James Patrick Hosty Jr. (August 28, 1924 – June 10, 2011) was an American

FBI 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, t ...

agent 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 P ...

, 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 List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

Biography

Hosty was born on August 28, 1924, in

Chicago, Illinois (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , 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 opposing ...

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 university, Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, outside the city of South Bend, Indiana, South Bend. French priest Edward Sorin fo ...

. 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,

was allowed to return to the United States after his 1959 defection to the

. 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

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 Port ...

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

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

attorneys often asked how the FBI could either (1) be unaware of the dangers of

; 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

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

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

. 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

Kennedy assassination John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was assassinated on Friday, November 22, 1963, at 12:30 p.m. CST in Dallas, Texas, while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza. Kennedy was in the vehicle with ...

. 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 on June 10, 2011, in Kansas City, Missouri.

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. In the 2011 Stephen King novel ''

11/22/63 ''11/22/63'' is a novel by Stephen King about a time traveller who attempts to prevent the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy, which occurred on November 22, 1963 (the novel's titular date). It is the 60th book published b ...

'', 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 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 television series '' Ally McBeal'' (1997� ...

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