Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

FBI Investigation of Oswald in New Orleans

In mid-May 1963, Agent Hosty checked Oswald’s last known residence and found he had moved. Oswald was tentatively located in New Orleans in June, and Hosty asked the New Orleans FBI office to determine his address and activities. The New Orleans office investigated, located Oswald, and learned his address and former place of employment on August 5, 1963. A confidential informant advised the FBI that Oswald was not known to be engaged in Communist Party activities in New Orleans.

Oswald’s 1963 Passport Application and FBI Inaction

On June 24, 1963, Oswald applied in New Orleans for a passport, stating he planned to depart by ship for an extended tour of Western European countries, the Soviet Union, Finland, and Poland. The Passport Office in Washington had no listing for Oswald requiring special treatment, and his application was approved the following day. The FBI had not asked to be informed of any passport application by Oswald, as it might have under existing procedures, and did not know of the application. According to the Bureau, it did not request that Oswald be placed on a watch list because the facts relating to his activities at that time did not warrant such action, and the investigation had disclosed no evidence that he was acting under the instructions or on behalf of any foreign government.

Oswald’s 1963 New Orleans Arrest and FBI Interview

On August 9, 1963, Oswald was arrested and jailed by the New Orleans Police Department for disturbing the peace after a street fight broke out when he was accosted by anti-Castro Cubans while distributing Fair Play for Cuba Committee leaflets. The next day, Oswald asked the New Orleans police to arrange an FBI interview, and Agent John L. Quigley was sent to the police station. The police had not given Oswald’s name to the Bureau, so Quigley did not know of his prior FBI record during the interview. Quigley found Oswald receptive about his general background but evasive about specific Fair Play for Cuba Committee details. After the interview, Quigley learned that Agent Milton R. Kaack had been conducting a background investigation of Oswald at Hosty’s request, and Quigley gave Kaack a detailed memorandum. Kaack recognized inconsistencies between Oswald’s statements and information already in Bureau files—for example, Oswald claimed his wife’s maiden name was Prossa and that they had married and lived in Fort Worth, and he had told arresting officers he was born in Cuba. On August 22, the Bureau learned Oswald had appeared on a radio program on August 21, and on August 30, William Stuckey reported that Oswald had told him he had worked and been married in the Soviet Union. Neither these discrepancies nor the fact that Oswald had initiated the FBI interview was considered sufficiently unusual to require another interview. Assistant to the Director Alan H. Belmont explained that the Bureau’s interest was in determining whether Oswald’s activities constituted a threat to internal security, that Oswald’s false statements became a matter of record, and that there was no law violated by lying to the Bureau, so the matter would be handled in due course as required by the investigation. On August 21, 1963, Bureau headquarters instructed the New Orleans and Dallas field offices to conduct an additional investigation, and FBI informants in the New Orleans area reported that Oswald was unknown in pro-Castro or Communist Party circles there.

CHAPTER VIII

This chapter covers the FBI’s pre-assassination investigation of Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas and the agency’s decision not to refer Oswald to the Secret Service ahead of President Kennedy’s 1963 Dallas visit.

FBI Pre-Assassination Investigation of Oswald in Dallas

In early September 1963, the FBI transferred principal responsibility for the Oswald case from its Dallas office to the New Orleans office. On October 1, 1963, the Bureau learned from the Oswalds’ New Orleans apartment rental agent that the family had vacated the unit, with Marina Oswald and the couple’s two children leaving in a Texas-registered station wagon. On October 3, Dallas FBI Agent Hosty reopened the case to support the New Orleans office; he checked Oswald’s former neighborhood and the broader Dallas-Fort Worth area but was unable to locate him. On October 10, the CIA notified the FBI that an individual tentatively identified as Oswald had contacted the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City earlier that month, the first indication the Bureau had that Oswald had left the United States. The FBI arranged to follow up with the CIA to verify Oswald’s entry into Mexico, while the State Department Passport Office, which knew Oswald had obtained a U.S. passport on June 25, 1963, did not share this information with either the CIA or FBI. On October 25, the New Orleans FBI office learned Oswald had provided a September forwarding address at 2515 West Fifth Street in Irving, Texas; after receiving this information on October 29, Hosty attempted to locate Oswald, interviewed neighbors on Fifth Street, and learned the address belonged to Ruth Paine. He initiated a limited background check on the Paines with plans to interview Mrs. Paine about Oswald’s whereabouts. On November 1, Hosty interviewed Paine, who stated Marina Oswald and the couple’s two children were staying with her, and Lee Oswald was living alone in the Dallas Oak Cliff area but she did not have his exact address. She disclosed Oswald worked at the Texas School Book Depository at 411 Elm Street, and said she would try to obtain his Dallas address. Hosty gave Paine his name and office phone number, and assured a visibly alarmed Marina Oswald via Paine (as interpreter) that the FBI would not harm or harass her. On November 4, Hosty confirmed Oswald worked at the Depository and had provided Paine’s Irving address as his own, and transferred principal case responsibility back to the Dallas FBI office. On November 5, Hosty visited the Paine residence again; Paine added only that Oswald had recently self-identified as a “Trotskyite Communist,” a statement she found illogical and amusing. Hosty never learned Oswald’s Dallas address or phone number during either interview. Paine later testified she learned Oswald’s Beckley Street roominghouse phone number in mid-October, shortly after he rented the room on October 14, but did not share it with Hosty, assuming the FBI could easily locate him on its own. Hosty took no further investigative action on the case until after the assassination. On November 1, he had received a New Orleans office report containing Agent Quigley’s August 10 jail interview memo noting Oswald provided false biographic information, and planned to wait for New Orleans to forward related paperwork before conducting a detailed interview with Marina Oswald. Official Bureau files confirm no active investigation occurred between November 5 and the assassination. On November 18, the FBI learned Oswald had recently contacted the Soviet Embassy in Washington, and shared this information with the Dallas office, which Hosty received the afternoon of November 22, 1963.