Mr. Chayes. If I could just give some notion of what this system is like.

Mr. Dulles. Yes.

Mr. Chayes. The lookout card is an IBM card, an ordinary IBM card, and it should be prepared on anyone as to whom some evidence of disqualification for a passport exists in our files. If the system worked perfectly, anytime there was an unresolved question about the eligibility of a person for a passport——

Representative Ford. Does a defector or an attempted defector fall in that category?

Mr. Chayes. No; the problem here was that this man had attempted to expatriate himself, and said he was going to naturalize himself as a Soviet citizen, and if he had done either of those things effectively, he would have disqualified himself for a passport.

So there was an unresolved question on the facts known in 1959, or January 1960, whenever it was. And at that point a lookout card should have been prepared for him.

Then in July of 1961, when he came back in in Moscow, and asked for the renewal of his passport, that question of expatriation was then determined, both in Moscow and at home, and it was determined in favor of the applicant. So that the outstanding question was then removed, and if the procedures had gone right, the lookout card also, if it had been prepared, would have been taken out of the lookout file and torn up and thrown away.

Representative Ford. Don't you keep records of what you put in and what you take out?

Mr. Chayes. Yes, the refusal slip which formed the basis on which this memorandum that we are talking about was made. There was a refusal slip which was a direction to the person in the lookout card office to make a lookout card, and also probably whoever made the refusal slip also sent this memorandum to Moscow saying that a lookout card had been prepared.

If you look at the refusal slip, which is retained in the main passport file of Oswald, it doesn't have the notations that it would have had or should have had if a card had been made. So that on the general basis of the evidence, we conclude that it is probable that no card was made. But you can't say that for sure because even if one had been made, it would have been removed when the issue was resolved.