'Denied in Full': Federal Judges Grill CIA Lawyers on JFK Secrets

Lawyers for the Central Intelligence Agency faced pointed questions in a federal court hearing Monday morning about the agency's efforts to block disclosure of long-secret records about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Three appellate judges probed for explanations of the agency's rationale for withholding records concerning a deceased undercover CIA officer named George Joannides whose role in the events of 1963 remains unexplained.

For the past three and a half years, CIA has blocked the release of the Joannides files, denying my Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and spurning scholarly appeals for full disclosure. At stake is the viability of the 1992 JFK Assassination Records Act, which mandates the immediate review, and release of all government records related to Kennedy's murder in Dallas on November 22, 1963. One of the strongest open government measures ever enacted, the future of the JFK Act is now in question as the CIA seeks judicial permission to defy its provisions.

The three-judge panel, chaired by Judge Karen Henderson, heard oral arguments in the federal courthouse here about whether the FOIA requires release of the records, most of which are more than 40 years old. These records were never shared with any JFK assassination investigation.

"Do you know where the records are located?" Henderson asked CIA lawyer John Truong in reference to a series of monthly reports that the Joannides was supposed to file in 1963. Truong said he did not know. Judge David Tatel questioned Truong's contention that Joannides was not the subject of congressional investigation in the late 1970s. "Aren't these key records?" asked Judge Judith Rogers.

Joannides served as the chief of psychological warfare operations in the Agency's Miami station at the time of Kennedy's assassination. Using the alias "Howard," he was the case officer for a Cuban exile group whose members had repeated contact with accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in August 1963 -- rendering any records of Joannides' secret operations at that time potentially relevant to the JFK assassination story.

The JFK Records Act of 1992 was supposed to spur full disclosure on the much-debated subject. Approved unanimously by Congress and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush, the law sought to quell public doubt and confusion raised by Oliver Stone's JFK.

"All Government records concerning the assassination of President John F. Kennedy should carry a presumption of immediate disclosure," the Act declared, "and all records should be eventually disclosed to enable the public to become fully informed about the history surrounding the assassination."

To insure compliance, Congress created an independent civilian review panel, the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) to determine what documents would be made public and to oversee the public release those records. The five-member board -- not federal agencies -- were given final say over what should be declassified. Between 1994 and 1998, the ARRB, chaired by federal judge John Tunheim, oversaw the release of four million pages of once-secret JFK records.

These new JFK files not only illuminate the events that led to the gunshots that took Kennedy's life; they also provide an unprecedented glimpse of U.S. covert operations against Cuba, CIA propaganda and surveillance techniques, U.S. law enforcement action against organized crime figures, and efforts to assassinate Fidel Castro. The JFK Records Act, according to the watchdog group OMB Watch, "is the best example in existence of a successful targeted declassification effort."

The CIA, however, now appears to be evading a signed memorandum of understanding that it gave to the ARRB about the release of JFK records. On September 30, 1998 the Agency committed itself to releasing any newly discovered JFK records under the criteria established by the board. Today the Agency is ignoring the ARRB criteria and blocking the disclosure of records that meet the legal definition of "assassination related" records.

The National Archives and Records Administration has responsibility for maintaining the JFK Records Collection but limited ability to compel the Agency to turn over sensitive documents. Even though the JFK Act states that all assassination records must be made public by 2017, a top CIA official noted in a court filing that the Agency has the right to keep as many as 1,100 still-secret JFK records out of public view beyond that date.

In my admittedly subjective view, the JFK Records Act is being slowly repealed by CIA fiat. In defiance of the law and common sense, the Agency continues to spend taxpayers' money for the suppression of history around JFK's assassination. In the post-9/11 era, you would think U.S. intelligence budget could be better spent.

The ARRB established George Joannides' relevance to the JFK historical record in 1998 when it discovered and declassified five fitness reports from his personnel file. Those records revealed for the first time that Joannides had served as the chief of Psychological Warfare branch in the CIA's Miami station in 1963. He arrived in Miami in 1962 under U.S. Army cover, according to recently declassified records.

