Chapter LXI: Section 423: 2-1 of the Department’s regulations provides that

repatriation loans may be granted only to destitute U.S. nationals:

a. Who are in complete and unquestioned possession of their
citizenship rights;

b. Who are entitled to receive United States passports;

c. Whose loyalty to the United States Government is beyond
question, or to whom the provisions of Section 423.1-2(b)
apply.[A15-238]

Oswald undoubtedly satisfied the requirements of paragraphs (a) and (b), since he was determined to have been a U.S. citizen at the time the loan was granted and he had been issued a passport to return to the United States. There is a serious question whether he could have qualified under the first clause of paragraph (c). The Commission is of the opinion that in its application of this clause the Department should exercise great care in determining whether an applicant’s loyalty to the U.S. Government is beyond question, particularly in the case of a defector like Oswald who has expressed hostility and disloyalty to our government and manifested a desire to renounce his citizenship. The Department chose instead to exercise its judgment under the second clause of paragraph (c), which refers to section 423.1-2(b). This section provides that loans to destitute nationals are authorized when:

b. The United States national is in or the cause of a
situation which is damaging to the prestige of the United
States Government or which constitutes a compelling reason for
extending assistance to effect his return.[A15-239]

The Department decided that the provisions of section (b) were applicable to Oswald because his “unstable character and prior criticism of the United States” would make his continued presence in the Soviet Union damaging to the prestige of the United States.[A15-240] In acting under this section, the Department was acting within its competence and the law. As required by another section of the regulations, the Department sought to obtain funds for the Oswalds’ repatriation from private sources--his mother and the International Rescue Committee--before using Government funds.[A15-241]

Regulations further provide that repatriation loans are authorized for the alien, wife, and children of the U.S. national receiving a repatriation loan in order to avoid the division of families.[A15-242] However, loans are limited

To the minimum amount required to cover transportation and
subsistence while enroute to the nearest continental United
States port. * * * When necessary, loans may include: expenses
incident to embarkation, such as fees for documentation and
minimum subsistence from the date of application for a loan to
the date of departure by the first available ship. * * * The
cost of transportation shall be limited to third-class passage
by ship.[A15-243]

Oswald’s loan was sufficient to cover no more than the least expensive transportation from Moscow to New York. His passport was stamped as valid only for return to the United States.[A15-244] Oswald completed all necessary forms and affidavits to obtain the loan.[A15-245]

According to its own procedures the Department of State should have prepared a lookout card for Oswald in June 1962 when he received the proceeds of the loan.[A15-246] The promissory note which he signed contained a provision stating,

I further understand and agree that after my repatriation I
will not be furnished a passport for travel abroad until my
obligation to reimburse the Treasurer of the United States is
liquidated.[A15-247]

However, a lookout card was never in fact prepared. With respect to this failure the State Department has informed the Commission as follows:

On receipt of notice of the loan from the Embassy in Moscow,
the Department’s procedures provided that Miss Leola B.
Burkhead of the Revenues and Receipts Branch of the Office
of Finance should have notified the Clearance Section in the
Passport Office of Oswald’s name, date, and place of birth. If
the Passport Office received only the name and not the date
and place of birth of a borrower, it would not have prepared
a lookout card under its established procedures because of
lack of positive identification. (Among the Passport Office’s
file of millions of passport applicants, there are, of course,
many thousands of identical names.) Mr. Richmond C. Reeley was
the Chief of the Revenues and Receipts Branch of the Office
of Finance and Mr. Alexander W. Maxwell was Chief of the
Clearance Section. If the notice was received in the Clearance
Section it would have been delivered to the Carding Desk for
preparation of a lookout card on Oswald. It appears, however,
that such a lookout card was not prepared. It may have been
that the Finance Office did not notify the Clearance Section
of Oswald’s loan. One reason for this might have been the
Finance Office’s lack of information concerning Oswald’s date
and place of birth. On the other hand, the Finance Office may
have notified the Clearance Section of Oswald’s name only, in
which case this Section would not have prepared a lookout card
under its procedures. Since Oswald began repaying the loan in
installments immediately after his return to the United States,
it is also possible that the Office of Finance decided that it
was unnecessary to pursue the matter further. In any event,
Oswald’s loan was repaid in full on January 29, 1963, five
months prior to his application for a new passport.[A15-248]

