Mr. Chayes. There would have been a delay of a couple of days probably.
Representative Ford. And in this case time might have been important.
Mr. Chayes. No; if you are talking about this case as it actually happened, time wasn't important at all. He applied for the passport in June of 1963. He got it in June of 1963, and he made no effort to use the passport, nor did he have any occasion to use it, until he died.
Mr. Dulles. It would have been a blessing for us if he had used it, say, in the sense that the assassination might not have taken place, if he had taken the passport and gone to China as he may have contemplated.
Mr. Coleman. Mr. Chayes, is it your testimony that when the Department knows a person went abroad in 1959, attempted to defect to the Soviet Union, stated that he had information on radar which he was going to turn over to the Soviet, and the difficulty that we had to get him back, it is your opinion that it would not be prejudicial to the interests of the United States for him to be given a passport to go abroad the second time?
Mr. Chayes. Well, I think that is correct without knowing any more about what he intended to do this time on his travels abroad.
You have got to remember that the discretion that the Secretary can exercise under 51.136, is as the Supreme Court said in the Kent case, a limited discretion, although it is phrased in very broad terms.
For example, we have people who are going abroad all the time and making the nastiest kinds of speeches about the United States, or who go abroad for political activity that is completely at odds with the policy of the United States, and may be even directed against our policy. But we could not deny a passport on the grounds of political activities, political associations, speech, things of that kind. So the Kent case says, as I read it and as most others do. I think you have to, in order to apply this section, there are some fairly regular categories, fugitives from justice.
Mr. Dulles. Just one question. If there had been a lookout card in, and then you would reconsider the case in June 1963, when he applied, would you not then normally have notified the FBI and the CIA that here was a returned defector?
Mr. Chayes. No.