The CIA is suppressing history

Posted by Real History Lisa | Oct 22, 2007 | 30 |

The CIA is withholding key documents in the JFK assassination case. As Jefferson Morley reports in the Huffington Post:

Lawyers for the Central Intelligence Agency faced pointed questions in a federal court hearing Monday morning about the agency’s efforts to block disclosure of long-secret records about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Morley filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the CIA for failing to disclose records about a CIA officer named George Joannides. Joannides was responsible for running the DRE, an anti-Castro CIA front group that had extensive interactions with Lee Harvey Oswald in the months leading up to the assassination of President Kennedy. The CIA has consistently refused to release Joannides’ records, even though they are mandated to by the 1992 JFK Assassination Records Act.

What’s at stake here matters greatly to all historians. If the government can simply choose which records to release, and which to withhold, they can pervert and deliberately misshape history to serve their purposes.
In this particular case, the CIA appears hellbent on ondoing the will of the people. The JFK act came into being due to an enormous outcry from the public when they learned, at the end of Oliver Stone’s film JFK, that many records relating to the assassination were still classified.

Congress passed what became known as “The JFK Act,” which mandated the creation of a board to declassify records and, if necessary, seek out new and pertinent records and make them public. The Board, officially named the Assassination Records and Review Board, put Joannides on the JFK assassination story map when they declassified five personnel reports of his in 1998. In addition, researchers learned that it was Joannides who had helped shut down an early investigation of the CIA’s possible involvement in the assassination. Joannides was responsible for kicking out two staffers of the House Select Committee on Assassinations who had been set up with full access at CIA to CIA records pertaining to that time period. When the records they dug up got more interesting in terms of suggesting possible CIA involvement in a plot to kill Kennedy, Joannides had the two staffers removed from their temporary office at CIA headquarters.

Morley discusses why Joannides records are of interest:

Oswald approached the DRE’s delegation in New Orleans and offered to train guerrillas to fight the Castro government. He was rebuffed. When DRE members saw Oswald handing out pro-Castro leaflets a few days later an altercation ensued that ended with the arrest of all the participants. A week after that, the DRE’s spokesman in New Orleans debated the Cuba issue with Oswald on a radio program. After these encounters, the DRE issued a press release calling for a congressional investigation of the pro-Castro activities of the then-obscure Oswald.

The CIA was passing money to the DRE leaders at the time, according to an agency memo dated April 1963, found in the JFK Library in Boston. The document shows that the Agency gave the Miami-based group $250,000 a year — the equivalent of about $1.5 million annually in 2007 dollars.

The secret CIA files on Joannides may shed new light on what, if anything, Joannides and other CIA officers in anti-Castro operations knew about Oswald’s activities and contacts before Kennedy was killed.

Morley has spent several years now trying to obtain these records, and his frustration is palbable. But his frustration should be ours, as it’s our history that is being hidden from us. If the CIA was involved in the Kennedy assassination, wouldn’t that change entirely our understanding of events from that time forth, and wouldn’t that call into question much of the reporting on the case, and the credibility of the media from that time forward?

And aren’t laws meant to be upheld? As Morley writes:

In my admittedly subjective view, the JFK Records Act is being slowly repealed by CIA fiat. In defiance of the law and common sense, the Agency continues to spend taxpayers’ money for the suppression of history around JFK’s assassination. In the post-9/11 era, you would think U.S. intelligence budget could be better spent.

Several former members of the ARRB, including its chairman, filed affidavits in support of Morley’s request. Even anti-conspiracy authors Gerald Posner and Vincent Bugliosi have sided with the law, calling for the documents to be released.

If our government can simply choose which laws to support and which to break, is it really our government anymore?

For more information on Morley’s suit, click here.

About The Author

Real History Lisa

I'm a guerrilla informationist, dedicated to telling the truth about REAL history, as opposed to the propaganda version that often passes, unchallenged, into history books.

