Dallas FBI Agent James Hosty #7
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Lee Harvey Oswald (hereafter LHO) finished typing his “Mexico City Letter” on Nov 9, 1963. It was the final letter of his life. Three days later he mailed it to the Soviet Embassy in Washington DC, where the FBI instantly intercepted it. Dallas FBI agent James Hosty made this letter into the centerpiece of his written statement to the US Congress Church Committee on Nov 14, 1975, seeking to prove that LHO and KGB agent V.V. Kostikov had teamed up in a Communist conspiracy to kill JFK (cf. Hosty, Assignment Oswald, 1996). Here is the full text of Oswald’s “Mexico City Letter”:
FROM: LEE H. OSWALD, P.O. BOX 6225, DALLAS, TEXAS
MARINA NICHOLAYEVNA OSWALD, SOVIET CITIZEN
TO: CONSULAR DIVISION
EMBASSY U.S.S.R.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
NOV. 9, 1963
Dear Sirs,
This is to inform you of recent events since my meetings with comrade Kostin in the Embassy of the Soviet Union, Mexico City, Mexico.
I was unable to remain in Mexico indefinitely because of my Mexican visa restrictions which was for 15 days only. I could not take a chance on requesting a new visa unless I used my real name, so I returned to the United States.
I had not planned to contact the Soviet embassy in Mexico so they were unprepared, had I been able to reach the Soviet Embassy in Havana as planned, the embassy there would have had time to complete our business.
Of course, the Soviet embassy was not at fault, they were, as I say unprepared, the Cuban consulate was guilty of gross breach of regulations, I am glad he has since been replaced.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is not now interested in my activities in the progressive organization Fair Play for Cuba Committee, of which I was the secretary in New Orleans (state Louisiana) since I no longer reside in that state.
However, the F.B.I. has visited us here in Dallas, Texas, on November 1. Agent James P. Hasty [sic] warned me that if I engaged in F.P.C.C. activities in Texas the F.B.I. will again take an ‘interest’ in me.
This agent also ‘suggested’ to Marina Nicholayevna that she could remain in the United States under F.B.I. ‘protection.’ that is, she could defect from the Soviet Union. Of course, I and my wife strongly protested these tactics by the notorious F.B.I.
Please inform us of the arrival of our Soviet entrance visa’s as soon as they come.
Also, this is to inform you of the birth, on October 20, 1963, of a DAUGHTER, AUDREY MARINA OSWALD in DALLAS, TEXAS, to my wife.
Respectfully,
Lee H. Oswald
Despite surface appearances, Jim Garrison labored to show that LHO in New Orleans during the summer of 1963 had worked diligently against Fidel Castro. Instead, LHO worked closely with anti-Castro activists David Ferrie, Guy Banister, Clay Shaw, Gerry Patrick Hemming, and Loran Hall. If so, then since Guy Banister had been a former FBI chief, he would have told LHO that all mail sent to the Soviet Embassy in Washington DC was always intercepted by the FBI.
On that basis I propose that LHO wrote his “Mexico City Letter.” to deliberately alarm everybody in the FBI who read it – just for the fun of it.
Although any serious Embassy letter would name a specific person to receive it, because LHO actually knew nobody at the Soviet Embassy, he used the generic greeting: “Dear Sirs.” This is evidence of the flippant nature of his letter. Aside from that, we read several jibes against the FBI, as follows:
1. This letter continues the charade of a Fake branch of the FPCC (Fair Play for Cuba Committee) in New Orleans started by Guy Banister with the help of David Ferrie, Clay Shaw, Ed Butler, Bill Stuckey, Carlos Bringuier, and LHO. Guy Banister’s goal was to topple the FPCC and Castro, and to infiltrate Castro’s FPCC by using LHO as his spy. On a staged radio program (Latin Listening Post) with Butler, Stuckey, and Bringuier, LHO pretended to be a supporter of Fidel Castro as a secretary of the FPCC. Though J. Edgar Hoover could see that, I suspect that very few FBI agents would guess it.
2. As the summer of 1963 came to an end, Guy Banister sent LHO to Mexico City’s Embassy compound to trick his way into Havana, Cuba. LHO was to use his Fake FPCC credentials provided by newspaper clippings of LHO as an FPCC secretary in jail, on radio, and on TV news. On Fri 27 and Sat 28, Sep 1963 in Mexico City, the Soviet and Cuban consuls agreed that LHO was a provocateur and laughed him out of their offices. However, LHO’s “Mexico City Letter” claimed the reverse – that his trip was basically a success. That was calculated to alarm the FBI.
3. LHO jabbed at the FBI by calling Marina a “Soviet Citizen” in this heading. This could alarm the FBI in the middle of the Cold War.
4. LHO also boasted that in Mexico City he had met “comrade Kostin” (not quite Kostikov). The name didn’t matter – only that he was a “comrade” – in the middle of the Cold War.
5. LHO toyed with the FBI by hinting that he used an alias; that maybe Oswald wasn’t his real name!
6. LHO pretended that he returned to the USA empty-handed only because his visa had expired – not because his efforts to sneak into Havana had failed.
7. LHO jabbed at the FBI by claiming that he had planned to contact the Soviet Embassy in Havana to “complete our business.” But LHO didn’t describe that business because there was actually nothing to describe. It was a jab.
8. LHO’s behavior confirmed Marina’s WC testimony that LHO’s one and only goal in Mexico City was to get into Cuba. LHO blamed the Cuban consul for his failure to get to Cuba – though the Soviet consuls had also sent LHO away empty-handed. LHO was pretending to be friends with the Soviets.
