New York time 2-23-75 Data On Oswald Withheld (M.Parks) From: bhart@cyberramp.net (Michael Parks) ====================================================== First Reports, The New York Times, 2-23-75 All emphasis is my own...........Michael Parks Start quote DATA ON OSWALD APPARENTLY WITHHELD FROM KEY WARREN INVESTIGATION AIDES By Ben A. Franklin WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 - J. Edgar Hoover sent a memorandum to the State Department in 1960 raising the possibility that an impostor might be using the credentials of an American defector named Lee Harvey Oswald, who was then in the Soviet Union. This memo from the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and two subsequent State Department memos related to it were appar- ently not shown to key investigators of the Warren Commission, which examined the assassination of President Kennedy and determined that Oswald, acting alone, was the assassin. The late Mr. Hoover's warning of the "possibility" that an impostor could be using Oswald's identification data, in the Soviet Union or elsewhere, came more than two years before the murder of the American President in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. The impostor theory was rejected, by implication but not directly, in the published report of the Warren Commission, and its significance could not be determined. BODY IDENTIFIED AS OSWALD The body of the man who the commission concluded has shot the President - and who was shot to death by Jack Ruby two days later - was identified by his mother and other relatives and also by fingerprints and other physical features as that of Lee Harvey Oswald. BUT THE APPARENT WITHHOLDING OF INFORMATION FROM THE COMMISSION INVESTIGATORS RESPONSIBLE FOR CHECKING OSWALD'S ACTIVITIES IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES SUPPORTED A THEORY OF SOME CRITICS OF THE COMMISSION'S FINAL REPORT THAT THE PANEL HAD COME TO ITS CONCLUSION REGARDING OSWALD WITHOUT HAVING HAD ALL THE FACTS. A spokesman for the FBI said, in response to questions, that "we can definitely state, without hesitation, that a copy of the Hoover memo was shown to a member of the Warren Commission staff in the presence of an FBI agent." However, the spokesman said that he could not identify the commission staff member to whom the memo reportedly had been shown. Neither J. Lee Rankin, the former general counsel of the commission, nor any of his former staff aides who were most involved in investigating Oswald's background said they could remember seeing it. However, Howard P. Willens, now a private lawyer here, identified himself in an interview today as the commission lawyer who had reviewed the FBI file. Mr. Willens, who was then the commission's special liaison officer to the Justice Department, said today that "while I do not think that anyone can state now with the necessary precision whether or not he saw the Hoover memo, it is my best recollection that I did, in fact, see that memo." "I DO NOT WANT TO BE IN A PUBLIC DEBATE WITH MY OLD COLLEAGUES," MR. WILLENS SAID, "BUT I KNOW THAT THERE WAS DISCUSSION OF THIS AMONG OTHERS ON THE STAFF CON- CERNED WITH CONTINUED PUBLIC REFERENCES TO THE NOTION THAT THE COMMISSION OVERLOOKED OBVIOUS FACTS." SUGGEST REOPENING INQUIRY Shown the FBI memos and the two State Department documents - discovered in the National Archives here by a private researcher - W. David Slawson, a lawyer who checked out rumors about Oswald for the commission in 1964, said he thought the assass- ination inquiry should be reopened. Mr. Slawson, who is now a law professor at the University of Southern California, said he and other investigators had never been shown the memos. "We were the rumor runner-downers, and we certainly should have seen this material, as we did a great deal of other stuff that we showed to be unfounded," he said. "IT MAY BE MORE SIGNIFICANT THAT WE DID NOT SEE IT, IN TERMS OF A POSSIBLE COVER-UP AND THE REASONS FOR IT, THAN IF WE HAD SEEN IT," he continued. "I mean, I don't know where the impostor notion would have led us - perhaps nowhere, like a lot of the other leads. BUT THE POINT IS WE DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT IT. AND WHY NOT?" Two other commission staff members shared with Mr. Slawson the responsibility for checking out rumors. Neither recalled specifically having seen the memos, but they tend to discount any thought of a renewed investigation. One of them, Dr. Alfred Goldberg, who wrote the gossip-puncturing "Speculations and Rumors" section of the commission's report, said in an interview: "I don't have any recollection of having seen that (Hoover) memorandum. As a matter of fact, I am fairly certain I didn't. "While I think we might have done more had we seen it - we might have engaged in more research, we might have looked for more, we might have asked for more from the State Department and the FBI - in terms of the outcome, I don't believe it would have made any difference." William T. Coleman Jr., who was Mr. Slawson's immediate superior at the commission, and who was nominated last month by President Ford to be Secretary of Transportation, was asked during an interview whether he had seen the memos. "It's been 10 years," he said "and I don't remember one way or the other." He recalled, however, that his duties "required me to see