CIA admits shadowy officer monitored Oswald before JFK assassination, new records reveal
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Lee Harvey Oswald distributes "Hands Off Cuba" flyers in New Orleans. This photograph was used in the Kennedy assassination investigation. A newly released CIA document indicates an agent ran an operation that came into contact with Oswald before he was accused of assassinating President Kennedy in 1963. Photo: Corbis via Getty Images/National Archives
For the first time since President Kennedy's assassination nearly 62 years ago, the CIA has tacitly admitted that an officer specializing in psychological warfare ran an operation that came into contact with Lee Harvey Oswald before the Dallas killing.
Why it matters: The disclosure Thursday — nestled in a batch of 40 documents concerning officer George Joannides — indicates the CIA lied for decades about his role in the Kennedy case before and after the assassination, according to experts on JFK's slaying.
- The linchpin document: A Jan. 17, 1963, CIA memo showing Joannides was directed to have an alias and fake driver's license bearing the name "Howard Gebler."
- Until Thursday, the agency had denied that Joannides was known as "Howard," the case officer name for the CIA contact who worked with activists from an anti-communist group opposed to Cuban dictator Fidel Castro called the Cuban Student Directorate.
- For decades, the agency also falsely said it had nothing to do with the student group, which was instrumental in having Oswald's pro-Castro stances published soon after the shooting.
The bottom line: "The cover story for Joannides is officially dead," said Jefferson Morley, an author and expert on the assassination. "This is a big deal. The CIA is changing its tune on Lee Harvey Oswald."
- The information comes to light as part of President Trump's order that the government meet its obligations to disclose all documents under the JFK Records Act of 1992.
- Little was known of Joannides' involvement in the case until disclosures in 1998 under the records act. New disclosures of previously hidden records keep adding slices of information to the story.
Zoom in: Joannides was the deputy chief of the CIA's Miami branch, overseeing "all aspects of political action and psychological warfare." That included covertly funding and directing the Cuban student group, commonly referred to as DRE for its Spanish-language initials.
- On Aug. 9, 1963, more than three months before Nov. 22 assassination, four DRE operatives got into a scuffle with Oswald in New Orleans when he was passing out pro-Castro "Fair Play for Cuba Committee" pamphlets. The subsequent court hearing was covered by local news media.
- On Aug. 21 , 1963, Oswald debated DRE activists on local TV, providing more media attention to him as a communist.
- After the assassination, DRE's newsletter identified Oswald as a pro-Castro communist, and the Miami Herald and Washington Post covered the story.
- A year before Oswald became known as pro-Castro, the Pentagon formulated a plan called Operation Northwoods to stage a false-flag attack in the United States, blame Cuba and then attack it.
Zoom out: The new documents don't shed any additional light on Kennedy's shooting or settle the controversy over whether Oswald acted alone. Nor is there any evidence showing why the CIA covered up Joannides' ties to DRE.
- All the records disclosed so far show how the CIA lied about financing or being involved with DRE. That includes the agency's interactions with the Warren Commission (1964), the Church Committee (1975), the House Select Committee on Assassinations (1977-78) and the Assassination Review Board (until 1998).
The intrigue: Joannides didn't just have knowledge of Oswald before the assassination — afterward he played a central role in deceiving the House Select Committee on Assassinations.
- At the time, the CIA appointed Joannides to be its liaison with the committee. But he and the agency hid the fact that he was involved with DRE and therefore the Kennedy case, slow-walked the CIA's production of records, and lied.
- The committee's chief counsel, Robert Blakey, testified in 2014 that he asked Joannides about "Howard" and DRE, and that "Joannides assured me that they could find no record of any such officer assigned to DRE, but that he would keep looking," Blakey said.
- A former committee investigator, Dan Hardway, testified before a House Oversight committee last month that Joannides was running a "covert operation" to undermine the congressional probe into the assassination.
- Two years after stonewalling the committee, Joannides was awarded the Career Intelligence Medal by the CIA in 1981. He died in 1990.
What they're saying: Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Florida Republican overseeing the House committee examining the newly released JFK documents, said Joannides was "1,000 percent" involved in a CIA coverup.
- Morley and some others who've written extensively about Kennedy's assassination believe rogue CIA agents might have been involved in the killing, but Morley's not ready to say Joannides was one of them.
- Others, such as author Gerald Posner, believe Oswald was the lone gunman. But all are in agreement that the CIA acted in bad faith after Kennedy was killed.
- "It's vintage CIA. They never provide transparency. They don't tell the truth. They obscure. They obfuscate. And when the documents come out, they look bad," Posner said.
- A CIA spokesperson told Axios the agency "has fully complied and provided all documents — without redactions — related to the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy to NARA consistent with President Trump's direction in an unprecedented act of transparency by the agency."
What's next: Morley and Luna say CIA Director John Ratcliffe and National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard deserve credit for demanding more transparency. So expect more records.
