FBI Agent James Hosty #4
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James Hosty published a book 33 years after the JFK Assassination, namely, Assignment Oswald (1996). The title seems to claim that the FBI had “assigned” James Hosty to the case of Lee Harvey Oswald (LHO), but that’s a stretch.
Actually; FBI headquarters had assigned Hosty to track Ex-General Edwin Walker – the only US General to resign in the 20th century. After he quit the US Army after 30 years of stellar service, Walker clashed with JFK, especially at Ole Miss University on September 30, 1962, to oppose racial integration laws there.
(The rumor that JFK fired Walker is incorrect. JFK had offered Walker a new post in Hawaii, but Walker refused it. Walker had resigned in late 1961 because he was prevented from circulating radical right literature among his troops – among other personal reasons. He moved to Dallas and ran for Governor of Texas in 1962, backed by none other than oil billionaire H.L. Hunt).
Anyway, at the racial riot in Ole Miss in 1962, Walker lost so that after two were killed and hundreds were wounded, the first Afro-American student, James Meredith, began classes at Ole Miss the very next day. JFK and RFK should have sent Walker to prison, instead, they rashly sent him to a military insane asylum. That drew huge protests from liberals as well as conservatives. Walker was quickly released, and when he arrived at Love Field the next week, the US Radical Right rallied to nominate him for US President. (See photo).
In late January 1963, a Grand Jury acquitted Walker because his brilliant lawyer, Robert Morris, argued that Walker was not insane, and did not deserve to be sent to an insane asylum. He returned to Dallas, and there became the leader of that branch of the militant Minutemen.
J. Edgar Hoover wanted Walker tracked every day, and Dallas FBI agent James Hosty was assigned to track Walker, not Oswald. The file on Oswald had been closed in 1962 by the FBI and was not on anybody’s radar at that time.
Let’s establish this fact quickly by using the words of James Hosty himself. Here’s what he wrote on page four of his 1996 book:
My caseload in the four-man counter-intelligence squad in the Dallas office was dominated by right-wingers. I spent much of my time tracking the movements and actions of both Klan members and members of former US Army General Edwin Walker's Minutemen. (Hosty, 1996, Assignment Oswald, p. 4)
Not Oswald – Hosty was assigned to “right-wingers” and “General Edwin Walker’s Minutemen.” Historians know that the coast-to-coast Minutemen organization was founded by Robert DePugh from Missouri, who published their national magazine, On Target. DePugh taught – along with the John Birch Society (JBS) that Communists were already taking over the US. His Minutemen stockpiled weapons in order to take the USA back by force.
But James Hosty called them “General Edwin Walker’s Minutemen” because, as was explained to me by former Minuteman Harry Dean in 2011, the Minutemen were so secretive and so underground, that DePugh kept no membership list. So, there was almost no central control, and they organized themselves into small, local cells. Each local Minuteman squad basically selected its local leader. In Dallas, they selected Ex-General Edwin Walker.
Hosty deliberately wrote, “former US Army General,” knowing that this title was used for retired U.S. Generals. Walker himself made a point to refer to himself as resigned rather than retired. He was proud of the fact that he resigned.
After JFK and RFK had tossed Walker into that insane asylum after the deadly Ole Miss riots in 1962, Walker had no further chance of a political career except among the Radical Right, but Hosty wrote his book for ordinary conservatives and so concealed those facts.
James Hosty added this about the agenda of the Dallas Minutemen:
Convinced there was a Communist hiding under every bush, the Minutemen had been quietly and discreetly arming themselves with an impressive arsenal of weapons. In the eyes of the Minutemen, Kennedy was at best a dupe of the Communists, at worst a Communist collaborator. (Hosty, ibid.)
Yes – in Dallas the Minutemen following General Walker widely regarded JFK as a Communist collaborator that is, a traitor. Such a movement would quickly propose a handbill that read, WANTED FOR TREASON: JFK, circulating around Dallas. Hosty seems to distance himself from that political movement in Dallas, but as we will eventually see – that distance was shorter than it seems at first sight.
