Chapter 2



Chapter 2

The Flap Factory

Hosty's book has twenty chapters, an appendix and no table of contents. It is broken into two parts. Part one is titled, "The Cover Up." Part two is titled "The Truth Emerges." By "truth" Hosty means what he writes that he wants others to believe is true of him and of all the flaps in which he kept getting himself involved. He also pretends it is the truth about the assassination. It is not. He has two cover-ups in mind, what he wants to have believed is the covering up of his stellar performances and of the facts of the assassination. But in his entire book he never once gets to the corpus delicti or the body of the crime in the evidence. Special Agent of the FBI his adult life that he was, Hosty writes his entire book with deliberate disregard of what is most basic in, as he has to know, any criminal investigation. His book is not that kind of book. It is a political diatribe against those he regards as his enemies or who were critical of him and a political treatise in which he espouses an impossibility as the actuality of the assassination, thus seeking to advance his own political views. Without ignoring the evidence of the crime, which he boasted he had studied with care, he could not have written this book. Or believe what he believed.

In a sense it is like a shabby and shallow prosecution-type brief in which the prosecutor has made a deal and knows there will be no refutation. In a very real sense he selects, he ignores and he alters what he uses to make himself out to be the abused but persevering hero of a massive plot against him and all that he stands for, including a "solution" to the assassination.

Dick Tracy that he is in his portrayal, he knew immediately and instinctively that Oswald was the assassin.

He was eating that cheese sandwich, all he permitted himself for lunch on a Friday because he is Catholic, when the waitress said "They've shot the President!" (page 11). He does not rush to the FBI office, but instead goes to his car to turn the communications radio on. He then rushes to the Trade Mart, where the President was to have spoken, because his wife is there as a volunteer hostess. He gets there to find "the place was surprisingly calm." No matter, shouting "Coming through! FBI! Coming through!" while thinking "I have to find Janet. I have to make sure everything is all right." He finds her, sees she is OK but nonetheless asks, "Are you all right?" She assures him she is (pages 12-3). He kisses her and returns to his car to go to the office.

Hearing that Shanklin wants four agents at Parkland, he radios in that because he is less than a mile from the hospital he'll go there. He sees the bloody limousine and calls the office on the radio. His supervisor orders him "Get back to the office, get here fast." Which does suggest that is what he should have done to begin with. He should have realized that when the waitress could announce the shooting at 12:38, with the time it took for her to hear, that it was not likely the limousine could have been at the Trade Mart for the shooting of the President to have been there. He did not think to ask the waitress where the shooting was or when, big-time investigator that he was.

In route to the office, "Bob Barrett, another agent, came on the radio to report a police officer had been shot and killed in the Oak Cliff area. He immediately thought, "There has to be a connection between Kennedy and this officer shooting" (page 14). That does provide a kind of time clock. It says that the first forty-five minutes after the assassination all Hosty had done, besides kiss his wife, is running around doing nothing but wasting time.

Almost an hour passes before he got to his office. He is told to go to police headquarters to talk to the police about those right-wingers he says headquarters already suspected. Before he can leave his office, he is grabbed by his supervisor, Ken Howe. Howe tells him "They've just arrested a guy named Lee Oswald and they're booking him for the killing of the policeman over in Oak Cliff. Officer's name was Tippit" (page 16).

This is where, as quoted above, Hosty goes into Oswald being a Communist and who along with his wife were considered espionage risks. Hosty then writes "I had learned on November 1 that Oswald worked in the Texas School Book Depository buildings [sic]. I remembered thinking that Tippit's and Kennedy's killings were related and then it hit me like a load of bricks. 'That's him' Ken, that must be him.' Oswald has to be the one who shot Kennedy" (page 16).

Hosty rushes to get the Oswald file. The file was gone, which meant that the mail clerk had it for incoming mail purposes. When they got the file, "paper-clipped to the top we found a one-page communiqué from the Washington, D. C. Field Office . . . which summarized a letter written by Oswald to the Soviet embassy . . . intercepted by the FBI, then read and copied . . ." (page 16). In it Oswald referred to having been in "Mexico City" and had spoken with Comrade Kostine" (page 16).

And there, that early on, Hosty had it all figured out, beginning before he knew who had been arrested.

When Hosty told this to Shanklin, Shanklin was on the phone with Alan Belmont, then the Number Three man in the FBI. Shanklin told him that Belmont wanted him to go join the police in their interrogation of Oswald (page 17).

