For Weeks Before Assassination Oswald's Every Move Monitored By FBI/CIA

[Charles Collins]

Does James Hosty that not just the FBI but the CIA were monitoring Oswald as well.
Exactly WHY does Agent Hosty say both the FBI and CIA were obsessed with monitoring Oswald ?
Was it because considered Oswald to be a non-threating individual of no significance ?
Please tell me why Agent Hosty says both the FBI & CIA felt a need to follow Oswald ?
What was it Hosty says they were trying to discover ?

"The CIA Was Monitoring Oswald in the Months Before JFK's Murder
Lee Harvey Oswald defected to the Soviet Union in 1959 before returning with his Soviet-born wife, Marina, to the United States in 1962. The CIA was monitoring Oswald on his September 1963 trip to Mexico City—a mere month before the shooting. While in Mexico, Oswald visited the Soviet and Cuban embassies and even voiced plans to kill Kennedy. The CIA downplayed their knowledge of Oswald’s travels to the Warren Commission.

“They lied outright to the Warren Commission,” says Shenon. “The whole cover story from the CIA and FBI after the assassination was that Oswald was this lone wolf who could never have been foreseen as a threat before the assassination. The truth is the FBI and CIA were closely surveilling Oswald in the weeks and months before the assassination. Both agencies were terrified that their failure to subdue Oswald would be revealed publicly and they missed evidence that could have allowed them to preempt Kennedy’s murder"  - Jessica Pearce Rotondi

So, where exactly does Hosty say what you just claimed that Hosty said? You apparently quoted someone named Jessica Pearce Rotondi. I don’t know who that person is.

For your information here is what Hosty actually wrote about this:

The day the president arrived in Dallas, I gave no thought to the connection between Lee Oswald and the fact that one of the Texas School Book Depository’s two warehouses was on the parade route for the presidential party. At the time I had no information to indicate that Lee was violent or capable of killing anyone, much less the president. Lee had made no threats that I knew of. To me Lee and Marina were just routine espionage cases. All I was trying to find out was whether either one of them was a spy for the Soviets. Period..

According to someone who knew, the reason both the CIA and FBI were interested in the Oswalds was for a potential for espionage. That is all.

[Watson Phillips]

So, where exactly does Hosty say what you just claimed that Hosty said? You apparently quoted someone named Jessica Pearce Rotondi. I don’t know who that person is.

For your information here is what Hosty actually wrote about this:

The day the president arrived in Dallas, I gave no thought to the connection between Lee Oswald and the fact that one of the Texas School Book Depository’s two warehouses was on the parade route for the presidential party. At the time I had no information to indicate that Lee was violent or capable of killing anyone, much less the president. Lee had made no threats that I knew of. To me Lee and Marina were just routine espionage cases. All I was trying to find out was whether either one of them was a spy for the Soviets. Period..

This makes Hosty negligent  liar based on his failure to act on what he says he knew , negligence & lies on his part that directly resulted in the president getting his head blown off.
 Hosty says he knew Oswald worked at the Book depository , a virtual snipers nest looking down on the Presidents upcoming motorcade :

Mr. HOSTY. Yes; that is my recollection that we looked it [where Oswald was working] up in her telephone book to show it at 411 Elm Street, Dallas, Tex.


And yet Hosty failed to inform the Secret Service Advance team preparing the route for the President's motorcade of what he suspected could be a Russian asset with a documented violent history with firearms sitting in a 6th floor snipers nest looking down on the President like shooting fish in a barrel.

[Lance Payette]

So, where exactly does Hosty say what you just claimed that Hosty said? You apparently quoted someone named Jessica Pearce Rotondi. I don’t know who that person is.

For your information here is what Hosty actually wrote about this:

The day the president arrived in Dallas, I gave no thought to the connection between Lee Oswald and the fact that one of the Texas School Book Depository’s two warehouses was on the parade route for the presidential party. At the time I had no information to indicate that Lee was violent or capable of killing anyone, much less the president. Lee had made no threats that I knew of. To me Lee and Marina were just routine espionage cases. All I was trying to find out was whether either one of them was a spy for the Soviets. Period..

According to someone who knew, the reason both the CIA and FBI were interested in the Oswalds was for a potential for espionage. That is all.

It appears to me that Watson may be misunderstanding what he is reading.

Jessica Pearce Rotondi ("Roto" to close friends like me) is a young woman who writes about anything and everything in her quest for a writing career. The article Watson quotes seems to be the only thing Roto has ever written about the JFKA. It's a short piece, "8 Facts About the John F. Kennedy Assassination" at the History Channel website, https://www.history.com/articles/kennedy-assassination-facts-oswald-warren-commission. The quote she attributes to Shenon is found nowhere else. Even AI steers you to Roto's article.

