Posted on 06/18/2011 11:39:08 PM PDT by LucyT
KANSAS CITY, Mo. The FBI agent who inherited Lee Harvey Oswald's file the year before President John F. Kennedy was assassinated has died of cancer.
Funeral services were held Saturday in the Kansas City suburb of Roeland Park, Kan., for James P. Hosty, who spent nearly five decades defending himself against accusations that he should have investigated Oswald more closely.
Hosty died June 10 of cancer at Kansas City Hospice House in Kansas City, Mo., McGilley and Hoge Johnson County Memorial Chapel said on its website. He was 86.
Hosty wrote the book "Assignment: Oswald," which came out in 1996, partially in response to how he was depicted in the 1991 Oliver Stone film "JKF."
As recently as 2003, Hosty told The Kansas City Star there was nothing he could have done to prevent the assassination given what he knew at the time. He also conceded he probably would "go to my grave trying to straighten this out."
[snip]
Long before Kennedy's assassination, Oswald was already well known to the FBI and the Central Intelligence Agency. A former Marine, Oswald had defected to the Soviet Union in 1959, and his defection made international front page news.
Hosty said that in September 1962, after Oswald returned to the U.S., the FBI agent who had the Oswald file determined that the agency's file on Oswald should be officially closed. When that agent retired a month later, Hosty inherited his files. But in late February and into March of 1963, Hosty came to believe that the Oswalds needed further investigation.
He suspected Oswald's wife, Marina, may be a Soviet "sleeper" agent who married Lee Oswald only to enter and spy on America.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
"He even sat with Oswald in the offices of the Dallas Police Department on the night Kennedy was killed.
"But, in the end, the powers in Washington, Hosty said, thought "someone should have connected the dots."
...and yet, another CRITICAL piece of evidence passes away. Oswald was just a “Commie nut” right? That’s why he was SO WELL KNOWN to the Intel communities, right? especially the Office of Naval Intelligence. Amazing tale that makes Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Cristie look like child’s play...
They can't afford proof readers at Yahoo?
Things I will always wonder about:
The lack of “official” curiosity about Obama’s birth certificate.
The lack of “official” curiosity about UFO’s.
The lack of “official’ curiosity about Oswald and other aspects of the JFK assassination.
The government is interested in EVERYTHING. So when they’re NOT interested in something, it makes you go hmmm.
Adding to the thread:
JFK Jr.’s Assistant Remembers Camelot’s - IMPORTANT: see LBJ link at #37
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2303868/posts
JFK Theories; Oswald and Hasan
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2392053/posts
JFK video; link @ #55
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2226148/posts
JFK: Good comments here. Donaldson on This Week on JFK Assassination: I’d Like to Ask Castro
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2232796/posts
JFK: #263 for links: Oswald co-worker no longer silent about JFK assassination role (Buell Frazier)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2133024/posts
JFK: - Conspiracy Theorist (But New Hunt Tape Does Suggest JFK Assassination Inside Job) See #132
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1828940/posts
JFK: A New Wrinkle in the JFK Assassination Story
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2374603/posts
JFK: AP: ‘Deep Throat’ Reportedly Comes Forward
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1413800/posts
JFK: C.I.A. Is Still Cagey About Oswald Mystery
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2364514/posts
JFK: Conspiracy Theorist (But New Hunt Tape Does Suggest JFK Assassination Inside Job)#30, #97, #132
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1828940/posts
JFK: Dallas doctor Malcolm Perry, who worked on JFK and Oswald, dies at 80
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2404297/posts
JFK: Deathbed Confession of Howard Hunt Fingers LBJ in JFK Murder - See #61
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1828428/posts
JFK: Ex-Presidents, Johnson Widow Call for JFK Film Probe
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1070358/posts
JFK: Some Relevant Facts About the JFK Assassination
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1024668/posts
JFK: Teddy’s JFK Theory (His Brother’s Assassination)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2331379/posts
JFK: The Kennedy Assassination:
http://www.mathaba.net/0index.shtml?x=61832 4
JFK: Who Killed JFK?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2178367/posts
Oswald was a dedicated communist who had defected to the Soviet Union in 1959 out of disgust with American capitalism. After becoming disillusioned with Soviet life, he returned to the U.S. in 1962. In early 1963, he bought a scoped rifle through the mail and soon used it to fire a shot (which missed) at retired general Edwin Walker, the head of the John Birch Society in Dallas. In the summer of 1963, Oswald was active in street demonstrations in support of Castro. In September 1963, he visited the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico City seeking a travel visa that would allow him to travel to Cuba.
Oswald was among the radicals of the time who saw Third World revolutionaries like Castro as the wave of the communist future. He was well aware of Kennedy's efforts to overthrow Castro's regime. As a Senate investigative committee suggested in 1975, Oswald shot Kennedy to interrupt his administration's plans to assassinate Castro or to overthrow his regime in Cuba.
Ignoring Oswald's communist links, journalists and political leaders quickly claimed the president was a martyr to civil rights. Earl Warren said that Kennedy had "suffered martyrdom as a result of the hatred and bitterness that has been injected into the life of our nation by bigots." Martin Luther King said the assassination had to be viewed against the backdrop of violence against civil rights marchers in the South. James Reston wrote in the New York Times that "something in the nation itself, some strain of madness and violence, had destroyed the highest symbol of law and order."
The consensus opinion was that Kennedy was a victim of hate and bigotry, a casualty of his support for civil rights. The Cold War and Kennedy's ongoing feud with Castro were rarely mentioned as factors behind the assassination. The reasons? Mrs. Kennedy wanted her husband remembered as a modern-day Abraham Lincoln. Lyndon Johnson feared complicating relations with the Soviet Union. Liberals feared a replay of the McCarthy period, when the Wisconsin senator inflamed public opinion about fears of domestic communism.
The JFK Assassination conspirators finally got to Hosty and eliminated him, hust like they did with all the others. /sarcasm
Correct in every regard.
More’s the pity we’re not allowed to remember history as it happened.
You'll want to read (if you've not already) Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963-1964. Transcripts of LBJ's conversations with various leader when he was setting up the Warren Commission made that point very evident. I was just last night re-reading some of that book.
There was one part of the Oswald story that never got much play in the news. Marina Oswald’s uncle was a fairly high ranking official in Soviet intelligence. There is no way the USSR would have allowed the niece of such an officical to leave the country at the height of the cold war, unless of course she was trained as an agent and was expected to gather information about the U.S. She may have been a low level operative only expected to gather basic information about the U.S. but we will never know for sure.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.