Conclusions and Recommendations:


Following ARRB requests, the Department of Defense has been unsuccessful
in locating any documentation which memorializes its policies or
directives regarding the issuance of the DD 1173 I.D. card. DOD policy on
its issuance can be inferred from the Army regulations of July 1957, July
1959, and from the USMC's PRAM (change 2, implemented in December 1959),
but ARRB has seen no direct documentation of DOD's contemporaneous
service-wide directives, effective in September 1959, regarding its own
widely-used I.D. card. In any case, what really would have mattered to the
junior officer and the first sergeant running the El Toro Separation
Section would not have been some service-wide DOD directive, but rather
its implementation within the Marine Corps as stated in the requirements
of the USMC's personnel regulations manual (the PRAM). The analysis
conducted of the 8 reserve I.D. cards issued to El Toro Marines between
August 1959 and May 1960 strongly suggests that the USMC may not have
switched from issuance of the "Tan" DD 1173 to the "Red" DD 2MC(Res) I.D.
card until change 2 to the PRAM was promulgated in December, 1959. In any
case, the documented issuance of this same I.D. card to six out of eight
El Toro Marines, and its probable issuance to a seventh Marine, argue
against the uniqueness of this event and give it every appearance of
having been "business as usual" at the El Toro H & HS Separation Section,
regardless of whether the DD 1173 I.D. card was officially authorized in
September 1959, or not. Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that
Oswald's possession of this I.D. card, despite initial indicators to the
contrary, has no relevance to the question of whether or not he was an
agent of the U.S. Government when he defected to the USSR in autumn 1959.

Unfortunately, the apparent coincidence of Oswald's discharge from active
duty and First Lieutenant Ayers' receipt of a Secret clearance both
occurring on the same date-- September 11, 1959--remains unresolved and
unexplained.

No further action is recommended at this time in regard to the Oswald DD
Form 1173 I.D. card issue. I believe ARRB staff has pursued this issue as
far as it can be, given the state of the record, and the quality of human
memory, 38 years after the fact.
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