James Patrick Hosty Jr. (August 28, 1924 – June 10, 2011) was an American
FBI
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and its principal Federal law enforcement in the United States, federal law enforcement age ...
agent
Agent may refer to:
Espionage, investigation, and law
*, spies or intelligence officers
* Law of agency, laws involving a person authorized to act on behalf of another
** Agent of record, a person with a contractual agreement with an insuranc ...
known for unofficially investigating
Lee Harvey Oswald
Lee Harvey Oswald (October 18, 1939 – November 24, 1963) was a U.S. Marine veteran who assassinated John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, on November 22, 1963.
Oswald was placed in juvenile detention at the age of 12 fo ...
in the months before the
1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Hosty later testified before the
Warren Commission
The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known unofficially as the Warren Commission, was established by President Lyndon B. Johnson through on November 29, 1963, to investigate the assassination of United States Pr ...
, and came to believe Oswald shot Kennedy in coordination with an agent of the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
.
Biography
Hosty was born on August 28, 1924, in
Chicago, Illinois
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
.
He was one of seven children of Charlotte Irene and James Patrick Hosty Sr., an executive in a sugar company in Chicago. Hosty served in the United States military during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
from 1942 to 1946 and graduated from the
University of Notre Dame
The University of Notre Dame du Lac, known simply as Notre Dame ( ) or ND, is a private Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, outside the city of South Bend. French priest Edward Sorin founded the school in 1842. The main campu ...
.
Hosty was assigned by FBI Headquarters to investigate ultra-rightists like members of the
KKK and
General Edwin Walker along with "his
alker'sMinutemen in Dallas." Hosty himself said so on page 4 of his book ''Assignment Oswald'' (1996).
In June 1962,
Lee Harvey Oswald
Lee Harvey Oswald (October 18, 1939 – November 24, 1963) was a U.S. Marine veteran who assassinated John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, on November 22, 1963.
Oswald was placed in juvenile detention at the age of 12 fo ...
was allowed to return to the United States after his 1959 defection to the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
. He brought with him a wife and his infant daughter, both born in the Soviet Union, and FBI agent John Fain was assigned to investigate him. Fain interviewed Oswald twice – once in June 1962 and once in August 1962. After the second interview, Fain along with FBI Headquarters closed the FBI casefile on Oswald.
General Edwin Walker was a well-known anti-communist in his day, many US anti-communists were outraged that a defector to the Soviet Union would be allowed to return to the Dallas area with a Russian bride. They demanded that the FBI continually investigate Oswald. Yet the FBI casefile was officially closed.
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
The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known unofficially as the Warren Commission, was established by President Lyndon B. Johnson through on November 29, 1963, to investigate the assassination of United States Pr ...
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
Marina Nikolayevna Oswald Porter ( Prusakova; russian: Марина Николаевна Прусакова; born July 17, 1941) is the Russian-American widow of Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of US President John F. Kennedy.
Early life
Porte ...
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.
Hosty failed to tell the
Warren Commission
The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known unofficially as the Warren Commission, was established by President Lyndon B. Johnson through on November 29, 1963, to investigate the assassination of United States Pr ...
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
A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that invokes a conspiracy by sinister and powerful groups, often political in motivation, when other explanations are more probable.Additional sources:
*
*
*
* The term has a nega ...
.
The
Warren Commission
The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known unofficially as the Warren Commission, was established by President Lyndon B. Johnson through on November 29, 1963, to investigate the assassination of United States Pr ...
attorneys often asked how the FBI could either (1) be unaware of the dangers of
Lee Harvey Oswald
Lee Harvey Oswald (October 18, 1939 – November 24, 1963) was a U.S. Marine veteran who assassinated John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, on November 22, 1963.
Oswald was placed in juvenile detention at the age of 12 fo ...
; 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
John Edgar Hoover (January 1, 1895 – May 2, 1972) was an American law enforcement administrator who served as the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He was appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation ...
was asked this question numerous times in his own
Warren Commission
The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known unofficially as the Warren Commission, was established by President Lyndon B. Johnson through on November 29, 1963, to investigate the assassination of United States Pr ...
