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A CRUEL AND SHOCKING MISINTERPRETATION

Phil Shenon and I agree on at least a few things. In any resolution of the mysteries surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Mexico City will undoubtedly be important. The investigation into what happened there in 1963 was, for some reason, seriously curtailed by the U.S. government. The government has, since then, fought tooth and nail to keep the full story about what happened there secret.

While I have never met Mr. Shenon, I have spoken with him several times by telephone. I first heard from him when he called me around 2011. He introduced himself as a reporter for Newsweek Magazine. He said he was working well in advance on an article for that magazine for the 50th anniversary of JFK’s murder. He wondered whether I would be willing to talk about the HSCA’s investigation in Mexico City. I agreed to speak with him.

Over the course of that first conversation, and several follow-up calls from him over the next couple of years, it became apparent to me that Mr. Shenon was only interested in our work investigating what had happened in Mexico City in 1963 insofar as it might provide some kind of basis for linking Oswald to Castro or the Cubans. I tried to discuss the details of the HSCA investigation into what happened in Mexico City in its anomalous issues, but he was uninterested in those details. While there is an acknowledgment in his book, A Cruel and Shocking Act, stating that Ed Lopez and I were “generous with their time and interviews for this book,” precious little, if any, of what we shared with him made it into the book or any of his subsequent writing on the subject of Mexico City. Not only does Mr. Shenon ignore the post-HSCA materials we tried to bring to his attention, he also ignores the primary thrust of our report written for the HSCA.

I would not take issue with Phil Shenon if I thought what he is claiming is, merely, that the possibility of Cuban assistance to Oswald should be investigated. While I think the evidence of that is very weak at best, I will not deny that any avenue of investigation that remains open should be pursued. What I take issue with Mr. Shenon about is his single-minded concentration on that one issue and the resultant misrepresentation of facts and questions related to, and arising from, Lee Oswald’s activities in Mexico City. It appears to me that Shenon may be carrying water for the proponents of the original conspiracy theory – that Castro did it – rather than offering any objective review of the complete evidentiary base of that underlies the Mexico City visit. Shenon deliberately ignores the indicators and evidence that suggest Oswald’s trip to Mexico was either designed in advance, or spun in the aftermath, to give the appearance of Cuban and Soviet collusion in the Kennedy assassination.

Shenon’s thesis, as most recently explicated in his article in Politico, “What Was Lee Harvey Oswald Doing in Mexico?”, is built on suspicions expressed by some government officials after the assassination and Charles Thomas’s reporting of the Duran twist party – a report based on a story first told by Elena Garro de Paz. Many had initial suspicions after the assassination: Lyndon Johnson alleged a communist conspiracy within twenty minutes of JFK’s death; Bobby Kennedy’s first question to CIA Director John McCone that day was, “Did some of your guys do this?” (The Warren Commission, in Executive Session, was very concerned about Oswald’s intelligence connections, but Allen Dulles told them it was something that couldn’t really be proven, as a good intelligence officer would lie under oath to the Commission.) When Shenon and I talked, I tried to get him to consider evidence and facts that have come to light about Mexico City and the CIA’s handling of various investigations since, including the one I worked on in 1978, in his evaluation of the twist party story that lies at the root of his speculations. My efforts had no effect. Any possible explanation other than Cuban complicity has been ignored by Mr. Shenon who seems hell-bent on promoting the idea that Castro was behind the assassination, refusing to address any other possibility.

I tried, in vain as it turns out, to get Mr. Shenon to consider that what we had learned about Oswald’s activities, and the government’s reaction to those activities, could support a different explanation which also pointed to an additional avenue of investigation that needed to be publicized and followed. In my view, Oswald’s activities are more consistent with his being involved in an intelligence operation being run by U.S. intelligence than with him trying to make contact with Cubans to garner support for an assassination attempt on the sitting leader of this country.

To fully appreciate why I say that, a little background from Washington in 1978, is necessary. In 1978 the CIA resisted the HSCA’s inquiry into Mexico City more than any other area of inquiry. The chief counsel, G. Robert Blakey, told the Committee on August 15, 1978, “[T]he deeper we have gotten into the Agency’s performance in Mexico City, the more difficult they have gotten in dealing with us, the more they have insisted on relevance, the more they have gone back in effect on their agreement to give us access to unsanitized files. For a while we had general and free access to unsanitized files. That is increasingly not true in the Mexico City area….” And we have since learned that they used George Joannides to shut down the investigation into Oswald and Mexico City. In doing so, they lied to us about who he was. He ran propaganda operations in

George Joannides

Miami in 1963-64 and was the case officer for DRE, the anti-Castro group that scored the anti-Fair Play for Cuba Committee coup using Oswald in New Orleans in August of 1963. As G. Robert Blakey has since acknowledged, “The CIA not only lied, it actively subverted the investigation.” I think the CIA expected we would take the superficial approach of considering the “Castro did it” theory, but when we went beyond the initial appearances and began pushing our investigation into the propaganda sources, seeking interviews with the actual penetration and surveillance agents, seeking to find others in Mexico City who may have seen Oswald, then the Agency resistance to our investigation turned to a stonewall. Shouldn’t it be enough to raise serious questions that when a Congressional Committee investigating specific disinformation operations ran by the CIA, the CIA brings one of those involved in the operation being investigated and uses him in an undercover capacity to forestall and subvert the investigation? But that’s not all.

Consider the scenario of U.S. intelligence involvement in Oswald’s activities in Mexico City that we were not able to fully investigate in 1978. Let’s start with some background on David Phillips. David Phillips was one of, if not the, most experienced, ingenious, respected, and qualified disinformation officers in the CIA. In 1963 he was stationed in Mexico City, but, in early October, he was temporarily assigned to duty at Headquarters because he was being promoted from running anti-Castro propaganda operations to overseeing all anti-Castro operations in the

David Atlee Phillips

Western Hemisphere. He was an experienced hand. In the late 1950’s he had been under non-diplomatic cover in Havana, where he worked with student leaders who would eventually form the Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil (“DRE”). During the Bay of Pigs, Phillips was stationed at CIA Headquarters where he had responsibility for the propaganda and psychological warfare aspects of the antiCastro operations. In running those operations he not only oversaw the operations he ran personally from Headquarters, he was also the supervisor of the propaganda operations flowing out of the JMWAVE station in Miami by William Kent (aka Doug Gupton, William Trouchard). When the students who had been recruited by Phillips fled Cuba, they were reorganized under Kent’s tutelage into the DRE based in Miami.

Phillips was transferred to Mexico City later in 1961 after the Bay of Pigs. Kent was promoted to Headquarters, and George Joannides took over Kent’s position in Miami, including supervision of DRE. While still stationed in Headquarters in the early 60’s, David Phillips had worked with Cord Meyer to develop the first disinformation campaign aimed at discrediting and disrupting a group of Castro sympathizers who had organized themselves into the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC). In the summer of 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald formed a chapter of the FPCC in New Orleans. In August of 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald, still in New Orleans, had an encounter with DRE which led to a lot of publicity linking Oswald to communists, labeling him as pro-Castro, and discrediting the FPCC. In July and August of that year there is strong evidence that Oswald was used to identify and contact pro-Castro students at Tulane University. In early September, Oswald was seen with David Philips in Dallas.

On September 16, 1963, the CIA informed the FBI that it was considering action to counter the activities of the FPCC in foreign countries. To my knowledge, the operational files on this new anti-FPCC operation have never been released by the CIA. In New Orleans, on September 17, 1963, Oswald applied for, and received, a Mexican travel visa immediately after William Gaudet, a known CIA agent, had applied for one. On September 27 Oswald arrived in Mexico City. This activity did not occur suddenly or in a vacuum. Oswald had started establishing his pro-Castro bona fides earlier that summer in New Orleans, including establishing an FPCC chapter there.

