That would mean when he came back into the United States and he then reapplied 2 days later for another passport it would have gone through routinely and you would not have picked up the fact that it was Oswald the defector that was now going to go back out of the United States?
Miss KNIGHT. Well, that would be possible, I think; yes.
The experienced citizenship attorneys in the Passport Office, as well as the U.S. consul in Moscow determined individually that Oswald had not expatriated himself. His passport was renewed in May 1962, and limited for return to the United States.
In the adjudication of his citizenship, we can only deal with the facts on record. The fact is that Oswald did not avail himself of the prescribed procedure to renounce his U.S. nationality.
In applying for his passport renewal, he stated under oath that he had not committed an expatriative act. He denied an earlier statement that he had applied for Soviet citizenship, and produced some evidence that he had never been declared a Soviet citizen.
Now, as far as the repatriation loan is concerned, the recording of such a loan in the Passport office is a very routine procedure.
Apparently there is some question as to whether a lookout card was inserted in the lookout file at the time that the repatriation loan was made to Oswald. The Passport Office must depend on the Office of Finance to inform it with regard to repatriation loans. We require certain information such as the name of the individual, the place and date of birth, and other information which will identify the individual in our files.
It is very important that this information be complete and accurate to guard against embarrassing situations which could develop from misidentification.
The criteria for the procedure were developed over several years by the Office of Finance in cooperation with the Passport Office. Memorandum between the Passport Office and the Office of Finance have been provided to the Commission.
The important one is dated January 16, 1962, and spells out the criteria that we established by mutual consent. The Passport Office was and is directly concerned with only two actions in repatriation cases.
The insertion of an accurate and identifiable card in the lookout file and the prompt removal of such a card when the loan has been repaid.
Between August 1961 and December 1962 there was a purge of our lookout file because the cards were so shoddy and unreadable that they had to be refreshed.
We call them cards. But they actually were not cards, merely slips of pink paper 3 by 5 inches which were very badly worn and torn.
More than 1 million applications are cleared over this file annually, and it was imperative for us to find a system which would provide fast and accurate clearances.
During the renovation of this lookout file we found over 3,000 cards relating to repatriation loans which were unidentifiable. They had been in the file for decades, and they were of no value. They failed to give us any leads to either the passport or security files. The individuals involved may long since have passed to their reward. We did not know what had happened to them so we took these cards out of the files.
The record indicates that the Finance Office did not have Oswald's place and date of birth, and did not advise the Passport Office of the repatriation loan.
There may have been efforts to obtain the information necessary to make up a lookout card and this may have been suspended because Oswald started a series of payments within 10 weeks of the loan.
In any case, the Passport Office was notified when the loan was fully paid about 6 months later, which was January 1963. Had a card been placed in the lookout file it would have been removed upon such notification.

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