Dallas FBI Agent James Hosty #9
The 1996 book, Assignment Oswald, by former Dallas FBI agent James Hosty, offered a JFK conspiracy theory which was first shredded by J. Edgar Hoover in 1964, and then shredded by Bill Simpich in 2014.
In my reading, Hosty’s CT actually shows how close he was to the Dallas plotters. I’ve cited two Warren Commission (hereafter WC) witnesses who have presented scenarios that move us to doubt the honesty of James Hosty’s WC testimony.
First and foremost, Lt. Jack Revill testified to the WC that Hosty admitted to him hours after the JFK Assassination that the FBI knew Lee Harvey Oswald (hereafter LHO) was a Communist and a danger to JFK but withheld those facts from the JFK security team in Dallas and Washington DC.
Revill was astounded – the FBI had never withheld vital information from him in the past. And Hosty didn’t even attempt to explain! This is the side of Hosty’s behavior that has been our focus in this series. I find that it really helps to explain the whole JFK Assassination. From this perspective, Hosty knew far more about the JFK Assassination than he told his FBI superiors in 1963, and far more than he told the WC in 1964.
Hosty also withheld vital security information from the Dallas Police Department during the week leading up to 11/22/1963, and according to Jack Revill he admitted it.
Add to this the research of Dick Russell (1992) who interviewed WC witness Natasha Voshinin, a Russian exile in Dallas. She told him that she called the FBI on April 14th to report that LHO was a prime suspect in the April 10th shooting at Gen. Walker.
Although the FBI never reported any record of that call, the resigned General Walker himself told Senator Frank Church in 1975 that a high-level law enforcement person told him that LHO had been his shooter – “within days” of the shooting. Connecting the dots, we can surmise that James Hosty took Natasha’s call, and instead of reporting it to FBI headquarters, he chose to report it to Walker instead.
After that day, James Hosty tracked LHO quietly for the rest of 1963, not as an official FBI assignment (the FBI didn’t link LHO with the Walker shooting), but as the husband of a Russian national émigré. As a formerly good US Army soldier and a good FBI agent, James Hosty knew how to follow a leader, and he valued a chain of command. Yet at a certain point in his FBI career, James Hosty apparently chose to follow other leaders than J. Edgar Hoover and Alan Belmont.
I’m confident of this observation because his book, Assignment Oswald (1996) smashes the reputations of Hoover and Belmont. He portrayed them as having concealed a Communist plot to kill JFK. Clearly, the Dallas radical right-wing in 1963 led by General Edwin Walker (the only US General to resign in the 20th century) was first to preach that the high command of Washington DC had secretly moved over to the Communist side.
I don’t believe one word of Hosty’s “Kostikov-LHO” conspiracy theory. I don’t believe that Hoover betrayed JFK, the USA, or James Hosty. In my reading, Hosty was manipulated by Dallas right-wing politics, starting with General Walker and his rightist business partner, Robert Alan Surrey. These were the men that Hosty was originally assigned by the FBI to monitor. (We know that because Hosty admitted it on pages 4 and 64 of his 1996 book, Assignment Oswald.)
Apparently. in his duty of monitoring them, Hosty became friendly with them and played bridge with them (said Penn Jones, Jr. in 1966). They apparently found political ideals they could agree on. Perhaps Hosty, too, was alarmed when an Ex-Marine who had once defected to the USSR had recently returned to Fort Worth, USA, with an educated Russian bride, living only a few dozen miles from Walker.
Then, about nine months later, Dallas suffered the Walker shooting. Only three days later (Walker admitted to Senator Frank Church of the Senate Select Church Committee) somebody told him that LHO had been his shooter! (See photo above). So, it becomes easy to imagine Walker stalking LHO every day after that. By what means? By using his Federal contact and bridge partner – FBI agent James Hosty.
Natasha Voshinin told JFK Researcher Dick Russell in 1992 that George De Mohrenschildt told her early Easter Sunday that LHO was the likely shooter at General Walker on April 10th, as George had seen LHO’s rifle. George refused to call the FBI, so she called them. But the FBI never recorded Nathasha’s phone call! So, either she lied to Russell, or some FBI agent in Dallas deliberately neglected to report her call. The latter option makes most sense to me.
How could Walker learn that LHO had been his shooter only three days later? The FBI did not tell the Dallas police to arrest LHO. The Dallas police were still clueless about the Walker shooting at that time. In 1964 Walker swore to the WC that he had never heard the name of ‘Lee Harvey Oswald’ until the day of the JFK Assassination. Yet in 1975 he scratched that testimony and boldly asked Senator Church whether the CIA was somehow involved in the April 10th attempted assassination of Walker!
