Doc. 26. Reply in Support of AARC’s CMSJ & Opp. to CIA’s MSJ (180220)
Doc. 26-2. AARC FOIA suit on CIA’s 1963 study of plots to assassinate Adolf Hitler
RELATED:
RELATED:
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Civil Action No. 17- 00160 (TNM)
____________________________________
ASSASSINATION ARCHIVES AND :
RESEARCH CENTER :
Plaintiff,
v.
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY :
Defendant.
____________________________________ :
AARC’S REPLY IN SUPPORT OF AARC’S CROSS-MOTION FOR
SUMMARY JUDGMENT TO REQUIRE CIA TO PERFORM AN
ADEQUATE SEARCH AND RELEASE NON-EXEMPT RECORDS, OR
PORTIONS
Case 1:17-cv-00160-TNM Document 26 Filed 02/20/18 Page 1 of 17
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page No.
PRELIMINARY STATEMENT………………………………… 4
A. CIA reveals that its Chief Historian participated
in responding to AARC’s request, and CIA ignores
President Trump directive…………………………………… 4
ARGUMENT…………………………………………………… 6
A. CIA’s Search was Inadequate……………………………. 6
B. CIA’s Vaughn Index is Deficient……………………….. 11
C. CIA’s b(1) Exemption Claim Fails……………………… 13
D. CIA’s b(3) Exemption Claim Fails………………………. 14
E. CIA’s b(5) Exemption Claim Fails………………………. 15
F. CIA’s b(6) Exemption Claim Fails………………………. 15
CONCLUSION…………………………………………………. 16
TABLE OF AUTHORITIES
Federal cases
Founding Church of Scientology,Inc. v. Nat. Sec. Agency,
610 F.2d 824 (D.C.Cir.1979)……………………………………… 7
King v. United States Department of Justice ,
830 F.2d 210, 218 (D .C .Cir .1987)………………………………. 11
Neugent v. U.S. Dept. of Interior (Neugent),
640 F.2d 386,391 (D.C. Cir. 1981)…………………………………. 11
Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press v. FBI,
877 F.3d 399 (D.C. Cir. 2017)…………………………………….. 7,8,9
Truitt v. Department of State,
897 F.2d 540 (D.C.Cir. 1990)……………………………………… 7
Vaughn v. Rosen,
484 F.2d 820, 824-825 (D.C.Cir. 1973)…………………………… 11,12
Rules and Statutes
Freedom of Information Act 5 U.S.C. Sec. 552(a)……………………. passim
National Security Act of 1947, 50 U.S.C. Sec. 3024…………………. 15
Miscellaneous
Executive Order 13,526 ……………………………………………….. 13,14
Plaintiff AARC replies in support of its Cross-motion for summary judgment
(ECF #21) and incorporates by reference the arguments and evidence supporting
its own Cross-motion and will not restate them here except as necessary for
clarification and emphasis.
PRELIMINARY STATEMENT
A. CIA reveals that its Chief Historian participated in responding to AARC’s
request, and CIA ignores President Trump directive.
CIA in its response to AARC’s cross-motion attempts to minimize the
significance of the records requested, but contradicts this position by revealing that
the Chief Historian of the CIA (David Robarge) was personally involved in
formulating CIA’s response to AARC’s FOIA request.1 According to CIA, Chief
Historian Robarge advised on Agency-wide searches in response to AARC’s
request and searched his own files for responsive records, due to his familiarity
with the subject matter. See pp. 3-4 of text of CIA’s Reply and Opposition, ECF #
24. However, there is no declaration by Robarge submitted by CIA. This
omission requires further exploration by way of a deposition of Robarge on his
participation in this search.
1 CIA Chief Historian Robarge authored a report in 2013 in which he contended that CIA
Director John McCone was at the heart of a “benign cover-up” of the assassination of President
Kennedy by withholding information from the Warren Commission about CIA plots to
assassinate Fidel Castro. “Yes, the CIA Director Was Part of the JFK Assassination Cover-Up”,
Politico Magazine, Philip Shenon, Oct. 6, 2015, attached as Exhibit 1.
CIA’s response is curiously silent on the October 2017 directives by President
Donald J. Trump cited in AARC’s brief that agencies should, in the public interest,
expeditiously release the maximum amount of material related to the assassination
of President John F. Kennedy, as are the records at issue. Trump Directive cited at
pp. 11, 27-28, AARC cross-motion, ECF #21. CIA does not even acknowledge
these cited instructions from the President even though he is the officer of the
government with authority over CIA and these issues. The Court should treat the
CIA’s silence as a concession that the President has directed prompt release of
such material, as he has in fact done, demonstrating the high public interest and
significance of the information requested. As set forth in AARC’s cross-motion,
the information requested relates in part to U.S. government efforts to overthrow
Fidel Castro in Cuba in the fall of 1963. Such activities have been the subject of
multiple government investigations to determine if there is a relationship between
such activities and the assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963,
including CIA Chief Historian Robarge’s 2013 report finding a CIA “benign
cover-up” of such activities. See footnote 1.
Further, President Trump has recently utilized the public interest provision of
Executive Order 13526 to release Top Secret classified information in other
contexts, in particular release of the House of Representatives Intelligence
Committee report on compliance with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Statement of White House Counsel McGahn, February 2, 2018, attached as Exhibit
2. Clearly the President is the responsible officer of the government on issues of
classification and release of classified documents. CIA must acknowledge
President Trump’s directives to release JFK assassination related material such as
the information requested in this case, and demonstrate it has complied with them.
