An article in today’s Guardian has the potential to re-open, and perhaps even solve, the investigations into both the JFK and RFK assassinations. I know that sounds incredible, but it is true. To explain why will be painstaking and involve a lot of retelling of history.
The assassination of JFK has been controversial from the moment it occurred, but the assassination of RFK has been much less so. In fact, I never questioned the official story of the RFK assassination until this year, and I didn’t even know there was cause to do so.
Robert Kennedy was shot in Los Angeles, in the pantry of a ballroom in the Ambassador Hotel, on June 5th, 1968 and died the next day. The assassin was immediately subdued and later identified as Sirhan Sirhan, a 24 year old Christian Palestinian. Witnesses saw him unload all eight shots from his .22 caliber gun. They also agreed that Sirhan was facing Kennedy and never got within two feet of him. There are two difficulties with the official story. First:
In conducting the autopsy on Kennedy, Los Angeles coroner Dr. Thomas Noguchi found powder burns on Kennedy’s ear and gunpowder residue in his hair. Noguchi said this indicated that Kennedy was shot from a distance of, at most, 1.5 inches (37 millimeters.) (When a firearm is discharged, the powder residue travels only a few inches because the material is very light.) Noguchi’s conclusions led to speculation that Sirhan was too far from Kennedy and in the wrong position to have administered the fatal shot (also fired from a .22 caliber handgun, one which had apparently been fired into Kennedy’s head at point-blank range from behind his right ear) and that a second shooter must have been present. Dr. Noguchi himself wrote years later that “Until more is precisely known…the existence of a second gunman remains a possibility. Thus, I have never said that Sirhan Sirhan killed Robert Kennedy.”[5]
Independent testing (shown in a program on the Discovery Channel) indicates that gunpowder residue can easily travel over 15 inches (38 cm), but that the stippling effect observed requires that the gun must have been less than 2 inches (5 cm) away.
Kennedy was killed by a bullet that entered the rear of his head behind the right ear. This is curious because Sirhan was facing him as he shot. However, this could be explained if Kennedy wheeled away from Sirhan as he began to fire. The powder burns are much harder to explain.
The second problem with the official story is in the number of bullets recovered (possibly ten) versus the number of bullets in Sirhan’s gun (no more than eight). BooTrib member Lisa Pease has written about this issue. It’s complicated, and resolving it is not the focus of this essay.
The focus of this essay is on the implications of new evidence that suggests that three CIA officers, two of whom have long been suspected by ‘conspiracy’ buffs of involvement in the JFK assassination, may have been present in the Ambassador Hotel ballroom the night RFK was killed. The CIA officers are George Joannides, David Sanchez Morales, and Gordon Campbell. If these men were indeed in the Ambassador Hotel that night it would almost certainly lead to the conclusion that they were involved in the RFK assassination, and by implication, the JFK assassination. To explain why will take some time.
Are these two men George Joannides (right) and Gordon Campbell (left)?
The most important of the three CIA officers is George Joannides because his role in the JFK assassination and investigation is already highly controversial and has been recently litigated in the courts. I will excerpt a little bit from respected Washington Post reporter, Jefferson Morley’s 2005 article on the subject.
People interested in the JFK story will be interested to know that the CIA is due to file papers in court tomorrorow, May 20 [2005], to block release of certain JFK assassination-related documents.
The records in question concern a deceased CIA officer named George Joannides. At the time of Kennedy’s death, Joannides was the Chief of
Psychological Warfare branch of the Agency’s JM/WAVE station in Miami.Among his primary responsibilities were guiding, monitoring and financing the Revolutionary Cuban Student Directorate or DRE, one of the largest and most effective anti-Castro groups in the United States.
CIA records show, and the group’s former leaders confirm, that Joannides provided them with up $18-25,000 per month while insisting they submit to CIA discipline. Joannides, in his job evaluation of 31 July 1963, was credited with having established control over the group.
