Mr. DULLES. Which answer is that?
Mr. CHAYES. Question 3, attachment A.
The relevant part is "In the immediate post-war period there were about
15 marriages in which the wife had been waiting for many years for a
Soviet exit permit. After the death of Stalin the Soviet Government
showed a disposition to settle these cases. In the summer of 1953
permission was given for all of this group of Soviet citizen wives
to accompany their American citizen husbands to the United States.
Since this group was given permission to leave the Soviet Union, there
have been from time to time marriages in the Soviet Union of American
citizens and Soviet citizens.
"With one exception it is our understanding that all of the Soviet
citizens involved have been given permission to immigrate to the United
States after waiting periods which were in some cases from 3 to 6
months and in others much longer."
So that I think what Mr. Snyder said yesterday was that 6 months was
par for the course. It wasn't an unusual delay, and it was fairly
low as those things went, but not something that would give you any
surprise. There were a number of other 6-month ones and there were some
less.
Mr. DULLES. For our records I wonder if it would be possible to be a
little more specific, I mean to furnish us information that would be a
little more specific on this point, because it is very hard for us to
tell of the numbers how many had less than 6 months and how many had
more than 6 months.
That is the point that has been raised often you know in the press,
and the charge has been made that this is very suspicious, that this
was done so soon. I think our records ought to show a good deal of
specification what that record is. I mean this is very helpful in a
general way but it is not very specific.
Mr. CHAYES. We can do that. The further answer farther down on the next
page, page 2, says for example that "In a most recent case of this type
a Soviet woman married an American citizen in December of 1963 and
received an exit visa about 2 months later."
Mr. DULLES. That is very helpful.
Mr. CHAYES. But we will get a detailed account for the Commission.
Mr. COLEMAN. Mr. Chayes, as I understand it, section 243(g) itself says
nothing about the power of the State Department or Immigration and
Naturalization Service to waive its provisions.
Mr. CHAYES. The State Department doesn't waive the provisions. I should
start by saying that 243(g) is a section administered by the Justice
Department and the Attorney General has primary responsibility for
interpretation and administration. The Attorney General has from the
beginning interpreted 243(g) as involving waiver power. I had never had
occasion to examine the question at all until this matter came up, and
I have made only a cursory examination, but I think the judgment is
sound that there is waiver power under 243(g).
Mr. DULLES. May I just ask one question there. Our file that I have
before me, and your very helpful paper----
Mr. COLEMAN. Commission Document No. 2.
Mr. DULLES. Commission Document No. 2 doesn't indicate really the basis
on which the Texas authorities were holding up the visa. Does that
appear anywhere in the record?
Mr. CHAYES. I don't know. It may appear in our attachment B answers. In
essence it was that they thought this fellow had behaved pretty badly
and he wasn't entitled to any special consideration.
Mr. COLEMAN. That is why at this time I would like to read into the
record part of the regulation under which they will waive. It says:
"If substantial adverse security information related to the petitioner
is developed, the visa petition shall be processed on its merits and
certified to the regional commissioner for determination whether the
sanction should be waived.
"The assistant commissioner shall endorse the petition to show
whether the waiver is granted or denied and forward it and notify the
appropriate field officer of the action taken."
In other words, that since some derogatory information was in the file,
and since Oswald was the petitioner, the initial decision made by the
field officer of the Immigration Service was that the waiver should not
be granted.
Mr. CHAYES. That is correct.
Mr. DULLES. I assume that that was motivated probably in one of the
letters from the Texas immigration office to the Department of Justice
or the Immigration Service here.
Mr. COLEMAN. Yes; well what happened, the record was referred to the
immigration field officer in Texas, and the record was the history
of the fact that Oswald had defected or attempted to defect, and the
statements he had made. So they, therefore, made the determination on
the field level that they would not waive the sanction.
Mr. CHAYES. That is right. The sanction was waived only after urging
from the Department.
Mr. DULLES. Yes, that appears in this Commission Exhibit, this document
that I have referred to. But we do not have in our files the letter of
the Texas immigration authorities first refusing as far as I know.
Mr. COLEMAN. We will have that. That testimony will be put in through
Miss James and Miss Waterman.
Mr. DULLES. They have that. All right, if they supply that, that will
be adequate.
Mr. COLEMAN. So I take it that, in your judgment after reviewing the
file, you think that the waiver should have been granted?
Mr. CHAYES. Well, I think there that it was not an improper exercise of
discretion. That is correct.
Mr. COLEMAN. Just one other question. Is there any policy in the
Department to delay the acceptance of attempted renunciation of
citizenship?