CIA entirely fails to explain its confused and contradictory handling of the
multiple searches in this case, instead stating the barest possible explanation at the
end of a footnote that this confusion was the result of “administrative error” with
no further explanation. 3rd Shiner Decl. p. 2 n.1 ECF # 24-1. CIA’s inadequate
response leaves unresolved material issues of fact that preclude a grant of summary
judgment to the government. AARC must be allowed to take discovery on the
searches as requested, including a deposition of CIA Chief Historian David
Robarge, who has been injected into this matter by CIA’s latest filing as a key
participant in the search, thereby opening the door to exploration of Robarge’s role
in this case. Further CIA must acknowledge the instructions of its superior officer
in the government, President Trump, and explain what it is doing to carry out his
instructions.
ARGUMENT
A. CIA’s Search was Inadequate.
When the adequacy of the agency’s search is in dispute, summary judgment for
an agency is inappropriate as to that issue. See Founding Church of Scientology,
Inc. v. Nat. Sec. Agency, 610 F.2d 824, 836-37 (D.C.Cir.1979).If doubt exists as to
the adequacy of the search, Truitt counsels, “summary judgment for the agency is
not proper.” Truitt v. Department of State, 897 F.2d 540 (D.C.Cir. 1990). In this
case, as noted above, there is growing substantial doubt as to the adequacy of the
search.
The Court of Appeals has recently emphatically restated that decisions in this
circuit have long held that declarations must describe in detail how searches were
conducted, including search terms that were used, and results yielded in the search
of each component of an agency. Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press
v. FBI, D.C. Circuit Case No. 17-5042, 2017 WL 6390484 (D.C. Cir. Dec. 15,
2017) pp. 7-8 slip opinion, 877 F.3d 399 (D.C. Cir. 2017).
In this case, CIA has still failed to state all of its search terms, and is hiding the
results yielded by searches of agency components. Further, CIA apparently has
not searched under the most relevant search terms, “July 20 plot” and “plot to kill
Hitler” despite AARC calling these terms to their attention in its cross-motion.
Nor has CIA searched the terms “Joint Chiefs meeting September 25, 1963”,
‘Rolando Cubela”, or “Castro overthrow” or “Manuel Artime”, “Desmond
Fitzgerald”, or “Walter Higgins” as suggested in AARC’s cross-motion. As noted
above, CIA now points to the involvement of its Chief Historian David Robarge in
this search, but provides no declaration from Mr. Robarge documenting his search
activities. Nor has CIA documented what it has done to comply with President
Trump’s directive to release the maximum amount of material related to the JFK
assassination, as set forth above. As the Court of Appeals made clear in its recent
Reporter’s Committee opinion, summary judgment for the agency is not
appropriate in such circumstances, and instead AARC’s cross-motion for summary
judgment on the search issue should be granted.
First, CIA has provided contradictory information as to the results of its search,
initially claiming it found no records, then withdrawing that letter as sent in error,
then reinstating that letter, and finally conducting another search once litigation
was initiated that found responsive records. CIA’s only explanation of these
problems is a short footnote calling them “administrative error’ without further
explanation. 3rd Shiner Decl. p. 2 n.1 ECF # 24-1. AARC must be allowed to take
discovery on these searches and errors, including the deposition of CIA Chief
Historian David Robarge, who CIA reveals was involved in formulating and
conducting the searches in this case and himself has authored a report finding a
“benign cover-up” by the CIA of the JFK assassination. See footnote 1.
Second, CIA withholds the crucial information that would document its search
and search results, by withholding the contents of five documents that record the
search process. Instead of adequately documenting the search, CIA has taken the
opposite approach and is actively hiding the breadth and results of the search.
Such active withholding of relevant information to the search issue makes
summary judgment for CIA inappropriate under the recent Reporter’s Committee
decision. The Court has authority under FOIA 5 USC Sec. 552(a)(4)(B) to make a
de novo review of the handling of plaintiff’s request and such review includes
knowing how the request was handled by employees of the government.
Third, the documentary record of the Higgins Memorandum evidences the
likelihood of more of a documentary record than CIA has produced to date. The
Higgins memo records a briefing of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. military by
the CIA’s head of Cuban activities during a period in which the U.S. relationship
with Cuba was one of the highest priority items of U.S. foreign policy. The CIA’s
detailed study of the 1944 plot to kill Hitler in order to develop an approach to
Fidel Castro was therefore one of the most important activities of the U.S.
government at that time. Yet CIA has failed to produce any such records or
explain the failure to do so. CIA attempts improperly to reverse the burden it
carries under FOIA 5 USC Sec. 552(a)(4)(B) and impose it instead on plaintiff.
The FOIA statute is clear that the burden is on the agency to justify its actions in
response to a request, not on the requester to prove otherwise.
AARC has supplied CIA with explicit leads and information to assist its search
and CIA is required to follow up on those leads. Reporter’s Committee v. FBI, p.
14. In addition to the explicit references in the Higgins Memo, AARC has
provided references to the Church Committee investigations and an unrebutted
declaration from author William E. Kelly, Jr. as to his findings as to places where
the plot to kill Hitler appears in the circumstances surrounding the assassination of
President Kennedy. FOIA requires CIA to pursue those compelling leads and
information and does not require AARC to prove what CIA has in its possession
but cannot or will not find.