That was the moment, in the Hosty story of his many travails, when they all began.

At police headquarters when Hosty pulled into the underground garage it happened that the Revill he depredated also had just pulled in. There is more that we come to later that created a series of major scandals. Hosty does not miss this opportunity to add to his deprecations of Revill for his alleged "glaring weaknesses" like having had no "training in investigating Communists or radical right-wingers, and many times his naivete showed" (page 18). As in having a source inside the right-ring students at he Denton Branch of the University and learning that they planned to rub Kennedy's "dick in the dirt," which well-trained and highly experienced expert that Hosty was, he was unaware of. After adding that Revill was "ruthless and would step on anyone to advance," Hosty gets around to saying that Revill told him, "we've got a hot lead. We've accounted for all the employees but one at the school book depository where the shots came from. The only employees not accounted for is a guy named Lee."

Hosty says, ". . . I could not help thinking, a bit smugly, for Christ sakes, Revill, you're way behind . . ." (page 18).

If this is what Revill actually said, and obviously Hosty was not then making notes, it was incorrect. Oswald was not the only Texas School Book Depository employee who left at lunch hour or after the assassination and did not return. That he was the only one, when he was not becomes important in Hosty's building his phony case. The Commission's published hearings that Hosty does quote are quite clear on the number of those employees who did not return that day.

After more of Hosty's opinions about Revill he gets to his version of what became a major scandal. He has said that they knew about Oswald, that he was a Communist, "and then" as they were "climbing the stairs" Revill snorted, "Well, if you knew that Oswald killed Kennedy, why the hell didn't you tell us? Why didn't you tell us Oswald was in town and was a known Communist?"

"Jack, I couldn't tell you," Hosty says he replied. "You know Bureau policy, the need-to-know rule." Hosty says that "was the long-standing policy in espionage cases" and "for better or worse the Bureau did not consider local police part of the need-to-know group, and this drove Revill crazy" (page 19). Whether or not it "drove Revill crazy" in this Hosty suggests a Revill motive for doing him harm.

First, Oswald was not an "espionage case" and second, the FBI and Hosty did not have to tell the Dallas police their source to let it be know that a man they regarded as a Communist was in town.

Besides which, when Oswald was in that area before he went to New Orleans, he was not even an FBI case at all, as we have seen. There is no reason in the world that the FBI could not have told the policed whatever it wanted about Oswald without any influence on the "need-to-know" rule that related only to the FBI's source.

Hosty times that at 3:00 p.m. the afternoon of the assassination. Fifteen minutes later he says he was where Captain Will Fritz, Chief of the Dallas Police Homicide Division, was questioning Oswald. Hosty say, "I looked over at a desk against the wall, saw a pad of police affidavit forms, and grabbed it" (page 20).

According to Hosty, the police having been questioning Oswald for some time before he got there, he had to abide by the Miranda rule all over again and tell Oswald what the police had, what his rights were. He had already given Oswald his name. He says that Oswald's face "turned ugly" and he said, "as if touched by a hot wire, 'Oh, so you're the Hosty who's been harassing my wife!'"

Oswald than added, "If you wanted to talk to me, you should have come directly to me, not my wife. You never responded to my request [sic]" (page 20).

From this Hosty eases into the scandal his own way, the way that is least unfavorable to him and with which, in the end, virtually nobody who had any knowledge of it agreed:

Both Oswalds -- he being a former Marine who had defected to the Soviet Union and then returned the United States, she a Soviet citizen -- made for a classic counter-espionage case. The question was: Could either of the Oswalds be Soviet intelligence agents? In November 1963, the Bureau had no direct information that the Oswalds were Russian agents, but this was the height of the cold war, and for national security purposes we had to be prudent.

What really struck me about Oswald's outburst in Captain Fritz's office, however, was the realization that it was Oswald who had left me an angry unsigned note just ten days before. I had the note in my file drawer. It said, in effect: "If you want to talk to me, you should talk to my face. Stop harassing my wife, and stop trying to ask her about me. You have no right to harass her."

When I received this note from Nannie Lee Fenner a former chief stenographer newly demoted to receptionist, I read it and, quite honestly, thought little about it. At the time I was juggling 35 to 40 cases, mostly on radical right-wing subversives, and had no way of knowing who might have written the note. I suspected it had come from a particular radical right-winger I had been investigating, simply because I had recently interviewed his wife.

