pumpkin and put the film in the
pumpkin, thus, arose the quote “Pumpkin Papers”. They
were actually not paper.
The next day he called one of the investigators for the
ACUA. This individual went out to Chambers’ home, got
the film, took it to the office. Of course, Nixon, he
immediately called the Attorney General and turned the film
over and it quickly found its way to the FBI Lab. The FBI
Lab determined that the typewriter used to print the
documents was a Woodstock Typewriter; a typewriter that
was not frequently used. Next, the Washington Field Office
was called upon to get the typewriter, find the typewriter.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Hiss denied that they ever had a
Woodstock Typewriter. We searched, and searched, and
searched typewriter repair shops. I was the coordinator of the
search. We could not find a typewriter in any repair shop or
other places. I believed that we had covered leads in
numerous cities and abroad. Since we couldn’t find a
typewriter, the next best evidence would be some documents
that had been prepared on the typewriter. Thus, we began a
search for mail written or typed by Mrs. Hiss that could be
found in public sources.
11
Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
Page 12
Jones:
The first typewritten document that we found was at the
Landon School in Bethesda, Maryland, where Mrs. Hiss’ son,
Timothy, attended.
As an aside today, as an anecdote of some interest, at least to
me.
Pimentel:
Sure.
Jones:
Several of us had spent a Saturday at the office reviewing
testimony before the ACUA and other sources for leads that
we could find typewritten documents on the Woodstock. A
lead that I had for Monday morning was to go out to the
Landon School and see if they had any material.
A good friend, Carl Buckholtz, an Agent who was not the
most hardworking Agent, but was good. His wife and I and
my wife were scheduled to play bridge that night. But I was
late, of course. Carl was a great needler and he wanted to
know what I had been doing that day. I told him that I’d
been reading files and searching stuff and that on Monday
morning I had to go to the Landon School. And Carl spoke
and said, “Well, that’s no problem. I know the Headmaster.”
Pimentel:
(Laughing)
Jones:
So I said, “Well, if you’re such good friends of the
Headmaster, call him tomorrow and if he has any documents
written by Mrs. Hiss, I will buy you a bottle of bourbon.”
Pimentel:
(Chuckling)
Jones:
I bought the bottle of bourbon because he was able to get the
document. That was the first document the FBI Lab
identified as prepared on the Woodstock. There were quite a
few others.
Pimentel:
And then these were compared with the other documents?
Jones:
The FBI Lab …
Pimentel:
Yeah.
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Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
Page 13
Jones:
… compared the documents that we found with the material
on the microfilm. There were certain keys that were very
characteristic.
I guess the next item of interest was the Grand Jury hearing
and Jack Danahy has told you all about it. And then there
were two trials. Now, by accident, an Agent and I learned
the location of the typewriter. A maid for the Hiss family
was interviewed by the U.S. Attorney, who came down from
New York. John Howard, an Agent, and I were prepared to
take the maid back to her home in Winchester. As she got in
the car, the other Agent said to her, “Your boys never did
find that typewriter did they, Claudia?” She said, “Why, yes.
You know that Mr. Howard; they found it and turned it over
to Mr. Hiss, his brother.”
Pimentel:
(Laughing)
Jones:
Thus, the prosecution was aware of the typewriter. This was
very important during the trial because the defense ridiculed
the FBI … me being the subject of considerable ridicule
since I was in charge of trying to find it … as we testified
that we had not found the typewriter.
Pimentel:
Uhm-hmm.
Jones:
The defense produced the typewriter during the first trial.
The Government, wisely, just let it sit. Because,
subsequently, defenders of Alger Hiss claimed that the FBI
had manufactured those papers that were on the microfilm.
Pimentel:
So was that the actual typewriter that the defense presented?
Jones:
Yeah.
Pimentel:
Oh, it was. Okay.
Jones:
Because the Catlett boys had turned it over to Hiss’ brother,
Donald.
Pimentel:
Oh, okay.
Jones:
He, in turn, gave it to the defense.
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Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
Page 14
Pimentel:
Okay. Okay.
Jones:
There was a lot of strategy involved in that …
Pimentel:
I’m sure.
Jones:
… of course.
Pimentel:
Let me switch this tape over.
Your job during the Alger Hiss and Chambers thing, besides
searching, you know, your team was to search for the
typewriter and what other evidence?
Jones:
Yeah.
Pimentel:
During that time?
Jones:
The Hiss case was, in effect, assigned to me. Fifteen or
twenty Agents worked on the typewriter search.
Pimentel:
Oh. Okay.
Jones:
Yes, although, there were numerous Agents working on it.
Pimentel:
Uhm-hmm.
Jones:
Lots of Agents.
Pimentel:
But you were the Case Agent.
Jones:
Yes. I don’t think I ever wrote a report, at this point.
Because it was all being handled by …
Pimentel:
New York?
Jones:
… teletype and that kind of stuff.
Pimentel:
Sure.
14
Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
Page 15
Jones:
Yes, I was the Case Agent but in particular the aspect
concerning the typewriter. Oh, Alger Hiss went to his
deathbed claiming that he was innocent. The files of the
intelligence services of the Soviet Union reflected that Alger
Hiss was the source.
Pimentel:
Reflect that he was the source?
Jones:
Yes. Soviet defectors have identified Alger Hiss as having
been a source. Yet, Hiss never acknowledged it. His son and
his step-son recently held a press conference and provided
data which they claimed showed that he was innocent. But
that’s a bunch of malarkey.
Pimentel:
Yeah. Did you ever have any doubt that he was not a source
of the Soviets?
Jones:
I never had an opinion of any significance until the
typewriter evidence came in. I interviewed Hiss earlier. The
Washington Field Office Agent interviewed the eight or ten
people that lived here. The interviews were cursory because
we had no evidence.
Pimentel:
Uhm-hmm.
Jones:
As I remember the interview of Hiss and his wife, I just
asked them if they knew Crosby or Chambers and that kind
of stuff, and they said no.
Pimentel:
Uhm-hmm.
Jones:
And that was it.
Pimentel:
And that was about the extent of the interview.
Jones:
Hmm.
Pimentel:
Yeah. Was he cooperative?
Jones:
Oh, yes. Very, very pleasant.
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Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
Page 16
Pimentel:
Yeah.
Jones:
He was a distinguished looking man.
Pimentel:
But denied any involvement with the Soviets.
Jones:
Very, very poised. Very distinguished. Very articulate. Of
course, he had been a law clerk to Justice Felix Frankfurter.
Pimentel:
Hmm!
Jones:
And he was the State Department’s representative at the
formation of the United Nations.
