The Kennedy assassination has haunted the American psyche for over six decades, shrouded in a fog of official denials, half-truths, and outright lies. Now, with the release of a new batch of declassified documents, that fog is finally beginning to lift—and what’s emerging is nothing short of explosive.
“For the first time since President Kennedy's assassination nearly 62 years ago, the CIA has tacitly admitted that an officer specializing in psychological warfare ran an operation that came into contact with Lee Harvey Oswald before the Dallas killing,” reports Axios.
Why it matters: The disclosure Thursday — nestled in a batch of 40 documents concerning officer George Joannides — indicates the CIA lied for decades about his role in the Kennedy case before and after the assassination, according to experts on JFK's slaying.
The linchpin document: A Jan. 17, 1963, CIA memo showing Joannides was directed to have an alias and fake driver's license bearing the name "Howard Gebler."
Until Thursday, the agency had denied that Joannides was known as "Howard," the case officer name for the CIA contact who worked with activists from an anti-communist group opposed to Cuban dictator Fidel Castro called the Cuban Student Directorate.
For decades, the agency also falsely said it had nothing to do with the student group, which was instrumental in having Oswald's pro-Castro stances published soon after the shooting.
Let’s be clear: the new evidence doesn’t show that Joannides or the CIA ordered a hit on Kennedy. But it does reveal a level of incompetence and subsequent cover-up that’s breathtaking even by Washington standards. The CIA was warned repeatedly about Oswald. They had every reason to know he was a dangerous, unstable man with deep communist ties and a penchant for violence. They watched him, they interacted with him, and then they utterly failed to connect the dots. After the fact, they did what bureaucracies always do—they circled the wagons and buried the truth.
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The intrigue doesn’t end with the assassination itself. After Kennedy was killed, Joannides was appointed as the CIA’s liaison to the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Instead of coming clean, he and the Agency stonewalled investigators, slow-walked the release of records, and outright lied about his involvement.
The committee’s chief counsel was told there was no “Howard” and no CIA connection to the Cuban Student Directorate. That was a bald-faced lie, and the agency knew it. For his efforts in deceiving Congress and the American people, Joannides was later awarded the CIA’s Career Intelligence Medal. That’s how the swamp rewards its own.
The new documents don’t answer every question, and they probably never will. But they do confirm what many of us have suspected all along: the CIA had Oswald in its sights, failed to act, and then spent decades covering its tracks. The Kennedy assassination may never be fully solved, but with each new revelation, the myth of government innocence crumbles further. The American people deserve the truth—no matter how damning it may be.
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