No, sir; unless there is a lookout card, the passport is issued automatically on the basis of the local agency's determination of citizenship. There has to be evidence of citizenship.
Now let me say there are different ways in which this can come up, because for example a man may apply for a passport before a clerk of the court and that application would be forwarded to the Department. But even then the Department adjudicator would first look at the lookout file. If there is no card in the lookout file, all he would do is determine whether the application was complete, and whether satisfactory evidence of citizenship was presented, and whether on the face of it, you know, the oath was properly taken or any supplementary questionnaire resolved doubts.
And then would issue the passport. If there were a supplemental questionnaire or something like that, then he would probably go to the file.
In our agency there are special passport issuing offices, New Orleans is one of the big ones, we have one in New York, we have some others, there the system is very routinized.
Daily, and sometimes more than once daily, the agency will telegraph by Telex the name, date, and place of birth of its applicants, the people who have come in that day to make an application.

Mr. Coleman.

Could we mark as Exhibit No. 952 the teletype that came in on Oswald. I think that would help the Commission to indicate how it comes in.
(Commission Exhibit No. 952 was marked for identification and received in evidence.)

Mr. Chayes.

Yes.

Mr. Coleman.

You had better explain the "NO" which is beside Oswald's name.

Mr. Chayes.

Yes; well here you see the Telex coming in from New Orleans, and there are 25 names on it with date of birth beside each name, and it is interesting that opposite Lee Harvey Oswald is capital letters "NO" which might be rather interesting except that it stands for New Orleans, and every Telex that comes from New Orleans has that mark on it. It is covered by our abbreviations manual, and one of your investigators made, of course with our knowledge in our office, but not in the Passport Office, a surprise visit to the Passport Office to make sure that they were, in fact, putting NO on these things, and they are. That is the designation of the office.
What happens is when these 25 names come in, the lookout file is searched for those names, and if there is no lookout card, then a responding Telex is sent back. It says here 561, OW561. That is this one, "All okay." OW is office to Washington. WO is Washington to office. So the control number of the outgoing from Washington is WO38, and it says that on your OW561, all the names were okay.
Now it is interesting, the Telex came in and it is stamped June 24, 4:19 p.m.--- June 24, 1963. It went out June 25, 10:57 a.m. and these 25 people all got the passports.
Now it is only on the basis of that kind of a system that you can get out a million passports in a way that really provides first class service to the American people. Miss Knight in her administration of the office, which extends back into the previous administration, has cut down the time from something like 2 weeks to 24 hours in most of the cases.

Mr. Dulles.

Could the Passport Office itself prepare a lookout card on its own initiative on the basis let's say of a file like the Oswald file?

Mr. Chayes.

It would have prepared a lookout card on any person as to whom the file suggested that there were grounds for withdrawal, or denial of the passport.

Mr. Coleman.

Mr. Chayes, at this point could we mark as Commission Exhibit No. 951 the existing standard. operating notice which was in effect on February 28, 1962, of the Department with respect to the lookout card system?

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