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

Oswald Lookout Card Procedures

In 1960, State Department Passport Office procedures required the creation of a “refusal sheet” whenever circumstances indicated a prospective passport applicant might not be entitled to a U.S. passport; the records section would then prepare a “lookout card” to file in the Passport Office’s central lookout file. When any passport application was received from any location globally, the applicant’s name and date of birth were checked against the lookout file, and a match would trigger appropriate action including possible passport refusal. Lookout cards were removed from applicant files when facts warranted an unquestioned passport grant. On March 25, 1960, a refusal sheet was created for Lee Harvey Oswald, with a notation that he “may have been naturalized in the Soviet Union or otherwise expatriated himself.” An Operations Memorandum dated March 28, 1960, documented the reason for the card’s preparation, advised the Moscow Embassy to take no further action on the Oswald case unless evidence of loss of nationality was obtained, and confirmed an appropriate notice had been placed in the lookout card section to flag any future Oswald passport application submitted outside the Soviet Union. Despite these records, the State Department informed the Commission on May 18, 1964, that no investigation had found evidence a lookout card for Oswald was ever prepared, modified, or removed, and no such card was ever located, with some file entries indicating it was never created. The State Department noted that as of October 1959, it possessed information that could reasonably have prompted preparation of a lookout card for Oswald. The Passport Office employee who created the refusal sheet suggested a possible explanation for the missing card: Oswald’s file was temporarily removed from its storage location between the refusal sheet creation and the normal timeline for lookout card preparation due to additional correspondence from the Embassy, and when the file was returned, staff may have incorrectly assumed the card had already been prepared. The Department noted that if a lookout card had been created on grounds of possible expatriation, it would have been removed and destroyed after the 1961 determination that Oswald had not expatriated, prior to his June 1963 application for a second passport, so the failure to prepare the card had no impact on later administrative actions. Additional regulations for lookout file handling were issued on February 20, 1964, a category for returned defectors (which automatically generates lookout cards) was established on March 14, 1964, and the Office of Security issued a procedural study of the lookout-card system with recommendations on July 27, 1964.

1959 Passport Return and Renewal

This section covers the administrative context and initial steps related to Lee Harvey Oswald’s request to recover his originally issued 1959 U.S. passport after his relocation to the Soviet Union, including U.S. government responses to family inquiries about his status and his formal request for passport return to facilitate his departure from the Soviet Union and return to the United States.

Oswald-Embassy Passport Negotiations

The formal negotiations between Oswald and the U.S. Embassy in Moscow over his passport return request began after Oswald’s mother visited the State Department on January 25, 1961, to ask for help locating her son. On February 1, 1961, the State Department requested the Moscow Embassy inform the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs that Mrs. Oswald was concerned for her son’s safety and wished to hear from him; the request arrived in Moscow via diplomatic pouch on February 10 or 11, 1961. Before the Embassy could act on the request, it received an undated letter from Oswald postmarked Minsk on February 5, 1961, in which he formally requested the return of his U.S. passport, stating he wished to return to the United States if an agreement could be reached to drop any legal proceedings against him, as he believed a valid U.S. passport would help him secure a Soviet exit visa. He noted he had not been required to take Soviet citizenship, was living in Minsk with non-permanent foreigner documentation, and could not leave the city without official permission. The Embassy replied on February 28, 1961, informing Oswald he would need to travel to Moscow in person to discuss passport and expatriation matters. Oswald responded with a letter dated March 12, 1961, received by the Embassy on March 20, objecting to the requirement to travel to Moscow, citing the lengthy and difficult process of obtaining permission to leave Minsk, and requesting that any preliminary questions be sent to him in questionnaire form instead. The provided source text cuts off at the end of this correspondence.