In going back over the record, and I have read each one of the reports dealing with that and the reports of Mr. Hosty who had dealt with the Oswald situation largely in Dallas, we had the matter that I have previously referred to, the report of the State Department that indicated this man was a thoroughly safe risk, he had changed his views, he was a loyal man now and had seen the light of day, so to speak.
How intensive or how extensive that interview in Moscow was, I don't know. But, nevertheless, it was in a State Department document that was furnished to us.
Now, we interviewed Oswald a few days after he arrived. We did not interview him on arrival at the port of entry because that is always undesirable by reason of the fact it is heavily covered by press, and any relatives generally are there, so we prefer to do it after the man has settled down for two or three days and become composed. We do it in the privacy of our office or wherever he may be, or in his own home or apartment. We interviewed him twice in regard to that angle that we were looking for. We had no indication at this time of anything other than his so-called Marxist leanings, Marxist beliefs.
We wanted to know whether he had been recruited by the Soviet government as an intelligence agent, which is a frequent and constant practice. There is not a year goes by but that individuals and groups of individuals, sometimes on these cultural exchanges, go through Russia and recruits are enlisted by the Russian intelligence, usually through blackmail. The individual is threatened that if he doesn't come back to this country and work for them they will expose the fact that he is a homosexual or a degenerate or has been indiscrete.
Pictures are usually taken of individuals who become implicated in that sort of thing, so the individual is really desperate. Such blackmail has occurred year after year for some time.
In Oswald's case we had no suspicion that any pressure like that had been brought to bear on him because he had gone voluntarily and had obviously wanted to live in Russia and had married a Russian woman.
After those interviews had been completed, the next incident was the difficulty he had at New Orleans. We were concerned there as to whether he was functioning officially for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee which was financed and supported by Castro and Castro's government, and if he was, where he obtained money and with whom he had dealt.
He apparently had the leaflets printed himself on plain ordinary paper. There was no reason for us, then, to have any suspicion that he had any element of danger in him.
However, we did not ignore or forget the fact that he was still in the country. We kept track of him when he went from New Orleans to Dallas, and that was one of the reasons why Hosty went to the home of Mrs. Paine. She told us where Oswald was working, at the Texas book house. Hosty gave her his telephone number and his name so that if there was any information or any contact she wanted to make she could phone him at the Dallas office.
Mrs. Oswald, the wife, took down the license number of Hosty's car which was incorrect only in one digit. The name, the telephone number, and the automobile license were later found in Oswald's memorandum book.