Miss Knight. And I think, Senator, you would be interested to know that these FBI reports are sent to us by the Office of Security.
A large volume of these reports come to us in the Passport Office on a very routine basis.
The last 6 months of 1963 over 3,000 such reports were received, that is 500 security reports a month, and in order to be effective and to render the ultimate in security these reports should be read by individuals who are knowledgeable; who are trained to spot information of security significance.
The staff that is assigned to this task is very limited, and it is heavily overburdened with many assignments, some of which take priority to the reading of reports, and it is physically impossible for the present staff of our legal division, which is headed by Mr. Johnson, to read and analyze the information in these reports as promptly and as thoroughly as should be done.
The eternal question that we are faced with is a matter of diminishing returns. It is almost impossible to staff the Passport Office 100 percent for security and with knowledgeability of everything that goes on, and in the course of the year the Passport Office puts in thousands of hours of overtime, uncompensated overtime, trying to catch up with this work and believe me, this makes little or no impression on the vast amount of paperwork, the reading, the reporting and the analyzing of reports which come in to us.
Senator Cooper. I can see your problem.
But now, assuming that this report from the FBI about Oswald's activities in New Orleans with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in which he was distributing material, and had been arrested, and was operating under assumed names, had been known, had been in the file at the time the application for a passport to go to Mexico and other countries had been made, would that have been of any significance?
Miss Knight. Oh, yes, sir.
Senator Cooper. In determining whether or not a passport should be issued?
Miss Knight. Yes, sir; very definitely. If those reports had reached us prior to the passport application we certainly would have put a card in the file.