George Joannides

[John Simkin]

This statement by G. Robert Blakey made in 2003 is very interesting:

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, and, 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 willful obstruction of justice.

Obviously, too, it did not identify the agent who was its contact with the DRE at the crucial time that Oswald was in contact with it: George Joannides.

During the relevant period, the committee's chief contact with the Agency on a day-to-day basis was Scott Breckinridge. (I put aside our point of 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. Breckinridge, however, suggested that he create a new point of contact person 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 of help 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 Breckinridge 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 understates 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 one 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 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.

[John Simkin]

Lesar has been busy too, as a District Court Judge recently dismissed the Morley vs. CIA suit.

Now it's our move.

BK

I assume this was the case about George Joannides. What possible steps can now be taken?

[William Kelly]

Lesar has been busy too, as a District Court Judge recently dismissed the Morley vs. CIA suit.

Now it's our move.

BK

I assume this was the case about George Joannides. What possible steps can now be taken?

Yes, Rex Bradford has posted the Judge's ruling at Mary Ferrell's web site for those who want to read it.

Perhaps a lawyer can translate it.

The part that I understand is that the Judge ruled the CIA, especially the director, has the authority to with-hold records that compromise sources and procedures and that takes precidence over the public's right to know.

Lesar, in a note today, said that the Judge made some mistakes in his ruling that allow for an appeal and that an appeal will be made.

Since it took two years for the case to get this far, he is not waiting for the appeals however, and additional moves will be made, possibly in Congress.

With John Judge as Special Projects Coordinator for Cynthia McKinney, we were going to have her sponsor a Congressional Briefing on Agency Compliance (or Non-compliance) with the JFK Act, similar to the briefing they put together on 9/11, which was carried by C-SPAN and well received.

The Congressional Briefing could lead to full fledged Congressional Hearings on the JFK Act Compliance, as part of the consideration of the MLK Act. It would possibly include the testimony of Lesar, Dan Alcorn, John Newman, PDScott.

A Congressional Hearing would include Judge Tunheim, and the heads of the agencies that destroyed records (SS) or refuse to release them despite the law (CIA).

While Lesar appeals the Morley case, the elections in November will determine the make up of the next Congress, which could be controlled by the Democrats and include more open and progressive members who will support our measures.

Unfortunately, Cynthia McKinney, the one member most sympathetic to our issues, will no longer be there, so we have to find another sponsor for the MLK ACT that must be reintroduced, and a new sponsor for the Congressional Briefing on the Compliance with the JFK Act.

The full fledged hearing on the JFK Act will have to be requested and supported by Rep. John Conyers (D. Mich.), the HSCA chairman and sponsor of the JFK Act, and Spector in the Senate. It will probably be held by the Government Affairs Committee, sometime in 2007.

Both the Congressional Briefing and Hearings would address the issues of the CIA records on Joannidies, as well as other cases of non-compliance with the JFK Act.

The purpose of the briefing and hearings will be to place the incidents of destruction of records and non-compliance with the JFK Act on the record, beyond the ARRB Final Report, and hopefully spark some indignation and disgust in the American people so that they will provide the popular support necessary to enforce the JFK Act and strengthen the FOIA.

Now that's the strategy as I see it. How it plays out is yet to be seen.

Bill Kelly

[John Simkin]

You can read the judge's ruling here:

http://www.aarclibrary.org/notices/Leon_Ju...t_73-092906.pdf

[William Kelly]

You can read the judge's ruling here:

http://www.aarclibrary.org/notices/Leon_Ju...t_73-092906.pdf

I am interested in reading any news articles or reports, especially in the mainstream media, that mention this court case, if anyone comes across any.

Thanks,

Bill Kelly

bkjfk3@yahoo.com

[John Simkin]

http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/...cords_Dismissed

Oct 2, 2006: Jefferson Morley's lawsuit to obtain CIA records of officer George Joannides was dismissed last Friday by Judge Richard Leon (see judge's opinion). Joannides was the former chief of anti-Castro psychological warfare operations in Miami in 1963, which included oversight of the DRE, the Cuban exile group whose members knew Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans. For background on the Joannides story, see our Unredacted interview with journalist Jeff Morley (pictured at left) and AARC President Jim Lesar.

Judge Leon upheld the CIA's right to block disclosure of records about Joannides's operational activities in August 1963. That's when Joannides' agents in a Cuban exile student group had a series of encounters with accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and used U.S. government funds to call attention to his pro-Castro activities.

At the time, CIA records show that Joannides was guiding and monitoring the Cuban Student Directorate and providing it with up to $25,000 a month. When JFK investigators later questioned Joannides about his knowledge of Oswald and the events of 1963, he stonewalled. In fact, the CIA had placed him in a position as liaison with the House Select Committee on Assassinations, without informing them of Joannides' prior role. When G. Robert Blakey, the House Committee's Chief Counsel, learned of this recently, he wrote a scathing response which begins: "I am no longer confident that the Central Intelligence Agency co-operated with the committee."

