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

Oswald’s May 1961 Letter and Embassy Dispatch

On May 26, 1961, the Embassy sent a dispatch to the State Department reporting it had received Oswald’s May 16 letter, in which he demanded full guarantees he would not be prosecuted under any circumstances if he returned to the U.S., threatened to seek assistance from U.S. relatives if guarantees were not provided, noted his Russian wife would accompany him, and repeated his refusal to travel to Moscow. The Embassy proposed to reply that citizenship questions required an in-person interview, advise on his wife’s immigration procedures, and observed that Oswald’s Soviet internal passport listed him as “without citizenship,” suggesting he had not yet expatriated under Section 349(a)(1) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. The Embassy asked whether Oswald was entitled to U.S. government protection while abroad without evidence of an expatriating act.

State Department July 1961 Citizenship Status Guidance

The State Department responded to the Embassy’s May dispatch on July 11, 1961, noting it was unclear if Oswald’s “without citizenship” designation meant he lacked Soviet citizenship or any citizenship. It stated that in the absence of evidence he had definitively lost U.S. citizenship, he retained that technical status. The Department said the Embassy could use its discretion to provide protection in an emergency, but non-emergency matters should be submitted to the Department, and the Embassy should seek prior State Department advice before granting Oswald U.S. citizen documentation for any application.