Not in Your Lifetime: The Defining Book on the J.F.K. Assassination (60 page)

The Assassinations Committee investigated another instance of strange FBI behavior regarding Oswald and Agent Hosty. Oswald’s address book, seized after his arrest, contained Hosty’s name, address, telephone number, and car license number. This was not necessarily compromising, for it had quickly become known that Hosty visited Marina in search of Oswald shortly before the assassination, and Marina was to explain that she passed information about Hosty to her husband. Nevertheless, when agents typed up the address book’s contents to send to the Warren Commission, the reference to Hosty was missing. Only later, following independent reports and in the light of Commission interest in Oswald’s relationship with the FBI, did the Bureau confirm the existence of the Hosty notation. The Assassinations Committee investigated the omission and concluded that “one or more FBI agents sought to protect Hosty from personal embarrassment by trying … to exclude his name from the reporting.” (HSCA Report, p. 186–; see also Report, p. 327 and CD 205, CD 385, V.112, V.242; and Malley, HSCA III.507–.)

Letter to Soviet Embassy: Report, p. 739; (on Mrs. Paine’s desk) III.14–; XVI.33, 443.

Note 4
: In an affidavit for the Senate Intelligence Committee and as he repeated in an interview for this book, former colleague Agent Carver Gayton quoted Hosty as having told him and colleagues that he had listed Oswald as a PSI [Potential Security Informant]. Hosty maintained, though, that he had never met him (Gayton affidavit for Senate int. Cttee, January 30, 1976, released 1994, NARA 157-10002-10267 & int. Gayton by Robbyn Swan)

350
Note 5
: On their own
initiative, Hosty and a colleague ignored the order and preserved the draft of the letter to the Soviet Embassy.

351
     Hosty and “bombs”: interview with Earl Golz,
Dallas Morning News
, August 30, 1978; Post-office box: XXII.717.

ACLU meeting and Paine: XI.403 and 11.408.

Oswald writes to Communist Party: XXII.70.

352
Note 6
: The postal inspector guessed that someone might have telephoned the change-of-address to the New Orleans sub-post office—that the writing was that of a post-office clerk. There was no further investigation, just a weary comment by Warren Commission lawyer Wesley Liebeler: “Well, in any event, we will add this to the pile.” The postal inspector’s guess, even if it was right, changed nothing. Oswald was in Dallas and had himself already arranged for mail to be forwarded. (VII.289–308, 525–530.)

Note 7
: Those who spoke of Oswald’s calls in a foreign language were Mary Bledsoe, the landlady at the house in which he first stayed, Arthur C. Johnson, husband of the landlady of the second rooming house, and Hugh Slough, who also roomed there. Bledsoe and Slough believe the calls included at least one to each address by a man. (Slough mentioned this for apparently the first time in a 2006 press interview. (Bledsoe/Johnson: VI.400–; X.307; Slough:
Dallas Morning News
,
March 9, 2006, & see Russo,
Live by the Sword
,
op. cit.
, p. 269.)

Enco manager: XXVI.250–; CE 2820.

353
     Louisiana operator: CD 75.180–.

Note 8
: The camp in question was at Lacombe, close to Slidell, one of a number of Cuban exile camps around Lake Pontchartrain during the period. The Lacombe property was controlled by William McClaney, who with his brother Mike, had operated out Havana during the heyday of gambling before the Castro revolution. The House Assassinations Committee found no evidence that the 1963 McClaney operation in Lousiana was linked to the crime syndicate. For information on this camp and others see
HSCA X.71–, 185, Sen. Int. Cttee.,
Performance of Intelligence Agencies
, p.
11–, Russo,
Live by the Sword
,
op. cit.
, p. 183–, & 1998 edition of this book, pp. 252, 324.

354
Note 9
: There was a report that a young man calling himself Harvey Oswald walked into the offices of the Selective Service System in Austin, Texas’ capital city, on September 25. He supposedly told Mrs. Lee Dannelly, the assistant chief of the administrative division, that he had been discharged from the Marine Corps under “other than honorable conditions” and hoped to get the discharge upgraded on the basis of two years’ subsequent good conduct.

The proprietor of a supermarket in Irving, the Dallas suburb where Marina Oswald lived, one Leonard Hutchinson, said that he had been asked two weeks before the assassination to cash a check for $189 made out in the name of “Harvey Oswald”—the same name reportedly used in the Austin sighting. A nearby barber, who said he cut the hair of a man who looked like Oswald, reported having seen him entering the same supermarket.