Pimentel:
Oh, okay.
Jones:
Which was in San Francisco.
Pimentel:
Right.
Jones:
Interesting man.
Pimentel:
Besides the Hiss case, assigned to you, did you have other
matters assigned to you, at that time, that you had to work?
Jones:
I doubt it.
Pimentel:
Yeah. This is pretty all-encompassing.
Jones:
No. No other cases.
Pimentel:
So this took up part of, what, 1945, ’46?
Jones:
This would have been ’46 and some of ’47.
Pimentel:
Okay.
Jones:
Yeah. I don’t remember the exact dates. They sort of run
together.
The only other case of any significance during that period
was the case of Judy Coplan. Her name is in there.
Pimentel:
Uhm-hmm.
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Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
Page 17
Jones:
She had been named by the NSA, subsequently, but called
the VENONA Files.
Pimentel:
Oh yeah.
Jones:
As a source for the Soviets. Judy worked in the Foreign
Agents Registration Section of the Department of Justice.
And our squad investigated her with surveillances, bag jobs,
and all that kind of stuff. She was caught (unintel) put in
touch with her Soviet principal, whose name slips my tongue,
but who was assigned to the UN.
Pimentel:
Uhm-hmm.
Jones:
The trial was held in Washington. Her attorney was an oldtime bankruptcy attorney, flamboyant, and he kept Agents on
the witness stand for hours asking asinine questions.
Pimentel:
(Laughing)
Jones:
I was called to testify and I got on the stand and identified
myself, and his first question of me was, “Haven’t I seen you
sitting in a cell back behind the court for the past week?”
Pimentel:
(Laughing)
Jones:
Well, of course, the answer is I was sitting in the cell which
was used as a waiting room. But that’s the type guy that he
was.
Pimentel:
Right. Right. (Laughing) That’s where the witnesses … that
was the witness room, right?
Jones:
Yeah.
Pimentel:
Yeah. Yeah.
Jones:
But that type of questioning.
Pimentel:
Yeah.
Jones:
I’m sure that Jack Danahy has anecdotes about the tactics of
Lloyd Paul Stryker, who was the attorney for Hiss.
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Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
Page 18
Pimentel:
Uhm-hmm.
Jones:
Ohhh, he was good. When he got through with me, I went
out and had two double scotches.
Pimentel:
(Laughing) So you end up on the witness stand in New York
at the trial?
Jones:
Both trials.
Pimentel:
Both trials. Yeah. Because the first one was a mistrial?
Jones:
Yeah. I guess it was.
Pimentel:
Yeah. So you spent days and days in the courthouse up there
in New York?
Jones:
Well, yes. I worked with Jack.
Pimentel:
Yes. That’s Jack Danahy of the New York Office.
Jones:
We became great, great friends. He missed his calling. He
should have been on stage. A charming Irishman. A great,
great guy.
After the Hiss case, we acquired more personnel and then we
began investigating the employees of the Soviet Embassy
who had been identified or suspected of being engaged in
intelligence work. The sources of the allegations were
XXXX files, Air Force, and Army; keeping in mind that at
the end of World War II that the Army, Air Force, and
XXXX kept a lot of people in Germany.
Pimentel:
Uhm-hmm.
Jones:
And Europe. And the Soviets used every opportunity to
develop sources. And some of those sources were transferred
back to the States that we operated or ran, together with the
other agencies. And it was an interesting period.
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Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
Page 19
Jones:
I’m going to mention briefly the fact that after the
investigations of the people named by Bentley, we began to
intensify our inquiries concerning the Soviet Intelligence
agencies. By this time, Eisenhower was President and he
saw to it that we got lots of personnel, both in New York and
Washington Field. As a matter of fact, New York got so
much personnel that they were falling all over themselves.
Pimentel:
(Laughing) Okay. We took a little lunch break here for a
minute. You were saying that you and Carl Graham …?
Jones:
We had an assignment to develop a Soviet code clerk. First
of all, we had to find out who the code clerks were and, in so
doing, by running surveillances and correlating information
from the surveillances, the lookouts, and the tech, we got a
pretty good thumbnail view of each employee.
Pimentel:
Uhm-hmm. During your assignment were you just a regular?
You were not a supervisor at the Washington Field Office
during the Hiss case or the Judy Coplan?
Jones:
No. After we got a lot of personnel, we formed a
Surveillance Squad and I was the first supervisor of the
Soviet Surveillance Squad. As we added personnel for the
satellite investigations, keeping in mind that the Communist
Parties in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and so forth, had taken
over. We added supervisors and squads. I then became the
Supervisor of the KGB Squad.
Pimentel:
Had the Soviets or the Russians changed their name?
Jones:
Well, they’re all the same thing.
Pimentel:
Yeah, okay. Okay.
Jones:
Comintern, NKVD, Soviet Intelligence and now they’re NV
something.
Pimentel:
I forget what they are now. They keep changing their names.
Jones:
We made a number of approaches on the street. The Soviet
Embassy protested. We denied it. But that was part of the
game.
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Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
Page 20
Pimentel:
In the meantime, your squad and all the other squads?
Jones:
Getting bigger and bigger and bigger …
Pimentel:
Well, but also getting more experience as to …
Jones:
More experience.
Pimentel:
… how to investigate …
Jones:
How to investigate, run things, and doing better. Gene Gray
appeared about that time.
Pimentel:
R. Jean Gray, yep.
Jones:
Russell Jean Gray. A great guy. There were some
interesting cases that the CIA gave us, some interesting
sources that they had in the States. Some of them we could
do things with. Nothing comes to mind.
The only “spy-catching” job that we did was late in my
career where the Air Force had a soldier down in Texas who
they had reason to think was giving information to the Soviet
military group. He came to Washington to see his girlfriend,
ostensibly, but the FBI and the Air Force had reason to think
that he was going to contact his Soviet principal. This was a
couple of years before I retired. I only mention the case just
to tell you how far we have come.
Of course, in those days, we used the standard Chevrolet and
Ford and Plymouth cars. Of course, we did not bring the cars
home, we kept them in a contract garage up on M Street …
on New York Avenue. Of course, the Russians used that
garage too.
Pimentel:
(Laughing)
Jones:
And when we got word that XXXXXXXXX, the name of the
soldier, Air Force Airman, was coming to Washington, I had
enough seniority, was eligible to retire, and enough moxie …
I had done it a little earlier … but I insisted that the Bureau
allow us to use rental cars. Well, of course, that calls for
writing a memo …
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Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
Page 21
Pimentel:
Right.
