Dallas FBI Agent James Hosty #1

<photo: Former Dallas FBI Agent James Hosty in 1975 testifying for the Edwards Subcommittee.>

As long-time readers here know, I have suspected Dallas FBI agent James Hosty in a conspiracy with the resigned General Edwin Walker and his Minutemen in Dallas in the JFK Assassination.

I’m familiar with the main literature, of conspiracy theories, including the works by Jim Garrison, Mark Lane, Jim Marrs, Oliver Stone, Harold Weisberg, Robert Groden, Peter Dale Scott, Fletcher Prouty, Anthony Summers, Sylvia Meagher, Edward Jay Epstein, Gaeton Fonzi, Carl Oglesby, Vincent Salandria, and Barr McClellan.  But I don’t rely on any of them for my theory.

I rely especially on the volumes of the Warren Commission (hereafter WC).  I find ample evidence there to pinpoint James Hosty.  Also, Hosty himself published a book entitled, “Assignment Oswald” (1996) in which he claimed to be the lead FBI agent assigned to track Lee Harvey Oswald (hereafter LHO).  That simply wasn’t true although he did ask FBI headquarters for that assignment multiple times and was denied.

Also in that book, Hosty accused FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover of conspiring with the CIA to keep the facts of the case secret, namely, that the Soviets killed JFK.  His book painted himself as a national whistle-blower in that regard.  So it is nonsense for defenders of Warren Commission advocates like Bugliosi and Posner to try to use James Hosty to defend the Warren Commission findings, because Hosty’s position was against the Warren Commission – he accused the Soviets of killing JFK (while Hoover and the Warren Commission repeatedly denied that).

I will show, based on WC testimony that Hosty falsified evidence to FBI headquarters in Washington DC and to the Secret Service Protective Research Section (PRS) to hide information about Lee Harvey Oswald.  The mission of the PRS was to locate individuals who had threatened the US President in any given city.  The PRS relied on local FBI agents to identify those individuals, and would then send Secret Service agents to warn those individuals that that they would be under surveillance when the President came to that city.  Anybody they knew, met or telephoned could also be under surveillance by the Secret Service.  The threatening individual was often advised to just stay at home on the day of the President’s visit.  They were watched.

That PRS strategy had never failed since its first days in operation.  Until Dallas.  What went wrong?

It is an interesting fact that every US city had at least one wacky person who was willing to threaten the life of the President.  Even if they were only joking, the PRS knew that anybody willing to talk about violence was the most likely to actually become violent.  The procedure was simple: (1) identify the spoken and written threats; (2) find the individuals behind them; and (3) sternly warn the individuals before the President came to visit their city.

When it came to JFK, the most interesting fact about the interaction between the Washington DC offices of the PRS and the Dallas branch of the FBI, is that when the PRS asked if there were any people in Dallas who were a potential threat to the President, the Dallas FBI said, “No, nobody at all!”

I will paraphrase here, so that the reader can get a quick overview of the topic before I lather on the WC testimony from high-ranking people in Washington DC.  It was so unusual that a local FBI would have nothing to report on days like this – especially in large cities like Dallas – that the PRS in 1963 asked pointedly – “Are you sure?  Better double-check!” 

In this case, the Dallas FBI returned the answer, “We’re sure.  Nobody in Dallas is a threat to JFK.”

The PRS asked again, “Well, what about last month, when Ambassador Adlai Stevenson was spit upon and struck by protesters in Dallas?”  The Dallas FBI replied, “Those were only college students who were a bit rowdy.  We have set them straight, and they are no threat to the President.”

The PRS asked a third time: “What about this handbill that circulated around Dallas during the Adlai Stevenson incident, which says, “WANTED FOR TREASON: JFK”?  What about the people who published that?  The Dallas FBI replied, “We don’t know who published that, yet.  We’re still looking.  We’ll tell you when he find somebody.  For now, we think it’s only a prank.”

The PRS was finally satisfied.  No FBI agent had never lied to the PRS in the past about these queries, or had ever let the PRS down before, or had ever been wrong before.  So, the PRS accepted the word of the Dallas FBI, and went ahead to plan JFK’s trip to Dallas.

But that, I say, is exactly where Washington DC Secret Service lost control of Presidential Protection in 1963.  The Dallas FBI, I say, deliberately withheld crucial evidence from FBI headquarters.

Many JFK researchers over the past 62 years have tried to explain the role of Washington DC in the tragedy of the JFK assassination by blaming the CIA.  Jason Ward and I will challenge that majority opinion.  We carefully review WC testimony to show how Washington DC was fooled by the Dallas FBI (and the Dallas branch of the Secret Service).  James Hosty and Forrest Sorrels, I will argue, committed treason along with the radical right wing in Dallas led by the resigned General Edwin Walker and his Dallas Minutemen.

Before I pry open the Warren Commission volumes along with James Hosty’s 1996 book, I will first prepare the backstory as told by high-ranking officials from Washington DC, as follows:

1.   DOUGLAS DILLON: US Secretary of the Treasury and Supervisor of the Secret Service in Washington DC, who admitted that a major cause of the JFK assassination was the failure of the Secret Service Protective Research Section (PRS) to obtain correct data from the Dallas FBI about persons in Dallas who were dangerous to the US President.

2.  JAMES ROWLEY: Chief of the Secret Service, who said that US Government systems broke down when the Dallas FBI failed to supply to the Washington DC offices of the PRS all relevant data on Dallas threats.  He said that even WC officer, Congressman Hale Boggs, had found this fact completely strange. 

3.  ROBERT INMAN BOUCK:  Head of the Secret Service PRS.  He testified that the PRS always received a card file of threats to the President in any US city where the SS would accompany the President.  Yet before JFK’s trip to Dallas, the Dallas FBI sent no such cards to the PRS.

4.  ALAN BELMONT: Assistant to the FBI Director.  He tried to defend the Dallas FBI failure to send suspicious names to the PRS on the grounds the FBI had no conclusive evidence that LHO was a Communist or was even violent.

In my next blog post, I will begin a chapter and verse deep dive into of WC testimony from these four, high-ranking Washington DC officials.

Thank you,

--Paul Trejo

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