MY SIXTH BOOK "THE PLOT TO KILL PRESIDENT KENNEDY IN CHICAGO" 2024

MY SIXTH BOOK "THE PLOT TO KILL PRESIDENT KENNEDY IN CHICAGO" 2024
MY SIXTH BOOK "THE PLOT TO KILL PRESIDENT KENNEDY IN CHICAGO" 2024

JFK ASSASSINATION SECRET SERVICE DOCUMENTARY

MAJOR SECRET SERVICE RELATED BOOKS/DVDs/BLU RAYS I AM REFERENCED IN

MAJOR SECRET SERVICE RELATED BOOKS/DVDs/BLU RAYS I AM REFERENCED IN
Zero Fail (quotes from my fourth book), The updated version of The Secret Service-The Hidden History of an Enigmatic Agency (several pages), The Secrets of the Secret Service (the former agent quotes from my third book), The Kennedy Detail (the former agent refers to me on a few pages- he wrote his book as a reaction to my research), Guardians of Democracy (the former agent refers to this blog), Within Arm’s Length (the former agent has my blurb on the cover), C-SPAN November 2010 DVD with former agents Gerald Blaine and Clint Hill (they show a You Tube video of me and discuss my research), C-SPAN May 2012 DVD with former agent Clint Hill (he discusses my letter about his first book), the original edition of The Secret Service-The Hidden History of an Enigmatic Agency (several pages), My History Channel appearance on The Men Who Killed Kennedy (DVD), My NEWSMAX TV appearance on The Men Who Killed Kennedy (2019-2020), The Final Report of the Assassinations Records Review Board (images of the excerpt about my Secret Service interviews donation, President Clinton receiving the report, and an image of the cover), Last Word (several pages and my blurb on the cover of the paperback), A Coup in Camelot DVD/ Blu Ray, They Killed Our President (16 pages refer to my work), an image of myself on C-SPAN, A Coup in Camelot via Amazon Prime television, The Man Behind the Suit DVD (I am Associate Producer on this documentary about former agent Robert DeProspero), JFK REVISITED: THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS (I am credited at the end), Vanity Fair article 10/17/14 (refers to my first book a couple times), JFK: The Final Hours DVD (program credits-in background slightly above), Murder in Dealey Plaza (I have two chapters), The Kennedy Half Century (refers to this blog), Coinage Magazine February 2010 (several quotes from myself), Publishers Weekly 8/28/2000 (refers to my contribution to Murder in Dealey Plaza, above), JFK: DESTINY BETRAYED (thanked at the end of all four episodes), and 2 images from THE ASSASSINATION OF JFK SBS UK DOCUMENTARY 2021

ALL MY BOOKS AVAILABLE HERE:

ALL MY BOOKS AVAILABLE HERE:
ALL MY BOOKS AVAILABLE HERE:

Secret Service JFK

Secret Service, JFK, President Kennedy, James Rowley, Gerald Behn, Floyd Boring, Roy Kellerman, John Campion, William Greer, Forest Sorrels, Clint Hill, Winston Lawson, Emory Roberts, Sam Kinney, Paul Landis, John "Jack" Ready, William "Tim" McIntyre, Glenn Bennett, George Hickey, Rufus Youngblood, Warren "Woody" Taylor, Jerry Kivett, Lem Johns, John "Muggsy" O'Leary, Sam Sulliman, Ernest Olsson, Robert Steuart, Richard Johnsen, Stewart "Stu" Stout, Roger Warner, Henry "Hank" Rybka, Donald Lawton, Dennis Halterman, Walt Coughlin, Andy Berger, Ron Pontius, Bert de Freese, Jim Goodenough, Bill Duncan, Ned Hall II, Mike Howard, Art Godfrey, Gerald Blaine, Ken Giannoules, Paul Burns, Gerald O'Rourke, Robert Faison, David Grant, John Joe Howlett, Bill Payne, Robert Burke, Frank Yeager, Donald Bendickson, Gerald Bechtle, Howard Norton, Hamilton Brown, Toby Chandler, Chuck Zboril, Joe Paolella, Wade Rodham, Bob Foster, Lynn Meredith, Rad Jones, Thomas Wells, Charlie Kunkel, Stu Knight, Paul Rundle, Glen Weaver, Arnie Lau, Forrest Guthrie, Eve Dempsher, Bob Lilley, Ken Wiesman, Mike Mastrovito, Tony Sherman, Larry Newman, Morgan Gies, Tom Shipman, Ed Tucker, Harvey Henderson, Abe Bolden, Robert Kollar, Ed Mougin, Mac Sweazey, Horace "Harry" Gibbs, Tom Behl, Jim Cantrell, Bill Straughn, Tom Fridley, Mike Kelly, Joe Noonan, Gayle Dobish, Earl Moore, Arthur Blake, John Lardner, Milt Wilhite, Bill Skiles, Louis Mayo, Thomas Wooge, Milt Scheuerman, Talmadge Bailey, Bob Lapham, Bob Newbrand, Bernie Mullady, Jerry Dolan, Vince Mroz, William Bacherman, Howard Anderson, U.E. Baughman, Walt Blaschak, Robert Bouck, George Chaney, William Davis, Paul Doster, Dick Flohr, Jack Fox, John Giuffre, Jim Griffith, Jack Holtzhauer, Andy Hutch, Jim Jeffries, John Paul Jones, Kent Jordan, Dale Keaner, Brooks Keller, Thomas Kelley, Clarence Knetsch, Jackson Krill, Elmer Lawrence, Bill Livingood, J. Leroy Lewis, Dick Metzinger, Jerry McCann, John McCarthy, Ed Morey, Chester Miller, Roy "Gene" Nunn, Jack Parker, Paul Paterni, Burrill Peterson, Max Phillips, Walter Pine, Michael Shannon, Frank Stoner, Cecil Taylor, Charles Taylor, Bob Taylor, Elliot Thacker, Ken Thompson, Mike Torina, Jack Walsh, Jack Warner, Thomas White, Ed Wildy, Carroll Winslow, Dale Wunderlich, Walter Young, Winston Gintz, Bill Carter, C. Douglas Dillon, James Johnson, Larry Hess, Frank Farnsworth, Jim Giovanneti,Bob Gaugh,Don Brett, Jack Gleason, Bob Jamison, Gary Seale, Bill Sherlock, Bob Till, Doc Walters...