There are too many similarities between Oswald’s activities in New Orleans and Mexico City to simply dismiss, without investigation or discussion, the possibility that he was being used in an intelligence operation, either wittingly or unwittingly, in both cities. In addition to his contacts with the Soviet and Cuban diplomatic facilities in Mexico City, which could have been part of an intelligence dangle, an attempt to discredit the FPCC, or both, there is now also evidence of Oswald’s contacts with students at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and his presence at social events with Cuban Consulate

Secret Wars Diary by David Atlee Phillips

employees. David Phillips frequently lied about Oswald and Mexico City, but in a footnote in a little known book he self-published, Secret Wars Diary, he wrote: “I was an observer of Cuban and Soviet reaction when Lee Harvey Oswald contacted their embassies.” [Emphasis added.] One purpose served by an intelligence dangle is to enable the dangling agency to observe the reaction and, from that observation, identify roles of employees, procedures and processes of the enemy.

There can be little doubt that Oswald’s activities, especially the more flagrant, blatant and egregious ones such as those alleged by Shenon to have occurred at the Cuban Consulate, could only have scandalized the Cuban diplomats who heard the threats and bluster – all to the discrediting of the FPCC, just as the publicity about the New Orleans encounter between Oswald and the DRE formed one of the propaganda nails in that organization’s coffin. It is much more likely, in my opinion, that the seasoned Cuban diplomats would be offended than it is that they would support someone exhibiting Oswald’s alleged behavior to attempt an assassination. It is much more likely that the Cuban diplomats would have, as the evidence shows they did, consider Oswald as a U.S. intelligence provocation. The Cubans knew of the surveillance on their facilities. Why would they use someone to do such a job who showed up under surveillance and announced his plans? On the other hand, someone as provocative as Oswald should have generated a cascade of response that, when observed by the watchers, would have revealed an abundance of information. It could also serve to discredit the FPCC with the Cubans. The CIA prevented us, in 1978, from interviewing then surviving penetration and surveillance agents who would have known more about such an operation.

In 1978, we knew not only about the allegations of the twist party, but also about the stories of Oswald’s contact with students. The CIA prevented us from interviewing Oscar Contreras, a student Oswald contacted. But Anthony Summers, and others, have interviewed him since. Contreras acknowledges that Oswald, in late September, 1963, approached him and three other students who were members of a pro-Castro student organization. He asked them for help getting a visa to Cuba from the Consulate. Contreras did have contacts at the Consulate and spoke to the Consul and an intelligence officer. Both warned him to have nothing to do with Oswald as they suspected he was trying to infiltrate proCastro groups. Contreras still wonders how Oswald identified him and his friends as the students, out of the thousands attending the University, as the ones with contacts in the Consulate. Shenon, some way or another, sees this incident as supporting possible Cuban involvement in the assassination. No mention is made to the similarity to what Oswald was doing with Tulane students in New Orleans.

While in New Orleans, Ruth Paine had asked fellow Quaker, Ruth Kloepfer, to check on the Oswalds while they were in New Orleans. Mrs. Kloepfer’s husband was a professor at Tulane University. There is information in the extensive records in this case that Oswald passed out FPCC leaflets near Tulane University and the homes of some of the professors there who were members of a local leftist group. The

Lee Oswald in New Orleans leafleting for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, 9 August, 1963

individuals who helped pass out pamphlets on the last occasion when Oswald passed out his FPCC literature in downtown New Orleans, were introduced by Oswald as students from Tulane. There are, keeping things in parallel, indications in the documentation about the case that Oswald, while in Mexico City, made contact with Quakers studying at the Autonomous University. There are indications that one Quaker student at the University at that time was an active agent of the CIA, although that person has never been identified and it has not been determined that he had any contact with Oswald in Mexico City. The reason that it has not been determined is that it has not been investigated.

It has to be pointed out that June Cobb, a known CIA agent, was very involved in Agency actions aimed at the FPCC in the early 1960’s. She appears again as the first person to report Elena Garro de Paz’s story about the Duran/Oswald twist party. At the time she made that report to the Mexico City CIA station, Cobb, a CIA asset, was renting a room from Elena Garro de Paz, Sylvia Duran’s cousin. And Shenon bases most of

Elena Garro De Paz

what he writes on a supposition that, based on this twist-party story, Duran was at the center of the Cuban recruitment of Oswald. But the fact is that it is still very much in question whether Duran had been recruited as an asset by the CIA. David Phillips, as well as other CIA employees, in 1978, were of the opinion that she may have been targeted for recruitment by the CIA. The CIA, then and since, has gone out of its way to keep details about Duran buried, claiming, among other things, to have destroyed her Mexico City P file.

But the point is, the activities in Mexico City in September and October, 1963, are a capsule version of Oswald’s activities in New Orleans in June, July and August of 1963. In the context of the other information we’ve learned about the CIA’s FPCC black propaganda operation, the people involved in those operations and the role of at least one of those people, George Joannides, in subverting the HSCA investigation, how can anyone not seriously consider whether Oswald’s Mexico City activities were part of a CIA anti-FPCC operation? The very first conspiracy theory, that Castro and the communists killed JFK – the one expressed by President Johnson 20 minutes after the assassination, and first seeing print in the DRE’s CIA funded newspaper, Trinchera, on November 23, 1963 – still has followers and proponents, the latest being Phil Shenon. None of the proponents, it seems, have ever really considered whether they may be the victims – or a part – of a very good, deliberate disinformation operation – possibly the best Phillips and Joannides ever ran.

________________________

Dan Hardway, J.D. Attorney in private practice; former investigator, House Select Committee on Assassinations.

The Talbot-Croft Archive: Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

A portrait of David Talbot at The Green Arcade bookstore, Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2020, in San Francisco, Calif. Talbot shares his experiences following his stroke in his new book, Between Heaven and Hell.

The Assassination Archives and Research Center, in cooperation with the Mary Ferrell Foundation, announces an extraordinary research resource: The Talbot-Croft Archive. This archive features the recorded conversations and transcriptions that were developed as primary sources in researching David Talbot’s books, Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years (2007) and The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA and the Rise of America’s Secret Government (2015).

This project is made possible with the permission of the author, David Talbot and his long-time research associate, Karen Croft, whose participation and involvement was integral to the creation and collection of these materials.

Interviews preserve and document perhaps our most precious resource, the stories of those who have made history as told in their own words. It is through the dedicated efforts of historians, authors, the men and women who practice objective and accountable investigative journalism, by which we may delve most deeply into our past. For those to whom history is more than the record and analysis of documented events, little can be of greater value than the candid reflections of those whose lives have influenced its shaping. History may have many authors and many voices, but once those figures have passed and those voices stilled, we are left to study what remains: the documented record of their words and deeds.

“The greatest brotherly duo in American political history. They gave their lives for the country — and they died for a reason, not simply at the hands of two ‘lone nuts.’ Those who know the true story of the Kennedy brothers’ lives (and I’m not talking about the PBS version) know how truly heroic they were.”

— David Talbot speaking about John and Robert Kennedy, (2016)

This introduction addresses two equal sides reflected within this project for which David Talbot is responsible. The first pertains to the unique value of unscripted and unrehearsed personal interviews with historical figures. The second, of course, must recognize the strength of David’s ethics, his social conscience, his deeply compassionate conception of literary and social objectives which convey his concerns about where things have gone terribly wrong and how, if we are all properly informed (hidden history-wise), we can work together to make our society better for all. In considering essential points that should be communicated in this introduction, we acknowledge the inseparable connection between the stories he chooses to explore, his intrinsic determination to focus his attention upon darkly complex and meaningful subjects and the absolute integrity of his personal and professional character. It is sometimes said that great works are the product of great souls. David’s life and his works exemplify the best of what it was to which John and Robert Kennedy, and the band of brothers who served them, were so passionately committed: Full use of your powers along lines of excellence.

His works are a gift to all of us who are haunted by living in a society that emerged after our hopes, and perhaps our destinies, were disrupted by gunfire.

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep

Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,

‘T is not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield

(Ulysses, Tennyson)

Special thanks to AARC president, Dan Alcorn and MFF president, Rex Bradford; courtesy of David Talbot and Karen Croft, we are honored to present The Talbot–Croft Archive.