Walker always believed that at least two people were involved in those shots, and that at least one of them was still at large. He had apparently become paranoid about it.
But in my reading, Hosty’s personal relationship with General Walker can explain how some Dallas FBI agent could take that call from Natasha Voshinin yet choose to conceal her report from J. Edgar Hoover and to tell only General Walker and his team. If so, then Hosty himself had changed his own assignment – he was no longer monitoring General Walker and the Minutemen; his job was now, “Assignment Oswald.”
Hosty in April 1963 asked Alan Belmont to re-open the FBI file on LHO – without mentioning the Walker shooting. Belmont denied that request because no reason was offered. FBI agent John Fain had closed the LHO case in August 1962 – the FBI knew that LHO was nerdy and poor, but he was nobody’s agent. (Belmont was ignorant of the April 14, 1963, phone call to the FBI from Natasha Voshinin about the Walker shooting.)
If Hosty catered to the whims of General Walker, we could begin to reconstruct the events from LHO’s trip to Mexico City, until the JFK Assassination. But let’s step back for some background before we zoom in.
H.L. HUNT – THE MAN TO PLEASE
The history of Dallas from 1959-1963 paints the background. The richest man in Texas was H.L. Hunt, the Dallas-based oil tycoon. All of Dallas high society wanted to stay on Hunt’s good side. Hunt had financed the political campaign of General Douglas MacArthur for President in 1948 and 1952. Hunt also sponsored the right-wing radio program, Life Line. Hunt sent large donations to Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950’s. Hunt also financed General Walker’s campaign for Texas Governor in 1962.
H.L. Hunt once called General Walker, “the most honest man I know.” They were both members of the John Birch Society (hereafter JBS), and each chaired his own JBS chapter in Dallas. In my reading, likely suck-ups in these JBS chapters would include SS agent Forrest Sorrels, Sheriff Bill Decker, Chief of Police Jesse Curry, DPD Captain Will Fritz, D.A. Henry Wade, Assistant D.A. Bill Alexander, Postal Inspector Harry Holmes, and FBI agent Hosty.
Dallas was known as a right-wing city. Supporters of George Wallace were joined by the White Citizens Council, the John Birch Society (JBS), and the armed, militant, Minutemen. The Minutemen in Dallas felt privileged to have General Walker himself as their leader. (After all, he had been acquitted by a Grand Jury for his role in the deadly Ole Miss riots of 1962.)
All over the US the Minutemen were armed and they trained often in preparation for a Communist invasion; possibly from Cuba. They typically followed the JBS paranoia that the US was secretly becoming Communist – and as Hosty said, that JFK himself had become a secret Communist.
Since the Communists were blamed for everything bad in the US, it was no surprise when JFK was assassinated that all of these high-level Dallas officials spread the news to every news outlet in America that the Communists had killed JFK. The US leaders in Washington DC heard this 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 whether this was true or false. They contacted their spies, ambassadors and agents from all over the world.
US Secretary of State Dean Rusk was in an airplane to Japan when his staff called to tell him about the Dallas news that the Communists killed JFK. Rusk ordered his airplane to return to the US, and he ordered his staff to contact every US spy in the world, to confirm or deny this claim as first priority. The FBI, CIA, State Department – everybody possible – all returned a unanimous answer – not the Communists!
So – what was going on in Dallas?
Since Atty. Gen. Robert Kennedy was stunned by the assassination of JFK, the man who took quick action was Assistant A.G. Nicholas Katzenbach. He called Texas A.G. Waggoner Carr for material proof that the Communists killed JFK. Carr admitted that he had no material proof, only the unanimous opinion of high-ranking Dallas officials. So, Carr called Dallas D.A. Henry Wade.
Wade had nothing material, either. So, although he rarely visited the Dallas police station, that evening he did. Yet, he found no material proof. So, Wade finally informed all high-ranking Dallas officials that Washington DC was not buying their Communist plot theory without material proof. Therefore, Dallas must find another party to blame, or charge LHO alone for the murders of JFK and Tippit.
HOOVER TAKES OVER
Dean Rusk and Earl Warren suggested to reporters a possible radical right-wing element. Earl Warren said, “A great and good President has suffered martyrdom as a result of the hatred and bitterness that has been injected into the life of our nation by bigots.” J. Edgar Hoover had a thick FBI file on LHO – from FBI agent John Fain in 1962 to FBI Agent John Quigley in the summer of 1963.