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Tuesday, July 5, 2011

James P. Hosty, Investigated Oswald, Dies at 86

James P. Hosty, Investigated Oswald, Dies at 86


By PAUL VITELLO
Published: June 19, 2011

Special Agent James P. Hosty had a few dozen cases in his portfolio in October 1963 when his supervisor in the Dallas office of the F.B.I. handed him another. It was the well-thumbed file on a suspected communist agitator and possible spy named Lee Harvey Oswald.

James P. Hosty testifying before Congress in 1975.

Mr. Hosty tried to find Oswald during two trips into the field in early November, without any luck.

The two men met for the first time on Nov. 22, 1963.

Oswald was being held at Dallas police headquarters, charged with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the killing of a Dallas police officer. Mr. Hosty, taking notes as the police interrogated Oswald, was beginning the half of his life that would remain painfully entangled in the mystery and national trauma of the Kennedy assassination.

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 F.B.I.’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 F.B.I. 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 1975, testifying before Congress, 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. (Mr. 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 F.B.I. 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.)

Both incidents made Mr. Hosty a lightning rod for suspicion about the credibility of the F.B.I. in the aftermath of the assassination, raising questions for some about what the agency knew and would not tell. For others, the incidents suggested darker possibilities.

Mr. Hosty’s name is ubiquitous in the conspiracy literature. Oliver Stone’s 1991 movie “JFK” has a fictionalized version of him at the center of a conspiracy of government operatives who kill the president and set up Oswald — an F.B.I. informant in the film — to take the fall.

“The irony was, my dad was a devout Irish-Catholic Democrat Kennedy supporter,” said Thomas Hosty, one of Mr. Hosty’s nine children, a lawyer, who helped his father write his 1995 memoir, “Assignment: Oswald.” They conceived the project after “JFK,” he said, to set the record straight. “Being portrayed as part of a plot to kill the president, it was just so hurtful to him.”

In his memoir, Mr. Hosty acknowledges some mistakes but contends that F.B.I. officials made bigger errors — first by trying to eliminate evidence that might make it seem as though the agency had any hint of Oswald’s plans, and then by letting commission investigators portray Mr. Hosty as a bumbler when the evidence emerged about his contact with Oswald in the weeks before the assassination.

“I came to understand that one of our jobs was to protect the bureau’s image at all costs,” he wrote.

Mr. Hosty was among 12 agents reprimanded for various investigative improprieties after the release of the Warren Commission’s report. In 1965, he was transferred to the F.B.I.’s Kansas City office, where he served until his mandatory retirement at age 55, in 1979.

After retiring, he granted interviews to every writer and documentary filmmaker who asked him about Dallas, Thomas Hosty said. “Even the ones who had some conspiracy agenda,” he added. “He figured if these people met him, they would see who he was — a straight arrow.”

James Patrick Hosty was born on Aug. 28, 1924, in Chicago, one of seven children of Charlotte Irene and James Hosty Sr., an executive in a sugar company. He served in World War II and later graduated from the University of Notre Dame. He joined the F.B.I. in 1952.

He and his wife, Janet, who died in 1999, had 9 children, 7 of whom survive, along with 22 grandchildren and 9 great-grandchildren.

In his testimony before the Warren Commission in 1964, Mr. Hosty said he spent the morning of Nov. 22, 1963, in meetings, none of them related to Oswald. On his lunch hour, he went outside to watch the president’s motorcade go by and then crossed the street to get lunch. While he was eating, a waitress told him what she had just heard on the radio.

“I immediately stopped my lunch,” he said, “and got back to the office.”

He found out two hours later that the Dallas police had arrested a suspect and identified him as Lee Harvey Oswald.

“What was your reaction?” the commission investigator asked.

“Shock,” Mr. Hosty said.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: June 22, 2011

An obituary on Monday about James P. Hosty, an F.B.I. agent who investigated Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963, misstated at one point Mr. Hosty’s testimony before the Warren Commission. He did not tell the commission that he had received a letter from Oswald in the weeks before President John F. Kennedy’s assassination and later destroyed it; Mr. Hosty did not publicly acknowledge receiving that letter until he testified before Congress in 1975.

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