On November 9, reportedly, a man calling himself Lee Oswald visited a Dallas car showroom to discuss buying a used car, then rattled the salesman by test-driving one too fast. The account was corroborated by two of the salesman’s colleagues, one of whom quoted “Oswald” as having said that in view of the high prices he might have to go “back to Russia where they treat workers like men.” One salesman said “Oswald” returned to the showroom just days before the assassination.

Western Union’s night manager in Dallas, a Mr. Hamblen, was sure Oswald had been a customer who collected money orders several times and—in the second week of November—sent a telegram. The customer had identified himself with a “Navy ID card and a library card.” A statement by a colleague supported Hamblen’s account.

On November 1, reportedly, a young man had drawn attention to himself while buying rifle ammunition at Morgan’s Gunshop in Fort
Worth—he boasted about having been in the Marine Corps. The three witnesses at Morgan’s thought the man had looked like Oswald. Similar reports included the manager of what had previously been a gun store who recalled an early November visit by a man who resembled Oswald accompanied by a wife and two children, one an infant. The couple had conversed in a foreign language. This “Oswald” had wanted the firing pin on his rifle repaired. An anonymous caller told the police that the alleged assassin had had a rifle sighted at Irving Sports Shop. Dial Ryder, an Irving Sports employee, found a customer ticket that bore the name “Oswald”. The work done had involved drilling holes for a telescopic-sight mounting.

There were reports of an “Oswald” seen at the Sports Drome Rifle Range on November 9, the day after the rifle was probably retrieved from the Irving Shop. A number of witnesses described a man who had been an excellent shot but drew attention to himself by being loud and obnoxious. Dr. Homer Wood, who was at the range that day with his young son, told the author in 1978 why he had felt obliged to report what he had seen. “On November 22, in the afternoon,” Dr. Wood said, “I was watching the television at home. As soon as I saw Oswald on TV I said to my wife, ‘He looks like the man who was sitting in the booth next to our son, out at the rifle range.’ … When my son came home from school, I purposely didn’t say anything to him. Well, he also looked at the television and he spoke to me quickly, saying, ‘Daddy that looks just like that man we saw at the range, when we were sighting in our rifles.’ ” Wood’s son, who had been thirteen years old in 1963, recalled the man mentioning that he was using a 6.5-mm Italian rifle with a four-power scope. Years later, after he, too, had become a doctor, the son still thought the man he saw at the range had been Oswald. The marksman left the range, he said, accompanied by “a man in a newer-model car.”

In October, when the real
Oswald had just returned from Mexico, according to a teacher, she disturbed three men firing a rifle on her land near Dallas. The owner, a teacher, said one of the men had looked like Oswald, another of them “Latin, perhaps Cuban.” She reportedly found a 6.5-mm Mannlicher-Carcano cartridge case on her land and handed it over to the FBI. Laboratory tests showed it had not been fired from the Carcano found in the Book Depository. The teacher said one of the men had been “Latin, perhaps Cuban.” Some of the other witnesses cited above also spoke of the man they saw having been accompanied by a man they thought Latin. (Dannelly: Report, p. 732; XXIV.729–; Hutchinson: X.327; XXVI.178; Barber: X.309; car showroom: Report, pp. 320, 840; XXVI.450; X.340, 345, 347–; XXVI.430, 577, 682, 702, 703, 704, 664; Western Union: Report, 332; XI.311; X.412; XXI.774, 745, 752–; Exhibits 3005, 3006, 3015;
Dallas Times-Herald
, November 30, 1963;
Dallas Morning News
, December 1, 1963; Morgan’s Gunshop: XXIV.704; previously gun store: XI.253, 262; Report, p. 317; XXII.546–; XXVI.456; Irving Sports Shop: XXIV.329–; Report, p. 315, XXII.525/531; XI.224–; (screws) I.483. Sports Drome: Report, p. 318; X.370–; X.380; X.357, 373; XXIV.304; Dr. Wood: int., 1978; X.386; XXIII.403; XXVI.368; teacher: int. Mrs. Lovell Penn by researcher Penn Jones, June 1975; and Mannlicher bullet, CD 205.182.)