Jones:
… and Section Chiefs detest having to write a memorandum.
Pimentel:
(Laughing)
Jones:
They’ll do anything to avoid it. But I insisted. I can’t
remember how many cars that we asked for but I would say
six. That presented a … by this time, we had lots of
experienced Agents who were good drivers, but what are you
going to do with the cars at night?
Pimentel:
Uhm-hmm.
Jones:
You can’t go put them in the contract garage?
Pimentel:
No.
Jones:
No! So I called an old friend of mine at the Bureau by the
name of C.Q.Smith and I said, “C.Q., I need for you to
arrange for us to keep rental cars in the Department of Justice
Building overnight.” C.Q. says, “You must be out of your
mind!”
Pimentel:
(Laughing)
Jones:
I said, “No, I’m not.” He said, “Ah, I know you guys in the
field office …” C.Q. had been there … he said, “you’ll
screw up and you’ll park in the parking space for some old
lady that works for the Department of Justice and she will
raise hell.” I said, “No doubt.” I said, “C.Q., please. I
promise that we will have them out of there early in the
morning.” So, of course, he said, “Alright, for one week.
Only one week.” That was Bill Brannigan’s admonition too.
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Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
Page 22
Jones:
Well, we had one or two incidents and at the end of the week,
nothing happened. So, I prevailed upon them again.
Brannigan reluctantly wrote a memorandum. I knew he
didn’t have any choice. And they were approved for another
week. And C.Q. agreed to keep the cars over there. Well,
fortunately, XXXXXXXX drove an unusual car. It was a …
hmmm … I’ll think of the name in a moment. It was unusual
looking, outstanding looking, different. One night, during
the second week, the Agents on the surveillance lost him, and
they were stopped at a signal light in Arlington and one
Agent said to the other, “Look to your left.”
Pimentel:
(Chuckling)
Jones:
There’s the car. They followed this car to a bowling alley in
Falls Church, Virginia, and guess who’s in the bowling alley?
One of the officers of the Soviet Military Office. Well, we
were elated.
Pimentel:
Sure.
Jones:
Absolutely elated! So, the Agents driving the car got
commended or a raise or something, and everybody was
happy and I called C.Q. Smith and I thanked him for
allowing us to use the garage. Now let’s go back a bit.
Pimentel:
Sure.
Jones:
Eight or ten years earlier, on a Saturday. I had a phone call
from the Duty Agent in the field office who was on my
squad. He had a call from a citizen who lived in Arlington
who had found an FBI badge in a boatyard in Alexandria.
Well, I had enough friends that I could get some certain
things done, so I made a few phone calls to people who did
not talk and determined that the badge belonged to C.Q.
Smith.
Pimentel:
(Laughing) You got him.
Jones:
(Chuckling) Ten years ago, you see.
Pimentel:
Right. You got him. You got him.
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Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
Page 23
Jones:
So I called C.Q. and told him I had his badge. He told me I
couldn’t because it was upstairs on his dresser. I said, “Go
look.” He came back. Of course, I gave the badge to C.Q.
Smith and forgot about it and never mentioned it to anybody
or to him. But when I called him to thank him (laughing) for
allowing us to park in the garage, he said, “That’s alright
Court, I might lose my badge again!” (Laughing)
Pimentel:
(Laughing)
Jones:
But what a wonderful guy.
Pimentel:
What goes around, comes around.
Jones:
That car was a Studebaker Avanti.
Pimentel:
Okay.
Jones:
Very streamlined.
Pimentel:
So they were able to put XXXXXXXX … Did they arrest
him?
Jones:
Ahh, the Air Force. I don’t know, because that was handled
down in Texas.
Pimentel:
Oh.
Jones:
I really don’t know; or don’t recall.
Pimentel:
Yeah.
Jones:
By that time, I had so much stuff on my plate that I was lucky
to remember my name. By that time, I was the Security
Coordinator, number three guy in the field office.
Pimentel:
That was when … early ‘70s, late ‘60s?.
Jones:
Let’s see, I retired in 1974; it was late ‘60s, early ‘70s.
Pimentel:
Okay.
Jones:
After Obie went to the Bureau.
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Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
Page 24
Pimentel:
Who?
Jones:
Obendorf. Did you ever know him?
Pimentel:
Oh. No, I didn’t know. No.
Jones:
Well, he was one of the smartest men I’ve ever known.
Pimentel:
Hmm.
Jones:
One of the smartest men I’ve ever known.
Pimentel:
So you were the Security Coordinator for how many years?
Do you recall?
Jones:
I can’t remember. I have to look at my personnel records.
Pimentel:
That’s okay.
Jones:
But I would say six or seven years.
Pimentel:
Yeah. For the record, I first knew Court Jones here, when I
first arrived in the Washington Field Office about summer of
’69 from my first office in Miami, Florida. And I was in awe
of Mr. Jones …
Jones:
(Chuckling)
Jones:
… because I was on the S-9 Squad. That was the squad that
handled the rest of the world. Herb Morgan was the
supervisor, a great man.
Jones:
Great guy.
Pimentel:
And, of course, nobody, none of the Agents went in to see
Mr. Jones because he was like an Assistant Director.
Jones:
(Laughing)
Pimentel:
Anyway, had a very good reputation in the Washington Field
Office.
Jones:
I understand that that job is now held by an Assistant
Director.
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Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
Page 25
Pimentel:
Probably. Probably. Well, you got the Washington Field
Office is held by an Assistant Director and then he’s got like
four or five SACs working under him. And that’s probably
where your job is included in there somewhere, probably as
SAC of all the Security Squads. Because I believe they’ve
got it …
Jones:
I was lucky.
Pimentel:
When you became the Coordinator, you always had nine
squads? Or it was just the nine squads? Yeah.
Jones:
They ran themselves.
Pimentel:
They ran themselves … yeah.
Jones:
Well, you know that.
Pimentel:
Right.
Jones:
The people who say, “I’ve got 500 Agents working for me”
are crazy. He should say, “I’m responsible for the work of
500 Agents.”
Pimentel:
(Chuckling) Now was there an equivalent of you, for
example …
Jones:
In New York?
Pimentel:
… no, here in Washington Field, on the Criminal side. Was
there a Criminal Coordinator?
Jones:
Yes. That was Grant Nana.
Pimentel:
Oh, okay. Okay. He would have been like an SAC?
Jones:
Yeah. Eventually, through the grace of God, both he and I
got Grade-15s.
Pimentel:
Fairly well deserving of it, I would say. Now I believe
they’re all 16s or 17s … well, the equivalent of 16 or 17 in
what they call now the SES. Yeah.