At any rate, in law enforcement such notes are common. Occasionally I received abusive phone calls and notes from the targets of my investigations. All law enforcement officers do. It's what I called "getting guff." After reading the note, I had tossed it in my file drawer at the office and not given it another thought. That is, not until November 22 at approximately 3:18 P.M." (page 21).

Hosty's reader has no way of knowing that whether or not the Oswalds were "a classic espionage case" the FBI had already decided that they were not and had closed the case on Oswald.

It is dishonest and the dirtiest kind of writing to impose on the trust of readers for Hosty to write that "the Bureau has no direct information that the Oswalds were Russian agents." It had no indirect information, either. It had no information or even misinformation of any kind even suggesting that either Oswald was a "classic" or ordinary espionage case, before Hosty saw a need to impose his political prejudices and preconceptions on the FBI, on the country and on the Oswalds.

Hosty says what can hardly be believed, that it was not until then that he realized that it was Oswald who had left the note that became a major scandal for him. Hosty says "such notes are common." Notes that allege a wife is being harassed, that if Hosty wanted to speak to the man who wrote the note he should do that and not harass his wife? That could hardly be typical of the cases Hosty says he then had. Besides which, even Hosty was later to admit that there was a threat in it. Threats are that common in notes to FBI agents? This simply is not credible.

How many wives in the cases he had, had Hosty interviewed?

Hosty timed his going in to Fritz's office at 3:15 p.m. (page 30). He times his alleged first reason to believe that note was from Oswald at "approximately 3:18 p.m." (page 21).

Oswald, he then says, was "squirming like a snared rat." He says that when Oswald calmed down a little he apologized to him, "I'm sorry for blowing up at you, and I'm sorry for writing that letter to you" (page 22).

"Bingo," Hosty writes, "That conformed Oswald was the one who wrote that note" (page 22). And who, as Hosty admits later, Nannie Lee Fenner said had signed that letter. Which, of course, Hosty denied.

The questions Dick Tracy Hosty says Fritz asked Oswald and Oswald's answer presented within quotation marks, as direct, verbatim quotations, take up more that two full printed pages (pages 22-4). They are the simplest questions. For whatever it means, none of the alleged verbatim is in the records made by any of the others at those Oswald questioning, the police and the federal agencies. This raises questions about how it came to pass that Hosty could give this as a verbatim transcript of what he says Oswald was asked and said. In the Hosty version when they broke for a police lineup:

. . . I started off with what I thought was a rather general and innocuous question. Out of deference to Fritz, I said, "Ask him if he has ever been in Mexico City."

Fritz turned toward Oswald and said, "Tell us about that, Lee."

Oswald hesitated for just a moment, then answered, "Sure. Sure, I've been to Mexico. When I was stationed in San Diego with the Marines, a couple of my buddies and I would occasionally drive down to Tijuana over a weekend."

"No, not Tijuana. Mexico City. Captain, ask have you ever been to Mexico City," I persisted.

Oswald was visibly upset. "What makes you think I've been to Mexico City? I've never been there. I deny that." He was shaking his head, and he was starting to sweat now. I knew I had touched a nerve.

The door next to me flung open, and another police detective poked his head in. "Captain Fritz, they're ready for the lineup now."

Fritz jumped up and said, "Okay, let's take a break and go do this lineup."

At that Oswald was escorted out of Fritz's office, and I was left wondering, why in the hell did they have to go and do that? Here we had Oswald on the ropes -- he had lost his edge. That is typically a perfect opportunity to break a suspect's facade and get at the truth. We could have made some significant headway and obtained valuable information if we could have only pressed Oswald a little more" (page 25).

And why should the usual, the necessary, needed, and regular police procedures in criminal cases intrude upon what Hosty imagines -- that early?

It was clear to me that the Mexico City information was pivotal, and could be Oswald's Achilles' heel. If I just could have gone further with Oswald. Well, I figured, we'll pick up where we left off before the lineup. I left Fritz's office last, and looked at my watch: 4:05 P.M. I jotted down the time in my notes. While I had been furiously scribbling on what Oswald was reporting, I had noticed that I was the only one doing so. But then, that would be what I'd expect. Captain Fritz was an experienced homicide interrogator. The fact that he wasn't taking notes was standard operating procedure. Fritz was conducting his first run-through with Oswald, and the object was to keep a suspect talking. Note-taking by an interrogator can be inhibiting. I was enough in the background during the interrogation so that note-taking seemed appropriate to me" (page 25).