Dedicated to the memory of John and Robert Kennedy and to all those who continue to seek a newer world.

INTERVIEW 01

Audio: Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

Transcript: Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

Arthur Meier Schlesinger Jr. (born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger; October 15, 1917 – February 28, 2007) was an American historian, social critic, and public intellectual. The son of the influential historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. and a specialist in American history, much of Schlesinger’s work explored the history of 20th-century American liberalism. In particular, his work focused on leaders such as Harry S. Truman, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy. In the 1952 and 1956 presidential campaigns, he was a primary speechwriter and adviser to the Democratic presidential nominee, Adlai Stevenson II. Schlesinger served as special assistant and “court historian” to President Kennedy from 1961 to 1963. He wrote a detailed account of the Kennedy administration, from the 1960 presidential campaign to the president’s state funeral, titled A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House, which won the 1966 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.

In 1968, Schlesinger actively supported the presidential campaign of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, which ended with Kennedy’s assassination in Los Angeles. Schlesinger wrote a popular biography, Robert Kennedy and His Times, several years later. He later popularized the term “imperial presidency” during the Nixon administration in his 1973 book, The Imperial Presidency.

RELATED: 30 June 1961 Memo for the President

CIA Reorganization, RIF 176-10030-10422

Schlesinger Memo-176-10030-10422

BLOG: The David Talbot Show

20 MAY, 2025: JUDGE JOHN TUNHEIM Opening Statement to the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets

‘Secret Service Was Very Difficult’

Judge John Tunheim

Opening statement to the House Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, U.S. House of Representatives

The Honorable John R. Tunheim
Sr. U.S. District Judge, District of Minnesota

20 May, 2025

Congresswoman Luna: I now recognize Judge Tunheim for an opening statement.

JUDGE TUNHEIM: Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. Ranking Member. I appreciate this opportunity to speak today. My name is John Tunheim. I’m a federal district court judge for the District of Minnesota. I’m in my 30th year as a federal judge. I served as chief judge of our district from 2015 until 2022 and as a member of the U. S. Judicial Conference from 2020 to 2024. I was originally nominated by President Clinton in 1995 after serving 10 years as Minnesota’s chief deputy attorney general. I was chair of the Assassination Records Review Board during its entire existence from 1994 through 1998. The review board was an independent federal agency. Its five board members were confirmed by the US Senate after being nominated by President Clinton.

Congress created the review board for the express purpose of reviewing all of the still secret records of the tragic assassination of President John Kennedy and declassifying as much information as could be publicly released. The impetus for the law, which was enacted in October 1992, was Oliver Stone’s movie, JFK. The President John F. Kennedy assassination records collection act of 1992 provided for a five-member decision-making board which would make decisions on agency-requested redactions from classified documents we had declassification authority the first time and maybe the only time an outside group had that authority. The board members were by law to be recommended for appointment by professional organizations: two National Historical Associations, an Archivist’s Association, and the American Bar Association. Besides me, the members included a renowned provost from a major university, later university president, two distinguished history professors, and a senior archivist at Princeton.

We were confirmed in 1994 and began our work with no appropriation or offices. We worked out of the National Archives for a time until I was able to secure some funding from the White House to get us started before Congress could provide an appropriation. The agency’s presentation of records was seriously delayed because of the delay in the appointments. We were ready to begin review with our staff by early 1995. The statute did not require us to reach any conclusions about prior investigations or what happened on November 22nd. Rather, our task was to conduct a wide-ranging search for records to create the largest possible collection. Of assassination-related records as open to the public as possible. The goal was to allow the interested public to make up their own minds about what happened and based on an open and transparent and complete record.

The congressional mandate, and this is important, it stated that the records relating to the assassination would, quote, carry a presumption of immediate disclosure. Quote, only in the rarest of cases is there any legitimate need for continued protection. This is Congress in 1992. Congress defined the term ‘assassination records’ broadly and indicated that the review board could further define the term assassination record, which we did. So in June of 1995, our definition was that any record that was reasonably related to the assassination would be an assassination record subject to the board’s jurisdiction. And we included all records collected by government agencies in conjunction with any investigation or analysis of or inquiry into the assassination of President Kennedy. We developed detailed guidelines for agencies to follow, and agencies did have the right to appeal our decisions directly to the President.

We were authorized to redact words. We did not ever redact entire documents that the agency proved by clear and convincing evidence, that was a standard, that the harm of disclosure outweighed the public interest in the document in four categories, national security, intelligence gathering methods, personal privacy, or methods of protecting the president. That was it. We held many public hearings, experts’ conferences around the country, in addition to our private meetings, to discuss our decision making. We also tried to clarify unclear evidence where we could, digitalizing autopsy materials and analyzing them and deposing the autopsy physicians. We also gathered artifacts, including photographs and film, clothing, and other artifacts. We had limited time to do our work. We had limited time to do our work, which was not enough time.

20 May 2025 Task Force witness swearing in. Image credit JFKFACTS.

We were granted just one more year by Congress, so we had a total of three years. We began to lose staff as we approached the end of our mandate. In all, the board issued over 27,000 individual rulings. These were decisions on requests by agencies to protect information. Most redacted information had release dates attached to them. We made it easy for the researchers to determine whether a redacted name appeared in different locations so that they would know it was the same person. There were a further 33,000 consent releases, which essentially means that the agency saw the handwriting on the wall and released the documents directly since we were likely to order release. When we finished, there were nearly 5 million pages at the National Archives.

We made the decision early that we would not protect any information directly related to the assassination because of the high level of public interest. By 2017, when the last records were to be released under the Act, there were probably not more than 1,500 review board redactions that were remaining. The Act was clear in stating that despite the Review Board wrapping up its work in 1998, the Act was to continue in effect, which meant that agencies had the obligation to continue to present information. Most of the redactions now in the documents are within documents never shown to the Review Board but were transferred to NARA at a later time. Agencies largely complied with the mandate to present records to the review board.

However, there are many delays and denials with records that we specifically requested, and there were many skirmishes along the way. It does not take a rocket scientist to realize that agencies were awaiting the end of our three-year mandate. The first 500 or so adverse disclosure decisions we made in FBI records were appealed to the president, and the appeals were dropped when White House counsel, former judge, and Representative Abner Mikva told the FBI to drop the appeals because President Clinton would deny all of them. FBI staff was helpful to us, but I’m now seeing records in the new releases that were not disclosed to the review board. The CIA was cooperative and processed many documents with us, but never, we never receive much of what we specifically asked for example, for documents involving James Angleton that we had not seen, I was told the documents were no longer maintained as a collection.

We received only three memoranda that incorporated the agency’s review of Angleton’s counterintelligence files. Not the files themselves, just a review by someone else of the files. We were told that all the other documents had been destroyed. I’m now seeing a flood of documents that clearly meet the definition of assassination records involving Angleton and others that were not submitted to us for review. When CIA analysts would not tell us the details of their secret operations, our response was, okay, we’ll release the record in 10 days. We then heard the details and could make a reasonable decision. We had in our hands a small file on George Joannides that was disclosed. It disclosed nothing really, so it was returned. We didn’t know the details of his work at the time.

We now know much more about Joannides, and his file should be immediately disclosed. There’s no reason anymore for protecting those files. Clearly, we were misled. I actually wrote to President Biden asking that he order the CIA to release the Ioannidis file, and I never received a response. The Secret Service was very difficult. They were the only agency that we were aware of that tried to reclassify assassination records after we were in office. They attempted to classify documents that had already been released publicly and fought us over 1963 threat sheets. That was still in process when we left office. The Department of State was less than helpful, although they released records in their possession. When we negotiated with Russian officials over the Oswald files in Moscow, they did not lift a finger to help us, not even allowing us access to the United States Embassy.