LHO had personally called the FBI from his jail cell – probably to place his Fake FPCC branch deeper into the public record. Hoover knew that LHO’s FPCC branch in New Orleans was a Fake with no solid connection to Cuba or to the New York FPCC. He testified this to the WC in 1964.
Hoover also knew that the address of that Fake FPCC branch was Guy Banister’s address: 544 Camp Street, New Orleans. Hoover knew Guy Banister well since he had worked for Hoover as an FBI chief for 20 years and suddenly quit the FBI in 1954 to enter New Orleans politics in opposition to the Supreme Court’s Brown Decision to racially integrate US public schools. But opposition to the Brown Decision was incompatible with FBI policy, so Banister quit the FBI.
Hoover also knew that Banister had been trying to infiltrate Castro’s FPCC since 1961. So, Hoover could see that Guy Banister and LHO started this Fake FPCC branch in New Orleans to infiltrate the FPCC. This best explains how – only 4½ hours after JFK was killed – J. Edgar Hoover informed Assistant A.G. Norbert Schlei that LHO was not a real FPCC officer. Here is Hoover’s FBI memo from 5:15 p.m. on 11/22/1963:
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
Hoover had a thick file on LHO, so he was certain that this suspect was not a real FPCC officer and not a real Communist but was working with Guy Banister in New Orleans in a plot against the FPCC. In my reading, Hoover rightly recognized LHO as part of a right-wing movement – but he also knew that this radical right plot to kill JFK would embarrass the USA during the peak of the Cold War. So, within hours, Hoover came up with his “Lone Shooter” idea. Don’t blame the Communists, but don’t blame the Radical Right-wing, either. Just blame the “Lone Shooter”.
DALLAS PUSHES BACK
Soon after the JFK Assassination, Hoover and Rusk told the world that LHO was a Lone Nut, unaffiliated with anybody, and “had no accomplices who are still at large.” Dallas officials protested! They continued to tell the swarms of journalists at the Dallas police station that the Communists killed JFK! Folks like Robert Klause, Robert Alan Surrey and General Walker even told the Dallas press that LHO was the likely shooter at General Walker eight months previous! We have those evening and morning news articles.
Dallas Deputy Buddy Walthers told the press that Ruth Paine might have been part of a Communist plot to kill JFK, because he found in her garage “six or seven metal filing cabinets full of the names of Cuba sympathizers.” No other Dallas police ever saw those filing cabinets nor were they ever part of any official DPD inventory, but the rumor persists to this very day.
Dallas Deputy Roger Craig testified to the WC that some dark-complected man driving Ruth Paine’s station wagon picked up LHO from the TSBD building only minutes after the JFK Assassination and hurried away.
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 publicly preach that the Communists killed JFK and had long ago seized control of the White House.
But since the truth was now a matter of National Security during the Cold War, Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren concluded that several facts had to be hidden from the American public (and thus from the whole world) for at least 75 years. Warren, Hoover, Dulles, and LBJ knew the full JFK Truth – and in my reading, so did General Walker, Robert Alan Surrey, James Hosty, and their minions.
FBI SCRUBBED EVIDENCE FOR HOOVER
Because of LBJ’s support, Hoover’s Lone Nut doctrine had become State Dogma before November 22nd ended. It then became the immediate duty of the FBI to scrub all evidence to conform to that Lone Nut Dogma. The ballistics, the photos, the film, the crime scene, the witnesses, the suspects, even the medical evidence – everything had to be scrubbed to erase any and all clues of anything other than a Lone Nut assassin. Yet, because the FBI was rushed, they missed a few steps, as many writers before Jim Garrison had already noticed, e.g., Mark Lane (1964); Joachim Joesten (1964); Bertrand Russell (1964); Harold Weisberg (1965); Edward Jay Epstein (1966); Thomas Penn Jones Jr. (1966).
In my opinion, the innermost circle of the Dallas plot to kill JFK had three key Dallas figures: the resigned General Edwin Walker, Robert Alan Surrey and James Hosty. Surrounding these three were four high-ranking Dallas officials: SS agent Forrest Sorrels, Sheriff Bill Decker, Chief of Police Jesse Curry, and Captain Will Fritz. There were also assorted minions like Dallas Postal Inspector Harry Holmes, and a few Deputies and Officers who were also Dallas Minutemen.
