WASHINGTON (Dispatches) – For the first time since U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s assassination nearly 62 years ago, the CIA tacitly admitted that an officer specializing in psychological warfare ran an operation that came into contact with Lee Harvey Oswald before the Dallas killing.
The disclosure — 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.
A January 17, 1963, CIA memo showed Joannides was directed to have an alias and fake driver’s license bearing the name “Howard Gebler”.
Until now, 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 ruler Fidel Castro called the Cuban Student Directorate.
For decades, the agency also falsely announced 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 cover story for Joannides is officially dead,” Jefferson Morley, an author and expert on the assassination, said, adding, “This is a big deal. The CIA is changing its tune on Lee Harvey Oswald.”
The information comes to light as part of President Donald 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.
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 August 9, 1963, more than three months before November 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 August 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.
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).