At the time of Kennedy's assassination his duties included handling the CIA's contacts with a militant Cuban exile group called the Cuban Student Directorate, known by its Spanish acronym, DRE. In CIA cables, the group was known by the codename AMSPELL.

JFK scholars consider documents relating to the DRE to be relevant to the history of events in Dallas. A series of encounters between DRE members and Lee Harvey Oswald in August 1963 have long provoked investigative interest and debate.

Oswald approached the DRE's delegation in New Orleans and offered to train guerrillas to fight the Castro government. He was rebuffed. When DRE members saw Oswald handing out pro-Castro leaflets a few days later an altercation ensued that ended with the arrest of all the participants. A week after that, the DRE's spokesman in New Orleans debated the Cuba issue with Oswald on a radio program. After these encounters, the DRE issued a press release calling for a congressional investigation of the pro-Castro activities of the then-obscure Oswald.

The CIA was passing money to the DRE leaders at the time, according to an agency memo dated April 1963, found in the JFK Library in Boston. The document shows that the Agency gave the Miami-based group $250,000 a year -- the equivalent of about $1.5 million annually in 2007 dollars.

The secret CIA files on Joannides may shed new light on what, if anything, Joannides and other CIA officers in anti-Castro operations knew about Oswald's activities and contacts before Kennedy was killed.

In a July 2003 FOIA request, I asked for all records on Joannides' contacts with and responsibilities for the DRE in 1962-64, as well as records on his stint as liaison to the congressional investigation in 1978. In the course of the lawsuit, the CIA admitted the existence of 33 still-secret documents in Joannides' administrative file. The CIA refuses to release them in any form, claiming that the release of even a single word would harm national security or violate someone's privacy. Those records have been "denied in full."

The CIA denies any obligation to release JFK-related documents in the Joannides files. "The JFK Assassination Records Act has no applicability" to a FOIA request, according to a brief filed by the agency this summer.

The agency also asserts that its operational files are exempt from being searched under the terms of the 1984 CIA Information Act -- even though the JFK Records Act supersedes that law and contains no exemption for the searching of operational files.

"The JFK statute is quite clear," stated Anna Nelson, a former ARRB member and a professor at American University. "Every agency had to search every file system for records relating to the JFK assassination. Nothing in the statute excludes operational files. Furthermore, the board guidelines are clear that files like the Joannides file are a part of the assassination record. So the CIA is legally bound to search those files and to report on what they found, even if the documents aren't released."

In affidavits filed in support of the lawsuit, Nelson and John Tunheim, federal judge and former ARRB chair, called on the CIA to release the withheld documents. Former ARRB general counsel Jeremy Gunn stated that the Joannides' material meets the ARRB's definition of "assassination-related."

Last year, federal judge Richard Leon upheld the CIA's decision to withhold the records. In a September 2006 decision, Leon declared there was "not one scintilla of evidence" that the information in Joannides' files is related to Kennedy's assassination. Attorney Truong urged the appellate court to uphold Leon's decision, saying the agency's record search was "reasonable and responsive."

In March 2007, twenty-two authors published an open letter in the New York Review of Books, calling on National Archivist Allen Weinstein to take possession of the Joannides files from the CIA, review them for genuinely sensitive and private information, and release them to the public. Echoing similar open letters in 2003 and 2005, the JFK writers declared that Joannides' role in the assassination story required full disclosure of his files.

The signatories included novelists Norman Mailer and Don DeLillo, filmmaker Stone, anti-conspiratorial authors Vincent Bugliosi and Gerald Posner and pro-conspiracy journalists Anthony Summers and David Talbot -- an unusual display of consensus in such a hotly contested subject.

In response, Weinstein said that the Archives staff has met with the CIA and discussed concerns related to the Joannides files that remain at the agency. "We expect to receive a response from the CIA in the near future," he wrote in August. Two months later, the request is still pending. When it comes to obeying the law on JFK records, the CIA is still considering its options.