When we tried to get access to Belarusian records on Oswald, they did not help. When we planned meetings with Mexican and Cuban officials, they stopped us from direct contacts. The Act specifically required the Department of State to help us find foreign records. The National Archives was very helpful to us when we did our work. A very dedicated staff member, Stephen Tilley, was instrumental in getting our work done. But since we left office, I’ve been disappointed the Archives has not devoted more personnel to the records. We had planned that the Archives would continue our work to the extent possible. For the most part, that has not happened, and the agency has never been in contact with me. So, there are other files that should be released.

We came close to an agreement to copy the entire KGB file on Lee Harvey Oswald that is maintained in Minsk, Belarus. Last-minute disputes prevented the agreement from moving forward. Copies of the files are in Moscow.

I just have a little bit more here. We were particularly interested in the files of Walter Sheridan, an investigator for Robert Kennedy. When we took office, he removed the files from the Kennedy Library where we had access to them and gave them to NBC for safekeeping. I don’t think those files have been released. The William Manchester-taped interviews of Jacqueline and Robert Kennedy are protected by a 1967 legal agreement now controlled by Caroline Kennedy. We encouraged her to release the files, and she finally responded in August 1998 that she would not agree to their release or even let us listen to the recordings. And out there somewhere are files on Jack Ruby. We could not find them other than the files maintained by the earlier investigations.

And the final report of the board, a copy of which I will give to Madame Chair today. We made ten recommendations that are relevant today; still, I won’t go through them all, but they deal with the problems of excessive government secrecy, which has plagued the public’s understanding of the Kennedy assassination for decades. We strongly endorsed the method selected for independent declassification of executive branch records that was used in our case, but also detailed the problems inherent in the review board’s legislation.

Most important, to deal with massive over-classification, we recommended a federal classification policy be developed that substantially: one, limits the number of those in government who can actually classify federal documents; two, restricts the number of categories by which documents might be classified; three, reduces the time period for which documents might be classified; four, encourages the use of substitute language to immediately open material that might otherwise be classified; and five, increases the resources available to agencies and NARA for declassifying federal records.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Congresswoman Luna: Thank you very much. And just so everyone knows, we are going to be following up on getting that file, the KGB file in Minsk. I’m interested in seeing that, and I think that with peace talks right now, it might be prime time for that. So we will be following up on that.

JUDGE TUNHEIM: It stands about five feet high. It’s a lot of records.

20 MAY, 2025: DAN HARDWAY Opening Statement and Testimony to the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets

HSCA Researcher, Dan Hardway

20 May, 2025

Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets hearing on “The JFK Files: Assessing Over 60 Years of the Federal Government’s Obstruction, Obfuscation, and Deception:” Witness Dan Hardway, opening statement and testimony submitted for the record:

Opening Statement

For the past 62 years the Central Intelligence Agency (“CIA”) has actively and continuously obstructed the investigation of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy with no consequences for their actions. Ten years ago, the CIA’s official historian admitted it hid information from the Warren Commission during its investigation. The CIA stonewalled the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (the “Church Committee”) about the assassination. The CIA was not forthcoming with the Rockefeller Commission. The CIA misled and slow-walked the Assassinations Record Review Board (“ARRB”). James Angleton’s preferred strategy in dealing with the Warren Commission was to “wait them out.” The first CIA officer I ever interviewed told me, “You represent the Congress. What the f___ is that to the CIA? You’ll be gone in two years, and the CIA will still be here.”

In 1978 the CIA ran an illegal, domestic covert operation involving at an undercover officer to subvert and obstruct the House Select Committee on Assassinations (“HSCA”). Joannides “served undercover” is the terminology the CIA used to describe his assignment working with the HSCA in a statement their representative made under penalties of perjury in 2005. I personally experienced the CIA’s obstruction of the HSCA investigation and can testify first-hand about what happened. In 1977 and 1978 I was employed as a researcher by the HSCA and have submitted a detailed 17-page description of what happened then, and since then which I hope you will read.

Briefly, my primary area of responsibility was Lee Harvey Oswald’s activities in Mexico City in the fall of 1963 and the performance of the CIA in monitoring and reporting those activities as well as other issues related to the possibility of CIA knowledge of, or involvement in, the assassination of President Kennedy and cover-up of information relevant to the investigation of that assassination. In that capacity I had a top-secret security clearance and, during a major portion of my employment, had access to unredacted CIA records requested for review from the CIA by the HSCA. Implicit in the focus of my work was the issue of whether the evidence from Mexico indicated any operational connection between OSWALD and the CIA. Ed Lopez and I authored the report, “The CIA, Oswald and Mexico City.”

In the spring of 1978, among other things, I was looking hard into back channel communications methods used by the CIA’s Mexico City Station, the use of an impulse camera to photograph the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City, missing production from that impulse camera and one of the photographic installations that covered the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City, and David Atlee Phillips’s anti-Castro propaganda operations, including his connections to stories about OSWALD that rapidly appeared after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. In May of 1978, the CIA assigned an officer working in an undercover capacity to work with me and Mr. Lopez. This man was George Joannides.

When Joannides was introduced to the investigation, we were told that he had no connection of any kind with any aspect of the Kennedy investigation that was the subject of our investigation. In addition to that, the CIA assured us they had no working relationship with the DRE, an anti-Castro student group, when representatives of that group had an encounter in New Orleans with Oswald which they turned into quite a propaganda coup. The DRE was responsible for the first ever conspiracy theory about the assassination when, the day after the assassination, they published in their newspaper the story about Oswald’s pro-Castro activities in New Orleans and proposed that Castro was behind the assassination; a story picked up by the Washington Post and Miami Herald the following day.

Thanks to the work of the ARRB, though, we now know that not only was DRE still a CIA operation all through 1963, its controlling case officer was none other than George Joannides. I believe we were close to some major discoveries. Then the CIA ran an undercover operation against us. They assigned us a man who knew exactly how to keep us from finding what we were looking for. Reasonable inferences may be drawn about what they did not want us to find from the substantial circumstantial evidence that has come to light by our efforts and those of the ARRB and Jeff Morley.

I am a witness to these events. As such I have a civic duty to testify. I wish I were just here to talk about a cover-up, but I am not. I am here to talk about the CIA covert operation directed against the HSCA that was illegal and a violation of the CIA’s charter as well as being felonious obstruction of a Congressional investigation. That operation was, and continues to be, successful. Despite our testimony—I mean mine, Edwin Lopez’s and G. Robert Blakey’s—and the clear record, no one has ever done anything about it. I have copies of the sworn testimony and exhibits of all three of us in D.C. District Court case # 17-cv-1433, with me if any of the members of this Committee should want to see it.

The question for this Committee is whether anyone in this new generation of leaders has the backbone, courage, and gumption to try to do something at this late date. It is easy to admit the sins of our ancestors; it is much harder to admit that we build their tombs and endorse their actions by our inaction. I am here to testify again which is all I can do. What will you do?

Submitted Statement

20 May, 2025

For the past 62 years the Central Intelligence Agency (“CIA”) has actively and continuously obstructed the investigation of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy with no consequences for their actions. Ten years ago, the CIA admitted it participated in a cover-up during the Warren Commission initial investigation. The CIA stonewalled the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (the “Church Committee”) about the assassination. The CIA was not forthcoming with the Rockefeller Commission. The CIA misled and slow-walked the Assassinations Record Review Board (“ARRB”). And the CIA ran an illegal, domestic covert operation involving at least one undercover agent to subvert and obstruct the House Select Committee on Assassinations (“HSCA”).

I personally experienced the CIA’s obstruction of the HSCA investigation and can testify first-hand about what happened. In 1977 and 1978 I was employed as a researcher by the HSCA. As such, I was involved, among other areas, in the research and investigation of Lee Harvey Oswald’s (“OSWALD”) activities in Mexico City and the performance of the CIA in monitoring and reporting those activities as well as other issues related to the possibility of CIA knowledge of, or involvement in, the assassination of President Kennedy and cover-up of information relevant to the investigation of that assassination. In that capacity I had a top-secret security clearance and, during a major portion of my employment, had access to unredacted CIA records requested for review from the CIA by the HSCA. Implicit in the focus of my work was the issue of whether the evidence from Mexico indicated any operational connection between OSWALD and the CIA.