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February 8, 2008
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Pimentel:
Going back, you had mentioned the other day that you first
met Walter Walsh the day after Pearl Harbor.
Jones:
What happened we were scheduled to go to our First Office
of assignment the day after Pearl Harbor. No, we were
scheduled to go to Washington Field for one week’s
experience in the field and then go to our office of
assignment. Well, on Monday morning we went over to the
Washington Field Office, which was all abuzz, arresting
enemy agents, or arresting people who were on the Security
Index, basically. And I participated in two arrests and
thereafter, conducted a surveillance on the Italian Embassy
and then I went back and went to Sioux Falls.
Pimentel:
Yeah, okay. But could you give me your recollection of
meeting Walter Walsh?
Jones:
Well, he looked very much like he does now. He was
heavier than he is now, and he had two Magnum revolvers.
One each on his hips and he had big, big hips. And he was a
gentleman. Everyone loved him. I had seen him earlier at
Quantico, where he had been a Firearms man.
Oh, and an anecdote about guns and stuff. They issued gas
masks and metal helmets of the World War II variety, to us
Agents to go out on our first assignments. Well, you can
imagine the Agent in Charge in Sioux Falls, South Dakota,
when this tall, young kid walks in with a gas mask, helmet,
and a briefcase. And the conversation went like this:
“Mr. Hanni, my name is Courtland Jones.”
“Where the Gott did you get that stuff?”
Pimentel:
(Laughing)
Jones:
I said, “They issued it to me in training school.” He said,
“Dat figures.” He said, “Follow me.” I followed him back to
the gun vault and I haven’t seen the helmet or the gas mask
since. (Laughing)
Pimentel:
(Laughing) Now, the training school you went … attended …
was that at the Department of Justice?
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Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
Page 27
Jones:
It was in the Department of Justice and a small building at
Quantico, which was known as the FBI …
Pimentel:
Right.
Jones:
… Academy. And we held classes in Justice Building, as
well as, other miscellaneous buildings, because there was a
big influx of Agents coming in the Bureau at that time.
Pimentel:
When did you move from K Street to the Old Post Office?
Jones:
We moved from K Street … let’s see, I came back in ’45, ’46
I was on a Tech. We moved from K Street to the Justice
Building, first floor, the area I was in had offices along the
courtyard. We stayed there until, I would say, about 1951 or
1952. And then we went to the Old Post Office in about
1952.
Pimentel:
Oh. Okay.
Jones:
About.
Pimentel:
When I went there, I only spent 11 months there but, boy, in
the winter, the coldest place and then when it was
summertime, the hottest place. It was brutal.
Jones:
Yeah, that was not the best place but I had a parking place.
Pimentel:
Yep. That was good. If you have a parking place you’re in
hog heaven. Any other major cases you worked on?
Jones:
I want to tell you about some of the satellite cases.
Pimentel:
We’re back from lunch and it’s now 1:47 in the afternoon of
February 8th of 2008. I’m here, again, with Courtland J. …
Jones:
Joshua.
Pimentel:
Joshua Jones, in Vienna, Virginia. And we had talked about
his career in the FBI and he told us about the Alger Hiss case
and Judy Coplan, and some of the other matters that he
worked.
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Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
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Pimentel:
Court, you came in in 1941 right at the beginning of World
War II. You didn’t serve in the military?
Jones:
No.
Pimentel:
You were exempt. Anyway, any other stories … you were in
South Dakota, what, one year you said?
Jones:
Three months.
Pimentel:
Three months, rather. And then you were in Oklahoma for
…
Jones:
A couple of years.
Pimentel:
Okay.
Jones:
And then Cincinnati for about three?
Pimentel:
Three years. Okay.
Jones:
Does that make five years?
Pimentel:
Yeah. Anything notable in Cincinnati Division?
Jones:
I can tell an anecdote.
Pimentel:
Sure.
Jones:
I was assigned to a case involving an Army … what did they
call that?
Pimentel:
Selective Service … or deserter.
Jones:
I guess he was a deserter. At any rate, he had walked away.
Pimentel:
An AWOL?
Jones:
Thank you. AWOL guy. He lived in a rural area near
Cincinnati, about fifty miles away, and having spent a lot of
time in rural areas in my life, I knew that if you could find a
store, a particular grocery store, in the general vicinity where
one lives, you can learn a lot.
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Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
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Jones:
So Gene Young and I went up to locate this AWOL guy and
we stopped in the grocery store. Of course, in those days we
wore snap-brim hats and jackets and carried a gun on our hip
and we were obviously cops. So I asked the storekeeper if he
knew the family. “Yes.” I asked him if he had seen the boy
or the man. He was really a boy. “Well, yes.” Was he still
around? “Yes.” The storekeeper said, “If you’re going up
there to apprehend him, you should know that he has a twin
brother. They look exactly alike.”
So, Gene and I were able to locate the house and it was a
small house on a small lot. There was a shed to the side of
the house, about 75 feet or 100 feet away. And there was a
sign on a tree in front of the house that said, “Mule for Sale.”
So I turned to Gene and I said, “What do they know about
mules?” He said, “Nothing.”
Pimentel:
(Laughing)
Jones:
I said, “I know that if you get behind them, that they will kick
you and that you are supposed to be able to tell their age by
looking at their teeth.” So, I said, “Well, let’s give it a try.”
So we went in to the yard and a girl came out. It was my
case so, of course, I did the talking. I said, “Tell me about
your mule.” So she said, “You want to see it?” I said,
“Yes!” So we go to a little shed and there’s a mule in there
and we look at his teeth, and I ask lots of questions. If they
worked the mule; would it pull a plow, just asking lots of
questions. How much? So finally, after I ran out of my
knowledge of mules …
Pimentel:
(Laughing)
Jones:
I said, “Let’s go in the house and talk about the price.” We
had heard noise from the house. Now, mind you, we were
looking for Joe and Joe has a twin brother, Moe. So, of
course, it’s obvious we have to distinguish Joe from Moe. So
we go in the house … lots of activity there, children running
around, mother running around, one man in the house. So to
me, the smart thing to do is not pull your badge and ask for
identification, but wait and see what happens. So we hadn’t
been there long before somebody addressed Joe, called him
Joe.
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Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
Page 30
Pimentel:
(Laughing)
Jones:
We were looking for Joe. We grabbed Joe and yanked him
out of the house and put him in the car and put handcuffs on
him. Joe was a nice kid. He just got lonely.
Pimentel:
Yeah.