With the purpose of the questioning to get Oswald to confess, could there have been a better, a more persuasive reason for not having a tape recorder, even a hidden one, to record all he said?

Assuming what it is never safe to assume, the fidelity of Hosty's representations of what was done, said and seen, and assuming also that "Oswald was visibly upset," which is not in any of the reports on this questioning, there is no reason to believe that they "had Oswald on the ropes." If he felt that way, all he had to do, as he knew and on another occasion said, was refuse to talk any more until he had a lawyer.

This it is the beginning of Hosty's trying to make something out of nothing, what as we'll see he later was quoted saying were "bombshells," his fantasy about Mexico City. There will be more on this, too, but here note that Hosty says he a "had been scribbling furiously" in his notes. Those are the notes he says he made on those police affidavit forms. They are the notes he also told the Commission he had destroyed:

Mr. HOSTY. I can only say that it would have been sometime between the 22d of November and the 2d of December, because it went out in a report on the 2d of December.

Mr. STERN. Until then they were in the form of___

Mr. HOSTY. Notes.

Mr. STERN. Raw notes?

Mr. HOSTY. Right.

Mr. STERN. Do you take shorthand or any other form of speedwriting?

Mr. HOSTY. No.

Mr. STERN. Have you preserved the notes?

Mr. HOSTY. I don't have them with me, no; because once it is reduced to writing then we destroy the notes. That is the procedure.

Mr. STERN. You say you don't have them with you. Did you preserve these notes?

Mr. HOSTY. No; they were thrown away.

Mr. STERN. And this is the only record now that you have___

Mr. HOSTY. Right." (Page 4H457)

Destroying notes is general practice in the FBI. This is confirmed by my examination of many thousands of pages of FBI records that includes the evidence envelope, Form FD340 in which notes would be kept and on a few occasions were to my knowledge kept. However, the reason seems less to keep from having what is not needed in the files (and those files abound in what has not been needed for generations) then to prevent embarrassment from having to produce those notes in court cases and have defense counsel establish what is not in the notes is in the reports, based on them and finding that what is in the notes is not in those reports.

As it turns out with these notes, when one of the top men at FBI headquarters orders his Dallas Dick Tracy to go question Oswald, the one thing not needed for that assignment is a notebook one might have thought FBI agents carry in their pockets or attaché cases. Go question Oswald and be sure not to take with you what you need to write down what you get him to say.

Hosty was no "be prepared" Boy Scout.

As we saw earlier, when Hosty got to Fritz's office he "saw a pad of police affidavit forms, and grabbed it" (page 20).

As we also saw, Hosty writes that he alone was taking notes, "While I had been furiously scribbling on what Oswald was reporting, I had noticed that I was the only one doing so." The only source of those more that two pages of direct quotation of what Hosty says he asked and Oswald responded are then those notes Hosty had been "scribbling furiously." They are also his own source on Oswald looking like a "snared rat", on Oswald being "on the ropes" and as having "lost his edge."

When it came time for Hosty to write this book-years after he retired from the FBI -- and needed those notes they suddenly appeared. They had not been destroyed, the usual FBI practice. He is so proud of those notes that rather than reproduce them on the usual book paper stock, where they would have reproduced clearly, he has them on glossy paper in his insert of pictures. The caption on them reads, "Hosty was the only person to take notes during the police interrogation of Oswald, since no one anticipated the assassin's imminent death. These pages, which Hosty intended to discard after typing up his final report, fortuitously survived."

Those "fortuitous" notes are also magical, as magical as that famous bullet of the Commission's single-bullet theory.

They are of eight simple entries only. One consists entirely of "Mrs. Paine." The one above it reads, "denies Mexico City." The first is "1026 N. Beckley room." Another is "3 years in Soviet Union," then on a new line, "relatives." On another new line, "F.P.C.C." Another note is "F.P.C.C. in New York had badge for rifle marksmanship from U.S.M.C."

These notes do not give the appearance of having been "scribbled" all that "furiously." One scribbling furiously not to miss an important word does abbreviate and does not have time for those periods after the letters from the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and the Marine Corps. And for all that furious scribbling for a full fifty minutes, counting the numbers as a single word, Hosty wrote fewer than a hundred words of notes, fewer than two words a minute.

