Morley to publish “revelatory JFK assassination story”

[Brian Scantland]

Jefferson Morley posted on Twitter:

I've got some news.  I've been reporting on the JFK assassination story for three decades now. Next week, I'll be publishing a revelatory story that penetrates and disrupts the government's 60-year old account of the assassination. The story adds more detail to what I reported in my Dec 2022 "smoking gun" revelation at the National Press Club: the existence of a top-secret CIA psychological warfare operation involving Lee Harvey Oswald from Jan to Nov 1963 that the CIA still conceals via overclassification.

I'll also be conducting an invitation-only press conference next week with select members of the media to provide pre-publication context for why I think this is the most important JFK story I've ever done. If you are interested in participating, DM me, or get in touch via Signal

Edited October 4 by Brian Scantland

[Stu Wexler]

If this tops Jane Roman, Joannides, etc. it has to be pretty big.

[Brian Scantland]

Someone asked this in his Twitter feed. 
 

Morley says it is bigger than each of Jane Roman, Whitten, and Joannides 

[Stu Wexler]

I did. Lol

[Denny Zartman]

Exciting news. I'll be curious to learn more 

[Benjamin Cole]

Thanks for posting. Jefferson Morley is a serious JFKA/RFK1A researcher.

My eyes and ears are the size of saucer plates, in anticipation.

[Calvin Ye]

I am looking forward to this

[Robert Morrow]

7 hours ago, Stu Wexler said:

If this tops Jane Roman, Joannides, etc. it has to be pretty big.

1994: CIA’s Jane Roman said the CIA’s interest in Oswald: “Well, to me, it’s indicative of a keen interest in Oswald, held very closely on the need-to-know basis.”

DATE: 2 November 1994
Participants: Jane Roman, John Newman, Jefferson Morley.
Transcribed by Mary Bose of the Washington Post on 7 November 1994. Corrected by... Jefferson Morley in June 1999. Editors’ notes by Jefferson Morley.

EXCERPT, from page 16:

NEWMAN: Yeah, that’s very interesting. I mean, I find that entirely credible, but extraordinary. And we can get into why I think that’s extraordinary, but for now, I need to ask you some direct questions, quite apart from where this stuff was stored as to whether it’s in the Cuban file or the 201 file.
Jane, you knew that – you read this file just a couple of days before you released this message. So you knew that’s not true. Whether or not you remember it today, you must realize, at least analytically, logically, that you had to know that this sentence here was not correct.

ROMAN: Well, I had, you know, thousands of these things.

NEWMAN: Right, I’m willing to accept whatever your explanation is, but I have to as you this ---

ROMAN: And I wasn’t in on any particular goings-on or hanky-panky as far as the Cuban situation [inaudible]

NEWMAN: Right. So you wouldn’t have--what you’re saying is-- tried to examine it that closely?

ROMAN: Yeah, I mean, this is all routine as far as I was concerned.

NEWMAN: Problem though, here.

ROMAN: Yeah, I mean, I’m signing off on something that I know isn’t true.

NEWMAN: No, maybe. I’m not saying that that is what’s going on. You may not even –

ROMAN: I may have not noticed it or anything. And normally I wouldn't be moving the cable.

NEWMAN: Right.

ROMAN: I mean, higher-ups than me. I’m a desk, division chief.

NEWMAN: Well, and Karamessines signed off on there, and Hood for, excuse me, Wood, for chief of WH, exactly.

ROMAN: Hood.

NEWMAN: Excuse me Wood. Hood. Well, this is a problem though. If what we’re saying is they slipped this one in ---

ROMAN: Maybe they considered it was so run of the mill that I was authorized to sign off on or they put me down to sign off on. Whoever had--heads up this cable put me in to sign off on it.

NEWMAN: It’s not necessarily--you’re not a drafter, huh?

ROMAN: Oh no. I didn’t draft it.

NEWMAN: It’s just going through you, I guess. You’re signing off on a draft, a draft copy, basically.