JAMES HOSTY’S ACCUSATION
James Hosty went further than merely blaming the Communists for killing JFK; Hosty also named his own bosses, Alan Belmont and J. Edgar Hoover, as well as many other leaders in US Government. James Hosty accused them of covering up the Communist plot to murder JFK – because they were secretly Communists themselves.
Throughout his 1996 book, James Hosty repeated the nonsense that the US Government had tried hard to conceal the Kostikov-LHO plot; especially from Hosty personally. That aside, Bill Simpich (State Secret, 2014) showed in detail that the Kostikov-LHO myth really began on October 1, 1963, seven weeks before the JFK Assassination, by a Mole inside the CIA!
Somebody knew of LHO’s plans to visit the Mexico City Embassies in late September 1963. As Jim Garrison ably showed, only Guy Banister, David Ferrie, and Clay Shaw knew what LHO was doing in Mexico City. But who else would they trust with that data? Jeff Caufield (2015) used Garrison’s early work to show that Banister shared that data with his political ally against the Brown Decision – Ex-General Walker.
Walker’s known militant followers included Gerry Patrick Hemming, Loran Hall, and Frank Sturgis – who personally recruited two CIA rogues: E. Howard Hunt, and David Morales.
IIRC, Bill Simpich guessed that David Morales was the likely Mole who made that phone call from the Cuban Consulate to the Soviet Embassy on October 1, 1963. Only somebody inside the CIA in Latin America, someone like Morales, could have known enough about the Mexico City CIA protocol to be a genuine Mole.
WHY DID HOSTY TURN TO THE RIGHT?
It seems that James Hosty betrayed his FBI superiors. His FBI assignment was actually, “Assignment Walker.” James Hosty had become an expert on the topic of “General Walker and his Minutemen” in Dallas, and he wrote much about them in FBI HQ File 62-107261, labeled, “Minutemen,” with serial numbers #283, #592, #638, #680 and #753. The core Minutemen doctrine could be stated in a single sentence; as Hosty wrote:
“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)
There, in a single sentence, was sufficient motive for any patriotic militant to consider the assassination of JFK. Nevertheless, the 2015 work of Bill Simpich completely undermines James Hosty’s 1996 fiction about a Kostikov-LHO plot to kill JFK.
Hosty as the Mole’s accomplice had no clue that the CIA high command in Mexico City had declared that crucial telephone call was an impersonation and so started a Mole Hunt only one hour after that phone call ended. So, the Mole’s accomplices used that Mole-trapped CIA 201 File on LHO to write the CIA memos of 10/8 and 10/10/1963 which contained the Mole-trapped name of Lee H-e-n-r-y Oswald, and a description of LHO as an athletic Russian man, complete with photo.
Based on those Mole-trap-tainted CIA memos, an accomplice from the Miami FBI responded by composing (or relaying from Hosty) the FBI memo of 10/18/1963 which linked LHO with Kostikov but also called him Lee H-e-n-r-y Oswald. Hosty said he asked the New Orleans FBI for their latest data on LHO, and they sent him this FBI memo of 10/18/1963 – which claimed that LHO had conspired with a suspected KGB assassin.
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 memo saying that LHO had contacted the KGB at Mexico City’s Soviet Embassy. Then Woolsey added that he should never have said a word – it was classified CIA data! But Hosty ran with it – he immediately called the New Orleans FBI about it, and in late October they sent Hosty a photocopy of an FBI memo dated 10/18/1963 which had cited CIA memos from 10/8 thru 10/10/1963 – naming Kostikov and Lee H-e-n-r-y Oswald together. Hosty on that day concluded that LHO must be up to no good and decided to locate him via Ruth Paine.
In mid-November 1963, James Hosty read the FBI intercepted copy of LHO’s letter to the Soviet Embassy in Washington DC, boasting about how he had been able to meet with “comrade Kostin” in Mexico City. This was proof! It was practically a signed confession by LHO that he and Kostikov had plotted to kill JFK! Eureka!
Except one thing – J. Edgar Hoover and Alan Belmont could not stop laughing. 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 CT about Kostikov-LHO was shredded by J. Edgar Hoover in 1964. A half-century later, James Hosty’s CT was again shredded by Bill Simpich. Simpich carefully demonstrated that the Mexico City CIA had proved within an hour that the caller really could not be LHO.
Whoever impersonated LHO in Mexico City had apparently selected LHO to be a Patsy who could be easily condemned as a Communist. After all, he boasted that he was an FPCC secretary, and then he failed in his mission to enter Havana to help assassinate Fidel Castro.
LHO was playing with the wrong bunch of fellows.
Thank you,
--Paul Trejo
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