James Hosty always portrayed himself as a loyal FBI man – and yet he claimed in his book -- and also in his testimony in the 1986 BBC "Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald” that J. Edgar Hoover and Alan Belmont had betrayed him, personally! Here is how Hosty described the Dallas FBI office atmosphere around two weeks before JFK arrived in Dallas in November 1963:
We were all painfully aware of United Nations Ambassador Adlai Stevenson's visit to Dallas, just two weeks before, on October 31. During this visit, right-wingers had heckled and jeered him following his speech to a local group... (Hosty, ibid.)
History also shows that at this Dallas humiliation of Adlai Stevenson in late October 1963, that handbill, WANTED FOR TREASON: JFK, also circulated in Dallas at that event. According to historian Chris Cravens (1992), UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson and his people had rented the Dallas Memorial Auditorium (about a mile from Dealey Plaza) for Adlai’s event which he titled, “UN Day.”
Adlai evidently underestimated the activism of the Radical Right in Dallas for whom the UN was a purely Communist organization. For the Minutemen, Adlai Stevenson was a pure Communist. Now, according to a standing John Birch Society rule, no Communist must be allowed to finish a speech in any town where the JBS members were able to prevent it.
Cravens documented that the day before Adlai was to appear, the resigned General Walker and his team of Dallas rightists had rented the same auditorium. Walker titled his event, “US Day.” Their task, said Walker, was to prevent Adlai from finishing his speech in Dallas by all non-violent means. They were to bring party noisemakers, and to shout wildly and continuously in their seats or the aisles and loudly make their own speeches from the audience seats.
Also, reported Cravens, Walker had instructed his followers to attach to the ceiling an enormous banner, rolled up with string. When the string was pulled on cue, the banner would unfurl and on one side it would reveal a JBS slogan, “US out of the UN!” and on the other side, another JBS slogan, “UN out of the US!” In my own interviews with Larrie Schmidt in 2012, he confirmed that he and his JBS mentor, Joe Grinnan, helped to install that ceiling banner.
Walker’s plan to undermine Adlai Stevenson was unleased the very next night on October 24, 1963. Larrie Schmidt led his band of college students to protest with banners outside the stadium, and though Walker was not present that night, his people obeyed his orders thoroughly so that Adlai was famously prevented from completing his speech.
Fast forward to November 22, 1963, when the big news that morning was that JFK would drive in his limo through downtown Dallas to the Trade Mart to speak there. Encouraged by their victory over Adlai, we might imagine that the Dallas Radical Right felt bold enough to strike again. But Hosty wrote about his conversations with fellow FBI agents at the Dallas FBI office on the morning of November 22, 1963:
Among the agents this morning, everyone was discussing this Right-wing element in Dallas and the fact that in all likelihood a threat to the President would come from that direction. (Hosty, ibid.)
James Hosty knew the activities of the Dallas Radical Right and the “members of former US Army General Edwin Walker's Minutemen.” Hosty knew Walker's business manager, Robert Alan Surrey at a social level as a Bridge partner (said Penn Jones, Jr., 1965), and as officially assigned to track General Walker, it is certain that Hosty knew what Walker was doing at all times. Yet Hosty would not be as open in his following pages as he was in his opening pages.
Here is the puzzle. FBI agent James Hosty's main job was to track the Radical Right in Dallas, yet he decided on his own early in 1963 to devote valuable time tracking an enemy of General Walker – Lee Harvey Oswald (LHO), a young ex-Marine who had defected to the USSR and then boldly returned to Fort Worth and Dallas with his Russian wife.
Why? One logical explanation is that Ex-General Walker and Robert Alan Surrey were frankly alarmed by the arrival of a Red Defector into their neighborhood and told Hosty of their worries.
JAMES HOSTY TRACKED LHO FROM MARCH TO NOVEMBER 1963
Although FBI agent John Fain had closed the FBI case file on LHO in August 1962, Hosty asked to open it again in March 1963, based on the information from Dallas Postal Inspector Harry Holmes that LHO had subscribed to a newspaper, The Worker, known to be published by the Communist Party out of New York.