OSWALD’S RETURN TO THE UNITED STATES AND REPAYMENT OF HIS LOAN

On June 1, 1962, the some day that Oswald received his loan from the State Department, he and his family left Moscow by train destined for Rotterdam, The Netherlands.[A15-249] They boarded the SS _Maasdam_ at Rotterdam on June 4 and arrived in New York on June 13, 1962.[A15-250] The Embassy sent word of the Oswalds’ departure to the Department of State in Washington on May 31.[A15-251] Consistent with its prior practice of keeping the Federal security agencies informed of Oswald’s activity,[A15-252] the Department notified the FBI.[A15-253]

Frederick J. Wiedersheim, an officer of the Immigration and Naturalization Service in New York, interviewed the Oswalds upon their entry into the United States at Hoboken, N.J., on June 13, 1962, but made no written report. Mr. Wiedersheim recalled that he asked the Oswalds various questions which would determine the eligibility of both Oswald and Marina to enter the United States. The questions included whether Oswald had expatriated himself and whether Marina belonged to any Communist organization which would bar her entry. These questions were answered in ways which did not appear to raise any problems and therefore the Oswalds were admitted.[A15-254]

After his reentry, Oswald repaid his loan without having to be reminded by the Department to do so. The early payments were very small because he first repaid the approximately $200 he had borrowed from his brother Robert to apply against the expenses of his travel from New York to Fort Worth, Tex.[A15-255] The schedule of payments is as follows:

Aug. 13, 1962 $10.00
Sept. 5, 1962 9.71
Oct. 10, 1962 10.00
Nov. 19, 1962 10.00
Dec. 11, 1962 190.00
Jan. 9, 1963 100.00
Jan. 29, 1963 106.00
Total [A15-256]435.71

ISSUANCE OF A PASSPORT IN JUNE 1963

On June 24, 1963, Oswald applied for a U.S. passport at the Passport Office in New Orleans, La.[A15-257] He said he was planning to visit England, France, Holland, U.S.S.R., Finland, Italy, and Poland, and that he intended to leave the country sometime during November or December 1963 by ship from New Orleans.[A15-258] He stated further that he was married to a person born in Russia who was not an American citizen. For occupation, the word “Photographer” was inserted on the application.[A15-259]

On the same day a teletype was sent to Washington containing the names of 25 of the persons who applied for passports on that date in New Orleans, Oswald’s name among them. On the right side of the Washington Passport Office copy of the teletype message, approximately parallel to his name, are the letters, “NO,” written in red pencil.[A15-260] Oswald was issued a passport on June 25, 1963.[A15-261]

Since there was no lookout card on Oswald, the passport was processed routinely. Twenty-four hours is the usual time for routinely granted passports to be issued.[A15-262] The handwritten notation, “NO,” which appeared beside Oswald’s name on the list of applicants from New Orleans, is a symbol for the New Orleans Passport Office that is routinely placed on incoming teletype messages by anyone of a group of persons in the teletype section of the Passport Office.[A15-263] No one looked at Oswald’s file previously established with the Department.[A15-264] The Department, however, has informed the Commission that at the time the passport was issued there was no information in its passport or security files which would have permitted it to deny a passport to Oswald.[A15-265] No lookout card should have been in the file based upon the Moscow Embassy’s memorandum of March 28, 1960, which drew attention to Oswald’s intention to expatriate himself, because the subsequent determination that Oswald had not expatriated himself would remove expatriation as a possible ground for denying him a passport.[A15-266] And by January 29, 1963, the repatriation loan had been repaid, so a lookout card should not have been in the file on that basis.[A15-267]

* * * * *

Oswald was entitled to receive a passport in 1963 unless he came within one of the two statutory provisions authorizing the Secretary of State to refuse to issue it.[A15-268] Section 6 of the Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950, which has recently been declared unconstitutional,[A15-269] then provided:

* * * it shall be unlawful for any member of [an organization
required to register], with knowledge or notice that such
organization is so registered and that such order has become
final--(1) to make application for passport, or the renewal of
a passport, to be issued or renewed by or under the authority
of the United States; or (2) to use or attempt to use any such
passport.[A15-270]

Pursuant to section 6, the State Department promulgated a regulation which denied passports to

* * * any individual who the issuing officer knows or has
reason to believe is a member of a Communist Organization
registered or required to be registered under Section 7 of the
Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950 as amended.[A15-271]

Since there is no evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald was a member of the American Communist Party or any other organization which had been required to register under section 7 of the Subversive Activities Control Act,[A15-272] a passport could not have been denied him under section 6.