Jones:
On the way home, he said, “I should’ve known two guys, all
dressed up, coming out to buy a mule.” (Laughing)
Pimentel:
(Laughing) They never learn. That’s a good story.
Jones:
That’s a cute story.
Pimentel:
It is a cute story. Yeah. Now, in Washington Field, besides
the Alger Hiss and Judy Coplan, did you work anything on
the VENONA matter?
Jones:
Ahh, it was not called VENONA then … but yes, I worked a
bit on Bill Weisband, but he told us to go to hell, so that
didn’t work out.
Pimentel:
Bill who?
Jones:
Weisband. He was an employee of the NSA and had been a
Soviet Intelligence Agent for four years.
Pimentel:
Were you able to convict him or no? No. Couldn’t get
anything on him?
Jones:
Never got anything on him.
Pimentel:
Yeah.
Jones:
I would like to tell you some of the successes in the
developing and operation of sources among the satellites. I
supervised that squad for a year so. After the Communist
took over the governments of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and
the other satellites, well then the Communist sent their own
people abroad. So, we were, by this time we had enough
personnel that we were developing sources if we could and
we were following the activities of all the satellite-like
countries.
30
Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
Page 31
Jones:
The first country that I remember where the Russian took
over their government and took over the consulates, or the
embassies, was that of Romania. One of the Agents that had
the case assigned to him was told by the Army that the …
that the military attaché wanted to stay in this country. But
that he had a problem and that the FBI would give him
counsel because the Army didn’t have jurisdiction.
Pimentel:
(Chuckling)
Jones:
Well, the problem was that this military attaché had bought a
lot of booze and he was expecting the Communists to come
in and he had to dispose of that booze quickly. Well, of
course, we were well aware of the fact that we could not deal
in unlicensed whiskey but we suggested that he find a black
market for it.
Pimentel:
(Chuckling)
Jones:
And, as I remember, he said that he sold gin for 50 cents a
bottle and Courvoisier was a dollar and a half.
Pimentel:
Oh! (Laughing)
Jones:
I learned, later, that he had no problem getting rid of the
booze.
Pimentel:
I’m sure he didn’t. No.
Jones:
Another interesting case … the Army must have … or the …
I say Army, I mean the military attachés in the Pentagon
must have planted this bug through liaison but we learned
that an attaché at the Hungarian Embassy was making
comments that he really liked this country. So Jim Startzel
and Pete Murphy interviewed him and he agreed to cooperate
with us. The problem was that he was a ladies man and that
he had girlfriends all over town. He was difficult to control,
but he did give us the codes and the ciphers and other stuff.
He was recalled home for annual leave and when he went
home he was told that he either had to get married and
straighten up or he was not going to be allowed to go abroad
again.
Pimentel:
(Chuckling)
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Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
Page 32
Jones:
Boldog. His first name was Janus. I’ve been told by some of
my friends that that’s really not his correct name but that’s
the name that he went by. Now, he was a product of the
Communist regime but an opportunist. He started giving us
information and Jim Startzel and Pete Murphy did a beautiful
job handling him. They put a portion of the money that was
designated for him in a bank account and gave him a little
cash. As I said earlier, he was recalled and when he went
home and learned that his status would improve if he
married, he courted a beautiful girl who had served in South
America, who was a staunch Communist, and who’s father
was a Party member.
She and he married and he brought her back to the States.
She was unaware that he was cooperating with the Bureau.
Well, he was recalled again. So the two of them went …
went home just before that invasion of Hungary by the Soviet
Union.
And he expected to return to the States in a couple of months,
he didn’t come. Time passed, a lot of time passed. One day,
Jim Startzel got a phone call from the CIA that said that
Boldog and his wife were in Vienna and would Jim Startzel
get him in the States.
Pimentel:
(Chuckling)
Jones:
Well, Jim did. In the interim, Boldog had informed his wife
that he was cooperating with us. They came to the States; we
had a nice party. Boldog bought some motels, proceeded to
make money, and died. I failed to mention that his wife
became pregnant and she named her daughter after Jim
Startzel’s wife.
Pimentel:
(Laughing)
Jones:
And Pete Murphy’s widow and she are still friends. Isn’t that
a nice story?
Pimentel:
That is a nice story. Yeah. Yeah. It’s incredible. Did you
work Fedora?
Jones:
No.
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Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
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Pimentel:
No.
Jones:
Now, Fedora. I supervised some of that stuff.
Pimentel:
Okay.
Jones:
Had many conferences about Fedora’s bona fides. XXXX
and we used to get together and talk about that a lot. There
were, of course, conflicting opinions as to whether or not he
was a plant. Primarily because most of the information that
he furnished was old.
Pimentel:
Uhm-hmm.
Jones:
And of no real significance. It was throw away stuff. Ahh,
Top Hat, the Soviet military defector in New York, that
information had more depth. Again, it was a matter of
opinion as to whether or not he was a plant.
Pimentel:
Right. Right.
Jones:
It caused problems for the Washington Field Office because
Bill Sullivan was so proud of the sources that New York had
and he kept bugging us to have sources. And we are
probably better off because we didn’t have any sources
because there were no plants, as such. I got along very well
with XXXX, very well. I knew Jim Angleton quite well.
What ever problems arose because XXXX occasionally
operated Agents in the United States, I was able to manage. I
just didn’t tell the Bureau.
Pimentel:
(Laughing)
Jones:
And to talk with my counterpart and then saw to it that the
problem was resolved.
Pimentel:
What about, then, during that period of time where Mr.
Hoover prohibited the Bureau from having contact, or at least
Sam Papich, for example, was precluded from maintaining
liaison with XXXXX.
Jones:
Only for a short time.
Pimentel:
Oh, it was just a short time.
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Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
Page 34
Jones:
Bill … Assistant Director … what the hell is his name …
Sam’s right-hand man; he became an Assistant Director. He
was a nice guy. I’ll think of his name in a moment. How can
I forget his name? (Chuckling)
Pimentel:
It’s okay. (Chuckling)
Jones:
A football player, played for Pittsburg Steelers, strong as a
bull. No, we got along. We just didn’t tell the Bureau these
things. I would never let one of the supervisors write or send
a communication to the Bureau complaining about the
XXXXX encroachment.
Pimentel:
No. No.
Jones:
You’re just asking for trouble.
Pimentel:
Right. Right.
Jones:
Nice guy.
Pimentel:
So you did work very closely with XXXXXXXXXXX, here
again, was in 1945 or ’46, actually ’47 they got started, that
they were behind the learning curve, with their own Intel
services.