J. Edgar Hoover was asked about this by the Warren Commission (WC). Here is what Hoover told the WC:
Mr. HOOVER: There are many people who read…The Worker, and you certainly can't brand them as hazards to the security of the country or as potential assassins. It is in that area that I am particularly concerned that we don't become hysterical and go too far in restricting the citizens of our country from exercising their civil and constitutional rights.
So, the FBI denied Hosty’s request to be assigned to the closed case of LHO. More was needed. Do not re-open the LHO case file.
We should expect, then, that Hosty again asked to re-open the LHO case when in the Spring of 1963, Dallas Postal Inspector revealed that LHO had purchased weapons over US mail. Yet even this was legal – the FBI would not investigate the thousands of Americans who purchased weapons over the US mail. More was needed.
In a few weeks, Hosty again asked to be assigned to the LHO case file on rumors that LHO was distributing FPCC (Fair Play for Cuba Committee) pro-Castro handbills right there in Dallas! FBI headquarters were shocked. The FPCC in Dallas? Unheard of! They investigated immediately. No. It was a false alarm. There was never any FPCC activity in Dallas. Do not re-open the LHO case file.
Finally, however, FBI headquarters allowed Hosty re-open the FBI case file on LHO, in the Summer of 1963. FBI Assistant Director, Alan Belmont, testified to the WC that Hosty was allowed to re-open the FBI case file on LHO, but didn’t remember the date. But it wasn’t in June, because LHO in June was under the jurisdiction of the New Orleans FBI office. Here is what Belmont told the WC:
Mr. DULLES: ...After the case was marked closed in Dallas, there was this incident in New Orleans…of the FPCC pamphlets, and then...an open case was started...
Mr. BELMONT: The agent, Fain…who handled the case, closed the case [in August 1962] after two interviews with Oswald …He closed the case, as he felt there was no further action to be taken. The purpose had been satisfied. Headquarters agreed…In March 1963, Agent Hosty received information in Dallas to the effect that Oswald had been in communication with The Worker, the east coast Communist newspaper…He also received information, as I recall it, that Oswald had been in communication with the FPCC, so there were two incidents that aroused his interest. In June 1963 our New Orleans office likewise received information that Oswald had communicated with The Worker or was on a subscription list for The Worker. So that the case was [eventually] revived in Dallas by Hosty.
I emphasize here that FBI Assistant Director Alan Belmont heard of Hosty’s request starting in March 1963. This suggests that, even though Hosty had not yet been assigned to Oswald, he had been spying on LHO anyway – and most likely on the influence of Walker and his Minutemen. The rumor about a Dallas FPCC turned out to be false, yet let’s ask – who would spread such a false rumor about a Red Defector? Who would just hate the idea that a defector from the Marines to the USSR would return to the USA with a Russian wife and settle in Dallas, Fort Worth?
DETOUR TO DICK RUSSELL'S RESEARCH:
According to famed JFK researcher Dick Russell (The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1992) the Dallas FBI would hear about the crimes of LHO on the early morning of Easter Sunday, April 14, 1963.
It was from a woman who would become a witness for the WC. A Russian émigré in Dallas named Natasha Voshinin called the FBI to say that Russian émigré George DeMohrenschildt had just left her house after telling her and her husband Igor (another WC witness) that LHO had been the shooter at General Walker only four days ago.
The Walker shooting was still big news in Dallas. George had told the Voshinins, but he refused to tell the police or FBI because he did not want to be detained from his lucrative oil exploration contract in Haiti. So, Natasha called the Dallas FBI and told their offices about what George told her.
Did the Dallas FBI call the Dallas Police to arrest LHO for questioning? No, they did not. Did the Dallas FBI report this to FBI headquarters? No, they did not.
Actually, high-ranking FBI officers testified to the WC repeatedly that the FBI had no clues at all that LHO might be a violent person. They never dreamed that LHO had been Walker’s shooter in April 1963 until Marina Oswald confessed that fact to the Secret Service on December 3, 1963.
