OSWALD’S LETTER TO SENATOR TOWER
Sometime shortly before January 26, 1962, an undated letter from Lee Harvey Oswald was received in the office of the U.S. Senator from Texas, John G. Tower.[A15-220] The letter reads as follows:
My name is Lee Harvey Oswald, 22, of Fort Worth up till October 1959, when I came to the Soviet Union for a residenaul stay. I took a residenual document for a non-Soviet person living for a time in the USSR. The American Embassy in Moscow is familier with my case
Since July 20th 1960, I have unsucessfully applied for a Soviet Exit Visa to leave this country, the Soviets refuse to permit me and my Soviet wife, (who applied at the U.S. Embassy Moscow, July 8, 1960 for immigration status to the U.S.A.) to leave the Soviet Union. I am a citizen of the United States of America (passport No. 1733242, 1959) and I bessech you, Senator Tower, to rise the question of holding by the Soviet Union of a citizen of the U.S., against his will and expressed desires.[A15-221]
The letter was read in Senator Tower’s office by a caseworker on his staff. According to the caseworker and the Senator’s press secretary, the letter was forwarded as a matter of routine on January 26 to the Assistant Secretary for Congressional Relations, Department of State. The letter was forwarded with a cover letter, machine signed by the Senator, stating that he did “not know Oswald, or any of the facts concerning his reasons for visiting the Soviet Union; nor what action, if any, this Government can or should take on his behalf.” The cover letter pointed out that Oswald’s inquiry should have gone to the executive branch of the Government and that for this reason the Senator was forwarding it “for whatever action the Department may consider appropriate.”[A15-222] On February 1 an officer at the Department of State telephoned the Senator’s office and spoke briefly with the caseworker on the Oswald case. She made a memorandum of the call which notes, “Senator should not become involved in such case—therefore State will report to us the course which they follow regarding Lee Harvey Oswalt [sic].”[A15-223] About a week later the Department of State forwarded to Senator Tower copies of some of the correspondence which the Department had had with Oswald and informed the Senator that if he wished to be kept informed on further developments regarding Oswald he could contact the Department of State.[A15-224] Neither the Senator nor any member of his staff contacted the Department again nor did they take any other action in respect to the matter.[A15-225]