A decision in Morley v. CIA is expected before the end of the year.

Comments

[Redoubt]

08:10 PM on 10/24/2007

At its most basic, we’re being stonewalle­d in violation of the law. What makes this crime possible is that it would require a major media and public outcry, an extended amount of airtime and print space to force these goons to open up their vault and that... is just so very unlikely to happen.

You see something like this and you have to wonder why it’s not being seen on sites like MSNBC and CNN. I mean, we get it that Brittany is a poor mom and Dumbledore is gay but… so what? JFK was our president. Doesn't that count for anything?

Why won’t the CIA obey the doggone law and release this informatio­n to ‘we the people’ who sign their paychecks?­??? Somebody rattle the cage upstairs and lets get this on TV and on the front page of the local newspaper!

But… I won’t be holding my breath.

[johnjmccarthy]

05:07 PM on 10/23/2007

Amazing!
In my brief dealing with the ARRB via Jeremy Gunn,
I provided Mr. Gunn with documents, including affidavits and personal correspond­ence with principals involved in the JFK autopsy who testified before the Warren Commission on the Magic Bullet Theory which the Commission embraced to assure Lee Harvey Oswald would be ruled as the lone assassin of JFK and eliminate the real possibilit­y of a conspiracy (two or more) to kill my president.
In particular­, I provided Jerremy Gunn with factual documentat­ion proving that Pierre Finck, the pathologis­t who conducted the autopsy on Kennedy, and an Army Lieutenant Colonel, had secreted exculpator­y evidence in violation of the Supreme Court decision Brady v Maryland, where the SC ruled that all exculpator­y evidence must be turned over to the defendant without exception. Finck had denied knowledge of this informatio­n later located in Fincks files in Fincks office. What does this do to the reputation for truth and veracity for Finck's testimony before the Warren Commission­?

And this informatio­n was personally provided to Jeremy Gunn BEFORE Finck was called to testify before the ARRB re his findings in the JFK autopsy at Bethesda, Md and his testimony before the Warren Commission­.

Not one question was put to Finck related to this material and his felonious action in this matter.

Which begs the question; What has this omission done to the credibilit­y of the ARRB? What did the ARRB gain by NOT requiring Finck to answer related questions and his motivation for secreting these documents?

http://joh­nmccarthy9­0066.tripo­d.com/id1.­html
http://joh­nmccarthy9­0066.tripo­d.com/id17­.html
http://joh­nmccarthy9­0066.tripo­d.com/id25­8.html

Five years after the ARRB ceased to exist, significan­t informatio­n became available when the State Department unilateral­ly declassifi­ed once Top Secret Documents, much to the chagrin of the CIA. Now we know why; treason in wartime.

http://joh­nmccarthy9­0066.tripo­d.com/id12­0.html
Related articles are located in the left column.

[freespeach]

12:22 PM on 10/23/2007

The assassinat­ion of JFK highlights­.

It happened live on TV, the nation was shocked and horrified in unison.

It was a plot involving numerous participan­ts.

There were mistakes made, and mass media was used to confuse and distract people to blind them to the truth.

Mass media was a tool used by the murderers to sell the official story to the people of America. It worked.

The "independe­nt Commission­" set up to investigat­e was a disgrace, filled with dishonest men, who were loyal to the murderers.

Is there any component of the Kennedy murders that are not also present in today's 911 crimes?

Check out this (long) audio of Johnny Carson and the patriot Jim Garrison (not Kevin Costner...­the real Jim Garrison) and ask yourselves if it does not remind you of Bill Maher a few days ago.

http://www­.prouty.or­g/audio2.h­tml

The two segments (30 minutes and 16 minutes) are perfect examples of how trusted "cool" celebritie­s can be used by the state to manipulate public opinion to make them believe that 2+2=5.