Jones:
Well, now, we worked some XXXX cases. We worked cases
where they thought that they’d been infiltrated. And we
could never prove or disprove. I’ve got lots of art work
around that was framed by one of their Agents that they
brought from Germany here, and whom some of the Soviet
defectors claimed were still working for the Soviet Union.
Pimentel:
Uhm-hmm.
Jones:
No, we got along. Well, you gotta get along!
Pimentel:
Sure. Of course. Of course. It’s like this baloney that
Congress, supposedly after 9-11, saying that the FBI and the
XXXXX weren’t talking. It’s bull-cocky because when I
was in the Legat circuit, and even here at Headquarters. we
were always talking. I mean, we shared a lot of stuff, did a
lot of stuff.
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Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
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Jones:
On the top level, they’re all going to hold things close.
Pimentel:
Sure. Sure.
Jones:
But on the working level it works nicely.
Pimentel:
Yeah. How about when you first came into the Bureau in
’41, had you heard about the SIS?
Jones:
Ahh, only to the extent that I was destined to it.
Pimentel:
You were!
Jones:
I was single. I had had French and Spanish in college. I’m
not the type bi-linguist …linguist abilities … low.
Pimentel:
Uhm-hmm.
Jones:
And I was told that I was going to be sent to the Army
Language School and that I had a choice of either going to
the school, either get married or go to the school. Well, the
office knew that I was engaged. So, I called Janice and then
we got married quickly. So I didn’t go.
Pimentel:
You didn’t go.
Jones:
Some of my friends, who went, were down there for four and
five years.
Pimentel:
Right. Right. Some very remote areas and top of
mountaintops …
Jones:
And I was glad that I selected Janice.
Pimentel:
(Laughing)
Jones:
One of my friends was engaged to marry and his fiancée
couldn’t wait.
Pimentel:
Uhm-hmm.
Jones:
So she married someone else.
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Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
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Pimentel:
Oh, geez! Okay, now getting back … kind of jumping
around here. I’m just trying to pick your brain here on some
of the other cases that you might have worked besides
Fedora, Top Hat, and then Jim Angleton, a lot of liaison with
him. Anything else in that period of time of notable
experience from the Soviets or the Satellite countries?
Jones:
Nothing comes to mind at the moment but they probably will
after you leave.
Pimentel:
Uh-hmm. Do you have any write-ups or any books, or any
things that you’ve kept. No?
Jones:
No.
Pimentel:
Okay.
Jones:
I still have my notes from training school.
Pimentel:
(Laughing) They might be worth something to the
Smithsonian someday.
Jones:
(Chuckling) Very elementary.
Pimentel:
Yeah. Did you know Mr. Hoover very well? Or, how was
your relationship with Mr. Hoover?
Jones:
The first time I saw Hoover was [when] he did the swearingin of our class on the first day of training school. I saw him
on occasions when I had anniversaries and I saw him on
occasions when he saw fit to present some award.
Pimentel:
Uhm-hmm. But that was it? No personal relationship?
Jones:
No, I did not have a personal relationship, and I figured he
was too busy to fool with me.
Pimentel:
Were you ever assigned to Headquarters? Never?
Jones:
I avoided it in every way that I could. Well, first of all, I felt
that my family was better off …
Pimentel:
Uhm-hmm.
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Courtland J. Jones
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Jones:
… if I didn’t move around. I was in an ASAC Class and I
got in some sort of trouble after that and that taught me that I
was better off. One of my friends who was in that ASAC
Class inspected me and all he could do was to tell me how
fortunate I was to still be in the Washington Field Office,
when he and his family had had four or five transfers.
Pimentel:
Right. Right.
Jones:
Now, at that point, he may have had a better grade than I did
but I figured that I was better off.
Pimentel:
Okay.
Jones:
I preferred the field work.
Pimentel:
Right. Right.
Jones:
And I think that my biggest contribution to the FBI was my
knowledge of the personnel in the field office that I had
acquired.
Pimentel:
Uhm-hmm.
Jones:
I knew who was capable of what.
Pimentel:
And the rivalry between Washington Field and New York?
Jones:
Well, that was always fun.
Pimentel:
So that goes way back, too, in history.
Jones:
Oh, it goes back to a thing or two. Forrest Putman, do you
know him?
Pimentel:
Forrest Putman? Yes, yes.
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Courtland J. Jones
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Jones:
Ahh, (chuckling) Forest became a supervisor up there about
the time that we had a lot of instances where we were
gathering feed material in double-agent operations. And so,
let me get this, this story straight. So one of Forrest’s Agents
sent down here for us to get some material from one of the
government agencies, and when the Agent went to get it, he
learned that the material was available at the agency’s office
in New York. So the Agent made the mistake of sending an
airtel saying, in effect, “It’s available in New York so you
could get your own feed material.” And I made the mistake
of signing it.
Pimentel:
(Laughing)
Jones:
Thinking it was funny. Well, a couple of years later, we did
the same thing (laughing) and Forrest Putman sent me the
airtel saying, “Get your own material from Washington!” He
was a great guy, a fun guy. He’s in Albuquerque.
Pimentel:
Right. Yeah. He’s in Albuquerque. Yeah.
Jones:
There were a lot of good men in the Bureau.
Pimentel:
Any other big espionage cases?
Jones:
I’m trying to think. We spent a lot of time investigating a
Russian that the XXXX picked up in Germany, who had been
a source for the XXXX, and who also was a source for the
Russians. But we could never prove anything. It’s awfully
difficult to prove things like that.
Pimentel:
Sure. Sure.
Jones:
I’ve read, recently, a couple of books about Oppenheimer …
Pimentel:
Uhm-hmm.
Jones:
… the Manhattan Project …
Pimentel:
Right.
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Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
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Jones:
… and so forth. And, I note that the Bureau never did give
him any clearance and I can comprehend why they didn’t.
But there were so many people who were interested in the
successes in Russia and who bought all of the propaganda
about the value of collective farming and so forth. And who,
subsequently, realized that that was just propaganda. And
who were interested in the Communist Party from an
intellectual stand point, probably, instead of an ideology a la
McCarthy.
Pimentel:
Uhm-hmm.
Jones:
The XXXX had a couple of informants that they thought
were great that we did not think were so great. They had one
that they did not think much of. The man’s name was
Nosienko.
Pimentel:
Uhm-hmm.
Jones:
… that we liked. And he’s still in this country. He’s living
down in North Carolina.
Pimentel:
Uhm-hmm.
