plying its own regulations the Department should in all cases exercise great care in the return to this country of defectors such as Oswald who have evidenced disloyalty or hostility to this country or who have expressed a desire to renounce their U.S. citizenship and that, when such persons are returned, procedures should be adopted for the better dissemination of information concerning them to the intelligence agencies of the Government. The operation of the "lookout card" system in the Department of State was obviously deficient, but since these deficiencies did not affect Oswald or reflect any favoritism or impropriety, the Commission considers them beyond the scope of its inquiry.

Especially while he was in the Soviet Union, Oswald's manner to Government personnel was frequently insulting and offensive. As one 1962 communication between the Embassy and the Department of State observed, "It is not that our hearts are breaking for Oswald. His impertinence knows no bounds." 295 Nonetheless, the officials of the U.S. Government respected Oswald as a troubled American citizen and extended to him the services and assistance for which the agencies of government have been created. Though Oswald was known to be "an unstable character, whose actions are highly unpredictable," 296 there was no reasonable basis in 1961 and 1962 for suspecting that upon his readmittance to the country he would resort to violence against its public officials. The officers of the Department of State and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, acting within the proper limits of their discretion, concluded that Oswald's return to the United States was in the best interests of the country; it is only from the vantage of the present that the tragic irony of their conclusion emerges.