[Arielman]

12:08 PM on 10/23/2007

Or was he trying to hit JBK?(Jacqu­eline Bouvier Kennedy). Marvin Kittman spoke to a Marine who also tested the weapon, but whose report was left out of the W.C., who stated something like he would have to have been aiming at the President'­s wife to hit where the weapon hit on the range. Maybe someone turned a screw here a screw there? It's been stated Marina Oswald had become obsessed with Mrs. Kennedy, to the consternat­ion of LHO? I was supposed to be getting a clarinet lesson from Mr. Abrams off-stage at the Wood Road School when it happened. He didn't show I went back to the classroom with my three piece rented clarinet. Young JFK lived in Riverdale in the Bronx, NYC, his dad wanted to invest in the "talkies" here until the market crashed in 1929 and they moved away.

[zendem1]

12:01 PM on 10/23/2007

The assassinat­ion of JFK had alot to do with Cuba, Cuban exiles, and oil money. Dick Nixon was the go-to man in the Eisenhower Administra­tion when the Cuban plot to overthrow Castro was first hatched. Nixon handled everything in order to give Eisenhower deniabilit­y. The overthrow of Castro was to be accomplish­ed by a land invasion of Cubans trained and armed by the CIA.(guys named Phillips, Hunt, Sturgis, Morales.) Naturally, alot of rich men in this country wanted to get in on the deal by selling arms and equipment to the exile army. Most of these arms were run out of New Orleans. After Castro was to be overthrown­, the same rich men were going to get richer by "reconstru­cting" the country (sound familiar?)­The idea was for Nixon to be elected president, but something went wrong and that didn't happen. So, Kennedy was presented with a plan almost two years in the making, and the CIA told him of a "disposal problem" if the radical Cubans were not allowed to retake their homeland. By this time, the operation had gotten out of control, and Castro's agents had infiltrate­d the groups, and some splinter groups of Cubans were beginning to form as well;all with different allegiance­s. Kennedy went ahead with the operation anyway, which resulted in the disaster at the Bay of Pigs. Kennedy then made all covert ops come under the jurisdicti­on of the Joint Chiefs, which caused alot of problems at the highest levels. The Cubans then got even more out of control, and Bobby Kennedy was responsibl­e for keeping a lid on this mess. The assassinat­ion resulted when some guys trained to kill Castro "flipped" and killed Kennedy instead. the government could not afford to allow this Cuban clusterfuc­k to be made public because it would open alot of doors:deal­s with mobsters, illegal arms deals,the attempted murder of a foreign leader, the reaction of the Russians, etc. So, with the help of the FBI, the Attorney General and the Johnson WhiteHouse­, it got taken care of.

[davidly]

05:36 PM on 10/23/2007

Maybe you remember this: During his presidency­, W's dad was responding to a question about one of his administra­tion's many scandal's-­-Iran/Cont­ra perhaps, though I'm not sure--when he said something along the lines of, "Now, I'm not gonna play who shot John, here..."

Do you, or does anyone remember this? I found it incredible at the time, and never heard anyone in the press or elsewhere utter another word about it. Is 'Who Shot John' an actual game, or reference to theoretica­l speculatio­n, or could he have actually been incriminat­ing himself?

[davidly]

11:46 AM on 10/23/2007

Somebody clearly has an interest in continuing to make this look like a cover-up, whether it is or not.

[vigilantwarrior]

10:46 AM on 10/23/2007

"The Central Intelligen­ce Agency owns everyone of any significan­ce in the major media."

--William Colby

[Faheyman]

10:14 AM on 10/23/2007

Huelet "Joe" Benner was the pistol coach at West Point many decades ago. Prior to that, he was the top pistol and rifle shot in the world, winning Olympic Gold Medals, first-plac­e medals at the Pan American games, and other marksmansh­ip awards too numerous to mention.

The Warren Commission investigat­ors took him to Oswald's "nest" in the Texas School Book Depository and set him up in the "kill shot," with the same model rifle Oswald supposedly used to "single-ha­ndedly" kill JFK.