As a result of a Memorandum of Understanding negotiated by the CIA and HSCA General Counsel and Staff Director, G. Robert Blakey, in August of 1977, HSCA staff was provided with unexpurgated access to CIA documents. I spent many hours working with CIA files in a small office at CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Initially, I was provided promptly with full access to every file that I asked to see. This continued until May 1978, at which point CIA began a process of slowing down our access to files, giving them time to review the files before we saw them, which resulted in increasing redaction of the files we saw. CIA also began to limit our access to files, trying to limit access to Blakey and other senior staff members while excluding staff members such as me and Lopez who had developed the most intimate familiarity with the details of the areas being investigated. The CIA curtailment of our investigation that began in May 1978, continued with increasing intensity through the end of our tenure with the HSCA in December 1978.

Beginning in May of 1978, the CIA assigned George Joannides (“Joannides”) to handle liaison with Lopez and me. Joannides began to change the way file access was handled. We no longer received prompt responses to our requests for files and what we did receive no longer seemed to provide the same complete files that we had been seeing. The obstruction of our efforts by Joannides escalated over the summer, finally resulting in a refusal to provide unexpurgated access to files in violation of the Memorandum of Understanding previously agreed to by the HSCA and the CIA. It was clear that CIA had begun to carefully review files before delivering them to us for review.

In the spring of 1978, I had been looking into several areas of research which were actively obstructed by Joannides after he began working with us. These included back channel communications methods used by the CIA’s Mexico City Station, William Harvey’s Office of Security files and his continuing relationship with Johnny Roselli, the use of an impulse camera to photograph the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City, missing production from that impulse camera and one of the photographic installations that covered the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City, and David Atlee Phillips’s (“Phillips”) connections to stories about OSWALD that rapidly appeared after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Phillips, in 1963, was the head of CIA’s anti-Castro covert operations and worked out of their Mexico City Station. Phillips was known within the CIA as “the world’s greatest authority on Deception.”

In 1978, I did not do any research into Joannides, or his activities in 1963, because, while working for the HSCA in 1977-1978, I was not informed that he had had any involvement with any aspect of the Kennedy case, and I had no basis to even suspect that he had. In researching possible connections between post-assassination stories about OSWALD and David Atlee Phillips, I did little, if any, research that I recall into the Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil (Revolutionary Student Directorate “DRE”) because, among other reasons, the CIA had firmly represented to the HSCA that all ties between the DRE and the CIA had been terminated prior to 1963. I never saw Joannides’s name in any file that I reviewed.

My research into what had happened to the photographs produced by an impulse camera aimed at the Cuban Consulate during the time OSWALD visited that institution in Mexico City led to a broader inquiry into back-channel communications available to the CIA officers in Mexico City in 1963. I was looking at possible back-channel communication methods between the CIA’s Mexico City Station and its JMWAVE station in Miami, Florida, and possible records that may have been generated by such methods. My research into this area, especially as it regarded any way that Phillips could have been in contact with JMWAVE on a regular basis, consistently met stone walls of denial of any information being available. One way that I knew non-record communication could occur was by face-to-face meetings. I learned that contrary to his sworn testimony to the HSCA in his first Executive Session appearance on November 27, 1976, Phillips had not been in Mexico City at the time OSWALD was there in 1963. He had been on a temporary duty assignment at CIA Headquarters and at the CIA JMWAVE station in Miami. While he was there, he was promoted to chief of all Cuban operations in Mexico City with general supervisory authority. Phillips arrived in Miami on 7 October for “two days consultation” with CIA officers working at the large base there. Prior to his promotion to Chief of Cuban Operations in Mexico City, Phillips had been the Chief of Covert Action in Mexico. In both positions he was responsible for anti-Castro propaganda operations. I wanted to research the question of coordination of propaganda and disinformation operations between the Mexico City and Miami stations but did not make progress in that area due to Joannides’s non-cooperation and obfuscation in the waning existence of the HSCA.

Before my access was delayed, curtailed, and then cut off, I had been able to review CIA 201 files on many of the individuals who had been sources for stories that appeared in the immediate aftermath of the assassination tying Oswald to Castro or the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (“FPCC”). I was able to establish that most of the sources of those stories appearing in the immediate aftermath of the assassination were agents or assets used at one time or another by Phillips. When I confronted Phillips with this in my last interview of him at our offices on August 24, 1978, he became extremely agitated, but could not explain, “why the misinformation that came from the Cuban groups and individuals that tended to point to Castro involvement were predominantly from assets that he had handled personally as opposed to ones that had been ran out of the Miami station.” Phillips also acknowledged that back-channel communication methods existed.

Phillips was not questioned about any possible relationship, or work, with George Joannides because, at the time, we had no reason to think there could be any connection and had no information that they had ever worked together or in closely related areas of endeavor. I also did not question Phillips about any connection with DRE which published the first Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory in their newspaper Trinchera on November 22, 1963, within hours of the assassination, a publication that I have since learned was being funded by CIA and overseen by Joannides. I did not know that in 1978. The CIA had repeatedly denied that any association with DRE existed in 1963. It also denied that any CIA officer was assigned to work with them in 1963. We now know that DRE was controlled by a CIA officer all through 1963 and that officer was George Joannides.

In addition to being a primary source of stories about OSWALD in the days after the assassination, the DRE also had a highly visible encounter with OSWALD in New Orleans in September 1963. In the summer of 1963 Joannides was reported as having “done an excellent job in the handling of a significant student exile group which hitherto had successfully resisted any important degree of control.” OSWALD’s encounter with DRE in New Orleans, in the context of OSWALD’s activities there, appear to bear the earmarks of a CIA disinformation operation, raising even more serious questions about Joannides and his role in anti-Castro and anti-Cuban disinformation and propaganda operations in 1963. The resemblance between Oswald’s activities in New Orleans and his activities in Mexico City are amazing.

The CIA was providing DRE, an organization started by Phillips as a CIA operation, with $25,000.00 per month, but the organization resisted Agency control. Richard Helms, the then-head of the Agency’s covert action arm, met with the leader of the DRE in 1962 after the missile crisis. Helms promised the DRE that he would appoint a case officer who would be personally responsible to him. Helms appointed George Joannides. Joannides’s work with DRE was commended as being very good and successful. He began working with the group in late 1962. In July of 1963, his fitness report noted that Joannides “has done an excellent job in the handling of a significant student exile group which hitherto had successfully resisted any important degree of control.” CIA promoted him to run the Political Warfare branch of the Miami station – in other words, he became the manager of the propaganda operations and the only organization that we know of that he retained under his direct control was DRE.

In August 1963, OSWALD had an encounter with DRE representatives in New Orleans. That encounter resulted not only in widespread publicity in New Orleans at the time, including newspaper articles, television coverage and radio interviews, it also resulted in the first reports trying to tie OSWALD to Castro after the assassination of John Kennedy. DRE, under Joannides direct control, published the first conspiracy theory in their paper on the day of the assassination. The story was picked up by both the Miami Herald and the Washington Post the next day.

The CIA never told the Warren Commission about their support of, and work with, the DRE in 1963. The CIA never told the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (the “Church Committee”) about it. CIA ran a covert operation to keep that secret when HSCA began to investigate it. The Assassinations Record Review Board (ARRB) asked CIA about DRE. The CIA initially told the ARRB the same thing they told the HSCA: CIA had no employee in contact with DRE in 1963. The ARRB, however, in examination of Joannides’s CIA personnel file, at Jefferson Morley’s urging, discovered its clear indication that Joannides was the DRE case officer in 1963. Although the CIA has admitted to using Joannides in a covert operation in his capacity as a liaison with the HSCA in Jeff Morley’s Freedom of Information Act suit, they have yet to explain the nature of the operation, its objectives, or why they ran a covert operation aimed at a Congressional committee charged with examining its conduct in connection with the assassination of an American president. From the evidence available, it appears that the purpose was to hide critical information from the investigation and to otherwise obstruct and impede that investigation into CIA activities.

We now know that in the early 1960’s, David Phillips was working at CIA Headquarters where he, along with Cord Meyer, developed the first disinformation operations aimed at the FPCC. He was still in position to supervise those operations in 1963. Joannides became the director of covert operations at JMWAVE sometime between the end of July and the beginning of October 1963. As director of covert action, Joannides only retained direct responsibility for one operation: the student project involving “distribution of printed propaganda, production of radio programs, and the development of political action programs.”

Congresswoman Luna with Dan Hardway; also present Judge John Tunheim.

To summarize what we now know: In August, OSWALD and DRE had their encounter with its resultant publicity in New Orleans. On September 16, 1963, the CIA informed the FBI that it was considering action to counter the activities of the (FPCC) in foreign countries. In New Orleans, on September 17, 1963, OSWALD applied for, and received, a Mexican travel visa. The person in line in front of OSWALD to apply for a visa was William Gaudet, a known CIA agent. Gaudet claimed that this was merely a coincidence. On September 27, OSWALD arrived in Mexico City. On that day, and the following day, OSWALD, or someone impersonating him, may have visited the Cuban Consulate. On those same days, the Mexico City CIA Station was testing an impulse camera in their photo surveillance operation aimed at the door of the Cuban Consulate. Sometime in late September, Phillips left Mexico City on a temporary duty assignment at CIA Headquarters. It is at this time that Phillips was promoted to chief of Cuban operations in Mexico City. OSWALD, or someone impersonating him, visited, or at least appears in the CIA telephone tap records as visiting, the Cuban Consulate on September 27 and 28. Those days are the days that the CIA Mexico City Station tested an impulse camera to photograph people using the door of the Cuban Consulate that OSWALD would have had to have used. The impulse camera generated over ten feet of 16-millimeter film that has “disappeared.” On October 1, three days after Oswald’s initial visits to the Cuban Consulate, the Mexico City Station sent “bulk materials” to Headquarters by an untraceable transmittal manifest in a diplomatic pouch “to be held in registry until picked up by [Phillips] presently TDY HQS.” The HSCA was not able to find out what was in the pouch, a back-channel communication method. CIA claimed it was untraceable. On October 8, 1963, HQ sent a cable to JMWAVE advising them that Phillips would arrive in Miami the following day for a two-day visit.At about the same time Joannides was promoted in Miami, his supervisor was promoted to a Headquarters assignment and Phillips was promoted to the Cuban desk in Mexico City; all of them still working in anti-Castro operations. From HQ Phillips arrived on October 9 in Miami’s JMWAVE station where Joannides was then turning DRE into a successful propaganda operation. Phillips spent two days TDY at JMWAVE. In 1978, CIA brought Joannides out of retirement to work in a covert operation directed against a Congressional Select Committee where his role was to be the liaison with the two researchers working for the HSCA who were investigating the very area of his experience. In 1978 Joannides successfully kept his involvement, and the details of the CIA’s propaganda operations at the time, hidden from the HSCA and the American public.

The CIA resisted and undermined the work that I was doing on the activities that directly addressed CIA propaganda activities where they intersected with OSWALD’s visit to Mexico City, the activities of David Phillips and his propaganda machine and the photo-surveillance of the Cuban embassy. That resistance continued right up to the end of the time allotted to the HSCA. When they could not recruit me, they tried to curtail and frustrate our investigation. When I kept pushing and Blakey backed me up, they tried to limit their exposure by impugning and undercutting our work with the Chairman of the HSCA. When Chairman Stokes backed his staff, the CIA simply waited us out. They knew we were running out of time. The issues that could have been resolved then are still open and the CIA is still stonewalling.

Robert Blakey, Chief Counsel to the HSCA, has previously testified on penalties of perjury about the details of the covert operation run against HSCA:

“The credibility of the CIA is in doubt every time it speaks in whatever forum it does…. I was introduced to George Joannides (“Joannides”) by S.D. Breckinridge at CIA in the spring of 1978. I was told that he would be a senior person in liaison between HSCA and CIA; he was expected to be the “answer” to many “problems” — on both sides. In fact, CIA falsely represented to me that Joannides had no connection with any area of inquiry being undertaken by the HSCA. (Otherwise, he could not play the role CIA proposed for him.) I accepted these assurances at face value. At the time, I believed the CIA was in good faith about wanting to cooperate with the Committee’s investigation by putting behind it the increasingly old concerns about the assassination

“Once Joannides began his assignment, he was specifically tasked to work with (or on) Hardway and Lopez, two of my most important investigators working on anti-Castro groups, possible CIA contacts or connections to Lee Harvey Oswald and CIA propaganda activities.

“In 1977 and 1978, I was repeatedly (and falsely) assured by CIA as an organization, and Joannides personally, that CIA had no operational interest in or connection to the Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil (“DRE”), an anti-Castro Cuban exile group operating in Miami, New Orleans, and Dallas in 1963 with whom Lee Harvey Oswald had public and prominent encounters. I was also assured that there was no CIA case officer assigned to work with DRE in 1963. That assurance was also made organizationally and personally by CIA and Joannides. At one point I gave Joannides information about the alias, Mr. Howard, that members of DRE said their CIA contact used in 1963 to aid his search for information in regard to CIA contacts with DRE. Joannides assured me that they could find no record of any such officer assigned to DRE, but that he would keep looking. “Joannides lied to me about who he was and what he knew about the DRE and his role with it. CIA lied to me about knowing who Joannides was and what he knew about the DRE and his role in it. That, too, must be a part of this record. CIA and DRE did, in fact, have a CIA officer assigned to it who was financing them extensively in 1963; the officer was George Joannides. Had I known that at the time, he would have been under oath and in our hearings, not obstructing them for his special position in the CIA. The Agency knowingly and corruptly obstructed our investigation. In my professional opinion, Joannides and CIA were both guilty of obstructing proceedings before a Congressional committee that was properly exercising the power of inquiry in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1505, a crime punishable by fine and up to 5 years imprisonment. The truth about Joannides came to light largely only as a result of a lawsuit a journalist brought under the FOIA: Morley v. CIA, 508 F.3d 1108 (D.C. Cir. 2007). In connection with that case on remand, CIA filed the declaration of Delores M. Nelson. I am familiar with the Nelson Declaration. In the Nelson Declaration, made under penalties of perjury as a person “authorized to sign declarations on behalf of CIA” Ms. Nelson averred that CIA acknowledged Joannides had only worked on covert projects during his career with CIA on two occasions. Those two occasions admitted were when he was working “during the years 1962 through 1964 and 1978 through 1979 – time periods for which the CIA previously acknowledged Joannides’ participation in covert projects, operations, and assignments.” Id. Joannides assignment in 1978 through 1979 was as liaison with the HSCA. This simply means that Joannides’s work as liaison with the HSCA was a covert operation of the CIA. His office seems to have been to cover up evidence, not facilitate its production. CIA has already admitted as much. …. [Emphasis in original].

The CIA covered up this operation as best they could from the Assassination Records and Review Board. The ARRB asked for the operational files related to the DRE. In response, the CIA, on 20 January 1998, told them that operational files for the critical time period from December 1962 through April 1964 “appear to be ‘missing’”. They explained this by telling the ARRB:

“It should be noted that during the period in question, major policy difference between the Agency and DRE would not take directions or instructions about a number of operational matters, insisting on engaging in activities the Agency did not sanction. These differences caused the Agency to reduce the level of funding for the DRE. It also replaced the officer designated to deal with the DRE. Then, about the same time, the monthly operational reports trailed off. It seems the probable cause of these events are linked and that reporting in the form of such monthly reports simply stopped.

The CIA’s own released documentation shows the above statement to be, at best, full of half-truths, but likely just outright lies. George Joannides took over as the case officer for the DRE in December 1962 after a meeting between Richard Helms, the CIA Deputy Director of Plans (DDP), and the leaders of DRE. The meeting was occasioned by the policy differences between DRE and its independent streak. As a result of that meeting, the DDP informed the DRE leaders that “he was changing the Agency contact for the DRE in Miami.” He went on to tell them that “the new contact would be able to come to [him] for any clarification needed…. He also stated that this contact would be responsible to him for the relationship [between CIA and DRE].” That new contact, in December 1962, was George Joannides.

How did Joannides do in his new assignment? Fortunately, the Miami Station’s Fitness Reports for Joannides are not missing as are the operational reports. In February 1963 Joannides was the Deputy Chief of Branch responsible for “all aspects of political action and psychological warfare.” His primary specific duty is listed as “Case Officer for student project involving political action, propaganda, intelligence collection and hemisphere-wide apparatus.” That student project was DRE. Joannides was commended for being “successful in resolving complicated problems involving control of an unruly group.” He was further commended for his “firm adherence to valid reporting techniques.”

Joannides’s Fitness Report for the period covering 1 April 1963 to 31 March 1964 shows that he served throughout the time as the “senior case officer” for the “student group.” In this period, Joannides had an operational budget of $2,400,000.00. “These funds were judiciously spent on printed propaganda, white and black radio programs, and on political action operations which were implemented via labor, student and professional groups.” Remember, it was in this period that the confrontation between Oswald and DRE occurred in New Orleans resulting in the radio interview (white or black?) that was a major blow to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. It was also in this period that DRE’s printed propaganda newspaper, Trinchera, issued the first conspiracy theory about the JFK assassination.

A Fitness Report dated in July 1963 reported that Joannides continued to do “an excellent job in the handling of a significant student exile group which hitherto had successfully resisted any important degree of control.”

So, it is apparent that the CIA’s “explanation” to the ARRB about the missing operational reports isn’t just nonsense. It was a lie that had to be obvious to anyone with any familiarity with the DRE files or Joannides personnel file. But, yet the CIA did not hesitate to foist such a story on the ARRB and that story again bought them more time.

Would you like me to go on and tell you about how the CIA covered up this operation even as late as 2017 by lying in a Federal District Court? In 2017 G. Robert Blakey, Ed Lopez, and I sought documents from the CIA regarding the obstruction operation that it ran against the HSCA. In that suit the CIA attempted to dismiss that operation by arguing that we mischaracterize the CIA’s sworn admission in the Morley case that Joannides was undercover when assigned to work as liaison to the HSCA. They tried to explain that admission by having their counsel say, “The fact that Mr. Joannides was described as ‘undercover’ shows only that his affiliation with the CIA was not publicly acknowledged.” The CIA was very careful to let their counsel make this assertion and did not try to put that into any statement that was made under penalty of perjury. And with good reason. It was a flat out lie to the Court, a blatant prevarication.

The CIA officer who made the statement under penalties of perjury not only characterized Joannides’s work as being undercover, she also asserted that it was part of a covert operation: “the CIA previously acknowledged Joannides’ participation in two specific covert projects, operations, or assignments: JM/WAVE or JMWAVE from 1962 through 1964 and Joannides’ service as a CIA representative to the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations from 1978 through 1979.”

The CIA’s unsworn explanation offered to the Court by its counsel was untrue as shown by the fact that Joannides’ relationship with CIA had been publicly acknowledged in 1978 while he was subverting the HSCA, long before the Nelson affidavit. William P. Kampiles was arrested in Munster, Indiana, and charged with espionage in August 1978. George Joannides was involved in that very public case from the beginning. He testified on behalf of CIA at the trial in November 1978. The Associated Press (“AP”) reported that Joannides, a “28-year employee of the Central Intelligence Agency” had testified against Kampiles. The AP’s report of CIA’s public acknowledgment of Joannides’s employment was widely reported. The employment was also reported by United Press International and the Washington Post.

CIA’s explanation of the Nelson Declaration’s labeling Joannides’s work as undercover is not offered under penalties of perjury simply because it is not true. In 2008 Nelson, on behalf of CIA, swore that Joannides was not just undercover but involved in a covert operation in his work as a CIA representative to the HSCA. The CIA publicly acknowledged its relationship with Joannides in connection with the investigation and prosecution of Kampiles while the HSCA was still at work. CIA’s unsworn excuse in Hardway v. CIA that the Nelson admission meant only that there was no CIA acknowledged relationship was specious. But it carried the day with the District Court.

As detailed above, in1978 the CIA again committed felony obstruction of Justice in its dealing with the HSCA. As G. Robert Blakey stated under oath, in 2014:

“I no longer trust anything that the Agency has told us in regard to the assassination. It lied to the Warren Commission. It lied to the ARRB. It lied to the HSCA. In admitting that Joannides was employed in a covert capacity as liaison with the HSCA, it has admitted that it violated its charter and ran a domestic covert operation aimed at subverting the HSCA and its investigation…. That the Agency would put a material witness in a covert capacity as a filter between the committee staff and the Agency was an outrageous breach of our understanding with the Agency, the Agency’s charter and the laws of this country. As a result, I now believe that we were not able to conduct an appropriate investigation of the CIA.

What the Agency did not give us, none but those involved in the Agency can know for sure. I do not believe any denial offered by the Agency on any point. The law has long followed the rule that if a person lies to you on one point, you may reject all his testimony. The CIA not only lied, it actively subverted the investigation.

It is time that either Congress, or the Justice Department, conduct a real investigation of the CIA. Indeed, in my opinion, it is long past time.”

Where do we go from here? Regarding the JFK case, let’s consider this: fifty years after the fact, CIA admitted a cover-up in giving information to the Warren Commission. In 2014 they released, with redactions, an article from their in-house magazine written in 2013 by David Robarge, the official in-house historian. In this article, although admitting participation in covering up information during the Warren Commission investigation, they labelled it a “benign” cover-up. According to Mr. Robarge, the Director of Central Intelligence, John McCone, had been “complicit in keeping incendiary and diversionary issues off the commission’s agenda and focusing it on what the Agency believed at the time was the ‘best truth’ that Lee Harvey Oswald … acted alone.” He called this “a ‘benign cover-up’ or what also has been termed ‘a process designed more to control information than to elicit and expose it.’”

The concept of a “best truth” is an intriguing one, as is the statement that contains it. It implies, at the very least, that there could be a “good truth”, a “better truth” and ultimately, a “best truth”. Nothing is said though about the honest truth. Robarge says the Agency made the determination that blaming Oswald alone at the time was the best truth. So, best truths are also time sensitive. The formulation also raises another question: is this the best truth for the Agency or for some other principal interested in this particular truth? Who ultimately gets to determine what truth is the best? For Robarge and the CIA it clearly is the CIA. That, in and of itself, is an admission not just of a benign cover-up, but a subversion of the governmental institutions of this country. The Executive Order creating the Warren Commission makes it clear that the Commission is the one that is to determine the truth. But the CIA has admitted now that they subverted the very purpose and process created and sanctioned by law for the determination of the truth at the time: the Warren Commission. At a minimum, that was obstruction of Justice. That obstruction continued thereafter.

As with any CIA limited hang-out you must look carefully at the language used. Robarge works hard to create the impression that what they were trying to hide was the Castro murder plots. You must read Mr. Robarge’s article carefully. It is always wise to carefully parse CIA pronouncements. Mr. Robarge never specifically states that the CIA was mainly concerned with preventing information about their attempts to murder Castro getting out. Here’s his actual language about the motivation for the cover-up: “Moreover, the DCI shared the [Johnson] administration’s interest in avoiding disclosures about covert actions that would circumstantially implicate CIA in conspiracy theories and possibly lead to calls for a tough US response against the perpetrators of the assassination. If the commission did not know to ask about covert operations against Cuba, he was not going to give them any suggestions where to look.” [Emphasis added.]

Taken as a whole, the statement might draw you to infer that the Castro assassination plots were what was being covered up. But if that is the case, why has the resistance to disclosure remained so fierce even after those plots were disclosed in 1975? And earlier in the article, Robarge clearly states that electronic intercepts had, within a few days, convinced the administration and the Agency that neither the USSR nor Cuba had any complicity in the assassination. Since they already knew that neither Soviet Russia nor Cuba were complicit who did the Agency fear might be the objects of calls for a tough response? Notice the specific structure of Mr. Robarge’s statement: “avoiding disclosures about covert actions that would circumstantially implicate CIA in conspiracy theories.” I submit that this is the same motivation that existed in 1967 as stated by the CIA Chief of Covert Action in a dispatch to all CIA stations: “Conspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization, for example by falsely alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for us.”