Fourth, it is illogical and contrary to history that the CIA has only one record
related to the 1944 plot to kill Adolf Hitler, which CIA director (and Warren
Commissioner) Allen Dulles was in contact with at the time. The fact that the one
document produced in this case, the Propagandist’s Guide, relates to the twentieth
anniversary of the plot to kill Hitler supports the importance of the event. Even an
anniversary was important enough to receive written discussion in CIA records, yet
we are to believe that detailed study of the event to develop an avenue to deal with
Fidel Castro was not important enough to create records. Nor was any record
created about this event in the history of the CIA other than a document related to
the twentieth anniversary. Such a result is illogical and contrary to history.
In addition to ordering a new and competent search, this Court should allow
AARC to conduct discovery on CIA’s handling of this search in the form of a
deposition or depositions of CIA Chief Historian David Robarge and other officials
who conducted the searches and are responsible for the contradictory responses.
Neugent v. U.S. Dept. of Interior (Neugent), 640 F.2d 386,391 (D.C. Cir. 1981)
(holding that discovery sought prior to summary judgment should be answered in
the interests of clarifying the matter).
B. CIA’s Vaughn Index is deficient.
As noted in AARC’s cross-motion memorandum, in King, 830 F.2d 210,218,
“[t]he significance of agency affidavits in a FOIA case cannot be underestimated.”
The reason for this is that ordinarily the agency alone possesses knowledge of the
precise content of documents withheld. Thus, “the FOIA requester and the court
both must rely upon its representations for an understanding of the material sought
to be protected.” Id .The agency’s statements are critical because “[t]his lack of
knowledge by the party see[k]ing disclosure seriously distorts the traditional
adversary nature of our legal system’s form of dispute resolution, ‘with the result
that ‘[a]n appellate court, like the trial court, is completely without the
controverting illumination that would ordinarily accompany a lower court’s factual
determination.” . Id., quoting Vaughn v. Rosen, 484 F.2d 820, 824-825 (D.C.Cir.
1973).
As King also stated: Specificity is the defining requirement of the Vaughn
index and affidavit; affidavits cannot support summary judgment if they are
“conclusory, merely reciting statutory standards or sweeping.” To accept an
inadequately supported exemption claim “would constitute an abandonment of the
trial court’s obligation under the FOIA to conduct a de novo review.” Id., at 219
(citations omitted). This index “must describe each document or portion thereof
withheld, and for each withholding it must discuss the consequences of disclosing
the sought after information.” Id, at 223-224 (emphasis in original).
In this case, the Vaughn index and declaration submitted by CIA are wholly
deficient. They fail to specifically link asserted FOIA exemptions to rationales for
withholding, and instead make blanket assertions for multiple FOIA exemptions.
Since FOIA exemptions were enacted to meet specific factual situations, this
blanket assertion of rationales for exemptions is inappropriate and does not justify
the withholdings.
Further, there is no context given for the Court or counsel to understand the
asserted exemptions. Documents are released related to Propaganda techniques,
yet CIA seems to claim an exemption for these same Propaganda techniques,
which is illogical and inappropriate. Vital information related to the searches
undertaken and the results found are withheld under exemption claims.
Also, CIA has now identified its Chief Historian David Robarge as a key
participant in the search but has provided no declaration by him to document his
activities. Nor has CIA stated what it has done to comply with President Trump’s
directive to release the maximum amount of information related to the JFK
assassination such as the records in this case.
In addition, CIA has not identified a reasonably foreseeable harm to a protected
government interest to justify its withholdings, as required by the FOIA
Improvement Act of 2016, codified at 5 U.S.C. Sec. 552(a)(8)(A). CIA cannot
withhold records and information without making a determination of reasons to
foresee harm to a protected government interest.
C. CIA’s b(1) exemption claim fails
CIA fails to find an exemption from the automatic declassification provisions of
Executive Order 13526 for documents over 50 years in age, and these records must
be released. CIA does not deny that it fails to meet the exceptional circumstances
test of section 3.3(h) of that executive order, as pointed out by AARC in its crossmotion.
Nor does CIA meet the test of section 3.3(j) of that order, which states
(1) The notification shall include:
(A) a detailed description of the information, either by reference to information in
specific records or in the form of a declassification guide;
(B) an explanation of why the information should be exempt from automatic
declassification and must remain classified for a longer period of time; and
(C) a specific date or a specific and independently verifiable event for automatic
declassification of specific records that contain the information proposed for
exemption.
CIA asserts that all information it describes by the general term intelligence
method is exempt from automatic declassification under section 3.3(j). There
could hardly be a more generalized description of information, and it is certainly
not a detailed description of the information nor identification of specific records
as required in subsection (j)(1)(A). Nor has CIA provided a specific date or a
specific independently verifiable event for automatic declassification of the
withheld records, as required by subsection (j)(1)(C) The requirements of EO
13526 section 3.3(j) are not met on this record, rather the 54 year old documents at
issue must be treated as the Executive order states- they must be automatically
declassified for reasons of their age being over 50 years.2
CIA does not deny that the Propagandist’s Guide document does not contain
classification markings that comply with the requirements of Executive Order
13,526 Section 1.6.
D. CIA’s b(3) exemption claim fails
Because the records at issue under exemption b(3) are properly automatically
declassified under EO 13526, CIA’s b(3) exemption claim also fails. As noted, the
2 CIA’s failure to follow the automatic declassification provisions of EO 13526 and its failure to
acknowledge President Trump’s directive to release Kennedy assassination records are troubling.
Both circumstances involve executive authority over the CIA.
Executive order reflects Presidential authority over the CIA on matters of
classification and declassification. Records automatically declassified under the
executive order are properly approved for release and not subject to a b(3)
exemption claim pursuant to the National Security Act of 1947 (“NSA Act”) 50
U.S.C. §3024, which guards against unauthorized disclosure.
