Jim Braden's Arrest On November 22

Deputy C.L. Lewis was one of the first Dallas police officers on the scene at the Texas School Book Depository following the assassination.

Within just minutes after the deadly shots were fired, Deputy Lewis confronted a man across the street from the Book Depository, a man whom Lewis thought was "acting suspiciously."

Deputy Lewis questioned the man for several minutes before taking him to the Sheriff's office for further interrogation. The man identified himself as Jim Braden and said that he was in the oil business in Beverly Hills, California. Lewis became even more suspicious when Braden, and said that he tried to identify himself. Instead of producing his driver's license, the common means of identification, the man first out a gasoline credit card instead.

The man who identified himself as Jim Braden strongly protested when Deputy Lewis told him that he would have to take him to the Sheriff's office for further interrogation.

At the Sheriff's office, Jim Braden agreed to make a voluntary statement. Braden, then 48, told the police that he was in Dallas on oil business and had been there for two days. He said he was staying at the Cabana Hotel. Braden said he was walking from the scene of the assassination, a short distance away, down the street by the Texas Book Depository at the time of the assassination. Braden said he had been inside a building across the street from the Depository during an attempt to make a telephone call following the shooting.

Braden was shortly thereafter released by the Sheriff's office. Braden was not fingerprinted, nor was any check made of possible criminal records relating to him.

Two months later, in late January of 1964, Jim Braden was interviewed by two FBI agents at his office in Beverly Hills. The Warren Commission's investigators were then in full swing, and witnesses to the assassination were being questioned by the FBI and other authorities. In his FBI interview, Braden gave the same account as he had given to the Dallas police on the day of the assassination. The FBI's official report on Braden's interrogation further stated that, "Braden has no information concerning the assassination and both Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby are unknown to him."