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I know of just one reporter to whom the name Lee Harvey Oswald meant
anything before November 22nd: Kent Biffle. Still inside the book
depository at 2 p.m. when the suspect's name was first made public,
Kent received a memory jolt. Biffle remembered that in 1959, when he
was a reporter for the old Fort Worth Press,he'd written several
stories about some turncoat ex-Marine from Fort Worth named Lee
Harvey Oswald.
He recalled the Press had tried to connect Oswald's
bizarre 52-year-old mother, Marguerite, via telephone to her son in
Moscow from the paper's newsroom, but Lee had hung up on her.
FBI agent James Hosty in the bureau's Dallas office,
who had a far fresher recollection of the suspect, was dumbstruck at
the news of Oswald's arrest. Agent Hosty was supposed to be keeping
an eye on Lee Harvey Oswald and his young wife, Marina. Hosty had
known for weeks that Oswald was working in the book depository,
along the path of Kennedy's motorcade.
"I had no reason prior to that to believe he
was capable or potentially an assassin of the president of the
United States," Hosty would insist to the Warren Commission.
Later I would help find evidence that contradicted
Hosty's assertion.
Lee Harvey Oswald was what law enforcement today
calls "a person of interest." In 1959, following a brief
and bumpy career in the Marine Corps that included a court martial
for fighting and an "undesirable" discharge, he defected
at age 19 to the Soviet Union, unsuccessfully attempting to renounce
his U.S. citizenship in the process.
But life in the workers' paradise didn't pan out. In
May of 1962, Oswald returned to the United States with his wife,
formerly Marina Nikolayevna Prusakova, and their 3-month-old
daughter, June Lee. The family lived for a time in the Dallas-Fort
Worth area, then moved to New Orleans in the spring of 1963.
The FBI kept an eye on Oswald, as it would any
returned defector with a Russian-born spouse. The bureau noted in
his file, for example, that Oswald was arrested in New Orleans in
August of 1963 after getting into a scuffle while handing out
"Fair Play for Cuba" fliers.
On Oct. 3, the FBI office in New Orleans informed
Dallas that the Oswalds had left Louisiana, presumably headed back
for Texas. Marina and her daughter were seen driving away with a
woman in a station wagon with Texas tags. James Hosty was told to
find them. It was a routine assignment-"no particular note of
urgency," Hosty later said-until New Orleans also reported that
in September Oswald had traveled to Mexico City and visited the
Soviet embassy there.
"Did this increase your effort to find
him?" a Warren Commission lawyer would ask. "Very much so,
yes," Hosty answered. "I became curious then."
Thanks to another tip from the New Orleans office,
on Oct. 29 Hosty tracked the Oswalds to suburban Irving, eight miles
west of Dallas, where Marina and her daughters, little June Lee, and
Rachel, born Oct. 20, were living with a close friend, Mrs. Ruth
Paine at 2515 Fifth St. It was Mrs. Paine, 31, who'd driven Marina
to Dallas from New Orleans.
Hosty visited Ruth Paine on Nov. 1. She explained
how she'd recently helped Oswald, an unskilled high school dropout,
land a $1.25-per-hour, part-time job filling orders at the Texas
School Book Depository on a corner of Dealey Plaza in Dallas.
(Depository superintendent Roy Truly later told me
that he filled two similar openings the day he hired Oswald; one at
the Dealey Plaza warehouse, and one at another facility in Dallas.
Oswald just as easily could have been assigned to the second
location.)
Mrs. Paine also told Hosty that Oswald was staying
at a rooming house in Oak Cliff. She said she was aware there had
been considerable discord between the Oswalds, and that Lee had been
physically violent toward Marina. According to Hosty's notes of his
conversation with Mrs. Paine, she "didn't want [Oswald] at her
home; that she was willing to take in Marina Oswald and her two
children but she didn't have room for him and she didn't want him at
the house. She was willing to let him visit his wife and family but
didn't want him residing there."
Hosty visited the Paine household one more time, on
Nov. 5, but did not speak with Marina. Nor did he ever attempt to
interview her unstable husband.
The next he heard of Lee Harvey Oswald was his
arrest in the Texas Theater, a suspect in both the Kennedy and the
Tippit shootings. Under orders from SAC Gordon Shanklin, the agent
grabbed his Oswald files and hustled over to City Hall (and police
station), where the suspect would be brought for questioning.
As I reported in the News five months later, under
the two-column headline "FBI Knew Oswald Capable of Act,
Reports Indicate," Hosty arrived at City Hall about 2:05 and
rode up in an elevator with Lt. Jack Revill, head of the DPD
Criminal Intelligence Squad, and Officer V. J. "Jackie"
Bryan. According to Revill's written account of the episode, typed
up 45 minutes later and delivered to Chief Curry that afternoon, in
the basement Hosty "stated that the Federal Bureau of
Investigation was aware of the Subject [Oswald] and that they had
information that this Subject was capable of committing the
assassination of President Kennedy."
Hosty denied making the statement to Revill. Over
the years he has refused my interview requests.
A few months after the assassination, I asked Gordon
Shanklin why the bureau didn't at least tell the Dallas police about
Oswald, and where he worked. I observed that the cops surely would
have wanted to babysit such a character.
"We didn't want him to lose his job,"
Shanklin explained.
"Well, Mr. Kennedy lost his," I said
quickly, appalled at what I'd just heard.
Though Shanklin never deliberately-to my knowledge
anyway-caused me any difficulty, I was told by some of his agents
that I was not his favorite person.
A few years later-as I sought to expose a famous
Texas law enforcement official as a perjurer and thief-I asked
Shanklin and J. Edgar Hoover to verify certain facts to which they
had access, thinking the bureau would be pleased to clean up a case
involving one of their own. Shanklin referred me to Hoover, who sent
me a courteous letter of refusal. The official in question
later-through my efforts-was indicted and convicted.
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