30 Comments

cruz del sur on October 22, 2007 at 7:47 pm

Not the first time that they pick and choose which documents to release. Tenet also refused to declassify Pinochet’s and CIA involvement in Chile

But the release was postponed to allow for further declassification review after CIA Director George J. Tenet refused to release hundreds of Chile documents, saying it could jeopardize intelligence-gathering methods still employed by the agency.
- Real History Lisa on October 22, 2007 at 11:20 pm
  
  Good point, and another dark chapter in CIA history that really should be exposed.
on October 22, 2007 at 9:06 pm

They still need that illusion of American “greatness”.
Even as young as I was at the time the JFK funeral has to be rated as the peak of unity in the American populace. By peak, I mean it’s all been downhill since then.
- Real History Lisa on October 22, 2007 at 11:22 pm
  
  The more I look into our system of voting, the more I wonder how much society has been controlled since that time. Computers started counting our votes in 1968. Recounts sometimes reversed election results. How many MORE elections might have been reversed had THEY been recounted? And let’s not even talk about 2000 and 2004. I fear we’ve been witness, in our lives, to a slow-motion coup, and the endgame of total dictatorship is now very close at hand.
  - Gaianne on October 23, 2007 at 12:27 am
    
    the endgame of total dictatorship is now very close at hand.
    
    Based on government behavior (at the Federal level) it has already happened, and is complete. Two questions still remain:
    
    1)Who runs the dictator? Right now there seems to be considerable infighting over this.
    
    2) Will the shell-game of democracy be maintained, or tossed aside as no longer needed? I think we find out next fall, or no later than January. Personally, I think the answer will depend much on the popular reaction to the arrival of America’s economic collapse. And by next fall we will be well into that.
    - Real History Lisa on October 23, 2007 at 2:07 am
      
      I heard an insider say that Waco was a test of what the public could take when its guns were turned on its own. Evidently we “passed” with flying colors – we wouldn’t do anything at all. Then we had two elections stolen. Still no outrage. An illegal war. Okay, a few mumblings. But seriously – we’ve shown over and over that we will roll over and play dead.
      
      How are we any different from the German’s as Hitler was coming to power?
      
      Your question re who runs the dictatorship is an interesting one, in that arguably, the hidden hands wish to stay hidden, but need a face, and haven’t had much success in that regard. But they are patient, and will find one, eventually.
      - quake on October 23, 2007 at 6:47 am
        
        How are we any different from the German’s as Hitler was coming to power?
        
        Your question re who runs the dictatorship is an interesting one, in that arguably, the hidden hands wish to stay hidden, but need a face, and haven’t had much success in that regard. But they are patient, and will find one, eventually.
        
        I don’t think Hitler is a good example. What we have now in the U.S. is much more like the end of the Roman Republic and beginning of the Roman Empire. The forms of democracy are being scrupulously preserved even while the reality is being hollowed out. And instead of the gladiator fights we have the NFL on Fox.
      - Real History Lisa on October 23, 2007 at 11:23 am
        
        Agreed – that’s a more apt example. Unless, of course, someone charismatic appears on the scene. Fortunately, no one has, so far.
      - Gaianne on October 23, 2007 at 11:39 pm
        
        Analogies are meant only to show what is similar (and what is different).
        
        The Nazi/US analogy is good in some ways, not in others. When looking at modern methods of propaganda, the Nazis are indeed the direct precursor, and the principles of propaganda utilized match point for point. The key similarity: The creation of bogus realities out of crude, simple (but popular) lies buttressed by staged or bogus “news” events. Two differences: The Nazis system (the PK) was more tightly controlled, at the same time, it was less enveloping or pervasive.
        
        When looking at the military sphere, the differences could not be more extreme: The Nazis were strong believers in military competence, and the US, fortunately, thinks displays and photo ops are an adequate substitute for military success.
        
        While the Roman analogy is good in many ways, it suffers from the Romans’ inexplicable good press. If it were generally understood that, as the “keepers of civilization,” the Romans routinely engaged in looting, torture, and genocide, then the emotional weight of the analogy would be more true.
      - Gaianne on October 24, 2007 at 12:19 am
        
        that the destruction of American democracy has been a long step by step process, not starting with Bush, but rather finishing with him.
        
        Clinton and his people put out a series of lies, starting with the “these are crazy people, who can’t be dealt with” and finishing with “the fire was accidental–we had no idea.”
        
        I will admit that it was only several years later that I heard about local hospitals being alerted IN ADVANCE that there would be burn casualties (that is, the government already knew it was going to use incendiaries and deny it afterward).
        
