JFK SMOKING GUN: FBI False Report On September 10, 1963 Indicates Bureau Had Foreknowledge Oswald's Rifle Would Be Scrutinized

RECAP

In my previous Substack report, I laid out a flow of information from previously classified documents which strongly indicate that the FBI must have intercepted the rifle that was alleged to have killed President Kennedy.

The information came from a clandestine operation called Project Hunter, which involved the CIA intercepting mail to and from the USA between correspondents in the USSR. The original program known as HTLINGUAL was a sole endeavor of the CIA. But in 1958, the FBI began collaborating with the CIA in mail interception, and the subsequent program added specific FBI targets and Bureau interception of purely domestic mail between correspondents in the USA.

On December 11, 1962, the CIA intercepted (see PDF pg, 163) mail sent from Marina Oswald to USSR, return address 602 Elsbeth Street, Dallas. This interception is mentioned in a memo written to FBI Dir. J. Edgar Hoover by CIA counter-espionage chief James Angleton on November 26, 1963.

In that memo, Angleton also draws stark attention upon two other pieces of mail - heading to Marina Oswald from friends in the USSR - intercepted en route to the Oswald’s PO Box 2915 in Dallas, dated January and May 1963. Angleton informs Hoover that - according to these letters - Lee Harvey Oswald was known under the alias of “Alik” to people in Russia. Angleton also mentions that the rifle was shipped to a PO Box under an alias, and he informs Hoover that it may be “significant”.

In a declassified folder that traces the history of the Hunter project, correspondence between the FBI and CIA from its inception in 1958 through 1973 chronicles Hunter project operations, correspondence, and results. Hunter Report #1 (PDF pg. 7) by Angleton states that the FBI would be furnished copies of envelopes, and opened contents thereof, when the CIA intercepted mail from a specific name the FBI had targeted for Hunter surveillance.

In the November 26, 1963 memo to Hoover, Angleton attached the January and May 1963 letters (and translations thereof) intercepted from PO Box 2915, which means that the FBI had already requested continuing Hunter project surveillance of Marina Oswald’s mail by January 1963.

Then in February 1963, Marina’s mail to the Soviet Embassy is intercepted expressing a plea for help to return home to the USSR. Such dissatisfaction was a specific criteria for exploitation of Soviet persons in the USA by the FBI as per W.A. Branigan, FBI head of counter-espionage, in a memo from the Hunter project folder.

HUNTER IN THE FIELD

According to a an internal FBI Hunter project memo dated April 28, 1958 (Branigan to Belmont, PDF pg. 13), the Hunter protocols required information from the CIA to be forwarded to the relevant FBI field office in care of the SAC (Special Agent In Charge). All Hunter project information - even the existence of the project itself - was forbidden to be disseminated outside of the Bureau, and “should not be set forth in any investigative reports.”

Accordingly, after having already placed a mail stop on Marina Oswald, intercepting mail to her at PO Box 2915 in Dallas in January 1963, the CIA gets another hit on her Hunter file on February 17, 1963 which contains explicit criteria the FBI has set out to target Soviet individuals in the USA for “defection or double agent purposes”.

The Hunter file info on Marina, as per the memo, would have been sent to SAC Shanklin. He was allowed to share it within the Bureau, and the testimony of SA James Hosty before the Warren Commission on May 5, 1964, appears to confirm that this is exactly what happened in early March 1963:

“I might add that it is the practice of the FBI to interview immigrants from behind the Iron Curtain on a selective basis, and she was so selected to be one of these persons to be interviewed.”

HOSTY’S MARCH 11, 1963 INQUIRY AND SUBSEQUENT REPORTS THERETO

Hosty then testified that he began his inquiry concerning Marina Oswald on March 4, 1963 (two weeks after the CIA intercepted her Hunter triggering letter of dissatisfaction to the Soviet Embassy). He then testified that on March 11, 1963, he went to the 602 Elsbeth Address and interviewed the Oswald’s former landlady, Mrs. Tobias.

