Mr. Hosty. No, sir; in a pending inactive case it is really almost in the same status as a closed case. We do nothing on it, and it was just a waiting period of 6 months that we had set up.
Mr. Stern. Had that case been an active case?
Mr. Hosty. No, sir; it never had been. It was opened as a pending inactive case.
Mr. Stern. So that no work had been done?
Mr. Hosty. No, sir.
Mr. Stern. Until the point in time when you were considering the possibility of interviewing Mrs. Oswald?
Mr. Hosty. The only work that had been done was the work which I did in connection with the Lee Oswald case for Mr. Fain. I checked the immigration records on Marina Oswald and got her background, just put her background, her name, her description, her place of birth, and that sort of thing in the file.
Mr. Stern. What is the difference administratively between a "pending inactive" and a "closed" case?
Mr. Hosty. In a pending inactive case, any information coming into the office would be routed to the agent, it would not be put in the file and be missed by the agent.
Mr. Stern. Could Lee Harvey Oswald's case have been put in a pending inactive status rather than a closed status in 1962?