I’ve given FBI agent James Hosty far more space here than any Dallas official this year. This is because, in my opinion, Hosty is very close to the center of the Dallas JFK plot. But he isn’t the center.
As a good soldier and a good FBI agent, James Hosty knew how to follow a leader. He knew the value of a chain of command. Yet at a certain point in his career, James Hosty chose to follow other leaders than J. Edgar Hoover and Alan Belmont. I’m confident of this claim, because his book, Assignment Oswald (1996) drops a bomb on Hoover and Belmont. They were liars, he claims. They deceived all of America because they knew that the Communists had killed JFK, yet they refused to tell the Truth.
What is most interesting about that claim is that it’s exactly the same claim expressed by the Dallas Radical Right as led by Ex-General Edwin Walker – the only US General to resign in the 20th century.
I don’t believe a word of Hosty’s fictional plot by Valeriy Kostikov and Lee Harvey Oswald (LHO) to kill JFK. I don’t believe that Hoover betrayed James Hosty. Instead, it appears to me that Hosty’s head was turned by General Walker. Yet the FBI had originally assigned Hosty to spy on General Walker as one of the key figures of the Dallas Radical Right. We know that because Hosty admitted it on page four of his book, Assignment Oswald (1996).
It is clear to me that Hosty moved toward the side of General Walker’s Commies-did-it JFK CT and away from J. Edgar Hoover’s Lone Nut CT. Perhaps we should explore the dynamics of how this move might have occurred.
H.L. HUNT – THE MAN TO PLEASE
The history of Dallas in 1959-1963 paints the background. The richest man in Dallas was H.L. Hunt, and the main business in Dallas was Hunt’s oil business. Hunt was the solid citizen in Dallas, and Dallas society wanted to be on his good side. Hunt had financed the political campaign of General Douglas MacArthur for President. Yet, Hunt was also a right-wing fanatic with his own right-wing radio program, “Life Line.” He had been a major supporter of Senator Joe McCarthy. He had financed the political campaign of Ex-General Edwin Walker for Texas Governor.
H.L. Hunt was a close, personal friend of General Walker. He once called Walker, “the most honest man I know.” They were both members of the John Birch Society (JBS), and they both operated their own JBS chapters in Dallas. In my political opinion (pending more research), Sheriff Bill Decker, Chief of Police Jesse Curry, Captain Will Fritz, Postal Inspector Harry Holmes and District Attorney Henry Wade, were all involved to some degree with H.L. Hunt and the JBS, if only to stay on Hunt’s good side.
The key operating theory of the JBS was that basically everything “bad” in America was due to a “Communist plot.” That’s why, in my reading, it is no accident that all these high-level Dallas officials spread around town that JFK was killed by a Communist plot. Because those promoting a Communist plot idea had such high profiles in Dallas, the US leaders in Washington DC heard about the rumor within minutes.
Leaders like Dean Rusk, John McCone, Ramsey Clark, Bobby Kennedy, Nicholas Katzenbach, Douglas Dillon, Alan Belmont and J. Edgar Hoover, all scrambled to verify the story by using their spies all over the world. US Secretary of State Dean Rusk was in an airplane on his way to Japan when his staff called him on the airplane telephone to tell him about the Dallas accusations that the Commies-did-it.
Rusk ordered his airplane to turn around and fly back to the USA. In the meantime, he ordered his staff to contact all their connections all over the world, to confirm or deny this rumor. The FBI, CIA, State Department Embassies, Ambassadors – everybody possible – returned the unanimous answer – no Communists were involved.
So – what was going on in Dallas?
US Assistant Attorney General Katzenbach quickly called Texas Attorney General Waggoner Carr for any material proof that the Commies-did-it. Carr admitted that he had no proof, just the general agreement among Dallas officials. Carr offered to get more information for Katzenbach by calling Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade. Wade told Carr that he had seen no material proof – he had only heard the general agreement among high-ranking Dallas officials. Wade offered to get more information for Carr from the Dallas police.
Wade rarely visited the police station, but that evening he did. He didn’t ask for material proof, however, because he knew there was none. He simply told the Dallas chiefs that it was far more difficult to prove that LHO was part of a Commie conspiracy than to charge LHO and him alone for the murder of JFK and Tippit. Besides, he said, the White House wasn’t buying the Communist plot story.
HOOVER TAKES OVER
Both Dean Rusk and Earl Warren spoke to reporters about a possible Radical Right plot. Earl Warren’s famous quote about American “bigots” that day had resounded far and wide. J. Edger Hoover knew that cooler heads must prevail.