Without a single word or thought or idea or suspicion that justified any "furious" writing or "scribbling." There is not a thing of any importance in them. Nothing to rush to get down.

What he wrote them on measures two inches in width and four in height as he pictured them. But the writing seems to be about normal in size. The writing looks as though there was a firm base for the paper, like a table top. He did hold those two scraps of paper in his hands as he wrote as he says in the back of the room where there was no table for him to use. Not knowing the size of those "affidavit pads" it still is not easy to imagine them as of these dimensions. That would leave little space for any information of any kind and affidavits do require both the name and signature of the affiant and the full identification of the notary, the notary's license, the date and place. There would hardly be room for this alone, leave alone what was attested to.

Oddly on the scrap of paper pictured on the left, on its longer right-hand side there is one and only one place where paper is visible missing, as though the paper had torn off where a staple had been. That imperfection is not at either end or in the middle of that edge. On the other scrap, the left vertical or longer edge as pictured is a straight edge from the top down to the middle and there it gets wider where there is what appears to be a tear edge.

These imperfections do not give the appearance of being kind of pad, especially not an "affidavit pad." And they certainly do not contain anything like all the information Hosty presents as a verbatim transcript of his questions, not one of which is on those scraps, or of Oswald's answers almost all of which also are not on those scraps.

The second of these notes, which is next to the longest of them, after Oswald's second address, where Marina was with Ruth Paine, has "1/20" encircled with an arrow to the word "day" that is the first word in the second line of what is written in that note, "day before yesterday Mr. Truly [sic] & rifle 2 others 1st floor outside office." That is not likely what Oswald said. Oswald did know who his bosses were. Roy Truly was the manager and he did not have those two rifles. They had just been bought by Warren Caster, who was the assistant manager of a publishing company, South Western, that had space in that building.

On his lunch break that day he had brought a Remington single-shot .22 caliber rifle for his son and a .30-06 sporterized Mauser for himself, as he testified May 14, 1964 (7H386ff). Caster showed them to Truly in the presence of others including a number who worked where Oswald worked, in the "shipping department" (page 387). It should be a reasonable presumption that Oswald knew Truly when he saw him whether or not he knew Caster.

Whether or not this is so, Hosty has this note and none of what he says had Oswald looking like a "snared rat" and like he was "on the ropes" along with all else in Hosty's more than two pages of allegedly verbatim reporting of his questions, not one of which is in his notes, and Oswald's answers almost none of which there are in any form.

At the lineups for which the questioning of Oswald was interrupted Hosty writes that those making the identifications of Oswald were, with no names given, "a waitress and a car salesman" (page 26). Hosty "watched as both positively picked out Oswald as the person who shot Tippit." These two were Warren Reynold's, who later retracted his identification and Helen Markham, the hysterical waitress who got everything wrong, including her description of the clothing the man she saw shoot Tippit was wearing. I go into her and her testimony at some length in Whitewash (pages 56-9, 76, 80, 113-7). She was so utterly lost, and that in the neighborhood in which she lived, she could not even get the directions straight, not even with hints from the Commission's lawyer. And to top it all off, the way the police had those lineups rigged "identification" was automatic, as I wrote in Whitewash, based on the Commission's own published record:

Because the Report makes only passing reference to the lineups and represents the opposite of what Oswald did or tried to do about them, it would seem that the Commission decided that either Oswald was not being framed or that protection against frame-ups is not a legal right.

The methods of the police were simple and straightforward. Oswald was always in the No. 2 spot in the lineup. He was the only one in any lineup that was both bruised and cut on the face. His face was also slightly swollen. He was the only one whose clothing was described as "dirty", having been through the scuffle at the theater and having also lived in them from the time of his apprehension. In addition, besides that matter of the jacket, which Bookhout mentioned, he was also dressed differently. All the others in the first series of lineups were police employees, neatly dressed and not in sports clothing. Almost without exception, the witnesses in subsequent testimony referred to Oswald as "Number 2." Most of them admit to having seen his picture in the papers or on TV or both prior to being taken to the lineup. Some of the few denials are suspect (page 76).

Hawkshaw Hosty, with all those years of experience as an FBI agent, saw what nobody else at that or any other interrogation of Oswald saw and noted. Neither his companion agent Bookhout nor any of the police saw that Oswald looked like a "snared rat" and like he "was on the ropes" when not a single other person there, all professional police and including Hosty's one fellow FBI agent, saw and reported anything like those Hosty observations, yet he could not see what was so apparent at those lineups? Did not hear Oswald's complaint about them, about how automatic the police had made "identification" of him?