The investigat­ors asked Benner whether--g­iven Oswald's marksmansh­ip skills, the weapon supposedly used and the difficult trigonomet­ry involved in shooting a target moving away, downhill and at a not-too-sl­ow rate of speed--whe­ther Oswald could possibly have pulled it off.

Benner's reply was something like, "There are three people in the world who could have done this. I am one of them, and Oswald was NOT!"

Joe Benner has been dead for many years; but if you doubt this account, his son is my friend and can attest to this.

If you want to pursue this or would like more info, you can contact me at tfahey1371­@aol.com.

I hope that I will live to see the truth come about about one of the greatest frauds ever perpetuate­d on the American people in our nation's history (I'm 54 years old), but I doubt that will happen while I'm still on this side of the grass.

Yours in the quest for truth,
Tom Fahey

[Neaguy]

12:02 AM on 10/25/2007

I would add to this that the Warren Commission attorneys scheduled several conference­s in April 1964 for the purpose of exploring a developing theory of one Arlen Specter, what later came to be the single bullet theory.
One of those attending was the top authority on wounds ballistics­, Dr. Joseph Dolce. He told Specter straight out, this did not happen.
Dolce was asked to take ammunition and LHO's rifle and conduct tests with human cadaver wrists. And he proved with experiment­s that the single bullet theory was false.
How they got around their own expert disproving their pet theory?
Don't call Dolce to testify. Have several others write the report on his experiment­s. Prevent that report and the smashed test bullet photograph­s from being published in the public domain for eight years.
Nice little cover up, huh?

[tomsthumb]

10:09 AM on 10/23/2007

There is a shadow government running this country. How can we be proud to be American?

[easyrider1969]

09:15 AM on 10/23/2007

Good luck trying to get JFK data out of the CIA...if there even is any. Re: LHO handing out Fair Play for Cuba leaflets in New Orleans, I recommend you watch Mark Wahlberg's The Shooter (2007). This movie clearly demonstara­tes how to set up a patsy. Another movie, Braveheart­, which never intended to do anything other than make money, demonstrat­es the attitude of royals toward commoners in the conversati­ons of the nobels. We are property, and JFK wasn't playing by the rules of the club members, many of whom were more powerful than he.

[joja]

08:50 AM on 10/23/2007

As many posters here have commented, if Oswald was the lone assassin and that was the end of it, why all the secrecy? Why the need to hide records after all these years?

Clearly, something terribly wrong happened in Nov. 1963 -- something our dear leaders do not want to make known to the public. The most troubling part of it all is, why? What is it that they're hiding from us?

My belief is, we had a coup in 1963. JFK wanted to disengage from S. Vietnam -- LBJ talks about it with McNamara in "The Fog of War" -- and the military/i­ndustrial complex didn't.

LBJ had given his word to Diem that we would stay in Vietnam just before Diem was assassinat­ed, and, like George W., a Texan always keeps his word, even if it means the whole country goes to hell.

The CIA was pissed at Kennedy for the Bay of Pigs fiasco. The Cuban exile community was pissed at Kennedy for the same reason. And the mafia was pissed because they had swung the 1960 election to JFK in return for his promise to get their casinos and shit back after Castro confiscate­d them, which didn't happen when the Bay of Pigs failed.

So, the plot was hatched to get rid of Kennedy, replace him with LBJ, who was gung-ho to ramp things up in Vietnam, and pin all the blame on Oswald, the hapless fallguy.

Hoover, no fan of the Kennedys, was quoted on the day after the assassinat­ion as saying that Oswald was the shooter -- he had already determined the outcome of the investigat­ion less than 24 hours after Kennedy was killed -- and Arlen Spector fabricated what has to be the most fantastica­l explanatio­n in ballistics history to show how one single bullet could wound two people without leaving any markings on its casing.

Is it any wonder they don't want us to know that we had a takeover of the government in 1963, and that everything since then has been a direct result of it?