Hoover had a thick FBI file on LHO. Hoover knew a lot of facts about LHO from agent John Fain, and a lot of rumors about LHO from agent James Hosty. Hoover also had data from the New Orleans FBI, from the time when LHO himself had called them, to invite them to his jail cell.
Hoover knew, for example, that the alleged FPCC branch in New Orleans was bogus. It was not officially run by the New York FPCC on behalf of Cuba. Rather, Hoover knew that the address of that alleged FPCC chapter was the same building in which Guy Banister had his offices – 544 Camp Street, New Orleans. Hoover had known Guy Banister personally because Banister had been an FBI agent from 1934 to 1954.
Banister quit the FBI in 1954 after joining a Radical Right movement in New Orleans to oppose the Supreme Court’s Brown Decision which would racially integrate US Public Schools. Banister hated the Brown Decision, but his stance was incompatible with FBI policy. So, Banister simply quit the FBI.
Hoover knew that Guy Banister was behind that bogus FPCC chapter, so he knew that LHO was working for Guy Banister, probably to try to infiltrate the FPCC. How can I be so sure? Because, by 4 PM Dallas time, only 3½ hours after JFK was killed, J. Edgar Hoover telephoned Robert Kennedy to tell him that LHO was never a member of the Communist Party. Another hour later, Hoover told Assistant Attorney General Norbert Schlei, that LHO was never a leader in the FPCC.
Let me share that documentation with you. Here is an FBI memo, #5478 from 4 PM on the afternoon of the JFK Assassination:
November 22, 1963 4:01 PM
MEMORANDUM FOR MR.TOLSON
MR. BELMONT
MR. MOHR
MR. CONRAD
MR. DE LOACH
MR. EVANS
MR. ROSEN
MR. SULLIVAN
I called the Attorney General at his home and told him I thought we had the man who killed the President down in Dallas at the present time. I stated the man's name is Lee Harvey Oswald...I told the Attorney General…that we have a case on Oswald as he has been involved in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee…The Attorney General asked if Oswald is a communist. I said that he is not a communist...that it is entirely possible he may have some communist sympathies but, so far as we know, is not a member of the Communist Party.
Very truly yours,
John Edgar Hoover
Director
Also, here is an FBI memo from 5:15 PM.
November 22, 1963 5:15 p.m.
MEMORANDUM FOR MR. TOLSON
MR. BELMONT
MR. MOHR
MR. CONRADMR. EVANS
MR. ROSEN
MR. SULLIVAN
Assistant Attorney General Norbert A. Schlei...called. ...I stated that...the police have Oswald in custody and we are interrogating him at the present time. I stated he...was a member of the FPCC...but that this man never was a leader...
Very truly yours,
John Edgar Hoover
Director
In 1967, Jim Garrison labored long and hard to show that LHO was never a member of a Communist Party and never a leader of any genuine FPCC chapter. Yet J. Edgar Hoover had said the same thing to Robert Kennedy and Norman Schlei only a few hours after JFK was killed. Hoover had a thick file on LHO.
So, there it is from the pen of Hoover himself. Hoover knew – like the rest of Washington DC – that the Commies had not killed JFK. Hoover also knew that LHO, the suspect in custody, was not a Commie and was not an FPCC leader. In my reading, J. Edgar Hoover knew very well that LHO was really working for Guy Banister out of New Orleans, trying to infiltrate the FPCC.
In other words, LHO was really working for the Radical Right and Hoover knew it. In my reading, too, Hoover knew that a Radical Right plot would embarrass the USA and LBJ. So, on that same afternoon, Hoover came up with his “Lone Nut” idea.
DALLAS PUSHES BACK
On the afternoon of JFK’s Assassination, Hoover told Dallas Police officials that the FBI was now in charge of the JFK murder case, and that Dallas must step aside quickly. Hoover boldly announced that LHO was a “Lone Nut” affiliated with nobody – “who had no accomplices who are still at large.”
Dallas officials begrudgingly handed the case over to Hoover. Below their level, however, Radical Rightists spoke to journalists who crowded the Dallas police station that evening. Folks like Robert Klause, Robert Alan Surrey and General Edwin Walker hinted to the press there that LHO might also have been the shooter at General Walker eight months ago. Journalists at Dallas that weekend reported the speculation.
Dallas Deputy Buddy Walthers suggested that Ruth Paine might have been part of a Commie plot to kill JFK, because he had found in her garage “six or seven metal filing cabinets full of the names of Cuba sympathizers.” No such file cabinets were ever located by Dallas officials, or made part of any official inventory, but the rumor persists to this very day.
In New Orleans, Radical Rightists like Guy Banister, David Ferrie and Loran Hall joined East Coast radicals like Joseph Milteer, Johnny Martino, Frank Sturgis and Gerry Patrick Hemming to maintain a steady drumbeat that the Commies-did-it. They added that the Commies had also seized control of the White House and Washington DC to hide their tracks. I find it remarkable how closely the Radical Right fantasy from December 1963 resembles the Communist plot story promoted by James Hosty in his 1996 book.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren concluded that some facts must be hidden from the American public for a lifetime – namely – the real conspiracy to kill JFK. Few people have known the full JFK Truth, but in my opinion, James Hosty did; and he wasn’t about to share that Truth in 1996.
FBI TAMPERED WITH EVIDENCE
Hoover’s Lone Nut CT had become State Dogma before November 22nd was over. It then became the task of the FBI to tamper with all the evidence – the ballistics, the film, the photos, the crime scene, the witnesses, the suspects, even the medical evidence – to erase any and all clues of a Dallas Right-wing conspiracy. Because they were in such a rush, they made lots of mistakes, which are famous today.
The US Government knew who the culprits were in 1963 and 1964, and Warren and LBJ agreed to lock all that evidence away from the NARA until 2039. That is why even the HSCA (1977-1979) could not see that evidence – they lacked a Presidential mandate to see it.
However, in 1992, President GHW Bush signed the JFK Records Act which set the new date of the release of that data to October 2017. This was about 24 months ago. What have we learned? Are we still seeking data to blame the CIA? The Mafia? LBJ? J. Edgar Hoover? The Commies?
In my opinion, in the innermost circle of the Dallas plot to kill JFK we will find three key Dallas citizens: General Walker, Robert Alan Surrey and James Hosty. In my view, this has been the the best-kept secret in US History for over a half-century.
JAMES HOSTY’S ACCUSATION
James Hosty didn’t merely blame the Commies for killing JFK. Hosty also blamed Washington DC leaders who had mocked every Commies-did-it CT. This included Dean Rusk, Alan Belmont, J. Edgar Hoover, John McCone, Richard Helms, Allen Dulles, Llewellyn Thompson, James Rowley and C. Douglas Dillon. James Hosty accused all of them – along with the whole US Government – of covering up the Communist plot to murder JFK.
James Hosty chanted this theme throughout his 1996 book – the US Government had made multiple efforts to conceal the alleged plot by LHO and Kostikov from Hosty himself. Yet Bill Simpich (State Secret, 2014) showed us that a LHO-Kostikov myth began on October 1, 1963, only seven weeks before the JFK murder. Since it preceded the JFK murder by seven weeks, we might call it the original JFK CT.
The CIA immediately recognized it as a fiction on the same day. It seems that James Hosty was unaware of that, and he even unwittingly promoted CIA records containing the false name of “Lee Henry Oswald” as official, as well as a photo of a large, Russian dude as LHO.
HOSTY’S TURN TO THE RIGHT
James Hosty turned on his FBI superiors. How could this happen? By his own admission, James Hosty said that he was largely assigned by the FBI to spy on General Walker in Dallas. The simplest explanation, then, is that Hosty converted from his Yankee Liberal politics to Southern Rebel politics sometime between 1959, when he arrived in Dallas, and 1963. He knew his Dallas politics well.
“In the eyes of the Minutemen, Kennedy was at best a dupe of the Communists, at worst a Communist collaborator.” (James Hosty, Assignment Oswald, 1996, p. 4)
Because he had been specifically assigned by FBI headquarters to monitor General Walker and “his Minutemen” in Dallas, James Hosty was probably the most qualified FBI agent in America to make that statement. (By the way, FBI HQ File 62-107261, labeled, “Minutemen,” with serial numbers #283, #592, #638, #680 and #753 consists of Hosty’s FBI reports linking the Minutemen with Walker.)
So, Hosty’s eyes were wide open with regard to the Radical Right politics in Dallas. In 1996, we find that James Hosty was the first to accuse Valeriy Kostikov of the JFK murder. So far as I know, he is the only one.
In 1962, FBI Agent John Fain, Alan Belmont and J. Edgar Hoover knew that LHO didn’t belong to any dangerous organization. LHO was weird and poor, but he was nobody’s agent. The FBI closed their file on LHO in August 1962. Hoover told the WC that the FBI reopened LHO’s FBI case-file in August 1963, when LHO himself called the FBI from a New Orleans jail cell, demanding a private audience with the FBI. FBI agent John Quigley interviewed LHO but reported nothing important. Hoover read Quigley’s report and concluded that LHO was just “self-serving” (Hoover, WC, 1964).
The next thing we hear about LHO is his visit to Mexico City Embassies from September 25 to October 1, 1963. This was the most wire-tapped phone on earth at the time. LHO made the rounds at the Embassies there, and made a fool of himself, demanding an “instant visa” to Havana with his fake FPCC credentials and a few newspaper clippings. Those Embassies sent LHO away empty-handed.
