chapter VI

, she failed to report this to Agent Hosty because she thought the FBI was in possession of a great deal of information and certainly would find it very easy to learn where Oswald was living.[C8-116]

Hosty did nothing further in connection with the Oswald case until after the assassination. On November 1, 1963, he had received a copy of the report of the New Orleans office which contained Agent Quigley’s memorandum of the interview in the New Orleans jail on August 10,[C8-117] and realized immediately that Oswald had given false biographic information.[C8-118] Hosty knew that he would eventually have to investigate this, and “was quite interested in determining the nature of his contact with the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City.”[C8-119] When asked what his next step would have been, Hosty replied:

Well, as I had previously stated, I have between 25 and 40 cases assigned to me at any one time. I had other matters to take care of. I had now established that Lee Oswald was not employed in a sensitive industry. I can now afford to wait until New Orleans forwarded the necessary papers to me to show me I now had all the information. It was then my plan to interview Marina Oswald in detail concerning both herself and her husband’s background.

Q. Had you planned any steps beyond that point?

A. No. I would have to wait until I had talked to Marina to see what I could determine, and from there I could make my plans.

Q. Did you take any action on this case between November 5 and November 22?

A. No, sir.[C8-120]

The official Bureau files confirm Hosty’s statement that from November 5 until the assassination, no active investigation was conducted.[C8-121] On November 18 the FBI learned that Oswald recently had been in communication with the Soviet Embassy in Washington and so advised the Dallas office in the ordinary course of business. Hosty received this information on the afternoon of November 22, 1963.[C8-122]

_Nonreferral of Oswald to the Secret Service._--The Commission has considered carefully the question whether the FBI, in view of all the information concerning Oswald in its files, should have alerted the Secret Service to Oswald’s presence in Dallas prior to President Kennedy’s visit. The Secret Service and the FBI differ as to whether Oswald fell within the category of “threats against the President” which should be referred to the Service.

Robert I. Bouck, special agent in charge of the Protective Research Section, testified that the information available to the Federal Government about Oswald before the assassination would, if known to PRS, have made Oswald a subject of concern to the Secret Service.[C8-123] Bouck pointed to a number of characteristics besides Oswald’s defection the cumulative effect of which would have been to alert the Secret Service to potential danger:

I would think his continued association with the Russian Embassy after his return, his association with the Castro groups would have been of concern to us, a knowledge that he had, I believe, been courtmartialed for illegal possession of a gun, of a hand gun in the Marines, that he had owned a weapon and did a good deal of hunting or use of it, perhaps in Russia, plus a number of items about his disposition and unreliability of character, I think all of those, if we had had them altogether, would have added up to pointing out a pretty bad individual, and I think that, together, had we known that he had a vantage point would have seemed somewhat serious to us, even though I must admit that none of these in themselves would be--would meet our specific criteria, none of them alone.

But it is when you begin adding them up to some degree that you begin to get criteria that are meaningful.[C8-124]

Mr. Bouck pointed out, however, that he had no reason to believe that any one Federal agency had access to all this information, including the significant fact that Oswald was employed in a building which overlooked the motorcade route.[C8-125]

Agent Hosty testified that he was fully aware of the pending Presidential visit to Dallas. He recalled that the special agent in charge of the Dallas office of the FBI, J. Gordon Shanklin, had discussed the President’s visit on several occasions, including the regular biweekly conference on the morning of November 22:

Mr. Shanklin advised us, among other things, that in view of the President’s visit to Dallas, that if anyone had any indication of any possibility of any acts of violence or any demonstrations against the President, or Vice President, to immediately notify the Secret Service and confirm it in writing. He had made the same statement about a week prior at another special conference which we had held. I don’t recall the exact date. It was about a week prior.[C8-126]

In fact, Hosty participated in transmitting to the Secret Service two pieces of information pertaining to the visit.[C8-127] Hosty testified that he did not know until the evening of Thursday, November 21, that there was to be a motorcade, however, and never realized that the motorcade would pass the Texas School Book Depository Building. He testified that he did not read the newspaper story describing the motorcade route in detail, since he was interested only in the fact that the motorcade was coming up Main Street, “where maybe I could watch it if I had a chance.”[C8-128]