Jones:
One of the notable cases involved Igor Orlov. He’s the guy
that I said that they had operated in Germany and that they
brought to this country and who opened up a picture framing
business. His activities in XXXXX and FBI’s interest, has
caught the eye of journalists and there are a couple of books
about that end, include stories about Orlov. Incidentally, I’ve
have a fair library on espionage.
Pimentel:
Uhm-hmm.
Jones:
I’ve got a bookcase that size …
Pimentel:
(Chuckling)
Jones:
… that I’m saving for my son who has no interest in it …
Pimentel:
(Laughing)
Jones:
… probably. Maybe one of my granddaughters will be.
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Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
Page 40
Pimentel:
Jones:
Maybe so. Yeah.
I have an autographed copy of Chambers’ book. It was not
autographed to me. But it was autographed to the father of
Jesse Farr. Jesse had two books. He used to interview
Chambers.
It’s been a great ride. I defend the Bureau, the old Bureau.
Pimentel:
Uhm-hmm. And when you retired in 1974, what did you do?
Jones:
I worked for Mitre Corporation. Mitre was one of a half a
dozen similar organizations that made studies as to the
vulnerability of atomic-energy-powered electrical plants.
And, of course, they were vulnerable. Our group comprised
of four Agents was the only contractor that emphasized the
greatest vulnerability … people.
Pimentel:
People. Right.
Jones:
Guards.
Pimentel:
Exactly. Yep. Guards.
Jones:
People.
Pimentel:
Guards. Yeah. And they still are.
Jones:
Of course they are!
Pimentel:
Still are the most vulnerable part of them. Yep. You did that
for awhile?
Jones:
I did that for about ten months. And then after that I started
working for George Moore down at NOVA, as a, I thought I
was a lecturer, but I was an Adjunct Professor, which sounds
so great.
Pimentel:
Uhm-hmm. Lecturing on what, intelligence work?
Jones:
Interviewing skills.
Pimentel:
Okay.
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Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
Page 41
Jones:
That was my best course and I’d have enough experience
myself and knew enough anecdotes … I never worked as
hard in my life.
Pimentel:
Preparing for those classes, right?
Jones:
Oh, you could not BS those guys and girls. They were there
because they wanted to be.
Pimentel:
Right. Right. And then you’d also mentioned to me Ruger?
Jones:
Well, then Norm McDaniel, John Marshall, Judd Englestat,
Glenn Ing, Cal Ford and I went up to the Ruger Plant up in
Connecticut and were educated about their guns. Then we
worked for their attorneys to get the facts concerning injuries
and deaths where Ruger was sued. And that was not
necessarily pleasant work …
Pimentel:
No.
Jones:
… but it was interesting in that our objectives, of course,
were obvious. What were the circumstances of the death or
injury, and what experience in firearms did the injured or
deceased have?
Pimentel:
Right.
Jones:
And that was a lot of fun. That was easy, just plain
interviewing skills.
Pimentel:
Right.
Jones:
Finding enough people who knew enough about them.
Pimentel:
Right.
Jones:
And the putting it on paper. A lot of travel. But, as I said at
lunch, my late wife went with me when we went to desirable
states in proper weather.
Pimentel:
Uhm-hmm.
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Courtland J. Jones
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Jones:
That was fun. We did that up, ohh, we did it for about ten or
travel years; and the rest of the time, spending in travel or at
the beach.
Pimentel:
Yeah. Any other memorable moments in the Bureau? Other
than the whole time was memorable.
The Alger Hiss – Chambers caper had to be … ?
Jones:
That was fascinating.
Pimentel:
Yeah.
Jones:
That really stirred my deep interest in politics. I avoided
politics in the Bureau. Never sought an angel … I figured
that I would lie low.
Pimentel:
(Chuckling)
Jones:
I’ve seen too many good Agents hitch themselves to a star …
Pimentel:
Right.
Jones:
… who gets wiped out.
Pimentel:
You’re right.
Jones:
The man’s name I tried to remember is Bill Krieger.
Pimentel:
Oh yeah!
Jones:
Now how I could forget Bill, I don’t know. He’s a fine
gentleman.
Pimentel:
Yep.
Jones:
Very good administrator. He’s a very, very good person.
Pimentel:
Yeah. I knew him when he was a Deputy Assistant Director.
Jones:
I think he became Assistant Director.
Pimentel:
Uhm-hmm. Eventually, yeah.
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Jones:
And he was good at it. I would not put this stuff on the tape
there, but the anti-war demonstrations really played hell with
the Bureau.
Pimentel:
Uhm-hmm.
Jones:
Hoover had no idea that we had Agents stand there looking
like they were kids in jeans and that kind of stuff at these
demonstrations. Joe Purvis had told him once and that
Hoover’s reaction was, “Who authorized this?”
Pimentel:
(Laughing)
Jones:
He was really out of touch.
Pimentel:
Yeah. What year, those were the ‘60s, right?
Jones:
Yeah.
Pimentel:
Yeah. I got involved in one demonstration where four of us
were in a car. Here, again, it was on the weekend or
something and four or five of us were told to go out and try
to monitor the situation … 1968.
Jones:
Yeah.
Pimentel:
Or ’69, rather. And we got gassed.
Jones:
Sure.
Pimentel:
Either the police were upset because the gas had come back
at them and, basically the students were making, or the
demonstrators were making fools out of the metropolitan
police, and …
Jones:
And the FBI. …
Pimentel:
Yeah.
Jones:
… if they could.
Pimentel:
Yeah.
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Jones:
And that was a very unfortunate period because you couldn’t
win.
Pimentel:
No. No.
Jones:
And we may be approaching that again.
Pimentel:
Yeah. It’s a possibility.
Jones:
Anti-war this time.
Pimentel:
Yeah.
Jones:
Or anti-Arabs.
Pimentel:
Yeah.
Jones:
It’s inevitable as we saw from Joe McCarthy.
Pimentel:
Yeah.
Jones:
The Bureau’s jurisdiction is so wide and, particularly if you
have an Attorney General who is subservient to the President,
as they all are …
Pimentel:
Right.
Jones:
… they are appointed at their pleasure.
Pimentel:
So the demonstrations were an ugly part, but also a
frustrating part for the Bureau.
Jones:
Of course. It’s frustrating for everybody.
Pimentel:
Yeah. Yeah.
Jones:
The biggest problem … well, there were two big problems
for those of us in Washington Field. One, we were
competing with the newspapers.
Pimentel:
Right.
Jones:
Two, we were competing with the radio.
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Courtland J. Jones
February 8, 2008
Page 45
Pimentel:
Uhm-hmm.
Jones:
And the radio was even worse because of these bright, young
stars at the White House would call the Bureau, who ever
was on duty, and would want to know what was going on.