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
John Edgar Hoover (January 1, 1895 – May 2, 1972) was an American law enforcement administrator who served as the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He was appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation ...
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
Lee Harvey Oswald (October 18, 1939 – November 24, 1963) was a U.S. Marine veteran who assassinated John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, on November 22, 1963.
Oswald was placed in juvenile detention at the age of 12 fo ...
. In this way, Hosty himself fostered a popular JFK
conspiracy theory
A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that invokes a conspiracy by sinister and powerful groups, often political in motivation, when other explanations are more probable.Additional sources:
*
*
*
* The term has a nega ...
. 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
Kennedy assassination
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 un ...
. The note asked Hosty to stop questioning Oswald's wife. Hosty filed it away. He first met Oswald on November 22, 1963. It was while he was interrogating Oswald on November 22 that he realized that the unsigned note he had received two weeks prior was from Oswald. He said that, on orders from his supervisor, he destroyed the note after Oswald was killed on November 24, 1963.
Notes taken down by Hosty during his interrogation of Oswald on November 22, indicate that when Oswald was asked to account for himself at the time of the assassination, he claimed to hav
"went outside to watch P. Parade" (referring to the presidential motorcade). The newly discovered Hosty interrogation notes, unearthed at NARA by former British Intelligence agent and JFK researcher
Malcolm Blunt were recently featured for the first time in the 2020 NHK World-Japan documentar
Oswald and JFK - Unsolved Cases, Part II: The Chessmaster(at 35:00 - 36:10).
Hosty retired from the
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...
in 1979.
He died of
prostate cancer
Prostate cancer is cancer of the prostate. Prostate cancer is the second most common cancerous tumor worldwide and is the fifth leading cause of cancer-related mortality among men. The prostate is a gland in the male reproductive system that sur ...
on June 10, 2011, in
Kansas City, Missouri
Kansas City (abbreviated KC or KCMO) is the largest city in Missouri by population and area. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 508,090 in 2020, making it the 36th most-populous city in the United States. It is the central ...
.
Portrayal in fiction
Hosty was portrayed in the 1991
Oliver Stone
William Oliver Stone (born September 15, 1946) is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. Stone won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay as writer of '' Midnight Express'' (1978), and wrote the gangster film remake '' Sc ...
film ''
JFK
John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination i ...
'' as having a central role in a government conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy and frame Oswald.
In the 2011
Stephen King
Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, crime, science-fiction, and fantasy novels. Described as the "King of Horror", a play on his surname and a reference to his high s ...
novel ''
11/22/63'', Hosty questions the protagonist Jake Epping, a time traveler who has just narrowly prevented Oswald from killing the president.
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
Gil Bellows (born June 28, 1967) is a Canadians, Canadian actor, screenwriter, and director. He is best known for the roles of Tommy Williams in the 1994 movie ''The Shawshank Redemption'', Billy Thomas in the Fox Broadcasting Company, Fox televi ...
briefly appears as Hosty.
Actor
Ron Livingston
Ronald Joseph Livingston (born June 5, 1967) is an American actor. He is known for playing Peter Gibbons in the 1999 film ''Office Space'' and Captain Lewis Nixon III in the 2001 miniseries '' Band of Brothers.''
Livingston's other roles include ...
portrays Hosty in writer and director
Peter Landesman
Peter Landesman (born 3 January 1965) is an American screenwriter, film director, producer, journalist, novelist and painter. He wrote a number of cover stories for ''The New York Times Magazine'', ''The New Yorker'', ''The Atlantic Monthly'' an ...
's 2013 film ''
Parkland'', which recounts the subsequent events that occurred at Dallas' Parkland Hospital on the day JFK was assassinated.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hosty, James
1924 births
2011 deaths
Federal Bureau of Investigation agents
University of Notre Dame alumni
Military personnel from Chicago
People from Kansas City, Missouri
Deaths from prostate cancer in the United States
People associated with the assassination of John F. Kennedy
American military personnel of World War II
Deaths from cancer in Missouri