Five day later, Lee Harvey Oswald wandered into the DRE’s New Orleans delegation, setting off a string of encounters between the pro-Castro
ex-Marine and the anti-Castro exiles. Members of the DRE confronted Oswald on a street corner. They stared him down in a courtroom. They sent a DRE member to Oswald’s house posing [as] a Castro supporter. They challenged him to a debate on the radio. They made a tape of the debate which was later sent to Joannides. And they issued a press release calling for a congressional investigation of the thoroughly obscure Oswald. This, at a time, when the DRE had been warned to clear its
public statements with the Agency.What, if anything, Joannides made of the encounters between his assets in the DRE and the future accused assassin is unknown. Former leaders
of the DRE are divided on the question.Within an hour of Oswald’s arrest on Nov. 22, 1963, the DRE leaders in Miami went public with their documentation of Oswald’s pro-Castro ways, thus shaping early press coverage of the accused assasssin. Joannides told the group to take their information to the FBI.
Joannides connection to Oswald’s antagonists was not disclosed to the Warren Commission.
In 1978, Joannides was called out of retirement to serve as CIA liaison to the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Joanndides did not disclose his role in the events of 1963 to investigators. HSCA general counsel Bob Blakey says that Joannides’s actions constituted obstruction of Congress, a felony. Joannides’s support for the DRE was
uncovered by the Assassination Records Review Board in 1998. Joannides died in 1991.I filed suit against the CIA in December 2003 seeking records of Joannides’s activities in 1963 and 1978. In December 2004, the CIA gave
me about 150 pages of heavily redacted and obviously incomplete records from Joannides’s personnel file. The Agency informed me that it retains an unspecified number of records about Joannides actions that it will not release IN ANY FORM.Thus JFK assassination records are kept secret in 2005 in the name of “national security.”
The records that CIA gave me are not reassuring. They show that Joannides travelled to New Orleans in connection with his CIA duties in 1963-64. They also show that he was cleared for two highly sensitive operations in December 1962 and June 1963. The nature of these operations is unknown.
It would be premature and foolish to speculate on what George Joannides was doing in New Orleans in 1963. What is certain is that he had a professional obligation to report on the activities of the DRE in August and November 1963, especially as they related to Oswald. The CIA
is legally obliged to make such records public.Instead, they are stonewalling in court. This is a disappointing, if not disturbing.
The court ruled against Morley in October. The CIA will keep Joannides’s secrets. For those of you unfamiliar with the intricacies of the JFK investigation, it isn’t necessary to know too much detail to understand the possible import of Joannides presence in the Ambassador Hotel.
Here is what is essential. In 1959, Fidel Castro took over Cuba and immediately took steps that infuriated American corporate interests, the Cuban ruling/upper classes, and the mafia. Castro did this by taking control of the hotel/casino industry and nationalizing mining and other interests. In response, under Eisenhower’s direction, the CIA began plotting to overthrow and/or assassinate Castro. The hub for all anti-Castro activity was in Miami in a CIA station referred to as JM/WAVE. JM/WAVE enlisted the help of both Cuban exiles and Cosa Nostra.
Shortly after taking office, in 1961, the CIA launched a coup attempt that failed miserably, called the Bay of Pigs. Kennedy had okayed the operation but had warned that he would not send in air or naval cover if the invasion ran into trouble. To this, he kept his word. Even after the Bay of Pigs invasion failed, the CIA continued to pursue assassination attempts against Castro.
When Kennedy was killed, the list of people with an incentive to kill him was quite long. It included mafiosos that were angry that Kennedy wasn’t doing enough to repossess their casino and hotel holdings and that felt double-crossed after they helped Kennedy win election only to have RFK crack down on their activities as Attorney General. It included wealthy American industrialists that wanted their property back. It included anti-Castro Cubans that were angry about Kennedy’s inaction during the Bay of Pigs. It included CIA, Military, and right-wingers that were similarly angry over the Bay of Pigs. It included pro-Castro Cubans that might have been responding to the attempts on Castro’s life. It even included the Russians.
JFK conspiracy theorists have pursued each of these angles. George Joannides has repeatedly cropped up in the theories that focus on possible CIA involvement. As Morley noted above, Joannides was the Chief of the Psychological Warfare branch of the CIA’s JM/WAVE station in Miami when Kennedy was killed. He withheld that information from the Warren Commission (even though commissioner Allan Dulles would have known it). But it gets worse.