Even if he had recalled that Oswald’s place of employment was on the President’s route, Hosty testified that he would not have cited him to the Secret Service as a potential threat to the President.[C8-129] Hosty interpreted his instructions as requiring “some indication that the person planned to take some action against the safety of the President of the United States or the Vice President.”[C8-130] In his opinion, none of the information in the FBI files--Oswald’s defection, his Fair Play for Cuba activities in New Orleans, his lies to Agent Quigley, his recent visit to Mexico City--indicated that Oswald was capable of violence.[C8-131] Hosty’s initial reaction on hearing that Oswald was a suspect in the assassination, was “shock, complete surprise,” because he had no reason to believe that Oswald “was capable or potentially an assassin of the President of the United States.”[C8-132]

Shortly after Oswald was apprehended and identified, Hosty’s superior sent him to observe the interrogation of Oswald.[C8-133] Hosty parked his car in the basement of police headquarters and there met an acquaintance, Lt. Jack Revill of the Dallas police force. The two men disagree about the conversation which took place between them. They agree that Hosty told Revill that the FBI had known about Oswald and, in particular, of his presence in Dallas and his employment at the Texas School Book Depository Building.[C8-134] Revill testified that Hosty said also that the FBI had information that Oswald was “capable of committing this assassination.”[C8-135] According to Revill, Hosty indicated that he was going to tell this to Lieutenant Wells of the homicide and robbery bureau.[C8-136] Revill promptly made a memorandum of this conversation in which the quoted statement appears.[C8-137] His secretary testified that she prepared such a report for him that afternoon[C8-138] and Chief of Police Jesse E. Curry and District Attorney Henry M. Wade both testified that they saw it later that day.[C8-139]

Hosty has unequivocally denied, first by affidavit and then in his testimony before the Commission, that he ever said that Oswald was capable of violence, or that he had any information suggesting this.[C8-140] The only witness to the conversation was Dallas Police Detective V. J. Brian, who was accompanying Revill. Brian did not hear Hosty make any statement concerning Oswald’s capacity to be an assassin but he did not hear the entire conversation because of the commotion at police headquarters and because he was not within hearing distance at all times.[C8-141]

Hosty’s interpretation of the prevailing FBI instructions on referrals to the Secret Service was defended before the Commission by his superiors. After summarizing the Bureau’s investigative interest in Oswald prior to the assassination, J. Edgar Hoover concluded that “There was nothing up to the time of the assassination that gave any indication that this man was a dangerous character who might do harm to the President or to the Vice President.”[C8-142] Director Hoover emphasized that the first indication of Oswald’s capacity for violence was his attempt on General Walker’s life, which did not become known to the FBI until after the assassination.[C8-143] Both Director Hoover and his assistant, Alan H. Belmont, stressed also the decision by the Department of State that Oswald should be permitted to return to the United States.[C8-144] Neither believed that the Bureau investigation of him up to November 22 revealed any information which would have justified referral to the Secret Service. According to Belmont, when Oswald returned from the Soviet Union,

* * * he indicated that he had learned his lesson, was disenchanted with Russia, and had a renewed concept--I am paraphrasing, a renewed concept--of the American free society.

We talked to him twice. He likewise indicated he was disenchanted with Russia. We satisfied ourselves that we had met our requirement, namely to find out whether he had been recruited by Soviet intelligence. The case was closed.

We again exhibited interest on the basis of these contacts with The Worker, Fair Play for Cuba Committee, which are relatively inconsequential.

His activities for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New Orleans, we knew, were not of real consequence as he was not connected with any organized activity there.

The interview with him in jail is not significant from the standpoint of whether he had a propensity for violence.

Q. This is the Quigley interview you are talking about?

A. Yes; it was a self-serving interview.

The visits with the Soviet Embassy were evidently for the purpose of securing a visa, and he had told us during one of the interviews that he would probably take his wife back to Soviet Russia some time in the future. He had come back to Dallas. Hosty had established that he had a job, he was working, and had told Mrs. Paine that when he got the money he was going to take an apartment when the baby was old enough, he was going to take an apartment, and the family would live together.