everything that Oswald had done as a defector to the Soviet Union." Mr. Hoover's memo was dated June 3, 1960. Its contents suggest that the FBI director raised the possibility of an impostor because of certain facts the memo recounts. It cited a Foreign Service dispatch concerning Oswald's declaration in Moscow on Oct. 31, 1959, that he would renounce his citizenship and noted that he had surrendered his passport. It also cited a report of an FBI agent in Dallas of May 12, 1960, which said that Oswald's mother, Marguerite C. Oswald, "stated sub- ject had taken his birth certificate with him when he left home." The agent's report indicated that Mrs. Oswald was apprehensive about her son's safety because she had written him three letters and they had all bee returned to her undelivered. Mr. Hoover concluded: "Since there is a possibility that an impostor is using Oswald's birth certificate, any current information the Depart- ment of State may have concerning subject will be appreciated." Two internal State Department memos transmitted Mr. Hoover's warning. One, dated June 10, 1960, went to the department's Soviet desk The other, dated March 31, 1961, was sent from one section of the Passport Office to another. CONCERN ON PASSPORT The latter memo indicated concern that a revalidated passport to be issued to Oswald in preparation for his return to the United States in June, 1962, not be mailed to him through the Soviet postal system but be delivered to him "only on a personal basis" at the Embassy in Moscow. The Warren Commission subsequently developed that in July, 1961, Oswald's passport was handed back to the man who Moscow Embassy officials was satisfied was the same Oswald they had first met in 1959, when he angrily announced his intention to renounce his citizenship. The State Department had ruled by then that he had not given up his citizenship. NONE OF THESE DOCUMENTS - NOT THE HOOVER MEMO NOR EITHER OF THE STATE DEPARTMENT MEMOS - WAS IN THE DEPARTMENT'S OSWALD FILE AS IT WAS GIVEN TO THE WARREN COMMISSION in 1964, according to Slawson. After the commission published its report, thousands of pages of un published commission records were declassified by the State Department and placed in the public file in the National Archives. Among them J. G. Harris, a 45-year-old New Yorker who has spent nearly a decade in Kennedy assassination research, found the Hoover and State Department memos. How the memos came to be missing from the State Department's Oswald file given to the commission BUT INCLUDED IN THE SAME FILE PLACED IN THE ARCHIVES REMAINS UNCLEAR. At the State Department, a spokesman said there would be no comment because all former officials who might have knowledge of the Oswald file had died or retired. Mr. Slawson, citing recent disclosures about domestic activities of the Central Intelligence Agency, said: "IT CONCEIVABLY COULD HAVE BEEN SOMETHING RELATED TO THE CIA. I can only speculate now, but a general CIA effort to take out anything THAT REFLECTED ON THEM MAY HAVE COVERED THIS UP." Mr. Slawson added that he had been "impressed at the time with the intelligence and honesty of the CIA people I dealt with." DENIAL BY CIA A CIA spokesman denying that the agency had ever had any connection with Oswald, said the agency had no record of ever having seen the Hoover memo and HAD NOT ENGAGED IN A COVER-UP. A former State Department official who was familiar with the Oswald file suggested that Hoover himself might have ordered his memo removed from the file before it was sent to the commission, to avoid embarrassing the bureau. The former official, Richard A. Frank, now a lawyer here with the Center for Law and Social Policy, said in an interview that as the department's assistant legal adviser in 1963-64 he had been unaware of the Hoover memo, although he had a major responsibility for assemb- ling the Oswald records sent to the commission. He said it seemed possible that the memo "was so unsupportable by anything the FBI had on Oswald that, when the Oswald file suddenly became the object of a most intensive search and review, Mr. Hoover and his friends in the security operation at State SIMPLY MADE IT DISAPPEAR." A former senior FBI official who worked on the assassination inquiry said in an interview that he could not recall such a memo as part of the case file. Abram Chayes, the State Department's legal advisor in 1964, who assured the commission in testimony then that "VERY AG- GRESSIVE EFFORTS" HAD BEEN MADE TO COLLECT AND TRANSMIT THE FULL OSWALD FILE, was interviewed by telephone in Moscow, where he was attending a legal conference. He said he had no memory of any impostor memo in the State Department files. He recalled that Mr. Kennedy had died about 2 p.m. Washington time and said that if any Oswald documents had been taken from the files before he and his assistants took them under guard that night, "SOMEBODY WOULD HAVE HAD TO BE THINKING AWFULLY HARD AND MOVING AWFULLY FAST." "I am absolutely certain," he said, "that we gave the commission all the documentation that was in the files that night." End quote I just love this statement from Chayes: "SOMEBODY WOULD HAVE HAD TO BE THINKING AWFULLY HARD AND MOVING AWFULLY FAST. -MP ------------------------ end --------------------------------- ------------------------------ end ------------------------------