9. LHO blamed his failure on some unnamed Cuban consul for a “gross breach of regulations” and that he was “glad he has since been replaced.” All that was fiction. Actually, LHO had learned the hard way that his homemade credentials were useless as legitimate immigration paperwork.
10. LHO again jabbed the FBI by saying, “the FBI is not now in terested in my activities.” He knew that FBI agent James Hosty had recently visited Ruth and Marina on Nov 1 and Nov 5, because they told him. Just as LHO was faking ignorance that the FBI was spying on this letter, he also faked ignorance about the current FBI interest in his activities.
11. LHO informed the Soviets that he was the FPCC “secretary in New Orleans (state Louisiana)” – but all executives knew that the FPCC never had any recognized branch in New Orleans. Even J. Edgar Hoover would affirm that fact to the WC.
12. LHO falsely claimed that Dallas FBI agent James Hosty had warned him to refrain from FPCC activities in Texas. That was pure fiction, since Hosty and LHO had never met before that letter was sent. On Nov 9, 1963, LHO had only heard about James Hosty from Ruth and Marina. (Probably LHO imagined that James Hosty was tracking him because of his mock FPCC project – but he had no clue that Hosty was really tracking him because the Hosty and General Walker had learned from Natasha Voshinin that LHO had been Walker’s shooter the previous April, cf. Dick Russell, 1992.)
13. LHO falsely claimed that Hosty had offered Marina FBI “protection” to remain in the USA as a defector. Actually:
* Ruth Paine defended Hosty as having said nothing to Marina about protection or defection.
* Ruth testified that Marina never did “strongly protest” anything that Hosty said.
* Ruth testified that LHO was not even present at her Hosty meetings.
* Ruth was angry that LHO had lied about her private meetings with Hosty.
14. LHO mocked the FBI with his phrase, “notorious FBI.” This phrase even irked Ruth Paine.
15. LHO announced the birth of daughter Audrey “to my wife,” i.e., to Marina, that “Soviet Citizen”, hinting that baby Audrey was also a Soviet citizen! Another jab.
So, in my reading, LHO’s “Mexico City Letter,” was a deliberate series of jabs aimed at the FBI whom LHO fully expected to intercept his letter. Yet, FBI agent James Hosty in his 1996 book neglected all these jabs and emphasized only one point – the name of “comrade Kostin.”
James Hosty in 1996 would insist that “Kostin” was identical with “Kostikov” whom he claimed was a known KGB assassin plotting with LHO to assassinate JFK. When J. Edgar Hoover and Alan Belmont flatly denied any such theory, Hosty concluded that they were simply covering up for Kostikov and the Communists – as collaborators. It was a standard radical right-wing doctrine in the 1960s that all of Washington DC had secretly become Communist (cf. the John Birch Society).
Hosty claimed that the FBI, the CIA, the US State Department and the White House all knew about the Kostikov-LHO plot but conspired to hide that fact from America in general and from James Hosty personally. For Hosty, LHO’s “Mexico City Letter,” was nothing less than LHO’s personal confession of Hosty's personal JFK conspiracy theory.
RUTH PAINE AND THE MEXICO CITY LETTER
I was privileged to interview Ruth Paine at the end of 2015 and the beginning of 2016 in the context of a paper on US History at UT Austin for historian H.W. Brands. Ruth told me about her role in the “Mexico City Letter.” She actually respected the FBI and had welcomed James Hosty into her home on Nov 1 and Nov 5, 1963. She was a proud US citizen who would cooperate fully with the FBI.
She willingly told Hosty where LHO was working, and that LHO was living in some unknown room in Dallas. She didn’t tell Hosty LHO’s telephone number because she truly believed that the great FBI could find any phone number in America in a few minutes. If Hosty would have asked for it, she would have given it to him – but he didn’t ask. (Also, Ruth felt sorry for Marina, because LHO had already lost three jobs in the past year alone, so she tended to move slowly to avoid worrying Marina further.)
Yet, on Nov 9, 1963, when Ruth found LHO’s handwritten draft of his “Mexico City Letter” sitting next to her typewriter overnight, she read it and became quite angry. LHO had insulted the FBI and spread lies about them! This was the first time that LHO had ever lied that she knew about, and she was mad.
For example, LHO wrote that the FBI was no longer interested in him. Yet Hosty had visited Ruth twice in the past week alone, and on his second visit Hosty had asked only about LHO. Marina and Ruth had reported it all to LHO. Ruth wanted James Hosty to see this letter on his next visit, so she copied it by hand for Hosty. She was still saving it for Hosty on the day JFK was assassinated.
Michael Paine confirmed Ruth’s story – he was annoyed with Ruth for prying into LHO’s personal life, but Michael thought it was a fiction written to, “Dear Lisa,” not “Dear Sirs.”
In my reading, neither Hosty nor the Paines understood LHO’s “Mexico City Letter.” Not until Jim Garrison had revealed LHO’s secret loyalty to the right-wingers in New Orleans, rather than to Fidel Castro, was it possible to truly grasp the true import of this historical document.
In his WC testimony, James Hosty did not claim that Hoover knew about a Kostikov-LHO conspiracy. But 32 years later in his book, James Hosty boasted that the “Mexico City Letter” was solid proof of his Kostikov-LHO conspiracy theory of the JFK Assassination1
For Dallas FBI agent James Hosty, LHO was a super-spy who had traveled to Mexico City’s Soviet Embassy in order to plot with KGB agent Kostikov to kill JFK, and Hoover knew all about it and tried to keep the truth from Hosty personally. It’s amazing that so few today have recognized the bizarre nature of James Hosty’s lonely CT.
Thank you,
--Paul Trejo
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