Before we examine Hosty’s testimony regarding his visit to Mrs. Tobias, we must skip ahead to the official FBI report prepared about this visit - not by Hosty who conducted it - but rather by SAC Shanklin, dated March 25, 1963, wherein he states that Mrs. Tobias informed that the Oswald’s had moved out of the Elsbeth apartment on March 3, 1963, “to another apartment building in Dallas, Texas.”

Then in a subsequent paragraph, Shanklin states that the actual address where the Oswalds moved, “214 West Neely, Dallas, Texas”, was obtained - not from Mrs. Tobias - but rather from “Dorothea Myers” a confidential informant in the “Postal Inspector’s Office”.

So, at this point in time, March 11, 1963, Marina Oswald is being surveilled by the FBI and the CIA. Her mail from Elsbeth was in the Hunter files in November 1962; followed by a letter being intercepted to PO Box 2915, opened, copied, and translated in January 1963; then a letter to the Soviet Embassy in February 1963 expresses a desire to leave the USA and return to the USSR; and she is selected now for a Hunter interview, and the inquiry for that interview lands us on March 11, 1963, where the local Dallas “Postal Inspector’s Office” is also contributing on a confidential basis to the surveillance of the Oswalds, with regard to the Hunter project, a mail intercept program that is so secret that FBI agents are not allowed to even mention it in reports.

As such, it is next to impossible that the FBI did not know about a five foot long package containing a rifle from a nationally known firearms dealer arriving addressed to that PO Box, not to Oswald, but rather to a fictitious addressee, first initial “A”, which is also the first initial of Oswald’s Russian alias known to the intelligence community.

Using such a fictitious name was, according to the Department of Justice, a violation of federal law, which DOJ claimed allowed it to seize the murder rifle, winning litigation in federal district court against a claimant who had paid Marina Oswald for the rights to the infamous rifle. While the government’s win was reversed as to forfeiture in the 5th Circuit Court (winning possession later on abandonment grounds), the holding stated:

“…Oswald could have been punished for his use of a fictitious name under 18 U.S.C.A. § 1001, which prohibits the knowing and willful making of false or fraudulent representations in any matter within the jurisdiction of an agency or department of the United States.”

At this time, the FBI was actually intercepting domestic mail from targets flagged by Hunter, so the rifle should have been intercepted, especially since both Oswalds checked the right boxes for “exploitation” in the SOBIR program (see bottom of Shanklin memo), which stands for Soviet Bloc Immigrants and Repatriates, which encompassed both Lee and Marina.

THE COVER-UP BY SA HOSTY IN SEPTEMBER 1963

SA Hosty verified the Neely address on March 14, then put the case aside for 45 days. When he picks it up again in May 1963, he infamously reported that the Oswalds had left Dallas without leaving a forwarding address, which was provably false (as I discussed in an X Space here, and in an X post here).

Thereafter, it becomes clear, between April and August 1963, that Oswald had moved to New Orleans, where he is arrested after acting very strange by wearing a placard around his neck and passing out flyers promoting the Fair Play For Cuba Committee, which is subject to an alert by US Intelligence.

On September 10, 1963, SA James Hosty writes an official FBI report designed to transfer Office of Origin (meaning lead control) of Lee Harvey Oswald’s case to the New Orleans office of the FBI.

In that memo, Hosty completely flips the script on the March 11, 1963 interview of Mrs. Tobias, now reporting that when he interviewed her on that date, she advised that the Oswalds had moved to “214 West Neely Street in Dallas”, mentioning nothing about the Postal Inspector’s Office informant, Dorothea Myers, who SAC Shanklin reported in his March 25th memo was the source for the Neely address.

Why the subterfuge? Both reports can’t be true:

Either, the FBI got the address from the Postal Inspector’s Office; or the FBI got it from Mrs. Tobias.

PREMEDITATION OF FORTHCOMING EVENTS

Back in 1963, none of these reports were available outside of the respective intelligence agencies on a need to know basis. The agents could rely on secrecy. But now, six decades later, the information is coming to light. And that light is illuminating a malevolent premeditation here with regard to this September 10, 1963 report by SA James Hosty.

Obviously, the report is designed to conceal, bury, distract, and ignore, the March 25th inclusion of the Postal Inspector’s Office in the investigation of the Oswalds, since the rifle that would be used to allegedly kill JFK was paid for at that very post office, and shipped right into it…while it was under surveillance.