        One thing that is impressive then as now is how little facts matter. Americans remain resolutely ignorant of the most basic facts of physics and chemistry, and easily swallow stories of bullets that change direction in mid-flight, buildings that ignite themselves, and fire-proof steel structures that collapse uniformly under modest non-uniform heat stress.
        
        The Waco fires were certainly nothing less than suspicious–even from the news reports.
        
        I should add that Waco is not unique. Shortly after I left Philadelphia, a “radical” group (called MOVE) settled into a townhouse in a lower-middle class section of the city, where they gained the reputation of being real nuisance neighbors. Be that as it may, the cops were called in, and dealt with the matter with a rather surprising amount of force. The townhouse was strafed with machine guns while the residents were inside, and a helicopter dropped bombs and incendiaries from overhead. The shattered building burned intensely, and the fire spread to totally destroy an entire city block.
        
        The corpses of children were later pulled from the rubble.
        
        There was some public criticism of the police tactics, but the mayor and the police chief brazened it out. The police chief, of course, never faced charges.
        
        How are we any different from the German’s as Hitler was coming to power?
        
        Not so much, sadly. But this too is long in coming, and can hardly be said to be a surprise.
        
        the hidden hands wish to stay hidden, but need a face
        
        This is one aspect where the US is NOT like Nazi Germany: We can expect our dictators to be actually puppets. Here we see operating the experience of the CIA and similar agencies, with their long history in Latin America and the “Third World.”
      - zak822 on October 25, 2007 at 9:36 am
        
        Waco sidebar: Four agents were shot by cult members as the agents moved around on a low roof at Waco.
        
        That’s gonna bring major heat every time. The Banch Davidians brought it on themselves.
        
        Not the best choice as an example. The MOVE house is a whole different matter and a much better example.
Real History Lisa on October 23, 2007 at 12:05 pm

I sent a copy of this to Bob Parry, and he wrote right back and asked if he could publish this on his site. Here’s the link. The article is the same as the one above.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/102307b.html
Ed J on October 23, 2007 at 8:50 pm

all these documents released, as do I. You should, however, know some of what Bugliosi says about this in the endnotes to “Reclaiming History” (I’ve copied and pasted the following from the endnote CD included with the book):

Without my even yet asking Morley this specific question of where does all this go, he obviously sensed from my telephone conversations with him and the list of questions I submitted to him on January 31, 2005, that that was where I was leading, and on his own, he wrote to me in his February 9, 2005, letter, “What is Morley proposing? What’s the storyline?” Although he believes that it is “logical” to conclude that Joannides, the CIA handler of the DRE, “knew about Oswald’s existence and political activities [in New Orleans] three months before Oswald was arrested for killing Kennedy,” he acknowledges that what this means “for our understanding of November 22” is “probably nothing.” And he further acknowledges that “there is no evidence to link Joannides to Oswald. The most likely explanation would seem to be that Joannides’ knowledge was innocent and that when Oswald killed Kennedy whatever his knowledge of Oswald’s actions in August 1963 was, [it was] hidden lest it be misunderstood. Another possibility, consistent with available CIA records, is more sinister: that Joannides was running or helping run an authorized CIA psychological warfare operation that targeted or involved Oswald and his one man Fair Play for Cuba Committee chapter. The purposes of this operation, if there was one, are not known.”
In a follow-up telephone conversation with Morley on March 4, 2005, what became even more evident was the ambiguity and ambivalence of Morley’s state of mind with respect to the Joannides affair. Morley is not a conspiracy theorist, and he is not about to knowingly (though he has done so unknowingly) state something that the evidence does not support. When I told him that a portion of the conspiracy community is aware of his work on the matter and drawing the conclusion that Joannides and those around him at the CIA had a hand in the assassination, he immediately distanced himself from this conclusion, saying he didn’t mean to convey this in his article, and was not willing to say the CIA may have been involved in the assassination. But when I asked him what relevance, then, his story has to the assassination, he said that if it turns out that Joannides and the CIA were aware of Oswald’s activities in New Orleans prior to the assassination, this would be relevant since they have never admitted this. I responded that even if they did know, so what? The FBI, another federal intelligence agency, not only knew but also talked to Oswald about his activities in New Orleans.
I told Morley that if he was not willing to say that the CIA may have murdered Kennedy, who cares if the agency knew about Oswald? Morley had no good answer for this, except to say that if this was true, it would show “negligence” on the CIA’s part in dealing with Oswald, Morley presumably meaning (he didn’t so state) that the CIA should have taken some affirmative steps to prevent the assassination. I said that if his negligence theory was correct, this may be why the agency doesn’t want to give him the documents he wants–it’s covering up its negligence. But I added that actually it was the FBI (not the CIA, whose charter only authorizes it to gather foreign intelligence), if anyone, that should have kept closer tabs on Oswald right up to the president’s visit to Dallas, and thereby possibly prevented the assassination.
In any event, I told him the Joannides story seemed to suggest, as I told him about other conspiracy theorists, that the mere finding of the inconsistency, discrepancy, or suspicious circumstance (here, the CIA refusing to give Morley the documents he’s seeking on Joannides) is the story in itself, even though it “doesn’t go anywhere.”
- BooMan on October 23, 2007 at 10:28 pm
  This line of argument is infuriating.
  
  Start from the premise that people within the CIA had Kennedy killed. Don’t start from that premise because it is true, start from that premise and see what you can find to support the theory. If you start connecting dots, maybe you have something. If you don’t, maybe you don’t.
  
  If elements within the CIA had a hand in the assassination, what would you be likely to find (if you could get the documents)?
  
  you’d be likely to find that the CIA was aware of Oswald and monitored him after he undefected from the USSR. We’ve verified this.
  
  you’d expect him to have a handler. It is precisely Johannides that is suspected of being his handler (or the overseer of his handler).
  
  you’d expect (if they were setting Oswald up) that they would have created what is known in the trade as a ‘legacy’. We know from the LBJ tapes that the man in Mexico City was not Oswald.
  
  you’d expect that the CIA would take affirmative steps to cover their trail and their ass. They took Johannides out of retirement and made him the liaison to the Committee investigators.
  
  In other words, there is enough of a trail here to warrant all the files on Johannides. And you can’t ask for more than that from a investigator before they have the opportunity to see the documentation.
  - Real History Lisa on October 24, 2007 at 2:28 am
    
    You are absolutely correct.
    
    And I find it predictable that the guy who always pops out of the woodwork to defend the CIA whenever the Kennedy assassination is mentioned would bother to buy a copy of Vince Bugliosi’s book. The few people I have encountered who don’t think there was a conspiracy are the ones who read nothing on the case. The only people who seem to believe Bugliosi’s book is valuable, however, all seem to be linked to the intelligence community.
    - Ed J on October 24, 2007 at 6:25 am
      
      You accuse me of “reading nothing on the case”. I’ve read a few of the conspiracy books and parts of others. Have you read this book you say is not “valuable”? It runs about 2,500 pages, including the endnotes, and I’m sure you’d find much of interest there.
      
      As to my being “linked to the intelligence community”, please call them and find out where my checks are. Their accounting department seems to have lost my address.
      - Real History Lisa on October 24, 2007 at 3:31 pm
        
        I have read a lot of Bugliosi’s book now, and it’s just horrid. He calls people names in the most childish fashion. He dismisses Newman’s excellent book Oswald and the CIA in such a way that I doubt he even read the book.
        
        Worse – the book’s chapters are written in different voices. Either Vince has become a bit schizoid or he had help writing the book. He vigorously denies the latter, but then, he WOULD if that were true, so that denial proves nothing.
        
        It’s a book of serious ommission. But I’m not surprised you possess a copy.
      - Real History Lisa on October 24, 2007 at 3:34 pm
        
        Btw – for just some of the NUMEROUS errors in Bugliosi’s book, check out the articles at this site: http://www.reclaiminghistory.org/
      - Ed J on October 24, 2007 at 8:21 pm
        
        Are you serious? Bugliosi goes into meticulous detail about every aspect of the assassination.
        
        It’s the endless stream of conspiracy buffs who choose to omit that which makes them uncomfortable. They never deign to say how the assassination actually happened, being content just to say it didn’t happen the way the Warren Commission said it happened. This is intellectually dishonest in the extreme. Give me another plausible gunman from another plausible location.
        
        As to the website inspired by your fear of Bugliosi, I’m familiar with it. More useless nitpicking and not a fact in site. I’ll repeat a question here that I (as usual) couldn’t get answered over there. When one of the most monumental crimes in the history of the world had just been committed at his workplace, why did Oswald decide to go to the MOVIES?
        
