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Helms hiding his role in managing the DRE - and the agency's role in helping him hide it - is still outrageous and incriminating to me... Hence, my letter below to USA Today reporter Ed Brackett: Ed – Thank you for covering the Joannides court case regarding the JFK files recently. It’s really appreciated by someone like me who’s had an interest in the JFK case for years when someone from a mainstream media outlet covers this ongoing story. Maybe you’re already aware of this, but Richard Helms, the CIA’s Deputy Director of Plans at the time, was personally overseeing Joannides’ running of the DRE. This internal CIA memo are notes from a secret meeting Helms had with the leadership of the DRE in November 1962, a year before the assassination: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=18923#relPageId=1&tab=page In the memo, Helms mentions he will be hiring a new case officer for the group that would report directly to him. That new case officer would be Joannides. One year later the assassination occurs and Oswald is taken into custody. The DRE immediately contacts Joannides who say they interacted with the suspect in New Orleans over the summer and have newspaper, radio and TV coverage showing Oswald as pro-Castro. Joannides tells the group to wait for word from Washington on what to do. Apparently the group’s leaders waited one hour and then went ahead and contacted media. One would have to assume Joannides was trying to contact his direct report regarding the DRE, Richard Helms. But whether he was able to get a hold of Helms or not, Helms, like the rest of the country, would’ve seen video of Oswald interacting with the DRE chapter in New Orleans on national TV that evening. He would’ve seen the newspaper coverage the next day that described Oswald’s antics with the DRE that summer. So let’s pretend for a minute you’re Richard Helms in this situation. Your second-in-command of the CIA (and some would say ostensibly running the agency with the departure of Allen Dulles in 1961), and have learned that the accused assassin somehow crossed paths with the anti-Castro group you manage and you know is funded and guided by the agency. In fact, if the CIA didn’t form and fund the DRE, there would not have been coverage of Oswald’s pro-Castro ways for the media to report on following the assassination simply because, as the DRE leaders say in the meeting memo above, the group would not exist without CIA funding. Does Helms tell any federal authority about the CIA’s sponsorship of the DRE in the aftermath of the assassination? He doesn’t. He doesn’t tell the Warren Commission as the CIA’s liaison. He doesn’t tell the HSCA in the 70s. Instead, Congressional investigators are told the CIA cut-off all contact with the group by 1963. Helms also doesn’t alert anyone to Joannides’ role in managing the group and reporting to him when Joannides serves as the agency’s liaison to the HSCA. That is obstruction on its face. Helms never spoke about his oversight of the DRE to anyone the rest of his life as far as I know (although Jefferson Morley tried before Helms died in 2002). The CIA has never explained why he withheld that knowledge from successive investigations. And Helms perjured himself during his HSCA testimony in 1979 with this exchange: MR DODD: Are there other things that you can recall that might have had relevancy–things of importance, to the Warren Commission’s investigation of the assassination of an American President. Mr. HELMS – Well, I don’t know of any others. I can’t think of what they might have been, but then we might have been guilty of some other errors of omission, I don’t know. None come readily to mind. This didn’t come readily to mind at the time. If Richard Helms were alive today, the questions would be many, including: Why did you keep your oversight of the DRE and the agency’s sponsorship role a secret from investigative bodies? Did you know about Oswald’s antics in New Orleans through Joannides’ reports on the DRE prior to the assassination? In your meeting with DRE leadership in 1962, you asked that they alert you to any further TV coverage of the group. Were you alerted about their TV coverage in New Orleans with Oswald? How did you miss a press release by the New Orleans chapter of the CIA-funded group calling for a Congressional investigation into Oswald three months before the assassination? Did you know Joannides maintained a residence in New Orleans during the time Oswald was there? Everyone knows there was a lot of animosity by the DRE and other anti-Castro groups against JFK regarding Cuba in 1963. Wouldn’t it be logical to assume the CIA would have reams of info on what these groups discussed, who hated JFK the most, what role they might’ve played in the assassination, etc.? Why didn’t you help investigators with this information? But for me, the implications can be summed up simply by paraphrasing the old line from “Casablanca”: Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, how did the alleged assassin of the president walk into the CIA's? Thanks again for the story and thanks for listening.

