There is much to review with regard to Dallas FBI agent James Hosty and the JFK Assassination. My review of Hosty himself will probably require five or six parts. Let’s start with Hosty’s sworn testimony on May 5, 1964, before US Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, Senator John Cooper, Congressman Gerald Ford, CIA Director John McCloy and former CIA Director Allen Dulles. I’ll summarize briefly.
1. The FBI had no duties with regard to the President’s motorcade. At noon Hosty was at the corner of Main and Field watching the parade. Then he went to lunch. While at lunch, the waitress told Hosty about the JFK shooting.
2. Hosty ran back to FBI HQ. His boss immediately sent Hosty to Parkland Hospital, where JFK was being treated. When Hosty got to Parkland, his boss called him and ordered him to return to FBI HQ right away, to begin searching files of suspects.
3. So, Hosty returned to FBI HQ and began searching files. Here was the FBI case of Lee Harvey Oswald (LHO) which had been closed in Dallas for months. LHO’s case and Marina Oswald’s case both belonged to James Hosty – but Hosty had no reason to suspect LHO of violence. Hosty had never even spoken to either of them -- until November, 1 1963.
4. Hosty gently introduced himself to Marina at Ruth Paine’s house on November 1, 1963, but no more -- because she just had a baby.
5. Then, on November 5, 1963, Hosty returned to speak at length with Ruth Paine about LHO, because, as he said, LHO had returned to Dallas in early October 1963, and LHO had been in recent contact with the Soviet Embassies in New York and Mexico City. Well, well, well.
6. Anyway, as Hosty was searching through his FBI HQ files for JFK murder suspects, around 1:15 PM, Dallas radios began broadcasting stories about the slaying of Dallas policeman J.D. Tippit.
7. Then, around 2 PM, radios began broadcasting news that his very own case subject, LHO, was a suspect for the Tippit slaying! Then, only fifteen minutes later, radios began broadcasting that the Dallas Police were holding LHO on suspicion of killing JFK!
8. Hosty claimed that he was “shocked.”
9. Hosty’s boss was also upset. LHO had been Hosty’s case. At 3 PM he ordered Hosty to hurry to the Dallas Police Station to participate in the interrogation of LHO.
10. At about 3:15 PM, Dallas FBI agents Hosty and Bookhout arrived in the office of Dallas Police Captain Will Fritz. That’s where LHO was being interrogated. LHO exploded with anger against Hosty! LHO had evidently received his name, number and license plate number from Marina Oswald, and LHO was livid that Hosty had visited her without him present! LHO refused to talk with the FBI.
11. At that point, Captain Fritz alone interrogated Oswald, while Bookhout and Hosty just took notes. (Hosty told the WC twice -- that he destroyed those handwritten notes after they were typewritten later. He said, "that is the procedure.") After those interrogations, James Hosty never met LHO again; that was the first and last time that Hosty had ever met LHO.
12. Now at the end of his WC testimony, the WC asked James Hosty whether the Washington DC Secret Service PRS had ever asked him if the Dallas FBI knew of any dangerous suspects to investigate in Dallas. Yes, replied Hosty, and Hosty told them that he couldn’t find any.
13. Although Adlai Stevenson had been attacked in Dallas only one month previously, those John Birch Society protesters were arrested and warned. They weren’t dangerous.
14. Also, regarding the hostile handbill that circulated around Dallas declaring, WANTED FOR TREASON: JFK, Hosty did acknowledge those handbills to the Secret Service PRS, however, he also told them that he had no idea who published these – and neither did anybody else in Dallas.
OK, I have a lot of questions, as follows:
(A) Like J. Edgar Hoover, Hosty admitted that the LHO case had been closed back in 1962. Hosty had no reason to suspect LHO of violence, he said. Just the same – Hosty did visit Marina at Ruth Paine’s house on November 1, 1963, and he visited Ruth Paine four days later to ask many questions about LHO.
(B) This was because, Hosty says, "LHO had been in recent contact with the Soviet Embassies in New York and Mexico City.” Well, that’s pretty important! Why didn’t Hosty tell the PRS about this when they asked about dangerous people in Dallas? (This is only the tip of the iceberg.)
(C) Back to the JFK assassination; at around 1:15 PM, Dallas radios also broadcasted the slaying of J.D. Tippit. What a day! Then, at 2 PM, radios broadcast that LHO was a suspect in the Tippit slaying. Then, only fifteen minutes later, radios broadcast that the Dallas Police suspected LHO of killing JFK. Hosty claimed that he was “shocked.” Really? Then, why had he been researching LHO?
(D) At 3 PM, Hosty’s boss ordered Hosty to hurry to the Dallas Police Station to participate in the interrogation of LHO. At about 3:15 PM, he arrived with agent Bookhout, there in the office of Dallas Police Captain Will Fritz, where LHO was being interrogated.
(E) Suddenly, says Hosty, LHO exploded at him!
(F) Wait a minute. Hosty never met LHO before; not even once! Now he says that upon sight, LHO exploded at him? What are we missing? Sure, we can retell the story of how, on Tuesday, November 12, 1963, LHO gave the FBI HQ receptionist a hostile note to give to James Hosty, warning him never to meet with Marina unless he is present.
(G) Yet it seems to me that the story about LHO exploding at James Hosty in Captain Fritz's office, merely repeats the story of the angry LHO at FBI headquarters, practically word for word.
(H) There is another possibility. For months I've claimed that all interrogations of LHO at the Dallas Police Station were fake. Not one word was ever written down at the time. We waited for weeks and months to receive reports about what LHO said in those interrogations. More likely, those who were present had coordinated their stories later to tell the WC. I propose that LHO said nothing at all to Hosty; or even to Fritz. It just makes little sense to me that LHO, who was now accused of a double-murder, would change the topic to review last week's tantrum against James Hosty.
(I) At that point, says Hosty, Captain Fritz interrogated LHO, while Bookhout and Hosty just took notes. Really? Then where are those notes? Not the notes written weeks and months later, but the notes written during that hour? The WC never received them. In my opinion, the most obvious reason that the Warren Commission never received them, is that they never existed.
(J) Yes, I know that in the 1990's -- more than a quarter century later -- Hosty claimed that he "found" his handwritten notes after all. And what do you know -- they confirm exactly what he had already said! Yet, Hosty had told the WC twice -- twice -- that he had destroyed those handwritten notes -- and he even explained why he did it. So, Hosty is clearly an unreliable witness.
(K) Finally, WC attorneys asked James Hosty whether the Washington DC Secret Service PRS had asked the Dallas FBI for dangerous suspects to investigate in Dallas. Hosty told them that he couldn’t find any.
(L) As we saw last week, the highest ranking Secret Service and FBI officials in Washington DC were also asked about this. They all agreed that this was where everything broke down.
(M) Hosty told the PRS that the John Birch Society in Dallas had attacked Adlai Stevenson the month before, but they weren't really dangerous. He also told them – point blank – that nobody in Dallas knew the publishers of that hostile handbill, WANTED FOR TREASON: JFK.
Let’s let all this sink in. It’s going to become a lot more complicated after I include claims by James Hosty’s 1996 book, Assignment Oswald. In this bizarre book, James Hosty will blame J. Edgar Hoover, Alan Belmont and the highest levels of the FBI for keeping the truth from him.
Despite all that, Hosty claimed that he finally researched the truth on his own, and he found it, namely, that the KGB had hired LHO to kill JFK. Hmm.
Wait – what’s Hosty’s book again? Assignment Oswald. Wait – did the FBI ever assign James Hosty to investigate Lee and Marina Oswald? If not, then who did? Let’s take an even closer look.
All best,
--Paul