Tag: assassinations

JFK shooter Lee Harvey Oswald was contacted by a high-level CIA psychological warfare operative months before he assassinated the president, according to new bombshell documents declassified by the Central Intelligence Agency this week.

In a 1963 memo, released Thursday as part of President Trump’s JFK disclosure efforts, “George Joannides,” a deputy chief of the CIA’s Miami branch, is identified as a “special agent” being assigned a covert identity, complete with a fake address, driver’s license, and the alias “Howard Mark Gebler.”

Axios explains: “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 [DRE],” a group covertly funded and directed by Joannides’ CIA branch.

Members of the DRE confronted Oswald on August 9, 1963, as he handed out pro-Castro pamphlets in New Orleans, just months before the Nov. 22 assassination.

Oswald also debated DRE activists later that month, reinforcing his image as a Communist sympathizer – a year and a half after the Pentagon’s proposed false flag plan, Operation Northwoods, which aimed to blame acts of terror on the Castro regime in order to justify a military overthrow of Cuba. That plan, which President John F. Kennedy ultimately rejected, followed the CIA’s botched Bay of Pigs invasion just one year prior.

Later, Joannides and others inside the CIA helped conceal his role, slow-walking document requests, misdirecting congressional investigators and running “covert ops” intended to undermine investigations.

The bombshell document comes as previous releases have already shown the CIA lied under oath when questioned about the DRE during previous congressional testimony, Axios reports:

“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).”

Axios notes while the memo blows Joannides’ cover, “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.”

The document release, shedding light on the CIA’s long-suspected hidden hand in the assassination, was celebrated as a victory in transparency for the Trump administration, including by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) who chairs the House Oversight Committee’s Task Force on Declassification of Federal Secrets.

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Last November JFK Facts reported a previously unknown fact: the CIA compiled a 181-page dossier on accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald before President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963.

This figure that that has now been fact-checked—and revised upward.

My interest in the pre-assassination Oswald file was piqued in April 2023. That’s when the last redaction in file was lifted. All of the 42 document in the file had been completely redacted as of 2017. All that remained classified was one name

In April 2023 it was revealed CIA operations officer, Reuben Efron had monitored Oswald’s private correspondence for the first 18 months of JFK’s presidency. At the time Efron reported to counterintelligence chief James Angleton, one of the most powerful men in the CIA.

Even the New York Times took note of this JFK development in July 2023.

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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.

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