ROMAN: Well, they’re just disseminating information, and I wouldn’t necessarily remember at that point other information that had come in.

NEWMAN: OK. Certainly not. I mean, I accept that, although if you do get any recollections on this matter, this sentence, that appear strange to you or maybe didn’t register. If you have any more thoughts, we’d sure appreciate hearing from you about it because this is going to become an issue. But I want to ask you another question about it, without regard now, to whether you remembered it at the time, or realized at the time. Let me ask you today, knowing what you know about the agency, what does this tell you about this file, that somebody would write something they knew wasn’t true? And I’m not saying that it would have to be considered sinister. Don’t misunderstand if I don’t say anything, I tell you, you don’t have a need to know. But if I tell you something that I know isn’t true, that’s an action that I’m taking for some reason. But, I guess, what I’m trying to push you to address square on here is, is this indicative of some sort of operational interest in Oswald’s file?

ROMAN: Well, to me, it’s indicative of a keen interest in Oswald, held very closely on the need-to-know basis.

[Robert Morrow]

I remember the time around 2014 when Jefferson Morley (on his blog) was in disbelief/ignorance that Lyndon Johnson had said he was now convinced that the CIA was behind the JFK assassination, although this information had been known since the mid 1970s.

Now - to be fair - I am very ignorant about many things which is why I am constantly reading about the JFK assassination, the Kennedys and Lyndon Johnson. More than once, I have "just learned" about something on the "public record" 25 years ago.

Lyndon Johnson on 4/3/1967 told his Chief of Staff Marvin Watson that the CIA had something to do with the JFK assassination https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=62412#relPageId=60&search=In_this%20connection,%20Marvin%20Watson%20called%20me%20late%20last%20night (FBI Deke DeLoach memo -see page 2)

[Ron Bulman]

7 hours ago, Brian Scantland said:

Someone asked this in his Twitter feed. 
 

Morley says it is bigger than each of Jane Roman, Whitten, and Joannides 

Thanks to someone, Stu.  Thanks to Jeff from my days posting on JFKFACTS.  For exposing me to Roman, Whitten and Joannides.  I've still got a copy of What Jane Roman Said, printing it at the time in fear it would disappear from the internet.  I too look forward to this.  

[Brian Scantland]

6 hours ago, Stu Wexler said:

I did. Lol

Apologies for quoting you to you 

[Robert Morrow]

56 minutes ago, Ron Bulman said:

Thanks to someone, Stu.  Thanks to Jeff from my days posting on JFKFACTS.  For exposing me to Roman, Whitten and Joannides.  I've still got a copy of What Jane Roman Said, printing it at the time in fear it would disappear from the internet.  I too look forward to this.  

WHAT JANE ROMAN SAID (history-matters.com)

WHAT JANE ROMAN SAID

A Retired CIA Officer Speaks Candidly About Lee Harvey Oswald

By Jefferson Morley

This is the previously-unknown story of three senior CIA officers—Jane Roman, George Joannides and John Whitten—who knew about the activities of accused presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963. It is based on interviews and recently declassified CIA records in the National Archives.

Their story, as told by Washington journalist Jefferson Morley, reveals the CIA's pre-assassination knowledge of Kennedy's accused killer to be wider and deeper than generally known. It also documents the CIA's role in the publication of the first JFK conspiracy theory.

Jefferson Morley is senior news analyst for washingtonpost.com. He can be reached at morleyj2000@yahoo.com.

1. Introduction 2. The Interview 3. ‘A keen interest in Oswald’ 4. The Dead End 5. The ‘Scelso Deposition’: What John Witten Said 6. Dick Helms’ Man in Miami

Click here to read the transcript of the interview with CIA Counterintelligence officer Jane Roman.

Introduction

In the summer of 1994 I became curious if a retired employee of the Central Intelligence Agency named Jane Roman was still alive and living in Washington.

