The FBI has avoided a more active role in the investigation of Southern synagogue bombings in order to avoid giving local police an “excuse for relaxing their own efforts of for evading their own responsibility, “Deputy Attorney General Lawrence E. Walsh said today.
Mr. Walsh replied to a communication from Sen. Jacob Javits in which the New York Republican had urged greater FBI action to stop the bombings. According to Mr. Walsh, who wrote on behalf of Attorney General Rogers, “the acceptance by the FBI of some shadowy responsibility for the investigation obviously could be used by local officers as an excuse for relaxing their own efforts or for evading their own responsibility and in the end it would certainly furnish no basis for ultimate Federal prosecution.”
“By leaving local responsibility unambiguous and unclouded,” the Deputy Attorney General said, “the attention of the nation has been focused upon the officers of the communities directly concerned to measure their response to violence and bigotry. Further, it has seemed obvious that the prosecution of this type of crime would be far more effective, its deterrence of future acts more certain, and its meaning to all the world more clear, if conducted by the outraged communities themselves rather than left to some outside force because of some assumed inadequacy of local will or leadership.”
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