The James Hosty Notes.

A small part of this material has already been released through my second paper Anatomy Of Lee Harvey Oswald’s Interrogations.

Recently a post by Rob Clark at the Education Forum asked “Best of the Year 2019″. In a nutshell the thread was about what were the best finds in 2019 from an evidentiary/research p.o.v. Cliff Varnell mentioned two instances of which one was the discovery of the handwritten note by James Hosty which I found in Malcolm Blunt’s archive in Feb. 2019 and I posted this straight after finding it. This document caused a few ripples within the scene and led to a doubling in my website traffic that same month and a 1.5 x increase the month after. A good indicator of people being curious about this find. The document in question is below.

Pat Speer had the nerve to call it and I quote:  The Hosty notes are not notes perse, but are a first draft of a report. Well he has got that right. And then This draft is important but not for the reason most believe. He mentions in this draft that he confronted Oswald about contacting the Soviet Embassy.  

So a phrase on Oswald’s letter to the Soviet embassy is more important than Hosty recording that Oswald got a coke for his lunch and then went out to watch the P. parade.

Has everyone else stopped rolling around laughing yet? It’s posts like Speer’s that cause nothing but acrimony between researchers. The stuff he writes about in that post Airtel and Ruth Paine has nothing to do with the thread’s subject. What he puts forward is old news and filled with speculative innuendo as well..

But having said that it got me thinking and looking into Hosty’s paper work. Below the document in question, which I found in Feb. 2019.

Handwritten note by James P. Hosty. Click page to enlarge.

It was F.B.I. procedure to destroy handwritten notes once a typed up version was created, Hosty made mention of this during his Schweiker Committee testimony. In Hosty’s book Assignment Oswald two notebook pages appear on one page related to the interrogations of Lee Oswald. These were miraculously found in a pile of papers at his home. What Hosty did not do was post all the other pages I found or even make mention of them.

The world had no idea that these notes existed at all. That was until Feb. 2019 when I visited Malcolm Blunt’s archives and found a folder entitled “Hosty”. This folder at Malcolm Blunt’s archives was filled with more than 200 pages. I only published the one page as it had the most revealing sentence regarding to Oswald’s actions just before the motorcade passed by the T.S.B.D. “Then went outside to watch the P. parade“. That passage reconciles with the handwritten Fritz notes phrase “Out with Bill Shelley, in front”.

The note by itself was a good find in Malcolm’s archives. He himself had no idea that he had this very important document. Nevertheless it was a great addition as evidence to my paper.

*****

The page, showing two notebook pages is part of a set of 3. I shall post the third page below, there is nothing suspicious about the missing page as it makes mention of matters that are happening after the first and only interrogation Hosty was present at. There were more pages in that notebook, but they do not relate to the interrogation. I will get back to these extra pages in a moment.

Hosty was there along with James Bookhout and three D.P.D. officers (Will Fritz, Richard Sims and Elmer Boyd). On that third page you can see Hosty making mention of the first line-up and even the Sorrell’s talk which got him in hot water due to Secret Service agent William Patterson reporting on this.

If I take the very first notebook page and compare it to the page on D.P.D. affidavit paper I found it becomes clear that the notebook page was written during the interrogations and that the actual page served as the source for the draft report on the right. The result is that the “1st floor entrance office” is the third handwritten source for Oswald’s location when the motorcade passed by the building.

James Hosty handwritten notes. Click to enlarge.

In Hosty’s book Assignment Oswald he described how he kept on taking notes even after the interrogation.

I decided nonetheless that I would remain at the police station. Just because I couldn’t talk to the police didn’t mean I couldn’t learn things from them. I headed back to Fritz’s office, where I knew the police were keeping Oswald’s personal belongings. Nothing there, but in the second inner office, which belonged to Lieutenant Walter Potts, I spotted Oswald’s things, which had been removed from his person and from his apartment at the Oak Cliff rooming house. Among the items on Potts’s desk was Oswald’s black address book. I pulled out my pad of blank police affidavit forms and started transcribing the entries in his book, thinking I might find some interesting leads or even some possible co-conspirators. A little way into my transcribing, I came across a line that made my heart crawl. There, scrawled in Oswald’s handwriting, was the entry:
Nov. 1 James P. Hasty, RI1-
1211, MV8605,
1114 Commerce, Dallas.

I do not share Hosty’s opinion that the name says Hasty. The way it was written down could be interpreted both ways. Oswald’s way of writing an “a” or an “o” appear to be fairly similar. See for yourself in the image which comes from Hosty’s book.

Hosty’s details in Oswald’s notebook. Click to enlarge.

Hosty mentions in his book that he used a pad of blank police affidavit forms. The document at the very top is part of that bloc. The rest which I am posting below show the details of Oswald’s address book. Now whether the draft document from the top was created before or after him taking down the details of that address book will remain a mystery. But all these pages come from D.P.D. affidavit papers.

Then there are more pages from his notebook, and they appear to show a deeper investigation into Oswald’s past. There is a mention of Mrs Cunningham who worked for the Texas Employment Bureau and also Pauline V. Bates. I have no idea what the actual sequence should be, these were stuck together in twos on one page.

In Hosty’s book he ‘remembers’ how the conversation went and again mentions Oswald’s location being on the first floor, although he has changed the landing of the T.S.B.D. for the Domino Room.

Okay now, Lee, you work at the Texas School Book Depository, isn’t that right?
Yeah, that’s right.
When did you start working there?
About October fifteenth
What did you do down there?
I was just a common laborer.
Now, did you have access to all floors of the building?
Of course.
Tell me what was on each of those floors.
The first and second floors have offices. The third and fourth floor are storage. So are the fifth and sixth.
And you were working there today, is that right?
Yep.
Were you there when the president’s motorcade went by?
Yeah.
Where were you when the president went by the book depository?
I was eating my lunch in the first floor lunchroom.
What time was that?
About noon.
Were you ever on the second floor around the time the president was shot?
Well, yeah. I went up there to get a bottle of Coca-Cola from the machine for my lunch.
But where were you when the president actually passed your building?
On the first floor in the lunchroom.
And you left the depository, isn’t that right?
Yeah.
When did you leave?
Well, I figured with all the confusion there wouldn’t be any more work to do that day.

It will be an enigma how these papers ended up at the archives. Perhaps Hosty wanted to show the world what was really happening and slipped these notes inside the batch. And the A.R.R.B. completely overlooked this.

Special thanks go to Malcolm Blunt for the documentation.