A shadowy CIA operative specializing in psychological warfare interacted with Lee Harvey Oswald forward of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination — after which ran interference in opposition to congressional investigators probing whether or not the US spy company was related to the killing, newly disclosed paperwork present.
CIA officer George Joannides assumed the alias “Howard Gleber” in January 1963, and led an American effort to infiltrate anti-communist Cuban scholar teams within the 12 months main as much as JFK’s killing that November, in accordance with authorities paperwork launched Thursday and reviewed by Axios.
Oswald, 23 on the time, received right into a struggle with members of a type of scholar teams — the DRE, a corporation vehemently-opposed to dictator Fidel Castro’s rule over Cuba — whereas he was handing out pro-communist leaflets in New Orleans practically 4 months earlier than the JFK assassination in Texas.
That struggle publicly uncovered Oswald as a Castro-sympathizer — with information shops protecting a listening to that adopted, and the soon-to-be killer later debating DRE members on a neighborhood tv broadcast, in accordance with Axios.
A 12 months earlier than that publicity, the Pentagon was in search of excuses to assault Cuba — together with plotting a false flag plan generally known as Operation Northwoods, which drew-up a faux assault on the US that might be blamed on the communist nation.
Joannides was in command of “all aspects of political action and psychological warfare” at a Miami CIA workplace that funded the DRE when it encountered Oswald, and the identify of a shadowy operative named “Howard” who labored with the group has circulated in JFK assassination conspiracy theories and investigations for many years.
However till Thursday’s disclosure, the CIA has all the time maintained “Howard” was not considered one of theirs — and Joannides himself even denied it point-blank till the day he died in 1990 after incomes a Profession Intelligence Medal.
Joannides was assigned to be the CIA’s liaison with the Home Choose Committee on Assassinations because it probed the president’s homicide in 1976, and he brazenly lied in regards to the identification of “Howard” when questioned.
“Joannides assured me that they could find no record of any such officer assigned to DRE, but that he would keep looking,” the Home Committees chief counsel Robert Blakely testified in 2014, in accordance with Axios.
And a former investigator with the committee, Dan Hardway, testified in June that Joannides was behind a “covert operation” to throw Congress off the CIA’s path.
“The cover story for Joannides is officially dead,” writer and JFK assassination’ knowledgeable Jefferson Morley advised Axios. “This is a big deal. The CIA is changing its tune on Lee Harvey Oswald.”
Thursday’s launch is simply the most recent trove of knowledge to emerge as the federal government works by a mandated disclosure of its recordsdata associated to JFK’s killing.
The 1992 Kennedy Assassination Information Assortment Act decreed that each one recordsdata can be launched by 2017, however by 2018 there have been nonetheless tens of 1000’s of paperwork withheld. President Biden launched extra in 2022, and in March President Trump launched one other trove.
Earlier releases have indicated the CIA knew extra about Oswald than they advised the general public after the capturing, with paperwork disclosed in March displaying “three top CIA officials lied” to investigators about their data of the murderer beforehand.
The recordsdata on Joannides don’t point out why the CIA lied about his involvement with the DRE.
“[The CIA] 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,” a spokesperson for the company advised Axios.
