According to Oswald’s “Historic Diary”[C6-181] and the documents furnished to the Commission by the Soviet Government,[C6-182] Oswald was not told that he had been accepted as a resident of the Soviet Union until about January 4, 1960. Although on November 13 and 16 Oswald informed Aline Mosby[C6-183] and Priscilla Johnson[C6-184] that he had been granted permission to remain in the country indefinitely, the diary indicates that at that time he had been told only that he could remain “until some solution is found with what to do with me.”[C6-185] The diary is more consistent with the letter Oswald wrote to his brother Robert on December 17, saying that he was then, more than a month after he saw Johnson and Mosby, about to leave his hotel,[C6-186] and with some later correspondence with his mother. Oswald mailed a short note to his mother which she received in Texas on January 5; that same day she mailed a money order to him in Moscow, but it apparently got there too late, because she received it back, unopened, on February 25.[C6-187] Oswald’s conflicting statement to the correspondents also seems reconcilable with his very apparent desire to appear important to others. Moreover, so long as Oswald continued to stay in a hotel in Moscow, the inference is that the Soviet authorities had not yet decided to accept him.[C6-188] This inference is supported by information supplied by the CIA on the handling of other defectors in the Soviet Union.[C6-189] Thus, the evidence is strong that Oswald waited at least until November 16, when he saw Miss Johnson, and it is probable that he was required to wait until January 4, a little over 2½ months from October 16, before his application to remain in Russia was granted. In mid-November Miss Johnson asked Oswald whether the Russians were encouraging his defection, to which Oswald responded: “The Russians are treating it like a legal formality. They don’t encourage you and they don’t discourage you.”[C6-190] And, when the Soviet Government finally acted, Oswald did not receive Soviet citizenship, as he had requested, but merely permission to reside in Russia on a year-to-year basis.[C6-191] Asked to comment upon the length of time, 2 months and 22 days, that probably passed before Oswald was granted the right to remain in the Soviet Union, the CIA has advised that “when compared to five other defector cases, this procedure seems unexceptional.”[C6-192] Similarly, the Department of State reports that its information “indicated that a 2-month waiting period is not unusual.”[C6-193] The full response of the CIA is as follows: Oswald said that he asked for Soviet citizenship on 16 October 1959. According to his diary, he received word a month later that he could stay in the USSR pending disposition of his request, but it was another month and a half before he was given his stateless passport.