I should add one general point, and that is when we talk about passports in this context, we tend to emphasize the very, very few bad apples of one kind or another, and they are very few, who are not entitled to passports. But the fact is that the function of the Passport Office is not to deny passports to people. It is to get passports to people. The Passport Office puts out 1 million passports a year. The great overwhelming majority of those people are ordinary American citizens who want to get abroad for business or pleasure, and the ability of the Passport Office to furnish them with passport facilities, in very short order, is of tremendous service, and tremendous convenience to them.
That is the primary function of the Passport Office. It has of course the duty of administering these denial and withdrawal statutes. But that is not its primary function. Its primary function is to get passport facilities to the great bulk of Americans who have legitimate business abroad. It is dealing with a million or more applications a year, and millions of bits of information, like this piece we have just been talking about. I think when you see things in that perspective it is perhaps easier to evaluate some of the decisions and some of the actions taken here.
Representative Ford. But I think you have to turn the coin over. There are millions of passport applications, or a million plus. But there are only very few such as Mr. Oswald, or people in the defector category. So the problem there I don't think is as serious an administrative one as you would tend to imply.
Mr. Chayes. No; I am not suggesting it is, and in fact I think we have by a relatively simple administrative action taken the steps which will assure that in the future applications from this kind of person will receive a more elaborate review.
All I am saying is that if you ask why that wasn't done before, it is because the experience didn't indicate that there was a problem, and that is because that isn't the main business of the Passport Office. Its main business is not the business of a security agency which goes around focusing or is supposed to be focusing on security problems. Its main business is that of a processing agency.
Representative Ford. But we have vast resources of people in the Government who are, or who do have security as a main business, and it seems to me that it is vitally important that those people and those vast resources somehow tie into the administrative process of denying or refusing passports under unique circumstances.
Mr. Chayes. They do. That is any of those agencies can levy a request on the Passport Office for notification when a passport is issued to any person. If the FBI or the CIA or the Secret Service or any other security or law enforcement agency is interested, or the U.S. court, the Federal district court or the district attorney's office, any agency of that kind which is interested in knowing whether a particular person has applied for passport facilities may levy a request. That request would be serviced by placing a lookout card in the file which would then automatically involve notification of that agency when that person applied for a passport.
Mr. Dulles. Isn't there a broader point than that though, because the security agencies don't know in all cases what requirements to levy. Now if in this case, for example, in the Oswald case, if there had been this lookout card, and you had notified let's say the FBI and the CIA that the former defector had applied for a passport and might be going abroad, then they can put in a card, and then they can be helpful in following that situation abroad. But they don't know, if they don't know that Oswald is going to apply, they have no way of putting in their requirements.
In certain cases they can. But in a great many cases they cannot.
Mr. Chayes. Well, let me make two points. First, now under the new memorandum as to defectors, the FBI and CIA and other security agencies will automatically be notified whether they have made a request or not.