I was curious because I had just seen Jane Roman’s name and handwriting on routing slips attached to newly declassified CIA documents about Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy. This is what I found significant: these documents were dated before November 22, 1963. If this Jane Roman person at CIA headquarters had read the documents that she signed for on the routing slips, then she knew something of Oswald’s existence and activities before the itinerant, 24 year-old ex-Marine became world famous for allegedly shooting President John F. Kennedy in Dallas. In other words, Jane Roman was a CIA official in good standing who knew about the alleged assassin in advance of Kennedy’s violent death.

What self-respecting Washington journalist wouldn’t be interested? 

Of course, I knew enough about the Kennedy assassination to know that many, many, many people knew something of Lee Oswald before he arrived in Dealey Plaza with a gun—a small family, an assortment of far-flung buddies from the Marines, family and acquaintances in New Orleans and Dallas, some attentive FBI agents, not to mention the occasional anti-Castro Cuban, and even some CIA officials.

But Jane Roman was not just any CIA official. In 1963 she was the senior liaison officer on the Counterintelligence Staff of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia. That set her apart. At the height of the Cold War, the counterintelligence staff was a very select operation within the agency, charged with detecting threats to the integrity of CIA operations and personnel from the Soviet Union and its allies. The CI staff, as it was known in bureaucratic lingo, was headed by James Jesus Angleton, a legendary Yale-educated spy, who was either a patriotic genius or a paranoid drunk or perhaps both. Jane Roman’s responsibilities in the fall of 1963 included handling communications between the CI staff and other federal agencies.

The Ben Bradlee Challenge

 I was excited, perhaps foolishly, in June of 1994, when I learned that the CIA’s Jane Roman was living not far from me, on Newark Street in the Cleveland Park neighborhood of Washington DC.

I say foolishly because at that point in time pursuing an interest in the Kennedy assassination was among the less sensible career moves one could make in Washington journalism. As a news story, the murder of the American president many years ago was a vast and complex subject that defied summarization in a standard length news story. Public understanding of the event was so polarized that world-weary senior editors toiling in the vineyard of the news cycle were not inclined to believe that there was anything new or conclusive or fresh to report. But in the summer and fall of 1994, the JFK Assassination Records Act was yielding a huge number of assassination-related records that had never been seen before.

As I went through these records at the National Archives II building in College Park, Maryland, I wasn’t looking for a mythical “smoking gun document that would show who killed Kennedy. I wasn’t looking to vindicate or refute any JFK conspiracy theories. I was looking for people how might have information about the assassination story that they had never shared. I thought that Jane Roman might be such a person.

In his memoirs, retired Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee wondered if there were any young reporters left who would sacrifice their left testicle for the sake of getting a great story. Bradlee had become a hero to me when I saw “All the President’s Men” in a Minneapolis movie theater in 1975 at age 17. I knew right then and there I would work at a newspaper and soon I did.  A quarter century later, working as an assignment editor for the Post’s Sunday Outlook section, I was always cheered to see Bradlee, recently retired, striding about the Post newsroom, sometimes accompanied by his very pretty and charming wife, Sally Quinn. He was a cheerful lion of a man with more charisma in his cuff links than most of the editors now running the place. His example made me want to sacrifice something for the sake of a good story.

But against my interest in Jane Roman and the Kennedy assassination ran the strong warm current of Washington complacency: all serious wrongdoing in the nation’s capital is eventually exposed. When asked about the possibility of a Kennedy assassination conspiracy, former CIA director Dick Helms, said “Something like that would have leaked out by now.”

Considering the source, I was hardly reassured. Helms, who died in October 2002, was known as “the man who kept the secrets.” He was one of the most controversial and inscrutable power brokers of mid-20^th century Washington. A steely, handsome and efficient Navy man, he rose through the ranks of the CIA after World War II. On the strength of a reputation for not making mistakes, he became deputy CIA director in 1962. Skilled in the arts of flattery and covert violence he made himself indispensable to Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. He had a budget in the billions and he was discrete. When Congress pressed him to disclose his successful plot to kill a Chilean general in October 1970, he lied on the stand to protect Nixon.

