If Oswald insists on renouncing U.S. citizenship, Section 1999 Revised Statutes precludes Embassy withholding right to do so regardless status his application pending Soviet Government and final action taken Petrulli case.[A15-43]
This telegram, like most of the communications from the Department regarding Oswald, was prepared in the Passport Office and cleared by the Office of Eastern European Affairs and the Office of Soviet Union Affairs.[A15-44]
Oswald never returned to the Embassy.[A15-45] On November 6, 1959, the Embassy received[A15-46] a handwritten letter from Oswald on the stationery of the Metropole Hotel, dated November 3, 1959, which read:
I, Lee Harvey Oswald, do hereby request that my present United States citizenship be revoked.
I appeered in person, at the consulate office of the United States Embassy, Moscow, on Oct. 31st, for the purpose of signing the formal papers to this effect. This legal right I was refused at that time.
I wish to protest against this action, and against the conduct of the official of the United States consular service who acted on behalf of the United States government.
My application, requesting that I be considered for citizenship in the Soviet Union is now pending before the Surprem Soviet of the U.S.S.R.. In the event of acceptance, I will request my government to lodge a formal protest regarding this incident.[A15-47]
The Embassy immediately informed the Department of the receipt of this letter and advised that it intended to reply to Oswald by letter telling him that, if he wished, he could appear at the Embassy on any normal business day and request that the necessary expatriation documents be prepared.[A15-48] On the same day, November 6, the Embassy sent Oswald a letter so advising him.[A15-49] From then until November 30 the Embassy attempted to communicate with Oswald on several occasions to deliver messages from his relatives in the United States urging him to reconsider, but he refused to receive the messages or talk to anyone from the Embassy.[A15-50] The messages were therefore sent to him by registered mail.[A15-51]
On November 16, 1959, Priscilla Johnson, an American newspaperwoman stationed in Moscow, interviewed Oswald at the Metropole Hotel.[A15-52] On November 17, 1959, she informed the Embassy of her interview, and the information was recorded in a file memorandum.[A15-53] Oswald told Miss Johnson that he was scheduled to leave Moscow within a few days. She thought that Oswald “may have purposely not carried through his original intent to renounce [citizenship] in order to leave a crack open.”[A15-54] The Embassy accordingly informed the Department of State about 2 weeks later that Oswald had departed from the Hotel Metropole within the last few days.[A15-55] According to his “Historic Diary”[A15-56] and other records available to the Commission,[A15-57] however, Oswald probably did not in fact leave Moscow for Minsk until about January 4, 1960. Miss Johnson’s report of her interview with Oswald was the last information about him which the U.S. Government was to receive until February 13, 1961.[A15-58]
On March 6, 1960, Oswald’s mother asked Representative James C. Wright, Jr., of Texas to help her locate her son. The Congressman forwarded her inquiry to the Department of State, which in turn sent it to the Embassy.[A15-59] In response, the Embassy in Moscow informed the Department on March 28, 1960, that they had had no contact with Oswald since November 9, 1959.[A15-60] The Embassy went on to say that it had no evidence that Oswald had expatriated himself “other than his announced intention to do so.” It believed, therefore, that since Oswald was presumably still an American citizen, the American Government could properly make inquiry concerning him through a note to the Soviet Foreign Office. The Embassy went on to suggest, however, that it would be preferable if Oswald’s mother wrote a letter to her son which could then be forwarded by the Department to the Soviet Government.[A15-61]
The Department replied on May 10, 1960, that no action should be taken in the case other than on a request voluntarily submitted by a member of Oswald’s family.[A15-62] On June 22, a second communication was dispatched, asking whether the Embassy had been able to contact Oswald.[A15-63] On July 6, 1960, the Embassy replied that it had received no further communication with anyone on the subject of Oswald and that in view of the Department’s memorandum of May 10, 1960, it intended to take no further action in the matter.[A15-64] Mrs. Oswald apparently took no steps to follow up on her original inquiry.
Under the procedures in effect in 1960, a “refusal sheet” was prepared in the Department of State Passport Office whenever circumstances created the possibility that a prospective applicant would not be entitled to receive an American passport.[A15-65] The records section of the Passport Office, on the basis of the refusal sheet, would prepare what was known as a lookout card[A15-66] and file it in the lookout file in the Passport Office. Whenever anyone applied for a passport from any city in the world, his application was immediately forwarded to this office, and his name and date of birth checked against the lookout file.[A15-67] If a lookout card was found, appropriate action, including the possible refusal of a passport, was taken.[A15-68] Passport Office procedures also provided that the lookout card would be removed from a prospective applicant’s file whenever facts warranted an unquestioned passport grant.[A15-69]
On March 25, 1960, the Passport Office had made up a “refusal sheet” on Lee Harvey Oswald, typed across which was the explanation that Oswald “may have been naturalized in the Soviet Union or otherwise * * * expatriated himself.”[A15-70] An Operations Memorandum stating the reasons for which the card had been prepared was drawn up on March 28 and also put on file[A15-71] and a copy sent to the Embassy. It advised the Embassy to take no further action on the Oswald case unless it came into possession of evidence upon which to base the preparation of a certificate of loss of nationality. Included in the operations memorandum was the following: