Court Orders CIA to Search for JFK Records

Last week, the CIA admitted that it had destroyed key evidence in the case of al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubudaya, triggering denunciations from congressional leaders and legal authorities who said the agency was behaving lawlessly.

Two days later, a three-judge panel in the U.S. Court of Appeals ordered the agency to search for long-suppressed files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. The judges said the CIA had to search the files of a deceased Miami-based intelligence who hid what he knew about accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald from investigators.

"The CIA has not changed its ways since JFK," said author Gerald Posner, a Huffington Post contributor, who has written about the Abu Zubadayah case. He is also the author of a book on Kennedy's assassination.

The appellate court ruling marked an unusual setback for the agency. "FOIA decisions against the CIA are relatively rare," notes Secrecy News.

"To paraphrase Ricky Ricardo," said the FOIA Blog, "it looks like the CA has "lot's of 'xplaining to do."

That was the gist of Judge Judith Rogers' 31-page decision in my Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking records of George Joannides, a career undercover officer. At the time of Kennedy's murder, Joannides served as chief of psychological warfare operations in south Florida. He also served as the CIA's liaison to congressional JFK investigators in 1978. He died in 1990.

Rogers, joined by two colleagues, rejected the CIA's argument that it had no obligation to search for documents about Joannides in the files of its secret operations in 1963. During oral arguments in October, the judges had grilled Agency lawyer about this claim. In their decision, the judges ruled that the law required a search of sensitive operational files, something the agency almost always resists.

The judges also said that the Agency had not adequately explained the whereabouts of monthly reports filed by Joannides in 1963.

In August 1963, Joannides was secretly funding a Cuban exile group whose members clashed repeatedly with Oswald, an ex-Marine and supporter of Cuban communist leader Fidel Castro. When Kennedy was killed in Dallas, apparently by Oswald, three months later, the group used CIA funds to publicize these contacts and blame the assassination on Castro.

The CIA did not reveal Joannides' financial relationship to the accused assassin's antagonists to the Warren Commission, which investigated the crime and concluded Oswald acted alone. Joannides' reports on his actions in 1963 have never surfaced.

"On remand the CIA must supplement its explanation" of why the reports cannot be found, the court ruled.

The judges ordered lower court Judge Richard Leon to supervise the implementation of its order, a process that is expected to take several months.

"The CIA has constantly been an active leader in hiding, distorting, and sometimes destroying evidence on key issues affecting our history and lives," Posner said in an email.

That's a harsh judgment but it is more plausible today than it was before the Abu Zubadayah revelations and the Rogers decision.

Comments

[joja]

The main reason the CIA doesn't want the Johanmides files released is because it will undermine 40-plus years of carefully massaged history that attempts to obscure what really happened in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963 -- a coup d'etat.

Planting the idea that anything other than the lone assassin theory was the equivalent of reporting a UFO sighting (in other words, you're crazy) was a smart move on the conspirators' part. Who would dare bring up the glaring inconsistancies surrounding the murder and its ensuing investigation but someone with an "overactive imagination?"

Which begs the question, why, after all these years, are records still sealed away? If Oswald truly was the lone assassin, what's the big fuckin' secret the government doesn't want us to know?

[PatSpeer]

Although there may be nothing in the files, searching Joannides files might lead to new discoveries. While conducting my own research on the Kennedy assassination, I came across the names of some books and reports rarely mentioned elsewhere. I slowly tracked down these books and reports, and--guess what--I discovered that the government ran a series of tests on Oswald's cheek that suggested he had not fired a rifle on 11-22-63, and that a number of FBI agents and Warren Commission counsel conspired to keep this info from the public. (I go into this in detail in chapter 4c at patspeer.com.)

So, even if the Joannides files contain no "smoking gun" they may very well contain references to other documents that may help us complete a more accurate portrait of 11-22-63.
Congratulations, Jeff, on a victory of sorts, that may lead to even greater victories.

[outnow]

Since the inception of the atom bomb, the CIA has become the talisman for "truth" in our society.

Albert Einstein warned FDR about having such weapons. One of the drawbacks is that democracy itself is undermined by the secrecy required when dealing with issues surrounding such weapons of mass destruction. How can the citizens vote intelligently if they must always be kept in the dark while coups are staged in foreign countries and torturing is conducted in the name of the United States?

Another unfortunate issue of the "containment theory" was the development of "clandestine activities" designed ostensibly to contain communism which in turn created a justification to disrespect the sovereignty of other nations.

The history of the CIA reveals the structural and philosophical flaws that have dogged the agency since day one. These flaws continue to leave the country vulnerable but also create the means by which unscrupulous politicians can overthrow the will of the People by deception and other unconstitutional means.

When business and commercial interest of corporate investors are confused with the nation's wellbeing, a great disservice to the cause of democracy results.

For the last sixty years, the CIA has managed to maintain its reputation in spite of its terrible record, burying its blunders in top secret archives. It is one thing to obtain knowledge of the world; it is quite another to reshape the world by implementing some ideology in ordewr to change that world.

There are no secrets that time doesn't reveal. The use of force in the 1953 coup that installed the shah of Iran, the bleeding of the soviets in Afghanistan using the Islamic jihadists, or the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile so that "communism would not spread" are just some examples of the misguided actions by this agency. The time for concealing its own crimes is over. The agency may be a necessary evil but it need not itself be evil.

[larry278]

This court order will be as useful as looking in to the attempt to murder FDR in Miami in 1932 or the murder of A Lincoln. A sadistic psychopath could also ask for executions of every living person who had ties to the CIA or OSS.
JFK had a number of rabid enemies before he was murdered. Crediting the CIA with having any useful information of that day in Dallas may be a belated attempt to give street cred to the CIA.
Let Gen Mike continue to head CIA & he will destroy the CIA & its cred. Why waste time trying to enforce a court order?

[hopeless277]

USA 0
CIA 100

Game over.