Mr. Hosty, who died of prostate cancer on June 10 in Kansas City, Mo., at 86, always said he regretted not having found Oswald in those weeks before the assassination. But he insisted it would not have made a difference.
Oswald had been on the FBI’s radar since returning to the United States in 1962, with his Russian wife, after an unsuccessful effort to settle in the Soviet Union. He had been interviewed by other FBI agents and described in their reports as an avowed communist, a potential spy, and a heavy drinker, but never as a potential assassin.
When asked by a congressional committee years later why he did not alert the Secret Service to Oswald before the president’s visit, Mr. Hosty replied: “The only thing that we could tell the Secret Service was a direct threat to the president. He made no direct threat to the president. Therefore we could not tell them.’’
In fact, it was Mr. Hosty’s contacts with Oswald, rather than the lack of them, that came to haunt him. In 1964, answering questions before the Warren Commission, Mr. Hosty admitted having received a letter from Oswald in the weeks before the assassination and destroying it on the day Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby, Nov. 24.
He said the letter included Oswald’s sharp protest over Mr. Hosty’s having questioned Oswald’s wife, Marina, when the agent made two visits to their home while Oswald was out. Mr. Hosty testified that he destroyed the letter on orders from his supervisor, J. Gordon Shanklin. (Shanklin denied giving such an order.)
Mr. Hosty also figured in a deception involving Oswald’s address book. Mr. Hosty’s name and phone number appeared in the book, but FBI agents in Washington, taking inventory of the contents of it for the Warren Commission, left his name out. (Commission lawyers later obtained the address book and discovered the omission.)