As a part-time student of the assassination, I compared the sworn testimony of CIA officers to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) from the ‘70s with what is known today from the document releases of the past two decades. I found the most interesting disparity between what former CIA chief Richard Helms told the HSCA compared to the known facts today. For simplicity's sake, you can compare Helms' testimony to the 2014 open letter from Robert Blakey, Chief Counsel of the HSCA, detailing the CIA’s subterfuge around agency case officer George Joannides and the Cuban student group DRE: http://aarclibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/robert_blakey_aarc_9_26_letter.pdf[aarclibrary.org The known facts in Blakey’s letter directly contradict this statement from Helms to HSCA investigators on September 25, 1978: MR DODD: Are there other things that you can recall that might have had relevancy–things of importance, to the Warren Commission’s investigation of the assassination of an American President. Mr. HELMS – Well, I don’t know of any others. I can’t think of what they might have been, but then we might have been guilty of some other errors of omission, I don’t know. None come readily to mind. This didn’t come readily to mind at the time. [source: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/jfkinfo2/jfk4/hscahelm.htm[mcadams.posc.mu.edu] To summarize the timeline: December 1962 - Helms appoints agency case officer George Joannides to run the DRE and have Joannides report personally to him. August 1963 – Lee Harvey Oswald has several run-ins with the New Orleans chapter of the DRE that are publicized in the local news. The DRE chapter even writes a press release denouncing Oswald and asking for a Congressional investigation of the ex-Marine: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/images/dre_press.gif[mcadams.posc.mu.edu] Nov. 22, 1963 – Broadcast video of Oswald handing out pro-Castro leaflets in New Orleans is delivered to Congressional representatives and media in Washington DC by a fervent anti-communist based in New Orleans named Ed Butler, who had also participated in a radio interview with Oswald and a DRE representative in August 1963. Butler actually arrived with the video in DC before the president’s body did from Dallas. DRE officials also contacted media and reported on Oswald’s pro-Castro activities the day of the assassination with the tacit permission of the CIA. 1964 - Serving as the CIA’s liaison to the Warren Commission, Helms does not tell the WC anything about the CIA’s founding and continued funding and guidance of the DRE, or his appointment of George Joannides to run the group. 1977 – George Joannides is appointed as the CIA’s liaison to Congress and HSCA investigators, never revealing his role as the case officer to the DRE during 1963 and, as Blakey notes, lying directly to investigators and slowing the process of producing documents. 1978 – Helms makes his above statement to the HSCA. As Blakey writes, the CIA at the time still maintained that the agency had no contact with the DRE in ’63. Not sure if anyone else has delved into comparing the known facts with CIA testimony. Also, I would love to know if anyone has a link to the primary doc that shows Helms' appointment of Joannides. Thanks.