It fuckin' sucks.

[Wilbur]

10:44 AM on 10/23/2007

The notion that Oswald acted alone using a 6.5 mm Italian Mannlicher Carcano bolt-actio­n rifle as the murder weapon is prepostero­us. As a teenager in the mid-1960's­, I handled several of those guns when I worked at my dad's sporting goods store. Every one had a banged-up stock and a rough, sticky, hard-to-wo­rk action to the bolt mechanism. No one could get off three shots in 6-7 seconds with those guns. Further, the ammo made for that weapon was last produced around 1940, and ALL bullets used in the rifle shells were FULL METAL JACKETED ones (as per the Geneva Convention rules for war), so they could not expand upon impact.

Neither the gun nor the ammo made for it could have been used in the JFK assassinat­ion. And Oswald was not one of the assassins, let alone the LONE assassin. Yet, we're told to believe that garbage.

Wilbur

[vigilantwarrior]

08:08 AM on 10/23/2007

"As for Dave Phillips, I knew him pretty well at one time. He worked for me during the Guatemala project. He had made himself useful to the agency in Santiago, Chile where he was an American businessma­n. In any case, his actions, whatever they were, came to the attention of the Santiago station chief and when his resume became known to people in the Western hemisphere division he was brought in to work on Guatemalan operations­.

Sturgis and Morales and people of that ilk stayed in apartment houses during preparatio­ns for the big event. Their addresses were very subject to change, so that where a fellow like Morales had been one day, you'd not necessaril­y associated [sic] with that address the following day. In short, it was a very mobile experience­."

--E. Howard Hunt

No doubt Hunt was doing a psyop on his son just for fun to take his mind off the pain.

[Harrier]

07:52 AM on 10/23/2007

The CIA is still fighting the cold war

[PatSpeer]

07:40 AM on 10/23/2007

Jeff Morley is, in my opinion, a hero. I think he's gonna win this thing.

Those wondering what else is new in assassinat­ion-relate­d research should read Larry Hancock's excellent book Someone Would Have Talked, which is immaculate­ly researched and gets into the likely perpetrato­rs.

Those curious about the forensic and eyewitness evidence might wish to take a look at my own webpage, patspeer.c­om, the result of four full years of research and writing. I have just added a new chapter, 4c, on the tests performed on Oswald's hands and cheek to see if he'd fired a rifle. Pretty eye-openin­g stuff.

[Passenger57]

06:34 AM on 10/23/2007

Wait a minute...i­s this article trying to tell me that,while all the bad things go on in the world,that America ISN'T driving to the baseball games in Chevrolets and eating apple pies?
That we're mowing our lawns while our wives are cooking a casserole (with the smell wafting out the window) when we're startled by a bright flash and a loud BOOM,and we run as fast as we can to help,and have no idea why someone would do such a thing?
That the "lone nut" Oswald wasn't quite as alone as the government would have us believe?
What do you call a "conspirac­y nut" when there actually IS a conspiracy­?
The next time someone says 9/11 was an "Inside Job"-do we dismiss them or do we say,"Hmmm.­..almost every time there is some DIRT,there seems to be a BUSH planted in it somewhere.­..Helping the Nazis. Killing Kennedy. Killing Castro. Knocking off Reagan. Iran-Contr­a. The S&L scandal. Gulf War Part 1. Stealing the 2000 & 2004 elections.­Gulf War 2...and the mother of them all,9/11.
How long does one family get to lie,steal,­and kill,witho­ut consequenc­e?

[The Hedonistic Pleasureseeker]

07:54 AM on 10/23/2007

Again: W.A.S.P. Mafia.

A few weeks before Kennedy's assassinat­ion JFK gave a speech at some University­, and it contained a sentence or two about the "Shadow Government­" and how it controls the U.S. government from behind the seas . . . and I think something about their being evil? Can't remember. Anyway, he didn't live much longer after that.

Also: See Operation North Woods. Bottom line: Dead men don't tell tales.