        Can a rational person believe it was for any other reason than to escape capture for the two murders he had just committed?
      - BooMan on October 24, 2007 at 8:54 pm
        
        you’re right. Most murderers immediately go home change their shirt and go straight to the movies.
        
        Let me ask you an equally simple question.
        
        Why did someone impersonate Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico City two months before the assassination? Why did the CIA and the FBI destroy the photographic and audio evidence that the man was not Oswald. Why did someone erase the audio evidence of Hoover telling LBJ on the 23rd that the man was not Oswald?
        
        When you can answer that question then I’ll start worrying about answering yours.
      - Real History Lisa on October 25, 2007 at 12:25 am
        
        Great response, Booman.
        
        I would also note that it’s a well-known spook tactic to wait until a thread has ‘disappeared’ but not closed before responding, in an attempt to have the last word, to end with the voice of doubt. Ed is often late to these threads, but does wait until the thread is nearly gone before responding. Interesting.
      - Ed J on October 25, 2007 at 4:55 pm
        
        I post when I can. Working three jobs leaves limited opportunity.
      - BooMan on October 25, 2007 at 5:06 pm
        
        the problem is that you are engaging in a good faith debate.
        
        The core issue I am raising is that someone was impersonating Oswald…seemingly setting him up to be working with the Cubans and/or the Soviets.
        
        Until you come up with a theory to explain that, it does no good to say that the shooter was Oswald and only Oswald. Something more was going on. The issue is not so much whether Oswald was a shooter or the only shooter. More important is whether he was acting alone, whether he was really working with the Soviets, or the Cubans, or even the anti-Castro crowd.
        
        I’d be more inclined to discuss the scene in Dealey Plaza if I thought you were open-minded and acting in good faith.
      - Real History Lisa on October 28, 2007 at 3:56 am
        
        It’s called years of experience in this field.
        
        When I used to participate in the alt.conspiracy.jfk newsgroup, I was less and less surprised after each new conspiracy denier ended up having ties to the intelligence community.
        
        Are you claiming to be the exception that proves the rule? 😉
      - Real History Lisa on October 25, 2007 at 12:23 am
        
        Just one error of many, as an example.
        
        Bugliosi cites Courtlandt Cunningham’s testimony as “proof” that Oswald could have had a false negative for nitrate. When one fires a rifle, a little nitrate ends up on the cheek when the gun fired, especially when fired three times, as Oswald supposedly did. Until the Kennedy assassination, while false positives were common, false negatives were unheard of.
        
        Until Cunningham. He conducted tests and assured the Warren Commission he was able to replicate a false negative, and Bugliosi cites that, without really examining exactly what Cunningham said, which was this:
        
        We cleaned off the rifle again with dilute HCl. I loaded it for him. He held it in one of the cleaned areas and I pushed the clip in so he would not have to get his hands near the chamber–in other words, so he wouldn’t pick up residues, from it, or from the action, or from the receiver. When we ran the casts, we got no reaction on either hand or on his cheek. On the controls, when he hadn’t fired a gun all day, we got numerous reactions. [Source: Warren Commission Hearings, Volume III p. 494]
        
        What Cunningham says is that, with one person CLEANING THE RIFLE FOR A SECOND PERSON between shots, he got a false negative. In other words, only in a CONSPIRACY scenario could Oswald have had a false negative.
        
        Case closed. Bugliosi is either a bad researcher or a liar. It matters not which it is. He’s simply inaccurate, and his book is replete with such examples.
  - Ed J on October 24, 2007 at 6:11 am
    
    I don’t believe there was any conspiracy, AND I want all the information released – every single shred. The CIA (and most of our federal government) is it’s own worst enemy, often hiding things for the sake of hiding them.
    
    Let’s get it all out.
    - BooMan on October 24, 2007 at 3:54 pm
      
      Your assertion that there was no conspiracy is just incomprehensible to me.
      