Hosty next writes:

Oswald deserved the death penalty for the killing of Officer Tippit alone. With the positive identification by these eyewitnesses, and later with other eyewitnesses and the ballistics report matching the bullets in Tippit's body to Oswald's gun, we had Oswald cold for first-degree murder. We had the bastard. I felt a dark, brooding inner satisfaction knowing that Oswald was going to pay for his crime. No, for his crimes. I was already convinced that my initial surmise of barely two hours before -- that the murders of Officer Tippit and President Kennedy were done by the same person or persons -- was indeed correct. Little did I know that in the days and years to come, that all too simple conclusion would be doubted and dissected by hundreds if not thousands of investigators, many of whom came up with their own conclusions, all of which would seem to blur and cloud what seemed so clear to me that afternoon, the simple truth (page 26).

When neither the FBI nor the Commission could get Oswald to the scene of the Tippit shooting until some time after it was broadcast to the radio dispatcher on Tippit's radio, convicting Oswald before a jury might not have been as easy as in Hosty's writing. It could not have been achieved with "the ballistics report matching the bullets in Tippit's body to Oswald's gun" because the FBI's experts testified to the exact opposite -- that they could not and did not make that identification.

Dating it as only twenty minutes after Oswald questioning was interrupted for that lineup, Hosty next writes, under the time of 4:25 p.m.:

Harlan Brown, a senior agent in my squad, hurried up to me in the hallway. "Hosty! Come here. You are not to go back in on the interrogation of Oswald, and you are not to provide any information we have about Oswald to the police. Do you understand?"

I was dumbfounded, but I said yes, I understood. This was in direct contradiction to what Alan Belmont, Hoover's senior assistant, had ordered. But Brown was dead serious and was clutching my elbow tightly. It became clear to me that Belmont's order had been countermanded, and that probably meant that either the Old Man -- Hoover -- had taken over control of the investigation, or that the White House had. I shuddered at the thought of Hoover personally supervising my work here in Dallas (pages 26-7).

From that moment on Hosty regarded his being separated from the case as part of a dark conspiracy to protect the assassins. He says this in various ways some of which we come to. It apparently did not occur to him that Oswald's complaints about him were adequate cause and that for them alone he should have been taken off the case. Nor does he in this connection recall even his own version of that letter Oswald wrote him, the letter that in his version nonetheless include a threat.

Or that either of these considerations or his own politics would have been enough to lead him not to be used as a witness in the case then expected to go before a jury.

Despite his instructions Hosty hung around at police headquarters. He was outside Fritz's office and could hear when Forrest Sorrels of the Secret Service was questioning Oswald. He begins with his usual criticism of others as Gemberling had predicted, writing "Sorrels asked Oswald a few other unnecessary questions, on matters that had already been established and known for hours" but as Hosty does not say, was not known to the Secret Service, which had its own records to make. As Sorrels left Hosty spoke to him.

Knowing as he did that he had solved both crimes the very instant he first heard that Oswald has been arrested in the Tippit killing; knowing also that he had unique political insights and understanding; believing that although he had been removed from the case he should, really, have been in charge of it; suspecting already that all headquarters were part of a conspiracy to cover it all up for political reasons; manfully Hosty overcame his oft-expressed contempt for the Secret Service in general and for Sorrels in particular:

Mr. Sorrels, I can't tell you the full story, but have your headquarters call my headquarters. We have two items of secret information on some of Oswald's contacts that you should have.

Sorrels, not looking at me, or really at anything, mumbled, "Sure, I'll do that."

Then Sorrels left" (pages 28-9).

The "information" Hosty had in mind was not his information. It was what he had received form others in the FBI and some of that was not the FBI's own information, if information at all it was.

Hosty knew, as certainly as that the day follows the night, that if he did not interfere when he had no real business interfering, that "information" he has already described as "pivotal" might be ignored, lost.

He hung around police headquarters, then had a "quick dinner" and then went to his office, to which he refers as "the Bureau" (page 29). There, Shanklin holding "what appeared to be a letter," demanded, "What the hell is this?" It was that Oswald letter: "I shrugged. 'It's no big deal', I said, 'just your typical guff'" (page 29).

