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

CHAPTER VIII

The assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, was the fourth presidential assassination in the United States since 1865. Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, and William McKinley had all been killed in office; three attacks had narrowly failed—on Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 15, 1933, and President Harry S. Truman on November 1, 1950. The Commission noted one president assassinated for every five who had served, and an attempt on one of every three.

Presidential protection in the United States differs fundamentally from guarding a head of state in an authoritarian regime. The American President is simultaneously Head of State, Chief Executive, Commander in Chief, and party leader. He must travel widely, appear before vast crowds, and engage citizens face to face. As Special Assistant Kenneth O’Donnell testified, “The President felt very strongly that the President ought to get out of Washington, and go meet the people on a regular basis.” The protective service must accommodate this tradition.

In a post-assassination memorandum, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover told the President: “Absolute security is neither practical nor possible. An approach to complete security would require the President to operate in a sort of vacuum . . . isolated from the general public and behind impregnable barriers.” Risk could only be calculated and reduced. Presidents had been “understandably impatient” with required precautions, but those precautions had to be accepted.

The Secret Service’s Protective Research Section (PRS) bore central responsibility for preventive intelligence. At the time of the assassination, PRS had only twelve specialists and three clerks. Over twenty years it had accumulated roughly 50,000 cases, indexed manually by name. About 400 were under periodic review; around 100 serious enough for a geographical “trip index file.” A separate album covered twelve to fifteen individuals regarded as unpredictable risks, with copies carried by White House detail members.

PRS criteria for accepting information were, in the Commission’s view, “broad and flexible” almost to the point of incoherence. Sources were told to refer anything that “in any way indicates anyone may have possible intention of harming the President,” with no written guidance narrowing this standard. General files were not indexed geographically, leaving them largely useless for specific trips. The trip index was reviewed on November 8, 1963, at Advance Agent Winston Lawson’s request for Dallas; it contained no names from the Dallas-Fort Worth area, even though Ambassador Adlai Stevenson had been struck by a placard-wielding picket in Dallas less than a month earlier.

Requests to other agencies were equally vague. The Secret Service asked for “any and all information” indicating danger but issued no written criteria. The FBI Handbook required that threats be reported to the Secret Service but specified nothing else. The FBI interpreted liaison narrowly, referring only overt threats; the State Department, CIA, and military intelligence forwarded only their most obvious material.

The FBI nonetheless accumulated substantial information about Lee Harvey Oswald before the assassination. It opened a file in October 1959 when news of his defection reached headquarters. For two years the Bureau reviewed State Department and Office of Naval Intelligence files. In June 1962, Agents John W. Fain and B. Tom Carter interviewed Oswald in Fort Worth after his return; Fain found him “impatient and arrogant,” and a second interview in August did not allay concerns. Fain closed the case, concluding Oswald was not a security risk.

Agent James P. Hosty, Jr., of the Dallas office inherited the case in March 1963 when a former landlady reported that Oswald had been drinking heavily and beaten his wife. This conduct, combined with Oswald’s subscription to the Worker, prompted Hosty to reopen it. By April, the Bureau learned through New York that Oswald had claimed to have distributed Fair Play for Cuba Committee pamphlets in Dallas—Hosty later dismissed this as “stale” and did not verify it.

In August 1963, Oswald was arrested in New Orleans for disturbing the peace while distributing Fair Play for Cuba leaflets and requested an FBI interview at the police station. Agent John L. Quigley did not know Oswald’s prior history. Oswald lied—claiming his wife was named “Prossa,” that they had married in Fort Worth, and had lived there until coming to New Orleans, all false. When Quigley returned to his office, he learned Agent Milton R. Kaack had already been investigating Oswald at Hosty’s behest. Neither field office nor headquarters felt further interviewing was warranted.

The decisive disclosure came during the August 21, 1963 WDSU radio debate with Carlos Bringuier. William Stuckey and Edward Butler revealed that Oswald had defected to the Soviet Union and lived there for three years, “finished him on that program” by linking the Fair Play for Cuba Committee “with a fellow who had lived in Russia for 3 years and who was an admitted Marxist.”

Meanwhile, the FBI tried to locate Oswald after he vacated his New Orleans apartment in early October. On October 10, the CIA reported that an individual tentatively identified as Oswald had contacted the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City. On October 25, the New Orleans office learned Oswald had given a forwarding address in Irving, Texas—Mrs. Ruth Paine’s home. On November 1, Hosty interviewed Mrs. Paine, who confirmed Oswald was in Dallas and, after a moment’s hesitation, that he worked at the Texas School Book Depository on Elm Street. On November 4, Hosty confirmed the employment by telephone. On November 5, Hosty stopped by briefly; Mrs. Paine reported Oswald had described himself as a “Trotskyite Communist.”

Hosty did nothing further between November 5 and November 22. He testified he carried twenty-five to forty cases and other matters demanded attention. He planned to interview Marina Oswald once the New Orleans files arrived, but they had not. He had not learned Oswald’s roominghouse address, and Mrs. Paine did not volunteer it.

Robert I. Bouck, PRS special agent in charge, testified that the cumulative FBI information—Oswald’s continued Soviet Embassy contact, Castro activities, court-martial for illegal possession of a handgun, and unreliability—would have made him “a pretty bad individual.” But Bouck acknowledged no single agency held all this information.

Hosty testified he knew of the President’s upcoming visit and had been reminded twice to report any indication of potential violence, but he did not read the motorcade route in detail or realize it would pass the Texas School Book Depository. Even if he had, he would not have referred Oswald under criteria requiring “some indication that the person planned to take some action against the safety of the President.” Hoover and Alan H. Belmont echoed this: nowhere was there “any indication of a potential for violence on his part.”

The Commission concluded the FBI had taken an “unduly restrictive view” of its preventive intelligence responsibilities. Though criteria did not specifically require referring a defector, the accumulation of facts—Oswald’s defection, pro-Castro sympathies, trip to the Soviet Embassy, lies to federal agents, and employment in a building overlooking the motorcade route—should have moved an alert agency to share concerns with the Secret Service. The judgment was “tinged with hindsight” but aimed at directing future agencies toward a more “imaginative and less narrow interpretation” of their duties.