That being said, Shenon has long emphasized that the CIA and FBI were less than candid with the WC about their own malfeasance in regard to Oswald. His point is exactly the one that I and others have been making: their cover-up was of their own malfeasance, not of some role in the JFKA. He has never suggested that they were "closely monitoring" Oswald in the weeks and months before the JFKA. Watson, it appears to me, is expanding Shenon's point into something more dark and sinister than simple bureaucratic incompetence and the inevitable attempt to hide it. Surely what the CIA and particularly FBI did know about Oswald should have been communicated to the SS before the JFKA.

[Lance Payette]

This makes Hosty negligent  liar based on his failure to act on what he says he knew , negligence & lies on his part that directly resulted in the president And yet Hosty failed to inform the Secret Service Advance team preparing the route for the President's motorcade of what he suspected could be a Russian asset with a documented violent history with firearms sitting in a 6th floor snipers nest looking down on the President like shooting fish in a barrel.

"Documented violent history with firearms" - ?

You also speak as though "the FBI" were some monolithic entity. "The FBI" in this instance was Hosty. The whole point of people like Shenon is that better intra-agency and inter-agency communication would have at least put Oswald's employment in the TSBD on the SS's radar screen. (It's entirely possible the SS would have been satisfied he was harmless as well. Hindsight is always 20-20.)

Other than the fact that the CIA, FBI and SS dropped the ball, which everyone agrees is true, what is your point?

[Steve M. Galbraith]

After the assassination, Hoover ordered one of his top agents, James Gale, to review the FBI's surveillance of Oswald. Gale came back with a scathing review of the failure of the agents to adequately keep track of the Oswalds. Among other things: they completely failed to interview Marina; they took Oswald off the security indices list; and Hosty failed to interview Oswald after learning about Oswald's visit to Mexico City and his meeting with Soviet officials (Kostikov most notably) at the Embassy. And so on.

The FBI was simply not monitoring every move that Oswald made.

The brief account below is from Philip Shenon's book "A Cruel and Shocking Act."

[Watson Phillips]

, it appears to me, is expanding Shenon's point into something more dark and sinister than simple bureaucratic incompetence and the inevitable attempt to hide it. Surely what the CIA and particularly FBI did know about Oswald should have been communicated to the SS before the JFKA.

For the third time now, in what alternate universe does the FBI failure to inform the President's Secret Service Advance team that the proposed motorcade will be passing directly underneath a building with a 6th floor sniper's nest containing what Hosty is on record as saying is a possible Russian asset currently under investigation , with a  known documented history of criminal violence & firearms convictions , fit the description of "simple bureaucratic
incompetence?
Simple incompetence involving 17 individual experienced FBI agents all failing to inform the Secret Service Advance team of an individual under active criminal investigation , sitting directly above the motorcade ?
REALLY?
It takes some king-kong size giblets to own up the failure of 17 experienced FBI agents to include in their possible threat list to the Secret Service Advance Team what would have prevented the murder of President to being "Simple bureaucratic incompetence "  and then call other people "conspiracy theorists "

A location in spitting proximity of the presidential motorcade Agent Hosty says he had full knowledge of :
Mr. HOSTY. Yes; that is my recollection that we looked it [where Oswald was working] up in her telephone book to show it at 411 Elm Street, Dallas, Tex.

[Watson Phillips]

"Documented violent history with firearms" - ?

You also speak as though "the FBI" were some monolithic entity. "The FBI" in this instance was Hosty. The whole point of people like Shenon is that better intra-agency and inter-agency communication would have at least put Oswald's employment in the TSBD on the SS's radar screen. (It's entirely possible the SS would have been satisfied he was harmless as well. Hindsight is always 20-20.)

Other than the fact that the CIA, FBI and SS dropped the ball, which everyone agrees is true, what is your point?

A suspected russian asset currently under FBI investigation as such ,with a documented history of criminal violence towards authority figures , criminal use of illegal firearms , being considered "harmless" enough to be sitting in a 6th floor snipers nest within spitting distance to the President ?
It takes some king-kong size giblets to own up the failure of 17 experienced FBI agents, the CIA & SS  to include in their possible threat list an individual with a documented history of criminal violence towards authority figures , criminal use of illegal firearms , and then call other people "conspiracy theorists "

You do concede there was a threat list of individuals shared between the FBI & SS for the Presidents visit to Dallas, as is standard procedure to this day don't you ?  Yes, No