INVESTIGATIONS: FBI: Shaken by a Cover-Up That Failed

The FBI is being badly shaken by the revelation that its former leaders withheld evidence from the Warren Commission during the investigation of the assassination of President Kennedy. At issue is a threatening note that Assassin Lee Harvey Oswald delivered to the FBI's Dallas office about ten days before Kennedy was killed on Nov. 22, 1963. Even though the note did not mention the President, FBI officials wanted to conceal the embarrassing fact that they had ignored the threat, so they both destroyed the note and tried to make certain that the commission never found out that it had existed (TIME, Sept. 15). The cover-up was a clear case of bureaucratic self-protection. Nonetheless, it has fanned speculation—mostly wild—that all the facts of the Kennedy assassination have not yet been told.

Castro Leaflets. Last week a House subcommittee led by California Democrat Don Edwards, a former FBI agent, held its first public hearing on the FBI's mishandling of the Oswald note but cleared up none of its members' suspicions. They wanted to know why the FBI had not only failed to put Oswald under surveillance but destroyed the note about two hours after Nightclub Owner Jack Ruby shot and killed Oswald.

Oswald had been known to the FBI as a former defector to Russia who still backed Communist causes. The previous August, he had been arrested in New Orleans for disturbing the peace in connection with a scuffle that broke out while he was distributing leaflets at a demonstration in support of Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro. Indeed, the FBI harbored unsubstantiated suspicions that Oswald might be a Soviet agent and had assigned Agent James P. Hosty Jr. to keep watch on Oswald's Russian-born wife Marina. Oswald's note warned Hosty to stay away from Marina, whom he had interviewed a few days earlier.

At last week's hearing and in later interviews with reporters, FBI Deputy Associate Director James Adams reported that there were conflicting versions of what was in the note. The receptionist who took it from Oswald said that he had written: "Let this be a warning. I will blow up the FBI and the Dallas police department if you don't stop bothering my wife." But Hosty recalled that the warning was much milder: "If you have anything you want to learn about me, come talk to me directly. If you don't cease bothering my wife, I will take appropriate action and report this to proper authorities."

The bureau still has not determined who was responsible for destroying the note and ordering the coverup. Adams said that the bureau's three-month internal investigation has bogged down in a tangle of conflicting accounts from about 80 witnesses, who were questioned under oath by FBI inspectors. He added that they were told by Hosty that he had been ordered to destroy the note by Dallas FBI Chief J. Gordon Shanklin, who recently retired from the bureau. According to Adams, Shanklin denies knowing anything about the note.

Some of the conflicts seem to be an intentional smokescreen. The controversy focuses on three people:

> J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI's director from 1924 until his death in 1972.

> John P. Mohr, who as the FBI's administrative chief was one of Hoover's most powerful lieutenants until he retired in 1972.