Mr. CHAYES. Well, delay, I don't know that there is a stated policy
that you put the person off. The general policy of the Department is
first I think to discourage renunciations, to make it clear that the
person has a right to renounce, but nonetheless to discourage them.
Secondly, the policy is that the consular officer should assure himself
that the person seeking to renounce his citizenship is acting soberly,
rationally, and with full awareness of the meaning and consequences of
his act. And for that purpose the consular officer can use any means
within his judgment. He can talk to the person. He could invoke a
cooling-off period or ask a person to sleep on it or something of that
kind. It seems to me how the policy is implemented is something for the
particular case. If somebody came up in England and had just married an
earl or something like that and said "I want to be an English citizen
now" and was in full possession of her faculties apparently there
probably wouldn't be much worry about it, although even then the consul
would go through a routine of trying to assure that the person knew and
understood fully what she was doing.
Mr. DULLES. Is that routine prescribed, should it be prescribed do you
think now in the light of hindsight in this situation?
Mr. CHAYES. No; I think in each case it will depend so much on the
situation with the particular person. If a person comes in and he is
very agitated or something of that kind, it might dictate a totally
different approach than a different kind of thing.
Mr. DULLES. Wouldn't it be useful though to give--I don't want to
suggest what the Secretary of State should do in this, but in the
light of this experience, would there not be some benefit possibly in
giving people in the field the result of the experience gained in this
particular case?
Mr. CHAYES. Well, the general approach, and other matters related to
it, are touched on in orientation courses for consular officers and so
on. I think as I look on Consul Snyder's actions, that he behaved very
much like a responsible Foreign Service officer.
That happened long before I was in the Department, so I can say that
without any involvement. But it seemed to me that he did just what he
should have done, despite the unfortunate aftermath. And it shows to
me, at least, that the training and orientation that these people are
getting is right, is serviceable, and they are able to handle these
situations as they come in.
Mr. DULLES. I realize that you ought not to prescribe hard and fast
rules, that there is a broad range of discretion that should be
exercised here. But I just raise the question as to whether a good deal
of experience hasn't been gained in this case in that very field.
Mr. CHAYES. Well, it may very well be that more attention to that
particular aspect should be given in the orientation courses and so on.
Those things tend to reflect what is hot at the moment you know, and if
you haven't had trouble with something for a pretty long time, it tends
maybe not to get mentioned.
Representative FORD. If Oswald had persisted that day, October 31, in
demanding the form that is a prerequisite under your definition for
renunciation, would Snyder have been required to give it to him and
permit him to sign it?
Mr. CHAYES. I think if it had been in ordinary office hours when the
consulate was open for business, and if Snyder was satisfied that he
was competent, that Oswald was competent, he would have to give him the
form, yes, sir.
Representative FORD. Does Snyder have the authority to make a
determination of competency?
Mr. CHAYES. No; he doesn't have the authority to make a determination
of competence, and I suppose it is possible at some point to get the
issue tried in court. But I think a consular officer would probably
be acting within his discretion if he saw somebody who was drunk or
raving or something and just said, "Well, I am not going to give you
this until I am sure that your action is your act." After all, when the
consul accepts the oath, he is certifying that it is the act of the
person in a meaningful sense, and so if he thought that the person was
incompetent, I think he would have discretion not to give the oath. But
I put that far aside because in the particular case here, Mr. Snyder
made it perfectly clear that he had no reason to doubt that Oswald was
fully competent.
And so if Oswald had been there at a time when the office was open, or
had returned at a time when the office was open, and had persisted in
his demand, I think Snyder would have been under an obligation to give
him the form.
Representative FORD. The only technical reason or basis upon which
Snyder could have denied Oswald the right that day was the fact that it
was on a Saturday, a non-working-hour period of the Embassy.
Mr. CHAYES. Yes; I think he had every right to try to dissuade him,
or persuade him not to act or persuade him to think it over and come
back the next day. But if after all of that Oswald still had said "But
I want to do it now" and if the office was open for business, then I
think he would have had to do it.
Mr. DULLES. I think it might be useful if it has not been done to
introduce at this point as an exhibit the form of oath of renunciation.
Here is the formalized oath and I think it would be well to have this
in our records unless it is already in our records.
Representative FORD. I agree.
Mr. COLEMAN. No; it isn't. Could we say it will be marked as Commission
Exhibit No. 955 and place this sticker on that page, photostat it and
then just send it back?
(Commission Exhibit No. 955 was marked for identification and received
in evidence.)