E. CIA’s b(5) exemption claim fails
The material withheld under b(5) is the result of CIA’s searches for responsive
records in this matter. CIA asserts that deliberative process should exempt such
material as it contains CIA’s determinations as to whether to release or account for
apparently responsive material. The Freedom of Information Act 5 USC Sec. 552
(a)(4)(B) empowers this Court to make a de novo review of the handling of a FOIA
request to see that it was handled properly under the law. The court must review
these results of CIA’s search to make such a de novo determination. This statutory
provision overrides CIA’s assertion of deliberative privilege because by statute,
CIA’s actions are at issue in this case.
F. CIA’s b(6) exemption claim fails
CIA concedes that the subject matter of this request, the assassination of
President Kennedy, is a matter of very high public interest. Nor does CIA contest
that its handling of the searches in this matter have been confused, contradictory
and in error. CIA does not offer any explanation of these events other than that
they were in “administrative error”. These errors and contradictions add to the
public interest in knowing what the government is doing in responding to this
request. Further, CIA has revealed in its opposition the identity of one of the key
personnel participating in and directing the search- CIA Chief Historian David
Robarge. Obviously CIA felt it necessary to reveal the identity of this officer
because of the public interests in the subject matter of this request. In this context,
the public interest outweighs privacy interests in knowing who else conducted the
searches in question so that they might be deposed as to their knowledge.
CONCLUSION
In consideration of the foregoing and AARC’s memorandum in support of its
cross-motion for summary judgment, plaintiff AARC hereby moves the court for
summary judgment that defendant CIA has not conducted an adequate search for
records responsive to AARC’s FOIA request, and that CIA be ordered to conduct
an adequate search for responsive records, including operational files, and provide
them to AARC. Further, in light of the confusion and admitted error evident in
CIA’s search for responsive records in this case AARC moves that the Court order
that AARC be permitted to conduct discovery of CIA’s search activities and
location of responsive records and that such discovery include taking the
deposition of CIA Chief Historian David Robarge, who personally participated in
and directed the search due to his expertise in the subject matter. Further AARC
prays the Court for an order compelling CIA to release to plaintiff the material
withheld improperly under exemption claims as set forth above.
Respectfully submitted,
__/s/_Daniel S. Alcorn_____
Daniel S. Alcorn
Counsel for Plaintiff
Assassination Archives
and Research Center
James H. Lesar
Co-counsel for Assassination
Archives and Research Center
Courtesy of Carmine Savastano, author of Two Princes and a King: A Concise Review of Three Political Assassinations
A collection of Central Intelligence Agency internal documents that present information regarding selected historical agents, employees, and officers. Among the details reviewed are biographic information, service dates, personnel and security files, employee job performance, considerations for advancement, and the operational utilization of intelligence employees. These gathered files can offer some insights hidden from most original investigators and review specific information often left out of general Agency correspondence.
FEATURED REFERENCES
Biographic Profiles: Internal documents that offer detailed summaries of physical characteristics, service dates, and personal contacts.
Contact Division Files: These files that note contacts made with official agencies, staff, biographical information, and files created by the Office of Operations.
Fitness Reports: These documents monitor employee job performance, considerations for advancement or demotion, and the proper utilization of intelligence employees and leaders.
Personnel Files: An extensive series of files that include cables, messages, written notes, some operational details, awards, personnel action requests, and biographic information compiled by the Office of Personnel.
Personal History Statements: This document presents primary and supplemental reports that offer extensive biographic information, educational qualifications, and travel records for reference purposes.
Security Files: The Office of Security compiled these documents to assess potential security risks, protect sensitive information, and for determining the reliability of contacts, sources, assets, employees, officers, and members of the public who sought security approvals.
Miscellaneous Files: Supporting files with useful information regarding the subject not present in other related documents.
Tennant H. Bagley
Bagley was direct relation of multiple US Navy admirals and served in WWII, he later earned his doctorate in political science from international study. He joined the CIA in July of 1950 and was a noted intellectual trained in four languages. During 1951, he extensively studied operational and clandestine methods and later served in the Foreign Intelligence Operations Section at CIA headquarters. Bagley’s later marriage to an Austrian woman despite the warnings of supervising officials caused him to be moved from his later post in Austria to the United States. His personnel file verifies that in 1961 he used Department of State cover while employed in various Agency capacities. During 1965, Bagley served as the Chief of the Soviet Russia Division’s Counterintelligence Group and later that year was promoted to Deputy Chief of the entire Soviet Russia Division. Among his most notable endeavors was developing KGB defector Yuriy Nosenko, yet Bagley later joined the CIA faction labeling Nosenko as a false defector. In 1967, Agency officials sent Bagley to Belgium and he served as the Chief of Brussels Station until 1972 when he faced involuntary retirement. He sought during later years via reports, books, and interviews to substantiate his prior critical ideas and circumstantial evidence regarding Nosenko’s allegiances.
Personnel File
William Vincent Broe
Broe started his official career in government as a Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and later joined the CIA to serve in Far East Division operations. He became Station Chief of Tokyo and subsequently the Chief of Western Hemisphere (WH) Division in 1965. Broe led his division to undertake repeated illegal clandestine operations in South America to influence foreign governments and finished his intelligence career as Inspector General before retiring in 1973.
Biographic Profile Personnel File
Charlotte Louise Bustos-Videla (Zehrung)
She was a CIA Western Hemisphere Division staff employee that married former Argentine Brigadier General Cesar Bustos-Videla. Charlotte was prior trained as an Economist, Statistician, and Stenographer and she later was a foreign intelligence officer and granted a cryptographic clearance in 1974. She was an integral part of multiple Latin American operations and was the “internal troubleshooter” for years while assigned to Mexico City station.