And say, “We understand that” such and such “is the case. Is
that the truth?” And whenever they called me …
Pimentel:
Yeah.
Jones:
… I said, “I don’t know.”
Pimentel:
(Chuckling)
Jones:
“Why don’t you know?”
Pimentel:
Yeah.
Jones:
They never did. Some of the Bureau Supervisors did.
Pimentel:
Right. Yeah.
Jones:
But they were either kidding or else naïve.
Pimentel:
Hmm!
Jones:
Uh no, we were always a step behind because we had to be
accurate.
Pimentel:
Right. So anyway, I’ve drained you.
Jones:
You have exhausted my knowledge.
Pimentel:
Okay. (Laughing) So, Purvis … Purvis was there till when?
Jones:
Purvis came in, let me think back. Purvis succeeded Tom
Jenkins.
Pimentel:
Right.
Jones:
Purvis was a good Agent in Charge, a superb Agent in
Charge.
Pimentel:
Uhm-hmm.
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Jones:
Tom Jenkins was a good Agent in Charge.
Pimentel:
This is a different Purvis, of course. This is not the Purvis of
the Dillinger days, is it?
Jones:
Oh no.
Pimentel:
No. Yeah.
Jones:
Joe Purvis.
Pimentel:
Joe Purvis, that’s right.
Jones:
But he’s still alive.
Pimentel:
Yeah.
Jones:
The difficulty in any organization is that most people who
rise up through the ranks have an angel who is higher than
they and to whom they are …
Pimentel:
Beholden?
Jones:
… beholden.
Pimentel:
(Chuckling)
Jones:
And it can get frustrating. It’s very frustrating to have a man
in charge who is criminally-oriented and who has no
experience or taste, or recognition for intelligence work.
Pimentel:
Right. Right.
Jones:
That’s terrible.
Pimentel:
It is. Yeah. Yeah. And that happened often.
Jones:
That happened more often than it should have.
Pimentel:
Right. Right.
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Jones:
Now to their credit, we had quite a few people with
background being in charge of criminal work, to come in and
their intellectual curiosity was piqued and they became
interested in intelligence work.
Pimentel:
Right. Right.
Jones:
They were the great guys.
Pimentel:
Anyway.
Jones:
You survive it. Just outlast them.
Pimentel:
Right. Exactly.
Jones:
Did I tell you that I heard from Herb Morgan indirectly?
Pimentel:
Oh, no. Did you?
Jones:
Well, Fred Cassidy died. Fred used to be a supervisor in
Washington Field and was a friend. He had been living in
Florida, and Herb sent a message that both he and Frieda, his
wife, were happy and well and that he was interested in the
death of Fred Cassidy.
Pimentel:
Uhm-hmm.
Jones:
Herb was a good man.
Pimentel:
He was, at that. He was.
Jones:
Bob Torrence died, I guess you know that. It’s been a few
years, though. Hasn’t it?
Jones:
Ohh, a couple of years ago.
Pimentel:
Yeah.
Jones:
There aren’t many of that old squad left.
Pimentel:
No. And, of course, I’d just mentioned at lunch that Don
Fitzgerald just passed away Christmas Day. He was a great
guy.
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Jones:
Now, I don’t know that you have any need for it, but if you
want history on a specific case, that isn’t on the internet or
someplace, I do have a lot of books on this stuff. But I don’t
think you’re going to want it. Well, now, what are you going
to do with this stuff?
Pimentel:
What’s going to happen is I’m going to send this to Sandy
Robinette …
Jones:
Yeah.
Pimentel:
… and she’s going to have it transcribed.
Jones:
Yeah.
Pimentel:
Once it’s transcribed, she’s going to send you a copy to …
for you to look at to add, delete, amend, restrict …
Jones:
Okay.
Pimentel:
… if you want something not included, …
Jones:
Okay.
Pimentel:
… just, you know, put a circle around it and say restrict, or
whatever.
Jones:
My question, what is the ultimate …?
Pimentel:
Ultimately it’s going to go to the National Law Enforcement
Museum. That appears to be the folks who are going to be
the repository for all the interviews and all to do with law
enforcement in the United States.
Jones:
Is that the sole purpose?
Pimentel:
No, no. It’s for historians, researchers, that they can say,
“Oh, I want to know more about Court Jones.” And they can
pull up your interview.
Jones:
Well, I think, from my own standpoint, in seeing some of
these young retirees, that the great FBI Training School could
use some of this material.
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Pimentel:
Of course. Of course. That has been on the table also. As a
matter of fact, …
Jones:
It should be, if I were doing it, I would do it like some of my
lectures. I would have certain points I wanted to bring across
and tell anecdotes because the ways people investigate today
are entirely different than what we did …
Pimentel:
Oh sure. Sure.
Jones:
… five years ago, for instance.
Pimentel:
Yeah. Yep.
Jones:
I don’t know that the average young Agent is interested. I
think not. I remember my interest in the Civil War was only
because my grandfather was in the Civil War. I don’t know.
Archivists are a strange breed.
Pimentel:
Right. Right. But this is going to be made available. It’s not
going to be held just, you know, patently held. It’s going to
be eventually because before it goes to the National Law
Enforcement Museum, the Bureau Pre-Publication Unit looks
at it to make sure that there’s nothing in there secret or
whatever, and to get their imprimatur on it. And then it
comes back to us or to Sandy and then eventually all of them
are going to be in the ex-Agents website as part of the Oral
History Project. There are several on there already.
Jones:
Well, there should be a lot of editing.
Pimentel:
Oh yeah. Yeah.
Jones:
I mean a lot of editing!
Pimentel:
Oh yeah. Yeah.
Jones:
They should take an interview of Jack Danahy and mine and
say it’s that long, combine them into [one].
But it’s worthwhile.
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Page 50
Pimentel:
Oh, I think it is. And we’re trying to interview as many as of
the older fellows as possible because, of course, for example,
to Walt Walsh a little late, where his mind is starting to flow
out there.
Jones:
He did remember those, at least one of those, well, everybody
remembered Jelly Bryce.
Pimentel:
Right.
Jones:
But he also remembered Clarence Hurt, when I described
him.
Pimentel:
Yeah.
Jones:
But God, he’s a hundred years old.
Pimentel:
Right. Exactly. And he’s in good shape. Anyway, I’m
going to call this quits now.
Jones:
Well, I thank you.
Pimentel:
Thank you. Okay. And I will send you a copy of the picture.
The interview is completed here with Courtland J. Jones. It’s
now 2:42 on February 8, 2008.
50