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when such issuance was no longer formally authorized. [Since they posit
that the DD 1173 was no longer authorized for issue to reservists when
Oswald was discharged in September, 1959, then his receipt of one is, to
them, highly significant--virtual proof to the La Fontaines that he must
have been issued the card under the aegis of an intelligence agency, as
was Francis Gary Powers.] To this author, it has not been demonstrated
that Oswald was issued his DD 1173 I.D. card in contravention of USMC
regulations--in fact, the USMC regulations (the June 1959 PRAM) governing
I.D. card issuance at the time of his discharge (in September 1959) cannot
presently be located, and a circumstantial case can even be made, based on
the analysis of USMC service record entries discussed above (and the known
date of issuance of change 2 to the PRAM--December 1959), that the Marine
Corps may not have changed its regulations regarding issuance of I.D.
cards to reservists until 3 months after his discharge. If it should
eventually be determined that the originally promulgated version of the
PRAM (June 1959), or that change 1 to the PRAM (issued in August 1959),
discontinued the DD 1173, then it seems likely that bureaucratic inertia
(and possible ineptitude) would most likely be the true explanations for
why Oswald received a DD 1173. In support of this viewpoint, the La
Fontaines, as a result of their interview of former USMC 1st Lieutenant A.
C. Ayers, whose typed name and signature appears on Oswald's DD 1173 as
issuing officer (see attachment 2), write that although Ayers had no
recollection of issuing the DD 1173, "The processing of such paperwork,
including the decisions on which I.D.s to give out, he explained, was
done by administrative assistants under the supervision of the senior
noncommissioned officer. When the papers were ready, they were brought en
masse to Lieutenant Ayers for his signature--in essence, an anonymous
process by anonymous personnel.(1) The author's 20 years of previous
experience in Government prior to working for the ARRB (10 years on active
duty in the Navy, and 10 years as a federal civil service employee for the
Department of the Navy) reinforce his strong impression that this
methodology (attributed to Ayers by the La Fontaines) for out-processing
of personnel from active duty to civilian status is not only an accurate
description for how such processing is managed, but was the perfect
environment for a "that's the way we've always done it" bureaucratic
"snafu" to arise and to perpetuate itself. (Changing the rules for a
routine administrative procedure does not necessarily equate with proper
dissemination of that information, nor with implementation of changes in
behavior by the clerks who perform the routine procedure.) In support of
this potential "snafu" hypothesis, a review of attachment 8 reveals that
four people in Oswald's own unit were issued the same DD 1173 I. D. card
subsequent to him, in November and December 1959. My conclusion is that
these occurrences either reflected the still-current regulations in the
Marine Corps (assuming


            (1)  1Oswald Talked (Pelican, 1996): pages 81-82.




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