An appropriate notice has been placed in the lookout card section of the Passport Office in the event that Mr. Oswald should apply for documentation at a post outside the Soviet Union.[A15-72]
Despite these indications that a lookout card was prepared, the Department of State on May 18, 1964, informed the Commission that “investigations, to date, failed to reveal any other indication or evidence that a lookout card was ever prepared, modified or removed.” No such card was ever located, and certain file entries indicate that such a card was never prepared.[A15-73]
The State Department has advised the Commission that as of October 1959 the Department had “developed information which might reasonably have caused it to prepare * * * a lookout card for Lee Harvey Oswald.”[A15-74] The Passport Office employee who prepared the refusal sheet for Oswald has suggested as a possible explanation of the failure to prepare a lookout card that between the day she prepared the refusal sheet and the time the records section would normally have prepared the lookout card, Oswald’s file was temporarily pulled from its place because the Department received some additional correspondence from the Embassy. When the file was returned, she suggested, it may have been assumed that the card had already been prepared.[A15-75]
Had a lookout card been prepared on the ground of possible expatriation, it would have been removed and destroyed after the decision was made in 1961 that Oswald had not expatriated himself and thus prior to the time that he applied for a second passport in June 1963. Hence, the Department’s apparent failure to prepare a lookout card on Oswald had no effect on its future actions. As of February 20, 1964, the Department issued additional regulations regarding the manner in which the lookout file is to be handled.[A15-76] On March 14, 1964, a category was established for returned defectors, so that these persons automatically have lookout cards in their files, and on July 27, 1964, the Office of Security of the Department of State issued a procedural study of the lookout-card system, with recommendations.[A15-77]
RETURN AND RENEWAL OF OSWALD’S 1959 PASSPORT
Negotiations Between Oswald and the Embassy
On February 1, 1961, as a result of a visit by Oswald’s mother to the Department of State on January 25, 1961,[A15-78] the Department sent a request to the Moscow Embassy as follows:
The Embassy is requested to inform the [Soviet] Ministry of Foreign Affairs that Mr. Oswald’s mother is worried as to his present safety, and is anxious to hear from him.[A15-79]
The inquiry went to the Embassy by diplomatic pouch and was received in Moscow on February 10 or 11.[A15-80] On February 13, before the Embassy had acted on the Department’s request,[A15-81] the Embassy received an undated letter from Oswald postmarked Minsk, February 5. The letter stated:
Since I have not received a reply to my letter of December 1960, I am writing again asking that you consider my request for the return of my American passport.
I desire to return to the United States, that is if we could come to some agreement concerning the dropping of any legal proceedings against me. If so, than I would be free to ask the Russian authorities to allow me to leave. If I could show them my American passport, I am of the opinion they would give me an exit visa.
They have at no time insisted that I take Russian citizenship. I am living here with non-permanent type papers for a foreigner.
I cannot leave Minsk without permission, therefore I am writing rather than calling in person.
I hope that in recalling the responsibility I have to america that you remember your’s in doing everything you can to help me since I am an american citizen.[A15-82]