So, though Dick Russell reported Natasha Voshinin’s story, the FBI never heard of it, and no WC attorney asked her about it. Despite all this, on April 24, 1963, only ten days after Easter Sunday, LHO moved out of Dallas anyway – away from James Hosty – on his way to New Orleans.
BACK TO JAMES HOSTY'S TRACKING OF LHO:
The next time that the FBI heard about LHO was August 10, 1963, when LHO himself called the New Orleans FBI to come to interview him inside a New Orleans jail cell! LHO had been arrested for street fighting with a Cuban anti-Communist while handing out FPCC flyers. Why would LHO call the FBI on himself? Alan Belmont himself admitted, “I simply do not know why.”
In any case, the New Orleans FBI had no choice but to re-open LHO case file in August 1963. They also sent copies of their records to the Dallas FBI, since Dallas had been the previous city in which LHO had lived. Then, in late September 1963, LHO visited Mexico City’s Cuban Consulate and Soviet Embassy, seeking a quick visa into Cuba (testified Marina) based on newspaper clippings saying he was an FPCC Secretary. The consuls there laughed in LHO’s face. His name was not on their list. So, LHO went to the USSR Embassy for clout – and that visit was carefully tracked by the CIA in Mexico City.
In early October, LHO returned to Dallas, back into the jurisdiction of FBI agent James Hosty. LHO moved into a cheap rooming house, while his wife, more than eight months pregnant, now lived in Irving, Texas, with her friend, Ruth Paine, who had helped Marina arrange for free natal care at Parkland Hospital. LHO began to visit Marina on the weekends.
Back to James Hosty. In his book he notes that on October 25, 1963, he got a message from INS agent Jeff Woolsey that LHO had met with a KGB assassin in Mexico City. That was the last straw! Hosty stepped up to investigate LHO – but he did not tell the FBI about this report from the INS agent! (This is one of the puzzles in his book.) Hosty quickly got as much data from the New Orleans FBI as possible (and the WC published that correspondence).
Hosty chose to approach LHO now. But where was he? Hosty would start with Marina Oswald at the home of Ruth Paine. Since she was a Russian national, the FBI allowed him to interview her on that basis. He began by visiting the neighbors in Irving, Texas, and learned that Marina had recently given birth to her second child. On November 1, 1963, Hosty only introduced himself kindly to Ruth Paine and Marina. But asked Marina nothing, since she was a new mother, and tired.
Yet on November 5, Hosty visited Ruth Paine alone, and asked her several questions – not about Marina, but about LHO. Where did he work? Where did he live? What were his political beliefs? Hosty began closing in.
Forward to November 9th, Veteran’s Day weekend at Ruth Paine’s house; there LHO spent hours typing a one-page letter on Ruth’s typewriter. The letter was addressed to the Soviet Embassy in Washington DC. LHO casually left a copy on Ruth’s desk overnight, and she read it. LHO had written that “the FBI is no longer interested in me.” But Ruth exclaimed to the WC, that was a lie! The FBI was just at her house four days ago! She made a handwritten copy of that letter to give to James Hosty on his next visit.
On November 12, LHO mailed this letter to the Communist Party in Washington DC. The FBI always intercepted letters addressed to the Soviet Embassy in Washington DC. So, the FBI intercepted it and they made a Xerox copy (which is now WC Exhibit CE-15). On that same date, an angry LHO walked into the Dallas FBI office and demanded to see James Hosty! How dare he speak with LHO’s wife without him present! Hosty wasn’t in. So, LHO gave the receptionist a note of warning to Hosty to never do that again, or else.
In mid-November, preparing for JFK’s trip to Dallas, the Secret Service PRS asked James Hosty about any dangerous people in Dallas. Hosty told them that there were none. The Secret Service PRS then asked the Dallas FBI who had published the hostile handbill, WANTED FOR TREASON: JFK. The Dallas FBI told them that nobody in Dallas knew. At 12:30 PM on November 22, 1963, JFK was assassinated in Dallas, and 90 minutes later, LHO was arrested and taken to the Dallas Police Station. All other suspects were now released.
SUMMARY
The 1963 history of LHO reveals that James Hosty struggled to track LHO starting in March 1963 and continued throughout the year. Yet, when the Secret Service PRS asked for names of dangerous people in Dallas, Hosty refused to name LHO! This became a repeating theme for WC attorneys. “Why didn’t the FBI tell the Secret Service about LHO in Dallas?”
WC attorneys repeatedly asked James Hosty. They even asked J. Edgar Hoover as well as FBI Assistant Director Alan Belmont. Belmont gave the longest answer, basically repeating the others – LHO appeared to be harmless.
So, the WC attorneys asked him, “Why did the FBI track LHO all during 1963 if he was harmless?” Belmont contradicted himself – LHO appeared to be dangerous.
J. Edgar Hoover was asked the same questions and he basically the same – the FBI didn’t tell the Secret Service about LHO because he was harmless – but they tracked LHO all year because he was dangerous.
Hosty said the same. This was the official FBI position. FBI Headquarters in Washington DC knew that if they failed to defend Hosty, then the entire FBI would be blamed for failing to report LHO to the Secret Service. So, the FBI had to say that James Hosty was right – as self-contradictory as it was
In later posts I will quote chapter and verse of the WC testimony of J. Edgar Hoover, Alan Belmont and James Hosty to show all this in stark relief. I will post only some highlights today. Let’s read from Hosty himself as he testified to the WC that LHO was harmless:
Mr. STERN: I now show you a document marked for identification, Commission 831, a letter dated April 27, 1964, from Director Hoover to…the General Counsel of this Commission…Do you recognize this letter?
Mr. HOSTY: Yes, sir; I do…
Mr. STERN: Now tell us what the reason for your making this affidavit was.
Mr. HOSTY: It was to refute the story that appeared in the Dallas Morning News on April 24, 1964…as to what actually did take place in my conversation with Lieutenant Revill.
Mr. STERN: What did that story state?
Mr. HOSTY: It stated in substance, alleged that I was aware that Lee Harvey Oswald was capable of assassinating the President of the United States, but did not dream he would do it.
Mr. STERN: Did you say that?
Mr. HOSTY: No, sir…Prior to the assassination of the President of the United States, I had no information indicating violence on the part of Lee Harvey Oswald. I wish the record to so read.
At the same time, James Hosty made it clear that he was very interested in LHO one month before the JFK Assassination. This is what Hosty himself testified to the WC:
Mr. HOSTY: I then received a communication on the 25th of October from the New Orleans office advising me that another agency had determined that Lee Oswald was in contact with the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City in the early part of October 1963…
Mr. STERN: Did this increase your effort to find him?
Mr. HOSTY: Very much so, yes…
And yet James Hosty did not warn the Secret Service about LHO! That blunder was related to another one – namely, that Hosty did not answer the PRS direct question: “who published the handbill with the mug shots of JFK that said, WANTED FOR TREASON: JFK?” Since the WC confirmed that Robert Alan Surrey (Walker’s company president) was the publisher, and since Hosty was socially connected to Surrey and officially tracking Walker – it seems impossible that he would fail to tell the PRS that Ex-General Walker and his Minutemen were also dangerous persons in Dallas.
Robert Alan Surrey was also a Dallas Minuteman. It is impossible to believe that James Hosty, assigned to track “General Edwin Walker and his Minutemen,” somehow failed to learn that these same people had published that handbill? James Hosty was not incompetent. I can’t bring myself to believe that he missed this fact.
Was the WC somehow fooled by the FBI? Not in my opinion. Dallas ATF agent Frank Ellsworth had sent this clear message directly to them on March 16, 1964
“An organization known as the Minutemen is the right-wing group in Dallas most likely to have been associated with any effort to assassinate the President…The Minutemen in Dallas are closely tied to General Walker…” (Ellsworth, FBI HQ File 62-107261)
I agree with Allen Dulles on his message to his secretary Jacques Zwart: “The solution to the JFK Assassination is in the pages of the Warren Commission Hearings – but one must become an expert at hair-splitting.”
More to come on James Hosty and Robert Alan Surrey.
Thank you,
--Paul Trejo
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