He gave evidence of settling down. Nowhere during the course of this investigation or the information that came to us from other agencies was there any indication of a potential for violence on his part.

Consequently, there was no basis for Hosty to go to Secret Service and advise them of Oswald’s presence. * * *[C8-145]

As reflected in this testimony, the officials of the FBI believed that there was no data in its files which gave warning that Oswald was a source of danger to President Kennedy. While he had expressed hostility at times toward the State Department, the Marine Corps, and the FBI as agents of the Government,[C8-146] so far as the FBI knew he had not shown any potential for violence. Prior to November 22, 1963, no law enforcement agency had any information to connect Oswald with the attempted shooting of General Walker. It was against this background and consistent with the criteria followed by the FBI prior to November 22 that agents of the FBI in Dallas did not consider Oswald’s presence in the Texas School Book Depository Building overlooking the motorcade route as a source of danger to the President and did not inform the Secret Service of his employment in the Depository Building.

The Commission believes, however, that the FBI took an unduly restrictive view of its responsibilities in preventive intelligence work, prior to the assassination. The Commission appreciates the large volume of cases handled by the FBI (636,371 investigative matters during fiscal year 1963).[C8-147] There were no Secret Service criteria which specifically required the referral of Oswald’s case to the Secret Service; nor was there any requirement to report the names of defectors. However, there was much material in the hands of the FBI about Oswald: the knowledge of his defection, his arrogance and hostility to the United States, his pro-Castro tendencies, his lies when interrogated by the FBI, his trip to Mexico where he was in contact with Soviet authorities, his presence in the School Book Depository job and its location along the route of the motorcade. All this does seem to amount to enough to have induced an alert agency, such as the FBI, possessed of this information to list Oswald as a potential threat to the safety of the President. This conclusion may be tinged with hindsight, but it stated primarily to direct the thought of those responsible for the future safety of our Presidents to the need for a more imaginative and less narrow interpretation of their responsibilities.

It is the conclusion of the Commission that, even in the absence of Secret Service criteria which specifically required the referral of such a case as Oswald’s to the Secret Service, a more alert and carefully considered treatment of the Oswald case by the Bureau might have brought about such a referral. Had such a review been undertaken by the FBI, there might conceivably have been additional investigation of the Oswald case between November 5 and November 22. Agent Hosty testified that several matters brought to his attention in late October and early November, including the visit to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City, required further attention. Under proper procedures knowledge of the pending Presidential visit might have prompted Hosty to have made more vigorous efforts to locate Oswald’s roominghouse address in Dallas and to interview him regarding these unresolved matters.

The formal FBI instructions to its agents outlining the information to be referred to the Secret Service were too narrow at the time of the assassination. While the Secret Service bears the principal responsibility for this failure, the FBI instructions did not reflect fully the Secret Service’s need for information regarding potential threats. The handbook referred thus to “the possibility of an attempt against the person or safety of the President.”[C8-148] It is clear from Hosty’s testimony that this was construed, at least by him, as requiring evidence of a plan or conspiracy to injure the President.[C8-149] Efforts made by the Bureau since the assassination, on the other hand, reflect keen awareness of the necessity of communicating a much wider range of intelligence information to the Service.[C8-150]

Most important, notwithstanding that both agencies have professed to the Commission that the liaison between them was close and fully sufficient,[C8-151] the Commission does not believe that the liaison between the FBI and the Secret Service prior to the assassination was as effective as it should have been. The FBI Manual of Instructions provided:

Liaison With Other Government Agencies

To insure adequate and effective liaison arrangements, each SAC should specifically designate an Agent (or Agents) to be responsible for developing and maintaining liaison with other Federal Agencies. This liaison should take into consideration FBI-agency community of interests, location of agency headquarters, and the responsiveness of agency representatives. In each instance, liaison contacts should be developed to include a close friendly relationship, mutual understanding of FBI and agency jurisdictions, and an indicated willingness by the agency representative to coordinate activities and to discuss problems of mutual interest. Each field office should determine those Federal agencies which are represented locally and with which liaison should be conducted.[C8-152]

The testimony reveals that liaison responsibilities in connection with the President’s visit were discussed twice officially by the special agent in charge of the FBI office in Dallas. As discussed in

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