James P. Hosty
James P. Hosty | |
---|---|
Born | James Patrick Hosty August 28, 1924 Special Agent |
Spouse | Janet[1] |
Children | nine[1] |
James Patrick Hosty Jr. (August 28, 1924 – June 10, 2011) was an American FBI agent known for unofficially investigating Lee Harvey Oswald in the months before the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Hosty later testified before the Warren Commission, and came to believe Oswald shot Kennedy in coordination with an agent of the Soviet Union.
Biography
Hosty was born on August 28, 1924, in
Hosty was assigned by FBI Headquarters to investigate ultra-rightists like members of the
In June 1962,
James Hosty tried to re-open the FBI casefile on Oswald several times in the next nine months, but FBI Headquarters, including FBI Assistant Director Alan Belmont, rejected those requests. Belmont admitted this in his Warren Commission testimony. Hosty evidently kept a close eye on Oswald, anyway, through 1962 and 1963, without being sanctioned by FBI Headquarters.
In early November 1963, Hosty made contact with Oswald's wife Marina Oswald in order to interview her about her entry into the United States 17 months previously. Oswald wrote Hosty a hostile note to protest what he considered harassment of Marina. Oswald also had Hosty's name, phone number, and car license plate number in his address book.[2]
Hosty failed to tell the Warren Commission the truth about Oswald's hostile letter because he had destroyed it, allegedly on his superior's orders. His superior, Gordon Shanklin, denied this. Because of this, Hosty attracted speculation as a possible conspirator in several conspiracy theories.[3]
The Warren Commission attorneys often asked how the FBI could either (1) be unaware of the dangers of Lee Harvey Oswald; or (2) be aware of Oswald's danger and yet fail to warn the Secret Service in Washington DC about this threat to JFK in Dallas. J. Edgar Hoover was asked this question numerous times in his own Warren Commission testimony, with ambiguous replies (which fed different JFK conspiracy theories). After those hearings, Hoover transferred Hosty to the FBI's slow-paced Kansas City office until his mandatory retirement in 1979.
Hosty later wrote a memoir about the Kennedy assassination, titled Assignment: Oswald. In this book, Hosty claimed to have stumbled upon secret CIA information proving that Oswald killed JFK in collusion with Soviet consul Valery Kostikov. Hosty further claimed that J. Edgar Hoover and all of FBI Headquarters had deliberately prevented Hosty from learning the truth about Kostikov. Hosty, without any official confirmation, alleged that Kostikov was “the KGB's chief assassination expert for the Western hemisphere” (Hosty, 1996, p. 215).
Since Oswald had admittedly met "Kostin" in Mexico City during the final week of September, 1963, Hosty concluded that the Soviets killed JFK with the aid of Lee Harvey Oswald. In this way, Hosty himself fostered a popular JFK conspiracy theory. It is noteworthy that Hosty's conspiracy theory was basically the same as that posed by General Walker, i.e. a 'Communist Conspiracy.' Hosty's intrigue about Kostikov runs like a thread from the start to the finish of his 1996 book (Hosty, 1996, Index 'V.V. Kostikov').
Hosty received an unsigned note from Lee Harvey Oswald about two weeks before the
Hosty retired from the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1979.[1]
He died of prostate cancer on June 10, 2011, in Kansas City, Missouri.[1]
Portrayal in fiction
Hosty was portrayed in the 1991 Oliver Stone film JFK as having a central role in a government conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy and frame Oswald.[1] In the 2011 Stephen King novel 11/22/63, Hosty questions the protagonist Jake Epping, a time traveler who has just narrowly prevented Oswald from killing the president.[5] Hosty is suspicious of Epping because of what he knows about Oswald and his investigation by the FBI, but assists Epping in his efforts to quietly disappear, so that he may return to 2011. The television adaptation has Epping returning to 2016, and Gil Bellows briefly appears as Hosty.
Actor
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h Vitello, Paul (June 19, 2011). "James P. Hosty, Investigated Oswald, Dies at 86". The New York Times. New York. Retrieved December 17, 2014.
- ^ http://issuu.com/ajweberman/docs/1adressbookcolor/38?e=0/10629136 p. 38 of Oswald's Address Book.
- ^ Goldman, Peter; John J. Lindsay (April 28, 1975). "Dallas: New Questions and Answers" (PDF). Newsweek. New York. p. 37. Retrieved January 3, 2013.
- ^ Prayer Man: The Exoneration of Lee Harvey Oswald By Stan Dane (2015), p. 124.
- ISBN 9781451627305.
- ^ IMDB (October 4, 2013). "Parkland". IMDB.