The CIA has told us what they were trying to hide. Not that disclosure of what they were hiding would implicate Cubans or Russians in Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories but rather covert operations against Cuba that could “circumstantially implicate CIA” in Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories. They have been trying to hide information that could implicate them as an organization participating in a conspiracy because Oswald was not only under aggressive surveillance but was also being utilized in some capacity by them in active intelligence operations shortly before the assassination. Those operations were directed at Cuba. The ones they didn’t want to be asked about, as Mr. Robarge states, were “covert operations against Cuba,” not covert Castro assassination plans. Please note in his article that Robarge is careful to specify the Castro assassination plots when he is talking about them. He is equally careful here to not reference them but, rather, more general “covert operations against Cuba.” Why were Phillips, Joannides and his supervisor promoted in the fall of 1963? Was it a reward for a successful domestic operation in New Orleans that was being exported to Mexico? We should be looking for information on Oswald’s involvement in those operations in any records that may remain, although I think George Joannides probably destroyed most of them. But one thing I am confident about is that this Subcommittee may be certain that the CIA will lie to them. They have no respect for the law or this Congress.

Please let me note at this point that even if CIA has been trying to cover up its operational use of Oswald in covert operations, that does not necessarily implicate them in the actual assassination. David Phillips and George Joannides may have been two of the most surprised people on the planet on November 22, 1963.

On a wider basis, I think that this case, along with many others, illustrates that government secrecy is a cancer eating at the foundations of our republic. It may be too late, but I think that unless we radically and completely reform the secrecy system, and the ease with which it is invoked and maintained, that it will ultimately destroy us. Maybe a simple golden rule of classification should be applied: If something requires that a government action be kept secret for more than a few years, then it is something that should not be done.

While we are at it, the Freedom of Information Act must be totally restructured so that the Courts can no longer just rubber stamp Agency determinations of what they want to keep secret. That system, as well, must be reformed.

I was young when this all started. I was in 3^rd grade at Cowen Elementary School in rural West Virginia when they gunned my hero down in the middle of the street at high noon in a Texas cow town. I was a young, still idealistic, law student when I started working for HSCA. I am now old and battered, but still, somewhere in my heart, I hope, I believe, that this country may still be able to recover from this, to open itself up again to truth, to once again be an honest light shining upon the hill. May this Committee be that starting point. May God bless your efforts and this Country once again.

RFK Jr. asked Obama to probe ‘two gunmen’ theory, called for reexamination of his father’s assassination: new files

Story by Victor Nava

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had asked the Obama administration to examine an audio clip that purportedly captured his father’s 1968 assassination and seemingly recorded the pops of more gunshots than the convicted assassin’s weapon had the capacity for.

The current Trump administration official’s September 2012 letter to former Attorney General Eric Holder was part of thousands of documents released by the National Archives Wednesday related to the federal investigation into Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

Robert Kennedy Jr. penned a letter to the Obama administration in 2012 to reexamine his father’s assassination. Getty Images

Kennedy Jr.’s request for “a new investigation” of the killing included a letter for Paul Schrade, the former vice president of the United Auto Workers, who was injured during the June 6, 1968, shooting.

“He was standing beside my father when Daddy was killed and Paul was himself wounded by a bullet,” the son of the late New York senator and US attorney general wrote in his letter to Holder.

Senator Robert Kennedy during a visit to London, May 1967. Getty Images

“Paul and his team of nationally prominent attorneys including former U.S. Attorney Rob Bonner strongly believe this new evidence is conclusive and requires a new investigation. I agree and support his request for a new investigation,” RFK Jr., continued.

Additional records released Wednesday show that RFK Jr.’s request was passed along to the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office, which initiated an investigation of the audio tape, recorded by a journalist at the site of the assassination.

Schrade argued that tape shows “two gunmen fired at least 13 shots from two different .22 caliber revolvers and from opposing directions.”

Sirhan Sirhan, the convicted assassin, used an eight-shot .22 caliber Ivar Johnson revolver to carry out the deed and was unable to reload during the incident, according to Schrade.

Kennedy penned the letter to former President Barack Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder. UPI

The FBI’s Digital Evidence Laboratory in Quantico, Va., eventually got ahold of the tape for analysis, but could not determine the number of gunshots on the recording.

“The designated area recorded on specimen Q1 was of insufficient quality to definitively classify the impulse events as gunshots,” read the May 13, 2013, FBI analysis report.

The report added that investigators could not “confirm the number of gunshots or determine the identification of specific weapon(s)” based on what they heard on the tape.

The trove of files were released as part of Trump’s Jan. 23 executive order pertaining to the declassification of files related to Kennedy’s murder, as well as documents about the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the 1968 killing of Martin Luther King Jr.

PRESIDENT’S PAGE

AARC PRESIDENT DAN ALCORN: ARTICLES, POSTS, LECTURES

Dan Alcorn: Formerly a law partner of AARC co-founder, the late Bud Fensterwald, has served on the AARC board since 1991, and was a founding director of the Coalition on Political Assassinations (COPA) and served on COPA’s board until the end of the Assassination Records Review Board process in 1998. Dan has represented requesters in precedent setting Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) cases in the trial and appellate courts in Washington, D.C., including cases related to the JFK assassination, the Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination, allegations of misconduct in the FBI crime laboratory, death squad activity in Central America, and intelligence abuses, among other issues.

Partner 1985-1999, Fensterwald & Alcorn, A Professional Corporation specializing in Litigation, Constitutional Law/Freedom of Information, International Law, Labor & Employment/Security Clearances.

Admitted to the bar, 1980, Virginia. 1984, District of Columbia.

Director: Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, 1990-1996.

Vice-Chairman, 1994-1996 . Member: District of Columbia Bar, Virginia State Bar.

Founder, Dulles Corridor Rail Association, 1998.

Director, Assassination Archives and Research Center, 1992- 2023.

President, Assassination Archives and Research Center, 2023.

DANIEL ALCORN has been listed as an AV lawyer by Martindale-Hubbell. Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers Executive Director Stuart Statler called Mr. Alcorn, “a lawyer’s lawyer” after his work on the FBI Crime Lab FOIA case.

On the C-SPAN Networks:

Daniel S. Alcorn, as a Board Member for the Assassination Archives and Research Center is featured on three videos in the C-SPAN Video Library; the first appearance was a 1997 House Committee as a Counsel for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

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A CRUEL AND SHOCKING MISINTERPRETATION

The Talbot-Croft Archive: Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

Audio: Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

Transcript: Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

Schlesinger Memo-176-10030-10422

BLOG: The David Talbot Show

20 MAY, 2025: JUDGE JOHN TUNHEIM Opening Statement to the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets

‘Secret Service Was Very Difficult’

Judge John Tunheim

20 MAY, 2025: DAN HARDWAY Opening Statement and Testimony to the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets

RFK Jr. asked Obama to probe ‘two gunmen’ theory, called for reexamination of his father’s assassination: new files

Records Related to the Assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy

PRESIDENT’S PAGE

AARC PRESIDENT DAN ALCORN: ARTICLES, POSTS, LECTURES

AARC President Dan Alcorn: JFK’s PFIAB (President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board) and the CIA

AARC President Dan Alcorn: New Findings About Texas School Book Depository Building Owner David Harold Byrd

Spies in the Congo by author Dr. Susan Williams Reviewed by AARC President Dan Alcorn

Raven Rock by author Garrett Graff Reviewed by AARC President Dan Alcorn

AARC LECTURES: DAN ALCORN: BYRD, von ALVENSLEBEN and the DOOLITTLE REPORT

DANIEL S. ALCORN: MULTIPLE APPREARANCES, C-SPAN