O.K., LET'S CUT, STOP RIGHT THERE, THAT'S GOOD. CUT. O.K., HERE …

[18 Camera roll 336. Donald Thomas recordist. Speed. Mark.]

The Sovereignty commission was an agency of state government. It was not a big agency, it included the, uh, director and at one time a publicity director, no more than three investigators, they were not armed, they had no police power. The only thing they were asked to do was get information from any source they could. And when I say information, we were trying-—at least, I can speak about when I was director, I can't speak about prior to that— but, uh, we tried to get information in advance on what might happen, like for instance if there were uh, a group was planning a boycott of a school, or if they were planning to go into a place and, and stir up any kind of trouble somewhere, where we could alert the local law enforcement personnel to be on guard. And by doing that we feel like we averted a lot of situations that could have gotten out of hand. I know in several cases we were able to uh, get people to, both races together uh, in a situation where they were at an impasse. And whenever I was invited to come in I became the third party, and through my contacts and both groups, I could either find out what exactly would it take, then I could make a recommendation. Say, well if this works, fine, if it doesn't work, blame me.