James Hosty
From The Kennedy Assassination Resource
James P Hosty was the FBI agent in charge of Oswalds file. At the time, he was 35 years old, and a graduate of Notre Dame. He was an outspoken admirer of JFK.
Hosty apparently never actually met Lee Harvey Oswald before the assassination. Every time he called at Oswalds home, Oswald was out and Hosty spoke to Marina Oswald and Ruth Paine, who acted as interpreter.
About two weeks before the assassination, Oswald delivered a note to Dallas FBI office at 1114 Commerce Street and left it for the receptionist to give to Hosty when he got back from lunch, which she did. Apparently Hosty told the head of the Dallas office of the FBI, J Gordon Shanklin, about the note on the afternoon that JFK was assassinated. The FBI said in October 1975, when the existence of the note came to light that the note read "Let this be a warning. I will blow up the FBI and the Dallas Police if you don't stop bothering my wife." According to Hosty, the note said something like "if you have anything you want to learn about me, come talk to me directly. If you don't cease bothering my wife, I will take the appropriate action and report this to the proper authorities." Shanklin instructed Hosty to destroy the note about two hours after Oswald had been shot by Jack Ruby, saying as he handed the note to Hosty, "Oswald is dead now. There can be no trial. Here, get rid of this". Hosty destroyed the note by tearing it up and flushing it down a toilet.
According to a "Harry Dean", a former agent of both the FBI and the CIA, the note was a message from Oswald about the assassination plans. Shanklin has denied all knowledge of the note, despite confirmation from other office members that he had actually handled it. Hosty has suggested that the order to destroy the note came from FBI headquarters. In 1978 he said of the Congress Assassinations Committee, "I am the one they are afraid is going to drop bombs - if they are going to try to contain this like the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Warren Commission, they don't want me there."
Hosty said he had received no official notification of the motorcade route, but learned about it from a newspaper on the evening of November 21st. He had known Oswald was employed at the Texas School Book Depository since November 4th 1963, but didn't feel that Oswalds employment there was significant. According to author Jim Bishop, Hosty's opinion was that "Oswald was not a violent person; he was never seen with firearms; never walked a picket line; never wrote hate letters to newspapers; he never even went to a motion picture: he represented no physical danger to anyone."
On November 22nd, Hosty saw JFK from the kerb at 12:24, then went into the Alamo Grill for lunch, where a waitress whispered to him that shots had been fired from the School Book Depository. He hurried back to his office but was ordered out again and told to go to Parkland Hospital. As he arrived there, he was ordered to return to the office immediately and go over the Dallas files to see if he could find any leads. It seems that Oswald still did not come to his mind as a possible suspect. When Oswald was arrested at 1:50, he had a piece of paper in his pocket with Hosty's telephone number on it, but this information was omitted from the FBI's report to the Commission.
Hosty's immediate report to Shanklin when they heard that Oswald had been arrested for killing JD Tippit, was that Oswald could not be regarded as a potential cop killer and that he wasn't even a member of the local Communist Party. He knew this because the FBI had an informant in the Party.
At 2:30, the interrogation of Oswald began in Room 317 of Dallas Police Department in the presence of Hosty and Forrest V. Sorrels of the Secret Service. Apparently Oswald seemed relaxed until Hosty entered, when he became uncomfortable. At 2:50, according to a sworn statement, Jack Revill, a lieutenant in the Criminal Investigation Section of the Special Service Bureau, met Hosty in the basement of the City Hall. He was told by Hosty that Oswald was a member of the Communist Party and that the FBI had information that he "was capable of committing the assassination of President Kennedy."