354
     Inspector: Sen. Int. Cttee., Performance of Intelligence Agencies, p. 91.

Note 10
: Another piece of information suggests that someone other than the real Oswald used his identity in New Orleans well over two years earlier. In 1963, right after the assassination, the FBI was contacted by the manager of a New Orleans Ford Motors franchise, Oscar Deslatte. The name Oswald had struck a chord in his memory, and a check in his order files turned up a docket—which the FBI duly preserved—showing that a prospective purchaser using the name Oswald negotiated to buy Ford trucks in January 1961.
Deslatte’s Oswald, an American accompanied by a swarthy Cuban, tried to purchase ten trucks that month during the buildup to the Bay of Pigs invasion—a time when U.S. intelligence agents and their Cuban protégés were buying supplies and equipment for the operation.

The real Oswald had of course been on the other side of the world, in the Soviet Union, in early 1961. Oswald is a common enough name, and one would be inclined to see this episode as another red herring—were it not for the identity of the anti-Castro group that wanted to buy trucks from Deslatte. Its name, clearly legible on the docket, was “Friends of Democratic Cuba,” and men at that organization link directly to the story of the authentic Oswald. A vice president of “Friends,” Gerald Tujague, had employed the young Oswald as a messenger in 1955 and 1956—around the time he was a cadet in the Civil Air Patrol under David Ferrie. Guy Banister, moreover, the former FBI agent alleged to have manipulated Oswald in his Fair Play for Cuba Committee activity in summer 1963, had been on the board of directors of “Friends” in 1961.

Why Oswald’s identity would have been used by anti-Castro activists at such an early date is a puzzle unless—if they had access to Oswald’s identification documents and knew he was out of the country—they at that point simply thought it a useful pseudonym. In June 1960, after Oswald’s departure for the Soviet Union, an FBI memo issued in Director Hoover’s name warned of “a possibility that an imposter is using Oswald’s birth certificate.” Perhaps, in an FBI alert to the possibility that the Soviets might make use of Oswald’s I.D., this reflected merely routine caution. Yet the FBI and other agencies were to resume exchanging reports referring to the birth certificate after Oswald returned from Russia. The original of his birth certificate never did turn up. As we saw earlier, meanwhile, it seems that a phony certificate had been prepared for Oswald in 1955, when he tried to join the Marine Corps while underage.

Former Warren Commission attorney David
Slawson said years later that he and colleagues had been unaware of the “imposter” correspondence. It had perhaps been withheld, he thought, because of “a general CIA effort to take out everything that reflected on them.” The CIA, the record shows, had known the birth certificate was missing as early as May 1960, when FBI information about it was circulated to several Agency departments. On the relevant document, the relevant passages are emphasized and the words “Oswald took his birth certificate with him” underlined. (Deslatte: CD 75.677 and int. by New Orleans District Attorney’s Office, 1967; “Assassination Chronicles,” Vol. 1, Issue 4, December 1995; Purchase form: FBI file no. 89-69-1A6, released 1979).

Tujague: HSCA X.134; IX.101.

Banister: articles of incorporation of FODC, filed at Louisiana Secretary of State’s office, May 17, 1967.

“Imposter” warning: CD 294B; Hoover memo to State Dept. Office of Security, June 3, 1960.

other agencies: Edward Hickey to John White, March 31, 1961; XVIII.373, State Department document, July 11, 1961; see also John Newman,
op. cit.
, pp. 143, 216, 266, 269, and
VF
, December 1994. Also of possible relevance are XXII.99, XVII.728, XVII.685; and FBI Director Hoover, (New York) memo May 23, 1960, FBI file no. 105-82555, unrecorded before serial 7; Slawson:
New York Times
, February 23, 1975; record shows: John Newman,
op. cit.
, p. 160.

“Oswald” at DRE meeting: CD 205.646–.

355
Note 11
: The citizen who recalled this incident was Harold Reynolds. González left Abilene soon after the assassination, and was reportedly last heard of in Venezuela. (article by Earl Golz,
Dallas Morning News
, June 10, 1979).

Note 12
: De Varona stayed on November 15 at the New Orleans home of Agustín Guitart, the uncle of Silvia Odio, whose account of an encounter with a man identified as “Leon
Oswald,” in the company of men who said they were anti-Castro fighters, is the subject of the pages that follow. De Varona was in New Orleans to attend a meeting of the Cuban Revolutionary Council. (HSCA X.62)

Odio: interviews with author, 1978, 1979, 1993, 1994; HSCA Report, p. 137– and HSCA X.19–; also Warren XI.327, 386; XXVI.362, 472; see especially study in Meagher,
op. cit.
, p. 376–; XVI.834; CD 1553; “Dallas: The Cuban Connection,” article in
Saturday Evening Post
, March 1976.