Personal History Statement Personnel File
David Lamar Christ
He was captured during an operation while targeting a Communist news agency in Cuba and received the Distinguished Intelligence Cross for his actions during incarceration. He also was the Records Officer for his component in the Domestic Contact Services Division and noted by one reviewer to have been ardent but not a dominant personality. Christ had extensive knowledge of some Agency research projects that included foreign intelligence operations and eventually was promoted to Chief of CIA Technical Services. His role in the Technical Services Division focused on agent management, developing additional useful micro technology, coordination of surveillance installation operations, and gathering intelligence. Christ became the Chief of Applied Physics Division within the Office Research and Development and later retired in 1970.
Biographic Profile Personnel File Security File
Viola June Cobb
Cobb served in the Oklahoma Civil Air Patrol and was the managing editor of a medical news magazine. She later was employed by Castro regime to manage its English publications and became among those officials with some access to important members of the Cuban leadership. She also worked as a CIA double agent in her senior staff role under Fidel Castro and reported to the CIA from Cuba. Cobb also had connections to other people who have made various assertions related to Lee Harvey Oswald’s actions in Mexico City. Additionally, she testified before Congress regarding national security in 1962 and further claimed she could prove connections between Oswald and Soviet officials.
Security File
Lucien Emile Conein
He was a notorious former member of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and subsequently the Central Intelligence Agency that had an extensive military and covert intelligence background. Conein attended the British Special Intelligence School and received training in psychological warfare from US officials; he served as an operations officer at CIA Headquarters and collaborated with revolutionary forces in Saigon during the overthrow of Vietnamese President Ngo Dihn Diem. Conein later attempted to use his CIA contacts to sell arms to criminal and rebel groups abroad.
Biographic Profile Personal History Statement Personnel File
William John Crawford
Crawford began serving the Agency in the Clerical Branch his training included counterinsurgency orientation, photographic intelligence and counterintelligence training dealing with clerical materials. He advanced to recruitment officer, became a CIA personnel officer, and the Acting Executive Officer in Project AQUATONE’s Detachment C military group that included pilot testing for U-2 missions. He later is promoted to administration officer and in 1964; he was involved in CIA operations related to Iran, Jordan, and Lebanon.
Biographic Profile
Ross Lester Crozier
Crozier served in the US Air Force while using multiple pseudonyms (false names) during his operational career while located in Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Cuba. He was among the Agency’s case officers later handling the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE), a Cuban exile group supported and funded by the Agency. The primary objective of the DRE was undertaking anti-Castro operations that include propaganda, sabotage, and nearly any illegal operation to reduce the power of the Cuban regime.
Personal History Statement Personnel File
George A. Fill
He served in United States Army Military Intelligence as a Russian Liaison Officer, worked in the Central Intelligence Agency’s Washington D.C. Station and later was an operations officer located at CIA Headquarters. Subsequently Fill undertook Turkish, Baltic, and Soviet Branch Division operations and served as Chief of a CIA base in Chicago, Illinois gathering intelligence about immigrants from Soviet areas.
Biographic Profile
Daniel Flores
Flores served in the United States Marines and later became a file clerk for the Central Intelligence Agency. He subsequently was noted to have produced one of the most productive sources the CIA had from a challenging sensitive asset and was an operations officer using the designated alias Danilo Freitas. Flores was assigned to the Agency’s Directorate of Plans on its Special Affairs Staff and later was promoted to Operations Instructor for the Operational Training Branch.
Personal History Statement Personnel File
Jerome Fox
Fox was educated at Bard College in New York and majored in economics; he was also later trained in black (Illegal) propaganda methods, skilled in photographic interpretation, and served as a member of the Strategic Intelligence Staff. He was involved with CIA operations gathering and interpreting economic and military intelligence acquired in Soviet Bloc, North Vietnamese, Philippines, Indonesian, and Chinese areas.
Biographic Profile Personnel File
Anne Lorene Goodpasture
She assisted the Agency’s Station Chief Winston Scott in various important operations concerning Mexico City station. Goodpasture was among those who handled the original Cuban and Soviet Embassy tapes allegedly containing calls from Lee Harvey Oswald and she was among those responsible for the mishandling of the Mexico City Man photographs responsible for feeding public claims that Oswald was impersonated. She was questioned regarding the matter multiple times and was of little help in deciphering the issue and no tape of Oswald has ever been produced for public review. According to some internal Agency files, these tapes were prior mistakenly destroyed but some officials and the public highly doubted the official explanation. Additionally contending accounts and evidence handling failures never explained the diverging stories and claims by multiple connected officials.
Fitness Report Personnel File
William King Harvey
He was a former reporter and Federal Bureau of Investigation agent who became a notable CIA officer and was involved in various sensitive illegal compartmentalized operations including multiple plots to assassinate foreign enemy leaders. Harvey was directly involved overseeing Phase II of the Castro assassination plots, he led the CIA’s Staff D group that concentrated on the penetration of enemy signals intelligence and the penetration of enemy cryptographic material, and he led the Task Force W group that focused on the overthrow of the Castro regime. His notorious activities such as Project ZRRIFLE link him directly to assassination plots before and after the death of President Kennedy.
Biographic Profile Personal History Statement Personnel File
Calvin Wilson Hicks
He was an Operations Officer that served at CIA Headquarters and in field primarily in the Far East, Middle East, and Western Hemisphere Division. Hicks was a Staff Employee of Western Hemisphere Division under military cover and during periods of his operational activity he administrated a school, provided training and firearms lessons to students, and was a consultant to military and corporate Agency components. He was imprisoned in China during a portion of his Far East service.
