After 17 years of silence, FBI Oswald agent speaks up

              PENN JONES T H E
CONTINUING
INQUIRY
VOLUME V, NUMBER 5 DECEMBER 22, 1980 1
Z\\c XlalliiB ^Horning ^'pta» Monday, December 8,1980
After 17 years of silence,
FBI Oswald agent speaks up
The FBI agent responsible for moni-toring
Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas
has remained silent since the assas­sination
of President John F. Ken­nedy
n years ago. Now he has de­cided
to tell his side of what hap­pened
"because one of these days
they are going to have to face up
and tell the public the truth."
By EARL GOLZ
^Tbe DalUi MoratOK Ncwi. I9m
Documents referring to Lee Har­vey'Oswald's
trip to Mexico City,
where he met with a Soviet agent
for assassination and sabotage two
months before President John F.
Kennedy's death, were secretly re­moved
by the FBI from Oswald's in­ternal
security file in Dallas hours
after Kennedy was shot, says the
agent who monitored Oswald's ac­tivities
in Dallas.
A file of the FBI's pre-assassina-tion
investigation showed Oswald
met with Valeriy V, Kostikov in the
Soviet embassy in Mexico City less
than two months before the assassi­nation,
former FBI agent James P.
Hosty Jr. said. But nothing he saw
at FBI headquarters or other bu­reau
field offices before the assassi­nation
indicated Kostikov was a
KGB agent responsible for assassi­nation
and sabotage, Hosty said.
This is the bombshell Hosty said
he would have dropped if the
House Assassinations Committee
had permitted him to testify in
1978.
The Warren Commission in 1964
could not determine what hap­pened
at the meeting between
Oswald and Kostikov because the
CIA apparently did not know and
still does not know. The Soviets
were not about to tell — if they
knew.
"The true identity of the man
(Kostikov) Oswald was in touch
ji'ith was never given to me." Hosty
said. "They just didn't want to dwell
on that."
Hosty learned of Kostikov's
espionage work when an intelligence
source tipped him three years after
the assassination.
Neither the FBI's domestic intelli­gence
division, where Hosty was as­signed,
nor bureau headquarters "au­thorized
an intelligence investiga­tion
into possible foreign complicity
in the assassination," the House As­sassinations
Committee said last
year. The FBI "failed to cooperate
fully" with the Warren Commission
and provided "misleading" and "in­complete"
information, the panel
said.
Hosty's story bolsters reports FBI
director J. Edgar Hoover became
committed very early to defending
the idea Oswald was a lone nut who
shot the president.
The loner theory insulated the
FBI from criticism. Lone nuts are not
within the purview of the FBI, but
former defectors to Russia who deal
undercover with the likes of Kosti­kov
are.
Hoover sent President Lyndon B.
Johnson a background report on
Oswald the day after the assassina­tion,
omitting reference to the FBI's
security case against Oswald in Dal­las.
Three weeks later, the FBI submit­ted
its report on the assassination,
concluding Oswald was the assassin
and acted alone. One day later. Hoo­ver
secretly censured 17 FBI supervi­sors
and agents, including Hosty, for
negligence in the surveillance of
Oswald, whom Hoover said should
have been placed on the FBI subver­sives
security index.
In 1964, the FBI gave the Warren
Commission a summary of 69 items in
Oswald's file in Washington. Only
one Item mentioned Kostikov, "who
functioned overtly as a consul in the
Soviet embassy" in Mexico City and
who also was "known to be a staff of­ficer
of the KGB." Kostikov was a
member of the KGB's "thirteenth, or
'liquid affairs' department whose re­sponsibilities
include assassination
and sabotage," the report said.
Hoover told the Warren Commis­sion
10 days later he had been "un­able
to find any scintilla of evidence
showing any foreign conspiracy or
any domestic conspiracy that culmi­nated
in the assassination of Presi­dent
Kennedy."
Hoover "resented criticism to a de­gree
greater than any other person
that I have known," former Deputy
Atty. Gen. Nicholas Katzenbach told
the House Assassinations Committee
in 1978. If the FBI "made any mistake
.or anything for which the public
could criticize the bureau, the bu­reau
would do its best to conceal the
Information from anybody," said Kat­zenbach,
who was Atty. Gen. Robert
Kennedy's top aide at the time of the
assassination.
At least four Mexico City docu­ments
were removed from the Dallas
file during the afternoon of the assas­sination,
Hosty said. At least one of
the items was checked out by his su­pervisor,
Kenneth C. Howe, he said.
They were taken without Hosty's
knowledge from his workbox after
he was instructed to attend Oswald's
interrogation by Dallas police the af­ternoon
of the assassination.
Howe, retired and living in San Di­ego,
Calif., said he has "no recollec­tion
of anything like that.
"There was nothing taken out of
his box as far as I was concerned ex­cept
something I may have taken out
as a supervisor which I was entitled
to do," Howe said. "If I did so it cer­tainly
would be in connection with
business and not surreptitiously."
No evidence indicates the excised
Dallas documents ever reached the
Warren Commission, although Hosty
said they were reinserted into the
file after he testified five months
later before the commission. By that
time, possibility of the commission
demanding to see the Dallas file had
faded. One day after Hosty's testi­mony,
Chief Justice Earl Warren
urged other commission members to
refrain from examining the FBI
headquarters file on Oswald on the
basis it contained classified material.
The Warren Commission con­cluded
Oswald traveled to Mexico
City and visited the Soviet and Cuban
embassies in an attempt to get a visa
to Russia. One month after be re­turned
from Merico — and 10 days
before the assassination — he mailed
a letter to the Soviet embassy in
Washington recounting his efforts in
Mexico City and noting he met "with
comrade Kostin," who the CIA said
•probably was Kostikov.
In its 1964 report, the commission
said Kostikov was a member of the
Soviet consular staff in Mexico City
and was "also one of the KGB officers
stationed at the embassy. It is stand­ard
Soviet procedure that KGB offi­cers
be stationed in embassies and in
consulates to carry on the normal du­ties
(processing visas) of such a posi­tion
in addition to undercover activi­ties."
That was all the Warren Report
had to say about Kostikov. The
Oswald letter, intercepted by the FBI,
was "no more than a clumsy effort
(by Oswald) to ingratiate himself
with the Soviet embassy," the report
said. .
The commission indicated Oswald
would not have been a candidate for
Soviet intelligence work because of
his extensive Marxist exposure in
the United States. Investigators with
the House Assassinations Committee,'
however, have speculated Oswald's
pro-Communist demonstrations
made him ideal as a double agent for
VS. intelligence.
The CIA's handling of the Oswald
case before the assassination "was de­ficient
because CIA headquarters was
not apprised of all information that
its field (Mexico City) sources had"
about Oswald, the house committee
said. For example, the panel was un­able
to determine "whether Oswald
had any associates in Mexico City,"
the committee report said.
Hosty testified before the Warren
Commission in May 1964 he "was
quite interested in determining the
nature of his (Oswald's) contact with
the Soviet embassy in Mexico City, t