Shanklin was not satisfied:

What do you mean, "typical guff?" This note was written by Oswald, the probable assassin of the president, and Oswald brought this not into this office just ten days ago? What the hell do you think Hoover's going to do if he finds out about this note?"

Hosty says he replied:

"What's the big deal? So what if Oswald wrote this note and left if for me? What does that have to do with anything?" I asked. He had not threatened the president.

"If people learn that Oswald gave you guff a week before the assassination, they'll say you should have known he'd kill the president", Shanklin insisted. "If Hoover finds about this, he's going to lose it." (pages 29-30.)

From the look on the face of his supervisor, Howe, "He obviously agreed that the note could spell big trouble for us with Hoover. I kept shaking my head, insisting that the note was no big deal. "If we simply explain everything, how we got the note, what it means, the background, et cetera, they'll understand there was no way in hell we could have guessed Oswald was going to kill anyone, much less the president. I tell you, this little note is no big deal," I repeated (page 30).

Shanklin told Hosty to prepare a memo on it. From his account Hosty began with reporting that in his absence, Oswald gave the unsealed envelope to the receptionist Nannie Lee Fenner about whom he writes critically on all possible occasions.

Hosty does not at this point report what Fenner said was in that Oswald letter, his threat was to bomb the FBI office, police headquarters or both. When much, much later Hosty gets around to this he represents that she alone had that recollection. That is not so. Thus even the preposterousness of this being "no big deal" depends on what Hosty says was in that letter and on all others keeping their mouths closed (page 30).

Shanklin learned, Hosty says, when Fenner saw Oswald's picture on TV and recognized him as the man who brought that note. With Fenner having said it, it takes Hosty some time to get around to admitting, that she said the note was signed so she did not have to await the TV picture to know who had left the letter (page 30).

Hosty then goes into what he says Shanklin told them all. In this he refers to that Mannlicher-Carcano rifle as "high powered," which it was not. He refers to the paper bag in which allegedly Oswald took the rifle to the building that morning as "identified" by Buell Wesley Frazier as "consistent with what he saw" Oswald carrying, when what Frazier actually testified was the exact opposite. Hosty says that Oswald was the only Texas School Book Depository employee who did not resume work at the end of the lunch break, which is false. He says the paper of the paper bag "was covered with Oswald's prints," a rather unusual way of referring to a single thumbprint on the inside as made into a bag, and to the complete absence of any prints where he is said to have carried it. But Hosty also does not report, carefully as he says he examined all the evidence, that the rifle the FBI lab described as "well oiled" had the magical property of not letting any oil leave the tiniest trace on the bag. Magical paper, magical oil. He says, without naming Howard Brennan, that "one eyewitness" saw a "slender white male in his thirties, between 5' 8" and 5' 10" . . . shoot a rifle out of the sixth floor window" which Brennan did not see. Hosty also omits the weight Brennan gave for the man he says he saw. His weight estimate was that much more than Oswald's weight. And as Hosty also does not say, as of the time Shanklin was talking to them Brennan was at police headquarters telling them he did not see and could not identify the assassin.

Hosty has Tippit "shot five times" when he was shot only four times (page 32.)

Finally the working day is over and Bob Barrett is driving Hosty home:

As he was driving us home, Barrett said, "Did you hear Lieutenant Revill has written a memo to the chief of police saying that you and the FBI had Oswald under surveillance before the assassination?"

"What!"

"Revill says you told him all this today right after the assassination," Barrett said.

"That jackass has it all wrong."

"I know, but Chief Curry told the press that the FBI knew Oswald was in town, but didn't tell them, and you know what that means," Barrett continued.

I knew what it meant. It meant that it would be difficult to convince the media, the police, or the public that Revill's statement was a distortion of the truth. People would have already formed their own opinions. I also knew that Hoover was going to have something to say to me as well, and it was not going to be good. Either Revill had twisted my words in the police garage this afternoon or he had misunderstood me. Either way I would have a lot of explaining to do" (page 33).

Hosty surely was a flap factory. Two big ones the day of the assassination alone.

And, of course, he was innocent, entirely innocent, misunderstood or his words were twisted, and a threatening letter from the accused assassin was no big deal just because he had said nothing about it for ten days and then boom! That letter-writer is the accused assassin.

It is an unjust, unkind, unappreciative world that is picking on the innocent victim of it all and of that conspiracy to "cover up" he sees.

Not the one already in place, unseen to him. The one that does not exist but he believes he sees so clearly.

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