Personnel File Security File
Balmes Nieves Hidalgo Jr.
Hidalgo was a CIA staff member who testified in a formerly classified Executive Session of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). He possessed longstanding connections to multiple people associated with the JFK assassination case and Hidalgo’s Agency operations included the collection of information, anti-Communist counterintelligence, and he performed some work from the CIA’s JMWAVE station.
Personal History Statement Security File Security File 2
Sylvia Ludlow Hoke
Hoke was a Personnel Research Technician Placement and Employee Relations staffer for the United States Air Force and a CIA employee. She additionally was the sister of Ruth Paine who housed Lee Harvey Oswald’s family in Texas and she reported occasional discussions her sister had with Marina Oswald and general information to the CIA.
Security File
Everette Howard Hunt
The Agency employed Hunt to serve as an intelligence officer in 1949 and he transferred to Mexico City station in 1950. Officials assigned him to Washington D.C. and he served as an operations officer for the Directorate of Plans in 1953. By 1957, Hunt was at Uruguay station and returned to serve at Agency headquarters in 1960, except for just over a year he spent as a CIA officer in Spain. Hunt is the subject of speculations and some have claimed he is associated with the assassination of President Kennedy. However, substantial primary evidence discounts such prior claims and assertions seek to link him to matters that no verifiable facts do. Hunt serves for most of his remaining CIA career in Washington D.C. and retired in 1970 and his subsequent clandestine work for the Nixon administration ended with disastrous results due to his involvement in the Watergate scandal.
Biographic Profile Fitness Report Personnel File Security File 1 Security File 2 Security File 3 Security File 4
Miguel Angel Diaz Isalgue
He possessed several valuable relatives in multiple Communist nations, including a sister married to a former Cuban Ambassador to Poland and one cousin who was a personal aide of Fidel Castro. Related documents state he was a team leader and principal agent on behalf of the CIA’s JMWAVE Station in Miami. He served as principal agent for over a dozen black infiltration operations targeting Cuba between 1961 and 1968 and was the target of an unsuccessful recruitment pitch by Cuban intelligence. Isalgue was the owner of the Hogarama Discount store and was noted to have contacts in multiple business arrangements in Costa Rica and Venezuela. The Agency assigned him multiple cryptonyms for operational use, among his later assignments was a recruitment pitch targeting a Cuban official during the 1970s.
Personnel File Clandestine Service File
George Efythron Joannides
Joannides is a figure noted first as merely a CIA Office of Legal Counsel Liaison to the House Select Committee on Assassinations. He was involved in the procurement of and denial of information sought by investigators in this role but evidence subsequently revealed Joannides to have been a prior Case Officer for the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE, Student Revolutionary Directorate). This organization was an international CIA funded anti-Castro exile group with offices in Miami and New Orleans. In 1962 Joannides served as “Deputy Chief of Branch handling (in absence of Chief) all aspects political action and psychological warfare and supervising…case officers and clerical personnel…Case Officer for student project involving political action, propaganda, intelligence collection, and hemisphere-wide apparatus.” Joannides further “maintains contacts with key elements of veteran’s type organization as a developmental project” and he managed a teacher’s organization engaged in radio and media propaganda according to official files.
Fitness Report
Samuel Goodhue Kail
Kail graduated from West Point, served in the Korean War, and was the US Army Attaché stationed at the US Havana Embassy from June 1958 until 1961; among his duties was gathering military intelligence. He was transferred in 1962 to Opa Locka Processing center in Miami for interviewing newly arrived Cuban exiles. In 1962, Kail was assigned to the CIA Office of Operations for training Agency personnel and assets. He later retired from US military intelligence during 1969 and Kail subsequently testified to the House Select Committee that he believed the CIA funded his prior military unit.
Contact Division File Security File
Thomas John Keenan
He served as the case officer for a notable surveillance effort associated with the Agency’s Mexico City station. Keenan received aid from Agency employee Anne Goodpasture to undertake covert intelligence collections targeting Communist embassies in Mexico City. Kennan was noted in one document to be “case officer two of the station’s technical support projects, one sensitive double agent case, and has other operational responsibilities.”
Fitness Report Personnel File
Robert Malcolm Keith
Keith served in the United States Navy; he was educated in military science, chemistry, and engineering at West Point military academy. He attended the Citadel military college and the Agency further trained him in a variety of skills that include study of the Russian and German languages, secret writing, and technical operations. Keith supported Agency Soviet, Indonesian, and Chinese operations and was both an intelligence and operations officer during his career.
Biographic Profile
Herman Edward Kimsey
Kimsey was a staff employee in the Technical Services Division who used a media cover to gather intelligence from a variety of public sources for the Agency. He participated in Agency Project BEVISION and later was promoted to Chief of Research and Analysis and was claimed by author Hugh McDonald to have known the unidentified man in Commission Exhibit 237, however by this time Kimsey was deceased and could not offer a response.
Personnel File Security File
Henry Preston Lopez
Lopez was a Harvard educated lawyer who ran an unsuccessful campaign to become the Secretary of State for California. He possessed several connections to Communist groups and leftist organizations that fought against US Congressional actions during the 1950s amid the Red Scare. The Agency gave Lopez an intelligence gathering assignment in 1960 within Cuba as a tourist seeking to invest in local businesses. Lopez was hired by the CIA project to organize the most viable Cuban exile groups to for Agency operational use. During his organizational efforts, he used the pseudonym Edward G. Tichborn for Operation AMPATROL and following a thorough assessment of the gathered candidate groups Lopez informed the Agency there was little chance of unity among the disparate factions. Lopez resided in Mexico City during 1961 and during this period worked as a CIA undercover contract agent who was compensated by the local CIA Station. In 1966, his wife’s serious illness forced him to leave Mexico and they relocated to New York City.