However – on Tuesday, October 1, 1963, somebody impersonated LHO over the telephone from the Cuban Embassy. This was fully documented by researcher Bill Simpich, in his book, State Secret (2014). Bill Simpich was unable to identify the person or persons who impersonated LHO over that heavily wire-tapped telephone that day, but he ventured a guess, namely, CIA agent David Morales.
Be that as it may – let’s return to James Hosty's book, Assignment Oswald (1996) which refers to this telephone call several times. This telephone call forms the core of Hosty's conspiracy theory that LHO plotted with KGB agent Valeriy Kostikov to assassinate JFK. Hosty’s book shows no knowledge that the October 1, 1963 telephone call to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City, from somebody who called himself “Lee Oswald,” was an impersonation. Hosty seems to be ignorant of that historical fact.
I will venture a speculation: (a) James Hosty was never ignorant of that fact; (b) he knew very well that it was an impersonation, and he knew exactly who had impersonated LHO, because Hosty had long been cooperating with that impersonating Mole; (c) the cooperation was so complete, that James Hosty himself wrote the FBI memo of 10/18/1963 which referred to CIA reports from 10/8, 10/9 and 10/10/1963, all leaked to him by the same Mole; and (d) later, Hosty would fake surprise when the New Orleans FBI sent his own recent memo to him – at his request.
On the contrary, in his 1996 book, James Hosty claimed that he accidentally discovered that LHO tried to contact this wanted KGB assassin, Valeriy Kostikov, multiple times in Mexico City. This was the whole secret to the JFK Assassination, he claimed in his book. This was the secret that J. Edgar Hoover had tried to hide from James Hosty and America. Did Hosty “heroically find” the truth for us?
As Hosty tells it, this surprising fact came to his notice in mid-October 1963 when INS agent Jeff Woolsey accidentally let it slip that he had seen a CIA record saying that LHO had contacted the Russians at the Mexico City Soviet Embassy. Hosty quickly called the New Orleans FBI for confirmation, and they sent him a copy of an FBI internal memo, dated 10/18/1963 which had sourced various CIA reports from 10/8, 10/9 and 10/10/1963. That FBI memo named Valeriy Kostikov as the Russian contact.
Then, about three weeks later, James Hosty beheld an FBI intercepted copy of LHO’s typewritten letter to the Soviet Embassy in Washington DC, boasting about how he had been able to meet with “comrade Kostin” in Mexico City. “Kostin” must be “Kostikov,” thought Hosty.
This was pay dirt, according to James Hosty. This was practically a signed confession by LHO himself that LHO had plotted to kill JFK with help from Communist agent Kostikov. It was all over now. Except one thing. J. Edgar Hoover could not stop laughing. Alan Belmont just covered his eyes and shook his head. Here are Hoover’s exact words from his WC testimony:
Mr. RANKIN: From your study of this entire matter of the assassination and work in connection with it, do you know of any credible evidence that has ever come to your attention that there was a conspiracy either foreign or domestic involved in the assassination?
Mr. HOOVER: I know of no substantial evidence of any type that would support any contention of that character. I have read all of the requests that have come to the Bureau from this Commission, and I have read and signed all the replies that have come to the Commission... and I have been unable to find any scintilla of evidence showing any foreign conspiracy or any domestic conspiracy that culminated in the assassination of President Kennedy.
James Hosty’s Kostikov ploy was first shredded by J. Edgar Hoover in 1964. Fifty years later, Hosty’s Kostikov ploy was again shredded by Bill Simpich with an FOIA release of CIA documents about Kostikov and the impersonation of LHO in Mexico City. Simpich demonstrated that the Mexico City CIA proved within minutes that it wasn’t really LHO.
Whoever impersonated LHO in Mexico City was clearly part of a plot to frame LHO for serious crimes – perhaps the crime of assassinating JFK in only seven more weeks. Further, whoever claimed that LHO plotted with Kostikov in Mexico City – promoted that impersonation. We must seriously ask whether that promotion was knowing or ignorant.
In his 1996 book, Assignment Oswald, James Hosty insisted that LHO plotted with Kostikov in Mexico City to kill JFK. Hosty insisted on this as a fact multiple times in his book, as we have seen. We must seriously question whether Hosty deliberately promoted a deliberate impersonation of LHO in Mexico City, both in October 1963, and in his 1996 book – or whether Hosty was fooled by forces above his head. I cannot imagine that James Hosty acted in ignorance. Hosty had chosen freely.
Regards,
--Paul Trejo