      You know, we’ve learned a few things over the last 15 years. Such as…
      
      No less an authority than J. Edgar Hoover advised Lyndon Johnson of this by telephone on the morning of November 23: “We have up here the tape and the photograph of the man who was at the Soviet embassy, using Oswald’s name. That picture and the tape do not correspond to this man’s voice, nor to his appearance.”[89] Audio tapes for these LBJ phone calls have been preserved at the LBJ Library. However nothing of this conversation can be heard on the relevant tape; it would appear to have been erased.[90]
      
      Hoover’s reasons for saying this were laid out in a Letterhead Memorandum sent out on the same day to the President and to the Secret Service:
      
      The Central Intelligence Agency advised that on October 1, 1963, an extremely sensitive source had reported that an individual identified himself as Lee Oswald, who contacted the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City inquiring as to any messages. Special Agents of this Bureau, who have conversed with Oswald in Dallas, Texas, have observed photographs of the individual referred to above and have listened to a recording of his voice. These Special Agents are of the opinion that the above-referred-to individual was not Lee Harvey Oswald.”[91]
      
      Other FBI cables and memoranda confirm that the tape was indeed flown up on a US Navy plane from Mexico City to Dallas, where FBI agents confirmed the voice was not Oswald’s.
      
      John Newman has shown in detail how this initial candor was obfuscated by subsequent clumsy attempts by the Mexico City CIA to assert, falsely, that the tape, and others like it, had been erased.[92] By noon EST November 23, the Mexico City CIA Station had cabled headquarters to say that “Station unable compare voice as first tape erased prior receipt second call” (on October 1).[93] This false claim was soon abandoned. A headquarters memo reports that by 7 AM EST November 24, headquarters knew that the first tape had been reviewed, and the voice found to be identical with that in the other intercepts.[94] Ann Goodpasture, who handled the intercepts in the Mexico City CIA station, has confirmed that she herself commented on an internal document that the voices on the first and other intercepts had been compared (by “Feinglass,” [Tarasoff] the responsible translator) before the assassination.[95]
      
      Later on the same critical day of November 23, the CIA reverted to a second false cover story: that all the Oswald intercept tapes had been erased by that time, not just the first. The FBI notified its Dallas office that evening that “With regard to the tapes [deletion] referred to herein, CIA has advised that these tapes have been erased and are not available for review.”[96] This crucial lie (concealing the existence of evidence which could have led to a conspirator in the assassination) was repeated the next day in a cable from CIA Mexico City to headquarters: “HQ has full transcripts all pertinent calls. Regret complete recheck shows tapes for this period already erased.”[97]
      
      However contemporary CIA documents suggest that comparisons of the voices on the tapes had been made, including tapes only listened to after November 22.[98]
- BooMan on October 23, 2007 at 10:41 pm
  
  Btw- you can read the transcript of the phone call Hoover made to LBJ on Novemeber 23rd here. He is very clear that the man in Mexico was not Oswald. And the actual tape was intentionally erased.
  
  Meanwhile, LBJ called everyone and their brother when he was setting up the Warren Commission and told them that if the country ever saw what he had seen they would demand war with the Soviets and 100 million people would get killed. He made it obvious that their mission was to calm the nation and make damn sure no one got into their head that either right-wingers or communists were behind the plot. It had to be Oswald, and Oswald alone. It’s all in the tapes, most of which are not erased.
  
  So…the conclusions of the Warren Commission were completely foreordained. Despite that, many of the commissioners are on the record as saying that they didn’t believe Oswald acted alone.
  
  The Dictabelt controversy remains in dispute, but the weight of the evidence still sides with multiple shooters.
  
  And here we have the guy that supposed to facilitate document acquisition for the Congressional investigators turning out to be a prime suspect.
  
  G. Robert Blakey’s 2003 Addendum to 1993 Frontline Interview
  
  [ed. note: G. Robert Blakey was Chief Counsel to the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Based on new information uncovered by journalist Jefferson Morley (see Morley’s essay on the History Matters website), Blakey issued this scathing attack on CIA obstruction of the HSCA inquiry.]
  
  I am no longer confident that the Central Intelligence Agency co-operated with the committee. My reasons follow.
  The committee focused, among other things, on (1) Oswald, (2) in New Orleans, (3) in the months before he went to Dallas, in particular (4) his attempt to infiltrate an anti-Castro group, the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil or DRE.
  