Personnel File Security File
James Walter McCord Jr.
He is a former employee of the Department of Justice and was a former special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The CIA trained him in counterintelligence operations and McCord served as a security investigator for the Agency earning high praise for his various undertakings. Yet he subsequently faces arrest and prison for participation in the Watergate burglary with his former CIA coworker E. Howard Hunt.
Biographic Profile Personnel File
James Walton Moore
Moore served in the US Navy, was a member of the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Group, and then joined the CIA and was assigned to its Washington DC Headquarters. He transferred to Special Operations Division for whom he conducted overseas assignments in India, China, and other parts of Asia. Eventually Moore was promoted to the role of intelligence officer and he later managed a small local CIA office within Dallas in 1963. Moore had multiple contacts with George de Mohrenschildt a known associate of Lee Harvey Oswald and de Mohrenschildt claimed they discussed Oswald significantly before the assassination of President Kennedy. This claim drew unwanted attention to Moore after reporters and members of the public attempted to link him to the Kennedy assassination with the name Maurice Bishop.
Personal History Statement Personnel File Security File
David Sanchez Morales
He was born March 30, 1926 and his career prior to the Agency included physical education instruction during the 1940s and subsequently he joined the United States Army in 1946. Morales during his time in the military simultaneously was studying law, political science, and multiple foreign languages. Morales left the military according to his Agency biographic profile in 1953 and he was an operations officer assigned to Havana Station in Cuba by 1958. During January of 1963 Morales was classified as an operations officer and served as the Deputy Chief of JMWAVE Miami Station. He was noted to have orchestrated and undertaken multiple covert and paramilitary operations across the Americas. Subsequently Morales used a position in the Agency for International Development (AID) for operational cover. Some have claimed Morales was involved multiple assassinations and some in the public later have alleged he privately claimed responsibility for these crimes.
Personal History Statement
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WASHINGTON — For 15 years, journalist, author and assassination expert Jefferson Morley has fought to compel the CIA to produce records about longtime spy George Joannides, who worked with a group associated with President John F. Kennedy’s acknowledged assassin and then aided the committee that tried to investigate that killing.
Morley returned to federal court again Monday, this time before a three-judge appeals court panel to get the government to pay legal fees that have climbed to more than $500,000, said Morley’s attorney, James Lesar.
Circumstances around Kennedy’s murder and the various theories over the decades that reject the idea that the lone assassin was Oswald — who himself was murdered during a jail transfer two days after Kennedy was killed — can get pretty complicated.
Morley, however, says his case is simple: The government needs to inform the public of its activities. Morley wants the appeals court in Washington to force the government to pay his legal fees and to get the CIA to reveal some of Joannides’ records.
“We’re talking about very specific things. We are not talking about a Chinese box,” he said in response to a question mentioning the term.
Bill Miller, public information officer of the Washington U.S. Attorney’s office, said the office had no comment on the case beyond its court motions and filings.
As more and more government files have been released under the JFK Records Act since October, various long-held CIA secrets have been revealed, many of them not related to the assassination, at least directly. But even with the court case and the Records Act — with its final production due in April — files on Joannides remain scarce.
In 1963, the year Kennedy was murdered, Joannides was the CIA case officer over students from Cuba eager to oust dictator Fidel Castro, who had seized power in 1959. In 1978, Joannides was named by the CIA as its contact with the House Select Committee on Assassinations.
The committee wanted to know more about the student group, which was called the DRE and code-named AMSPELL. It was part of the CIA efforts to undermine Castro. Another CIA operation on a separate track even aimed to assassinate Castro, using the Mafia and assets within Cuba.
Oswald had a bizarre interaction with a DRE member in New Orleans the summer leading up to Kennedy’s Nov. 22 murder, in Dallas — to which Oswald moved from New Orleans. And just after the assassination, the DRE publicized that encounter with Oswald, and Oswald’s avowed support of Castro.
Committee staffers wanted to know more about Oswald and the DRE, but they were stymied by Joannides and the CIA, who did not tell the committee that the agent handled the DRE in 1963 was … Joannides himself.
Lesar, president of the Assassination Archives and Research Center, said the CIA is trying to chill further efforts to open more records by making the plaintiffs pay for the litigation even when there’s a public benefit.
So far, however, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon has disagreed, ruling there is no public benefit in records relating to Joannides, who died in 1990. Other appeals court proceedings have sent the issue back to Leon to address finer legal points.
Monday’s appeals court appearance is the fifth time Morley’s case has been presented, Lesar said.
A ruling from the panel of three circuit judges — Karen Henderson, Brett Kavanaugh and Gergory Kalsas — could come anywhere from a month to one and a half years, Lesar said.
Most of the fees come from the years-long fight over who should pay, Lesar said.
Morley’s lawsuit began nearly 15 years ago, after the CIA refused to produce any records it had on Joannides that the National Archives didn’t already have. Five years after that 2003 filing, Morley prevailed. The CIA produced records showing among other things that Joannides had a residence available to him in New Orleans possibly around the time Oswald had a very public altercation there with a member of the student group.