In 1978, in response to the public release of the Zapruder film (which appeared to show a fatal wound from the front, not the back), Congress created the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). They re-opened the JFK case. In order to gain access to the CIA files they needed a liaison officer familiar with CIA record keeping. The CIA brought George Joannides out of ostensible retirement to assist them. He never revealed that he was the CIA’s direct contact with the Revolutionary Cuban Student Directorate (DRE). The DRE was a prime suspect in the assassination. If the CIA had contracted out a hit squad to do in Kennedy, Joannides would have been the prime suspect for organizing it.
The HSCA made some odd conclusions. They concluded that acoustic evidence of a Dictatape recording of the shootings revealed at least one shot from the grassy knoll. As a result, they concluded that there had been a conspiracy to kill the President, but they still maintained that Oswald was the shooter in the Book Depository building. When the chief investigator discovered that Joannides had been in charge of psychological operations at JM/WAVE, he was furious.
Blakey, the Notre Dame law professor who served as the House committee’s chief counsel, now says Joannides was guilty of obstructing Congress. “The law says that anyone who corruptly endeavors to influence, obstruct or impede the exercise of the power of inquiry by [Congress] is guilty of a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison. That’s exactly what he did. He did not give us the information that was manifestly relevant.”
The House Assassination Committee’s final report, released in 1979, concluded that Kennedy had been killed by Oswald and other conspirators who could not be identified. In the report, Blakey vouched for the CIA’s cooperation with the congressional inquiry. He now says he was wrong.
When asked if Blakey had misstated any facts about Joannides’ tenure as liaison to the House committee, CIA spokesman Crispell replied, “We are not going to debate Mr. Blakey.”
“The JFK records review board examined the issue of Mr. Joannides’ work with the [committee] in 1998,” he stated.
Tunheim, chair of Assassination Records Review Board from 1994 to 1998, when it issued its final report, disputed Crispell’s assertion. He said the board had merely identified Joannides and declassified a handful of documents from his personnel file.
“We did not consider the matter of his obstructing Congress one way or the other,” he said. “I don’t think we knew enough about Joannides at that point to assess his significance. If the board was in existence now, we would certainly pursue it.”
Blakey says Joannides deceived him, and he remains angry about it 25 years later. “When Congress opened its investigation, we were especially interested in the DRE because they had pre-assassination contact with Oswald,” Blakey said. “That Joannides never told us those were his people just makes me go ballistic. He was a material witness. He shouldn’t have been the liaison. He should have been interviewed under oath.”
Blakey does not believe Joannides was part of a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. He speculates that the CIA man learned something about Oswald that was innocent but difficult to explain when Kennedy was killed.
Dan Hardway, a lawyer in North Carolina who worked as one of Blakey’s investigators in 1978, is more suspicious. While attempting to review CIA records relevant to Kennedy’s death, Hardway had regular contact with Joannides. He often complained to Blakey that Joannides was deliberately hindering his efforts. Hardway had several angry confrontations with the uncooperative CIA man — never suspecting Joannides was concealing his own personal knowledge of the events of 1963.
“Now there is no doubt in my mind that Joannides deliberately hid evidence of an assassination conspiracy from us,” Hardway said in a telephone interview.
I wonder what Blakey will think about Joannides being caught on film in the lobby of the ambassador hotel five years after JFK was killed. I suspect he will have a sinking feeling in his belly.
The second CIA officer potentially identified at the Ambassador is David Sanchez Morales. Morales was involved in the 1954 Guatemala coup, assigned to JM/WAVE and the Bay of Pigs, stationed in Laos in the late 1960’s (including at the time of RFK’s assassination), and part of the 1973 coup on Chile. He was obviously no stranger to using violence to determine political outcomes.
The third CIA officer, Gordon Campbell is less controversial. His significance lies almost solely in having been a deputy at JM/WAVE.
Lisa Pease informs me that she suspects it will turn out that the identifications of these three JM/WAVE CIA officers will be proven erroneous. And perhaps that is the case. But if the reverse were to be proven, it could not be a coincidence.
There was no CIA jurisdiction for these men to be in the Ambassador Hotel. The JM/WAVE crew were among the most anti-Kennedy factions in the entire country. And Morales was supposed to be stationed in Laos at the time.
It’s almost impossible to imagine an explanation of the RFK assassination that could account for all the known facts, and that included a CIA plot. But if these men were there, they were there for some nefarious purpose.