Representative FORD. When Oswald came back on November 3, I believe,
which was a regular working day----
Mr. COLEMAN. Mr. Commissioner, he did not come back on November 3. He
merely wrote a letter.
Mr. CHAYES. Wrote a letter. He never came back.
Representative FORD. Are all of the employees, Mr. Snyder, Mr.
McVickar, and the others who had any firsthand contact with the Oswald
case in this area, were they State Department employees?
Mr. CHAYES. Yes, sir; these two men who were the only ones who did see
him directly, I think the secretary, their secretary also saw him, but
had nothing to do with him except as a receptionist. These two men were
Foreign Service officers and are now Foreign Service officers.
Representative FORD. In the strictest term.
Mr. CHAYES. Yes, sir; members of the Foreign Service, appointed by the
President with the advice and consent of the Senate.
Representative FORD. Could you tell us in a bit more detail the process
that you followed or the procedure that you carried out when you first
got into the Oswald case.
You mentioned yesterday you got a call or you were directed by I
believe the Secretary of State or by somebody in higher authority to
take certain steps. Will you tell us who called you, what you did in
the first 3 or 4 days?
Mr. CHAYES. It was the evening of the day, perhaps about 5 o'clock
on the day of the assassination. It may have been somewhat earlier,
because I think I remember I went home for an hour and then came back
to carry out this assignment. Mr. Ball, once it became known that
Oswald had some history as a defector----
Mr. DULLES. Ball is the Under Secretary of State.
Mr. CHAYES. He was then the Acting Secretary because the Secretary of
State as you recall was on a plane over the Pacific. So he was the
Acting Secretary. But even if he had been the Under Secretary he is my
client.
Representative FORD. He still had some authority.
Mr. CHAYES. Yes; he directed me to gather together the files in the
Department on Oswald, and to prepare a report to be available for him
the first thing in the morning covering as best we could within that
time span the contacts that Oswald had with the Department.
We got the passport file. We got the security office file. We got the
special consular services file which covered Mrs. Oswald's visa and the
repatriation loan. I think those three files were the ones that we had.
It may have been there was a smaller fourth file, but I think those
three were the ones.
Representative FORD. What would that smaller fourth file be?
Mr. CHAYES. I can't remember. It was duplicates if it was anything. Oh,
that is right, we had a visa file and an SCS file so those were the
four. The SCS file, that is Special Consular Services in the office, in
the Bureau of Security and Consular Affairs.
Representative FORD. You got this order on or about 5 o'clock the 22d
of November?
Mr. CHAYES. The 22d; yes, sir.
Representative FORD. And you issued orders to have these files brought
in, or did you go and get them yourself?
Mr. CHAYES. No.
Representative FORD. Or what happened?
Mr. CHAYES. I issued orders to have them brought in. I called--I am
trying to think how we got them. [Turning to Mr. Ehrlich.] Did you go
down and get them? Mr. Ehrlich and Mr. Lowenfeld, another of my people,
we worked through the night on this, the three of us all together and
it may be that the two of them went down to get them. I don't think we
just called over the telephone and asked them to be brought up.
(Discussion off the record.)
Mr. CHAYES. It is my recollection that one of these two gentlemen,
either Mr. Ehrlich or Mr. Lowenfeld acting for me, went down to pick
up the file. Mr. Ehrlich thinks he recalls that one of the files was
already being examined by the Secret Service or the FBI, the passport
file. My own recollection, which I am sure of, is that later on in the
evening, about 8 o'clock or 9 o'clock, we established contact with the
FBI and they came over and read the files in our office at the same
time we were reading them. Now actually there was nothing in any of the
files that wasn't duplicated in the others in essence. I mean much of
our files consisted of FBI or CIA reports.
Much of their files consisted of these letters and documents that you
have seen that we had come into possession of when Oswald attempted to
renounce.
We worked, as I say, through the night. One thing that we did other
than go through the files was to go down to the lookout card file to
see whether there was a lookout card for Oswald. We got Mr. Johnson,
who is the General Counsel of the Passport Office, to open up the
lookout card file which is a large room that has a combination lock on
the door, and is also plugged into a general alarm system, got into the
room and examined the lookout card file and found that there was no
card for Oswald.
This was the first experience I had ever had with the lookout card
file, and I said all the things that you have said here, why wasn't
there a card. But we were very careful in doing that to record, Mr.
Lowenfeld, Mr. Ehrlich and I and Mr. Johnson and Mr. Schwartz all went
in and we all mutually recorded what steps we took. I think there are
notes of that, if anybody is interested in them, but I don't think
there is any need to see them.