The records also revealed that a then-retired Joannides got a “Career Intelligence Medal” in 1981. Morley said Monday that its reference to his work at headquarters is a pat on the back for stonewalling the House committee.
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THE PRESS DEMOCRAT | March 15, 2018, 7:43PM
Michael Paine of Sebastopol was a civil libertarian and retired aeronautical engineer who, while living outside of Dallas in 1963, engaged in occasional political discussions with a self-identified Marxist named Lee Harvey Oswald.
When Paine heard of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, he thought immediately of Oswald “but dismissed him because I didn’t think he was that irrational,” Paine later told an interviewer.
In testimony before the Warren Commission, created to investigate the assassination of JFK, Paine said he did not regard Oswald as someone likely to kill a president.
“I saw he was a bitter person … very little charity in his view toward anybody, but I thought he was harmless,” he told the commission.
Through much of the 55 years since JFK’s murder, some conspiracy narratives have alleged that both Paine and his former wife, Santa Rosa resident Ruth Paine, were CIA operatives and framed Oswald.
Both rejected the scenario as ridiculous, declaring that their observations and knowledge of Oswald persuaded them that the killing of Kennedy was the work of him alone.
Michael Paine told an interviewer not long after the shooting, “I think it’s a lone wolf thing. The opportunity presented itself to him and he probably wanted to make a mark on society.”
Paine died March 1 in Sebastopol, where he had lived with or near his son the past 14 years. He was 89.
He was born in New York City on June 25, 1928, to architect and left-wing activist G. Lyman Paine and Ruth Forbes Young, founder of the International Peace Academy.
Michael Paine studied at Harvard and Swarthmore and was living in Pennsylvania when, in 1957, he married Ruth Avery Hyde. Two years later, Michael Paine took a job with Bell Helicopter that required a relocation to Texas.
The couple settled in Irving, a suburb of Dallas. They had two children, Tamarin and Chris, when they separated amicably in the fall of 1962, then continued to spend time together as a family.
The children lived with Ruth Paine, a Quaker who has said she studied the Russian language in order to counter Cold War tensions by seeking out dialogue with Russian people.
In February 1963, she heard of a Russian woman who spoke no English, having recently moved to the U.S. with her young daughter and her husband, Lee Harvey Oswald. Ruth, now a retired teacher and school counselor living in Rincon Valley, has said she liked the idea of having someone with whom to practice her Russian.
So she reached out to the Oswalds. She invited her ex-husband, too, when she had 21-year-old Marina and Lee Oswald, 23, and baby June over for dinner. Ruth and Marina became friends.
That friendship on occasion brought Michael Paine and Lee Oswald together, and three or four times they engaged in political discussions. Paine, a liberal and longtime member of the American Civil Liberties Union, would later describe Oswald as a “pipsqueak,” but one whose politics he tried to understand.
“He told me he became a Marxist in this country by reading books and without having ever having met a communist,” Paine said in an interview following the assassination.
“With me he spoke very freely and he complained that with other people he couldn’t … they wouldn’t talk about political subjects. He would talk about nothing else.”
In interviews and in testimony before the Warren Commission, Paine described Oswald as a lonely man who seemed to like very few people. But in their conversations Oswald never revealed hostility toward Kennedy.
“I expressed my appreciation of President Kennedy and he didn’t ever argue with me on that point,” Paine said in an interview.
In a 2013 essay he titled, “My Experience with Lee Harvey Oswald,” Paine recalled that Oswald once declared emphatically that “change only comes through violence.”
“I’d also heard him say that President Kennedy was the best president he had in his lifetime. Looking back on what happened, these two statements seem impossibly contradictory … how could a man want to kill a president whom he thought was the best president he’d had in his lifetime?”
Though Michael Paine remained no more than an acquaintance to the Oswalds, Ruth took Marina Oswald under her wing and tried to be helpful to her struggling family.
Ruth, who became a key witness to the Warren Commission, has said she was hoping to bring a degree of stability to the Oswalds when, in the fall of 1963, she told Lee Oswald about a job opening she’d heard of — at the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas.
Oswald was hired. He rented a room near the job. In late September, Marina accepted an invitation by Ruth to live with her and her children in Irving, about a 20-minute drive from Dallas.
Ruth Paine allowed the Oswalds to store most of their belongings in her garage. For weeks while working at the book depository, Lee Oswald, who had no car or drivers license, hitched a ride to Ruth’s house after work on Fridays, then spent the weekend there with his family.
It surprised Ruth Paine when Oswald appeared at her home unannounced on a Thursday — Nov. 21, 1963. Later that night, she walked into the garage and found the light was on, causing her to wonder who’d been in there.
When she arose the next morning, Lee Oswald was already up and gone. He’d left a coffee cup in the kitchen sink.
At 12:30 that afternoon, gunshots killed JFK as he sat beside his wife, Jacqueline, in the back of a Lincoln Continental convertible just after the presidential motorcade passed by the book depository.
It would soon dawn on the Paines that Lee Harvey Oswald had hidden his scoped, bolt-action rifle in Ruth’s garage.
In the 9,400-word “My Experience with Lee Harvey Oswald,” Michael Paine wrote that he believed the assassin acted alone and decided only shortly before Nov. 22, 1963, to do something that would make himself infamous.
“The nation would remember him as the one who had shot the president of the strongest capitalist nation of the world,” Paine wrote. “He wanted to be important — not inconsequential. He would be in the history books now, and that is what he wanted.”
Both of the Paines testified before the Warren Commission in 1964, Ruth more extensively because of her nearly yearlong friendship with Marina Oswald and her many encounters with Marina’s controlling husband.