USA TODAY: JFK files: 15-year lawsuit over mysterious CIA agent drags as final files await release

JFK files: 15-year lawsuit over mysterious CIA agent drags as final files await release

Ed Brackett, USA TODAY Published 4:34 p.m. ET March 19, 2018 | Updated 8:41 p.m. ET March 19, 2018

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.

CIA trying to chill inquiry, lawyer says

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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CIA is accused of pouring cold water on legal efforts to force it to reveal the contact one of its spies had with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before JFK’s murder

Update on the Release of the FBI’s JFK Assassination Files

The FBI has authorized for release all previously withheld materials in its JFK assassination files. Currently, the limited redactions relate to individuals who provided information during the course of the investigation, and whose lives may be at risk if they are publicly identified. Every effort is being made to lift the remaining redactions going forward as those personal safety concerns are balanced with the goal of maximum transparency.

The National Archives will release all remaining records on a rolling basis in the coming weeks.

https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/update-on-the-release-of-the-fbis-jfk-assassination-files

President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection: Toward Final Disclosure of Withheld Records in October 2017

May 26, 2017 (IN10709)
|R. Eric Petersen, Specialist in American National Government

Congress enacted the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 (JFK Records Act), as amended, to bring together all materials related to the November 22, 1963, assassination of the 35th President that were created or held by a government office, and to house those records in a single collection in the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Today, NARA reports that there are 268,116 records comprising more than five million pages of paper documents in the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection. Of those, NARA states that “approximately 88% of the records … are open in full.” Another 11% are available in part with sensitive portions removed. Approximately 1% of documents identified as assassination-related, numbering between 3,000 and 3,600 records according to some media reports, remains withheld in full.

The JFK Records Act, 44 U.S.C. 2107 Note, set a deadline of 25 years from its enactment for each assassination record to be publicly disclosed, subject to some limitations. The deadline falls on October 26, 2017, and has raised some interest about the potential extent of disclosure of redacted portions of records that are partially available, and those that are withheld in full. No legislation related to the JFK Records Act has been introduced in the 115th Congress.

The October 26 deadline marks the end of the final, statutorily mandated assessment of assassination records, and might mark the conclusion of a long process of records preservation and assessment for the suitability of their release that began in the days and weeks following President Kennedy’s death. The JFK Records Act prohibited the destruction or alteration of assassination records, and required each government office, including Congress, various investigatory commissions and panels, executive branch entities, independent agencies, courts, and involved state or local law enforcement agencies, to identify and organize its assassination records, determine which were officially disclosed or publicly available in a complete, unredacted form, and which were covered by the Act’s standards for postponement of public disclosure. Officially disclosed records were to be made available immediately in 1992, following enactment of the JFK Records Act.

Postponed records were to be submitted to the Assassinations Records Review Board, an independent agency established by the JFK Records Act. The Review Board was to be composed of impartial private citizens with national professional reputations in their fields appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate. The Review Board’s responsibilities were to determine whether a record constituted an assassination record and whether an assassination record or particular information in a record qualified for postponement of disclosure.

Grounds for postponement include:

Threats to military or intelligence operations or the foreign relations of the United States.
Undisclosed intelligence sources or methods.
Potential identification of intelligence agents whose identities require protection.
Identification of a living person who provided confidential information who would be at risk of harm.
Unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.
Compromising confidentiality requiring protection between a government agent and a cooperating individual or a foreign government.
Public disclosure of a security or protective procedure currently utilized by the Secret Service or other government agency responsible for protecting government officials.

The Review Board concluded its duties on September 30, 1998, and transferred its records to NARA. In its final report, the Review Board stated that it had reviewed and voted to release more than 27,000 previously redacted assassination records, and worked with various agencies to publicly release more than 33,000 of their previously restricted assassination records. All remaining postponed records have been subject to periodic review by the agency originating a postponed record and NARA. When a record is determined to qualify for continued postponement, an unclassified written description of the reason must be provided and published in the Federal Register.

In anticipation of the October 26, 2017, deadline, NARA in 2014 established a team of archivists and technicians to evaluate materials subject to postponed disclosure and to process those materials for public release, along with an explanation of their activities. NARA reports that it has “identified a small number of records, or portions of records” related to grand jury or personal tax return information, and some records subject to a deed of gift that restricts their disclosure, that will not be released in October. As of March 2017, NARA states that it has not been informed of any agency appealing the planned release of its documents, but their understanding is “that agencies are still reviewing the documents subject to release.”

Under the JFK Records Act, postponed agency assassination records are scheduled to be released on October 26, 2017, unless the President certifies before then that continued postponement is made necessary by an identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or conduct of foreign relations, and that the harm is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure. There is no publicly available, authoritative source describing the contents of redacted and withheld records, but NARA states their assumption “that much of what will be released will be tangential to the assassination events.”

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RELATED: FREEING THE JFK FILES