  These were crucial issues in the Warren Commission’s investigation; they were crucial issues in the committee’s investigation. The Agency knew it full well in 1964; the Agency knew it full well in 1976-79. Outrageously, the Agency did not tell the Warren Commission or our committee that it had financial and other connections with the DRE, a group that Oswald had direct dealings with.
  
  What contemporaneous reporting is or was in the Agency’s DRE files? We will never know, for the Agency now says that no reporting is in the existing files. Are we to believe that its files were silent in 1964 or during our investigation?
  
  I don’t believe it for a minute. Money was involved; it had to be documented. Period. End of story. The files and the Agency agents connected to the DRE should have been made available to the commission and the committee. That the information in the files and the agents who could have supplemented it were not made available to the commission and the committee amounts to wilful obstruction of justice.
  
  Obviously, too, it did not identify the agent who was its contact with the DRE at the crucial point that Oswald was in contact with a George Joannides.
  
  During the relevant period, the committee’s chief contact with the Agency on a day-to-day basis was Scott Breckenridge. (I put aside our contact with the office of chief counsel, Lyle Miller).
  
  We sent researchers to the Agency to request and read documents. The relationship between our young researchers, law students who came with me from Cornell, was anything but “happy.” Nevertheless, we were getting and reviewing documents. Breckenridge, however, suggested that he create a new point of contact who might “facilitate” the process of obtaining and reviewing materials. He introduced me to Joannides, who, he said, he had arranged to bring out of retirement to help us. He told me that he had experience in finding documents; he thought he would be helpful to us.
  
  I was not told of Joannides background with the DRE, a focal point of the investigation. Had I known who he was, he would have been a witness who would have been interrogated under oath by the staff or by the committee. He would never have been acceptable as a point of contact with us to retrieve documents. In fact, I have now learned, as I note above, that Joannides was the point of contact between the Agency and DRE during the period Oswald was in contact with DRE.
  
  That the Agency would put a “material witness” in as a “filter” between the committee and its quests for documents was a flat out breach of the understanding the committee had with the Agency that it would co-operate with the investigation.
  
  The committee’s researchers immediately complained to me that Joannides was, in fact, not facilitating but obstructing our obtaining of documents. I contacted Breckenridge and Joannides. Their side of the story wrote off the complaints to the young age and attitude of the people.
  
  They were certainly right about one question: the committee’s researchers did not trust the Agency. Indeed, that is precisely why they were in their positions. We wanted to test the Agency’s integrity. I wrote off the complaints. I was wrong; the researchers were right. I now believe the process lacked integrity precisely because of Joannides.
  
  For these reasons, I no longer believe that we were able to conduct an appropriate investigation of the Agency and its relationship to Oswald. Anything that the Agency told us that incriminated, in some fashion, the Agency, may well be reliable as far as it goes, but the truth could well be that it materially understated the matter.
  
  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 any point, you may reject all of his testimony.
  
  I now no longer believe anything the Agency told the committee any further than I can obtain substantial corroboration for it from outside the Agency for its veracity. We now know that the Agency withheld from the Warren Commission the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro. Had the commission known of the plots, it would have followed a different path in its investigation. The Agency unilaterally deprived the commission of a chance to obtain the full truth, which will now never be known.
  
  Significantly, The Warren commission’s conclusion that the agencies of the government had cooperated with it is, in retrospect, not the truth.
  
  We also now know that the Agency set up a process that could only have been designed to frustrate the ability of the committee in 1976-79 to obtain any information that might adversely affect the Agency.
  
  Many have told me that the culture of the Agency is one of prevarication and dissimulation and that you cannot trust it or its people. Period. End of story.
  
  I am now in that camp.
  - Real History Lisa on October 24, 2007 at 2:30 am
    
    And that from the guy who said he had worked with the CIA for years, and they would never lie to him. Yes, Blakey is angry now. However, he still cannot connect the dots. Why would the CIA lie about something like that unless they had something to protect?
donmyers on October 26, 2007 at 3:41 am

I know I’m very late in posting this but similarity between now and the period following Vietnam is amazing. We’ve got to get the CIA under our control or they will take us to our demise through a nuclear event. Dismantle the agency completely. The intent of the CIA is to provide information that will improve our security not lead us to oblivion. Maybe it needs to be reborn every half century but we could implode especially when the people elect a deceitful and corrupt executive as we have in this era.

The CIA is suppressing history

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