In one of the more obscure subplots of the Watergate scandal, Nixon fired Helms in January 1973. The revelation two years later of the foreign assassination conspiracies that Helms had masterminded prompted public outrage and a purge at the agency that swept his loyalists from senior positions. Convicted of misleading Congress in 1977, Helms spent his retirement seeking to rebut the agency’s critics, rehabilitate his reputation, and avoid serious questions about the Kennedy assassination. Helms did his best to make sure none of the details of his own staff’s handling (or mishandling) of information about Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963 “leaked out,” not to the press, not to the Congress, not even, as we shall see, to a trusted colleague.

In any case, I was less interested in Jane Roman’s opinion about the conspiracy question than what she actually knew. That she knew about Oswald before Kennedy was killed was apparent from the records that the CIA released to the National Archives in the spring of 1994.  Roman’s initials appeared on a routing slip attached to an FBI report about Lee Harvey Oswald dated September 10, 1963. That was ten weeks before that same Oswald allegedly shot Kennedy. By that date, anti-conspiracy writers such as Gus Russo and Gerald Posner say that Oswald was clearly on a path that would put him in the right place--and in the right state of mind--to kill the president. He had certainly tried to infiltrate one of the CIA’s favorite anti-Castro organizations. He had made himself a public spokesman for the leading pro-Castro group in the United States.

Even if you assumed Oswald was the lone assassin, the perspective of a CIA paper pusher such as Jane Roman on that moment in time was still interesting, and potentially newsworthy.

What did she make of this character Oswald? What did the CIA make of him as he made his way to Dealey Plaza? Did he raise any alarms?

When I saw those initials on that routing slip 31 years later, I decided that talking to Jane Roman was a risk worth taking. I decided, manfully, I was ready to give “my left one” to get the story.

What a mistake.

 

[Robert Morrow]

The picture of CIA Deputy Director Bobby Ray Inman and George Johannides that Google is trying so hard to suppress https://robertmorrowpoliticalresearchblog.blogspot.com/2024/10/deputy-cia-director-bobby-ray-inman.html

[W. Tracy Parnell]

On 10/4/2024 at 2:39 PM, Brian Scantland said:

The story adds more detail to what I reported in my Dec 2022 "smoking gun" revelation at the National Press Club: the existence of a top-secret CIA psychological warfare operation involving Lee Harvey Oswald from Jan to Nov 1963 that the CIA still conceals via overclassification.

But Morley's "smoking gun" was nothing of the sort. It was simply his speculation about an operation that he thinks existed:

Morley's Bombshell a Dud ~ W. Tracy Parnell (wtracyparnell.blogspot.com)

I have been following Morley since the nineties and have witnessed his (alleged) metamorphosis from a person who believed LHO did it but had questions to a full-fledged CT. We'll see what he has now, but I am expecting it to be a witness who has suddenly and conveniently remembered something which helps Morley and his theories. One candidate is Jose Lanuza (now in his eighties) a DRE member who was featured in a Miami Herald article around the time of Morley's "smoking gun" business. In that piece, Lanuza expressed ideas which could be said to be sympathetic to Morley's beliefs:

Did the CIA use Cuban exiles in plot involving Oswald? Questions remain as Biden withholds JFK records (aol.com)

While we are waiting to see what Morley has, take time to look at my FAQ on Morley:

Jefferson Morley FAQ ~ W. Tracy Parnell (wtracyparnell.blogspot.com)

[W. Tracy Parnell]

23 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

The picture of CIA Deputy Director Bobby Ray Inman and George Johannides that Google is trying so hard to suppress https://robertmorrowpoliticalresearchblog.blogspot.com/2024/10/deputy-cia-director-bobby-ray-inman.html

Just type "Joannides" and "inman" hit enter then hit "images" and it comes right up.