Looking back on the Hunter project now - adding in the assistance of the Postal Inspector’s Office on behalf of the FBI in tracing the Oswald’s - the question is raised as to how the postal informant, Dorothea Myers - who was not called to testify before the Warren Commission - would have known where the Oswalds had moved if she wasn’t aware of an official change of address, which is not forthcoming in the record, and does not appear to exist.

This is a huge problem, because it makes it very likely that the postal authorities in charge of PO Box 2915 - where the rifle came - were keeping track of the Oswalds.

Why was Hosty (and certainly his superiors who would have put him up to this weird report) completely contradicting SAC Shanklin’s report six months earlier?

The assassination of JFK won’t happen for over two months, so this appears to be a genuine smoking gun that the FBI knew Oswald would be doing something illegal, or would be blamed for doing something illegal related to the PO Box where the rifle was shipped.

HOSTY FLIPS THE SCRIPT BACK AGAIN UNDER OATH

On May 5, 1964, SA James Hosty testified before the Warren Commission and he changes the story around again to the facts as stated by SAC Shanklin in March 1963, adding in more facts, stating that Mrs. Tobias did not know where the Oswalds had moved:

“On March 11, 1963, I made inquiry at this Elsbeth address, and determined from the landlady, I believe her name was Mrs. Tobias, that she had just evicted Lee and Marina Oswald from her apartment building because of their alleged fighting and his alleged drinking. They caused a disturbance and she had asked him to leave on March 3, 1963. She told me they had moved a short distance away. She didn't know where. On that same date, I was able to determine from the postal authorities that they had changed their address to 214 Neely Street, also in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas.”

So now the “postal authorities” are back, and Mrs. Tobias didn’t know where they moved.

Furthermore, later in his testimony, Hosty will be confronted with his September 10, 1963 report, the one which completely contradicts his testimony under oath given just moments prior, but the Warren Commission’s stooge, Mr. Stern, will not ask Hosty anything about that section of the September 10th report at all.

When asked by Stern if there was anything in that very report he would like to add to or discuss or elucidate upon, Hosty rejects the chance to clear up his conflicting schizo statements and instead indicates that he has read the report, and it’s good information, which is certainly not the whole truth and nothing but the truth. (Don’t ever try to pull this off yourself in court. You will be convicted.)

Mr. Stern. I show you a report of four pages, marked "Report of James P. Hosty, Jr."
Mr. Hosty. Right.
Mr. Stern. Dated 9-10-63.
Mr. Hosty. Right.
Mr. Stern. And marked for identification Commission Exhibit No. 829.

(The document referred to was marked Commission Exhibit No. 829 for identification.)

Mr. Stern. Can you identify that report for us?
Mr. Hosty. Yes, sir ; that is my report…This would be March 4 I got the address in Dallas. March 11 I determined that they had moved from that one address to another address in Dallas. March 14 I verified that address…

Mr. Stern. Have you reviewed this report marked for identification No. 829 Mr. Hosty?

Mr. Hosty. Yes, sir ; I have.
Mr. Stern. In connection with your preparation for testimony today?
Mr. Hosty. Yes, sir.
Mr. Stern. Is there any change you would like to make in anything set forth in it?
Mr. Hosty. No, sir ; I wish it to stand as it reads.

It would have been interesting if Mr. Stern had asked him why the report that he wishes to let stand - in most certain terms - states that he got the information about the Neely address from Mrs Tobias - when he literally just testified that she didn’t know where they moved.

CIA PROTECTION POST SCRIPT

Despite James Angleton’s November 26, 1963 memo to Hoover flagging the Hunter project interceptions as “significant” with regard to the rifle used to kill JFK, this flagrantly false and misleading testimony on May 5, 1964 by SA Hosty was made possible by Birch D. O’Neil at the CIA, who argued in a May 1, 1964 memo - clearing Hosty’s fraudulent path - that none of the materials that the CIA intercepted with regard to the Oswalds should be given over to the Warren Commission.

And they weren’t.

Written and research by Leo Donofrio ©2025