secured a loan from the State Department to help cover his transportation costs from Moscow to New York. These dealings with the. Department of State and the Immigration and Naturalization Service have been reviewed earlier in this chapter and are considered in detail in appendix w. After his return, Oswald was interviewed on three occasions by agents of the FBI, and Mrs. Paine was also questioned by the FBI about Oswald's activities. Oswald obtained a second passport in June of 1963. And both the FBI and the CIA took note of his Fair Play for Cuba Committee activities in New Orleans and his appearance at the Soviet consulate in Mexico City. For reasons which will be discussed fully in chapter VIII, Oswald's name was never given to the U.S. Secret Service.

These dealings have given rise to numerous rumors and allegations that Oswald may have been a paid informant or some type of undercover agent for a Federal agency, usually the FBI or the CIA. The Commission has fully explored whether Oswald had any official or unofficial relationship with any Federal agency beyond that already described.

Oswald's mother, Mrs. Marguerite Oswald, testified before the Commission that she believes her son went to Russia and returned as an undercover agent for the U.S. Government.759 Mrs. Oswald mentioned the belief that her son was an agent to a State Department representative whom she visited in January 1961, when she was trying to locate her son. 760 She had been interviewed earlier by FBI Agent John W. Fain, within some 6 months of Oswald's departure for Russia, and did not at that time suggest such an explanation for Oswald's departure. 761 Though provided the opportunity to present any material she considered pertinent, Mrs. Oswald was not able to give the Commission any reasonable basis for her speculation. 762 As discussed later in this chapter, the Commission has investigated Marguerite Oswald's claim that an FBI agent showed her a picture of Jack Ruby after the assassination but before Lee Harvey Oswald had been killed; this allegation was inaccurate, since the picture was not of Ruby.

After the assassination it was reported that in 1962 Oswald had told Pauline Bates, a public stenographer in Fort Worth, Tex., that he had become a "secret agent" of the U.S. Government and that he was soon going back to Russia "or Washington." 763 Mrs. Bates in her sworn testimony denied that Oswald ever told her anything to that effect. 764 She testified that she had stated "that when he first said that he went to Russia and had gotten a visa that I thought--it was just a thought--that maybe he was going over under the auspices of the State Department--as a student or something." 765

In order to evaluate the nature of Oswald's dealings with the Department of State and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Commission has obtained the complete files of both the Department and the Service pertaining to Lee Harvey Oswald. Officials who were directly involved in dealing with the Oswald case on these matters have testified before the Commission. A critical evaluation of the manner in which they were handled by these organizations is set forth