The dismissal of the Morley lawsuit shows that, with the demise of the Assassination Records Review Board, there is a problematic lack of enforcement of the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act.

Retrieved from "http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/News_Archive_-_Oct_2006"

[Jim Root]

John

43 years later and we find that the "official rules" that the US Government plays by still protects the details of the activities of the interesting characters that are cast within the assassination story. The records necessarry to fully understand the events of the assassination are locked up tight behind a vail of secrecy that even the courts and congress seem unable to break open.

While we may ask, "How is this possible?" I will suggest that we take a different approach. Is it possible to connect the person who wrote the rules of the game and ask, "Can that person be implicated in the assassination and coverup?" My research seems to indicate that the undoing of the person who may have orchestrated the assassination may not have been the fact that he left some stone unturned but rather that he and perhaps he alone may have had the ability to know exactly where to bury the stones that could point to the consipators. And when some gem would turn up in the future this person would have known that the government would still be legally required to leave them burried behind the rules because he would have been the person that wrote them.

A closer look at John J. McCloy will show that he not only developed the rules that created such organizations as the CIA but he positioned himself to direct the Warren Commission's investigation of the assassination as well. Was he the fox that was guarding the hen house on November 22, 1963? I believe that this possibility exists and that a closer investigation into the "real" John J. McCloy and his history, his motives and his activities in the days, months and years that lead up to the assassination are the real key to unlocking the doors that protect the secretes of the death of a President.

Jim Root

[Robert Howard]

John

43 years later and we find that the "official rules" that the US Government plays by still protects the details of the activities of the interesting characters that are cast within the assassination story. The records necessarry to fully understand the events of the assassination are locked up tight behind a vail of secrecy that even the courts and congress seem unable to break open.

While we may ask, "How is this possible?" I will suggest that we take a different approach. Is it possible to connect the person who wrote the rules of the game and ask, "Can that person be implicated in the assassination and coverup?" My research seems to indicate that the undoing of the person who may have orchestrated the assassination may not have been the fact that he left some stone unturned but rather that he and perhaps he alone may have had the ability to know exactly where to bury the stones that could point to the consipators. And when some gem would turn up in the future this person would have known that the government would still be legally required to leave them burried behind the rules because he would have been the person that wrote them.

A closer look at John J. McCloy will show that he not only developed the rules that created such organizations as the CIA but he positioned himself to direct the Warren Commission's investigation of the assassination as well. Was he the fox that was guarding the hen house on November 22, 1963? I believe that this possibility exists and that a closer investigation into the "real" John J. McCloy and his history, his motives and his activities in the days, months and years that lead up to the assassination are the real key to unlocking the doors that protect the secretes of the death of a President.

Jim Root

From the FWIW Department, out of the hundreds of JFK Assassination related articled I have read, one recently had a section that showed a graphic of the attendance of the heads of the Commission...While I can't remember the details, I was scandalized [somewhat] at how little Earl Warren actually invested time wise in the workings of the Commission, I just remember the author stated the name of the Commission would have more accurate if it had been called the McCloy Commission, [that comment may have been predicated more on McCloy's control over the Commission rather than his attendance record.] McCloy was one of the first American political figures to have a geopolitical worldview, [he was responsible for the detention of Japanese/American's after Pearl Harbor, and was in the forefront of practically every major event in American history in his time; one of the Seven Wise Men] I believe he left the LBJ Administration to head the World Bank in 1967. Jim have you heard about the new book, I think it's called "The Killer's of Admiral Darlan.?"

Edited November 1, 2006 by Robert Howard

[Steve Thomas]

This statement by G. Robert Blakey made in 2003 is very interesting:

I was not told of Joannides' background with the DRE, a focal point of the investigation.

Jefferson Morley

“Miami Daily News” 4-12-01

http://hometown.aol.com/DRoberdeau/JFK/REVELATION1963.html

And on October 9, DRE propaganda chief Salvat made a six-day trip to Dallas, though he remembers he didn't inform Joannides of the mission. The purpose, he recalls during an interview at his family's Calle Ocho bookstore, Libreria & Distribuidora Universal, was to bolster the DRE chapter there, raise funds among local exile supporters, and buy weapons. As first revealed in Oswald Talked, a 1996 book by Dallas journalists Ray and Mary La Fontaine, Salvat's trip later came to the attention of the FBI. According to FBI interviews with two of his friends in the DRE military section, Salvat arranged a series of meetings in Dallas with a gun dealer of fervent right-wing views named John Thomas Masen. That name would be of interest to the FBI after the assassination, when the bureau learned that Masen was one of only two people in the Dallas area who sold the type of Mannlicher-Carcano bullets that had killed Kennedy. Salvat says he has no recollection of Masen's name but reports that he relied on the CIA for the names of weapons suppliers. His own notes show he returned to Miami on October 15, 1963.

