James P. Hosty | FBI agent in JFK case, 86

James P. Hosty, the FBI agent who inherited Lee Harvey Oswald's file the year before President John F. Kennedy was assassinated and was implicitly accused of negligence in the Warren Commission Report, has died of cancer.

He was 86.

Mr. Hosty spent nearly five decades defending himself against accusations that he should have investigated Oswald more closely.

He died June 10 at Kansas City Hospice House in Kansas City, Mo., McGilley and Hoge Johnson County Memorial Chapel said on its website.

He wrote the book Assignment: Oswald, which came out in 1996, partially in response to how he was depicted in the 1991 Oliver Stone film, JKF.

As recently as 2003, Mr. Hosty told the Kansas City Star there was nothing he could have done to prevent the assassination given what he knew at the time. He also conceded he probably would "go to my grave trying to straighten this out."

Long before Kennedy's assassination, Oswald was well known to the FBI and the Central Intelligence Agency. A former Marine, Oswald had defected to the Soviet Union in 1959, and his defection made international news.

Mr. Hosty said that in September 1962, after Oswald returned to the United States, the FBI agent who had the Oswald file determined that it should be closed. When that agent retired a month later, Mr. Hosty inherited the file.

In late February 1963, Mr. Hosty said he came to believe the Oswalds needed further investigation. But he said the case was never considered a priority and that the bureau believed that if the Oswalds were involved in anything, it was likely no more than low-level espionage. - AP