Good Day.... FYI.... http://www.courthousenews.com/2016/01/25/conspiracy-theorist-entitled-to-foia-fees.htm <QUOTE> Courthouse News Service Conspiracy Theorist Entitled to FOIA Fees By JACK BOUBOUSHIAN (CN) - A reporter who fought the CIA for over 10 years to force it to release documents related to the Kennedy assassination is entitled to attorney's fees even if the records reveal little new information, the D.C. Circuit ruled. Former Washington Post reporter Jefferson Morley has spent years investigating a potential link between a deceased CIA officer and accused Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. Morley asked for records on George Joannides, the chief of psychological warfare operations in the CIA's Miami station at the time of the assassination. On the his website jfkfacts.com, Morley writes that Joannides controlled the Revolutionary Cuban Student Directorate, also known as the DRE, "one of the largest and most effective anti-Castro groups in the United States." He claims Joannides gave the group up to $25,000 a month and insisted the members "submit to CIA discipline." Members of the Directorate had an allegedly contentious relationship with Oswald, an ex-Marine who idolized Castro. They confronted Oswald on a street corner, "stared him down in a courtroom," challenged him to a radio debate and called on Congress to investigate him, Morley claims. Unsure of what to make of Joannides-DRE-Oswald connection, Morley asked for Joannides' personnel file. He says the CIA gave him 150 pages of "heavily redacted and obviously incomplete records." The CIA claimed it withheld information on privacy grounds or because it couldn't find the requested files. But in 2007, the D.C. Circuit ordered the CIA to look again. "Despite its burden to show that withholding is necessary, the CIA has failed even to articulate the privacy interests in the records, let alone demonstrate that such privacy interests meet the standard for an agency's withholding" under the exemption, the court wrote. The agency has to show that disclosure would constitute a "clearly unwarranted" invasion of personal privacy. The CIA eventually turned over several hundred documents, including travel records and a photograph, the value of which is "at best unclear," the D.C. Circuit said Friday. According to Morley, the records revealed that Joannides received a Career Intelligence Medal just two years after "stonewalling congressional investigators about what he knew of contacts in 1963 between accused assassin Lee Oswald and CIA-funded anti-Castro exiles in New Orleans." Morley sought attorney's fees as the prevailing party in the litigation, but a federal judge denied him, finding that Morley's efforts "yield little, if any, public benefit." On appeal, the D.C. Circuit agreed that "the released documents appear to reveal little, if anything, about President Kennedy's assassination." However, it said the court's job was not to evaluate the public value of the information received, but the potential value of what documents Morley sought. "Morley's request had potential public value. He has proffered - and the CIA has not disputed - that Joannides served as the CIA case officer for a Cuban group, the DRE, with whose officers Oswald was in contact prior to the assassination. Travel records showing a very close match between Joannides's and Oswald's times in New Orleans might, for example, have (marginally) supported one of the hypotheses swirling around the assassination,"U.S. Circuit Judge Stephen Williams said, writing for the three-judge panel. It was therefore plausible that Morley's documents request could have generated useful new information on Kennedy's assassination, "an event with few rivals in national trauma in the array of passionately held conflicting explanations," Williams said. DOCUMENT: http://www.courthousenews.com/2016/01/25/kennedy.pdf <END QUOTE> Best Regards in Research, + ++Don Donald Roberdeau United States Navy U.S.S. John F. Kennedy, CV-67, plank walker Sooner, or later, The Truth emerges clearly For your key considerations + independent determinations.... Homepages Website: "Men of Courage": President Kennedy-elimination Evidence, Witnesses, Photographers, Outstanding Researchers Discoveries, Suspects, + Key Considerations.... http://droberdeau.blogspot.com/2009/08/1-men-of-courage-jfk-assassination_09.html The Dealey Plaza Detailed Map: Documented 11-22-63 Victims Precise Locations + Reactions, Evidence, Witnesses Locations, Photographers, Suspected Bullet Trajectories, Outstanding Researchers Discoveries, + Important Information + Key Considerations, in One Convenient Resource.... http://i.imgur.com/rGmmWxD.gif ( updated map, + new information ) Visual Report: The First Bullet Impact Into President Kennedy: While JFK was Still Hidden Under the 'magic-limbed-ricochet-tree'.... http://i.imgur.com/rfRH5jX.gif Visual Report: Reality Versus C.A.D.: the Real World, Versus, 'garbage-in-garbage-out'.... http://i.imgur.com/r8Ga26x.gif Discovery: Very Close JFK Assassination Witness Rosemary Willis's Zapruder Film Documented 2nd Head Snap: West, Ultrafast, and Directly Towards the Grassy Knoll .... http://droberdeau.blogspot.com/2011/01/discovery-close-jfk-assassination.html T ogether E veryone A chieves M ore For the United States: http://www.dhs.gov