He gives a talk to a meeting of the DRE at the First Federal Savings and Loan. Gen. Walker attends and contributes $5.00. Oswald is said to have attended.

Mary Ferrell’s Chronologies p. 195.

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do

I wonder if it was Joannides who gave Salvat Masen's name, and why would he go all the way from Miami to Dallas Texas to buy guns.

Steve Thomas

[Jim Root]

Robert

The Murder of Admiral Darlan, Peter Tompkins, 1965 is the book I am most aware of that deals with the subject. I would be interested in reading any new books that might become available.

Tompkins was an OSS agent stationed in Rome during WWII and in North Africa previous to that time. To my knowledge he is still alive and living in Europe. I had an email address on him but he never replied to the questions that I asked him concerning persons who surround the assassination of JFK and that he may have been associated with during his OSS days in Italy, etc. Tompkins also worked with James Jesus Angelton after the war (Berlin) I believe. His book outlines a great deal of information about the inner workings of the competing French intelligence services during and after the war. An interesting read for many reasons including its date of publication and certain associations that my research suggests that Tompkins would have had with some of the potential conspirators (including McCloy and Taylor) that my research points toward.

I agree that the Warren Commission should have been actually named the McCloy Commission but then we would all have looked at this "public" person much more closely years ago.

Are you familiar with the Black Tom Case?

Jim Root

[Robert Howard]

Robert

The Murder of Admiral Darlan, Peter Tompkins, 1965 is the book I am most aware of that deals with the subject. I would be interested in reading any new books that might become available.

Tompkins was an OSS agent stationed in Rome during WWII and in North Africa previous to that time. To my knowledge he is still alive and living in Europe. I had an email address on him but he never replied to the questions that I asked him concerning persons who surround the assassination of JFK and that he may have been associated with during his OSS days in Italy, etc. Tompkins also worked with James Jesus Angelton after the war (Berlin) I believe. His book outlines a great deal of information about the inner workings of the competing French intelligence services during and after the war. An interesting read for many reasons including its date of publication and certain associations that my research suggests that Tompkins would have had with some of the potential conspirators (including McCloy and Taylor) that my research points toward.

I agree that the Warren Commission should have been actually named the McCloy Commission but then we would all have looked at this "public" person much more closely years ago.

Are you familiar with the Black Tom Case?

Jim Root

Yes, as I remember it was a terrorist attack before the word was even in vogue, [Ellis Island] and someone associated in some way with the JFK saga 'solved the case?' if I remember accurately, although I do not know who that was. Allen Dulles? Am I in the right ballpark [lol.] You once suggested I read Tompkin's book, and I did peruse it, pretty interesting. Allen Dulles included the story in his "Great True Spy Stories." [ballantine Books - 1968]

I wanted to give you [and other's] an interesting link to "books about counterintelligence"

It comes in pdf format

See

www.orp.doe.gov/oci/maindocs/ci_r_docs/readlist.pdf

If one does not want pdf but want's to read the list go to:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=C...G=Google+Search

and it is the first link; click on view html.

Very astute comments on McCloy, I tend to agree. It is ironic how a "person in government" can be just as important as the President, [in their own mind, anyway.]

[John Simkin]

Shane O'Sullivan’s article also claims that George Joannides was with David Morales, and Gordon Campbell in the Ambassador Hotel on the night of the assassination. Can anyone confirm that this is Joannides?

I have sent this photograph to G. Robert Blakey. He had a lot of contact with Joannides when with the House Select Committee on Assassinations.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1952393,00.html

[John Simkin]

Members might be interested in this document that proves that George Joannides was at JMWAVE at the time of the assassination of JFK.

[Robert Howard]

Members might be interested in this document that proves that George Joannides was at JMWAVE at the time of the assassination of JFK.

Isn't the power of intuition amazing, jolly good show, ole chap!

It should also [perhap's not on this thread, Oh Well] be mentioned that at NARA there are, under the basic search 'MADRID' as in Madrid, Spain as of 11/19/06 there were 297 hit's, many of them [not surprisingly] include JMWAVE and/or related Agency personnel. Did some of 'them, go thataway?'

[Steve Thomas]

Robert,

It should also [perhap's not on this thread, Oh Well] be mentioned that at NARA there are, under the basic search 'MADRID' as in Madrid, Spain as of 11/19/06 there were 297 hit's, many of them [not surprisingly] include JMWAVE and/or related Agency personnel. Did some of 'them, go thataway?'

You might be interested in this document, entitled, "Cuban Exiles Activities in Spain."

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/....do?docId=14253

Last week I got to wondering if Cuban exiles, Jean Souetre of the OAS, and E. Howard Hunt were in Madrid at the same time.

There are several CIA documents about Souetre being in Madrid trying to get CIA backing for a coup against DeGaulle.

Did they meet?

Steve Thomas