On Mar 1, 11:55=A0pm, Raymond <Bluerhy...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> CIA Lawyers to Face JFK Questions
> By Jefferson Morley 02/26/2008 12:41PM
>
> The Central Intelligence Agency will quietly defend its refusal to
> release a batch of top-secret files related to the assassination of
> President John F. Kennedy in a Wa****ngton courtroom tomorrow.
>
> Amid all the headlines about the discovery of a cache of previously
> unknown JFK material in Dallas, agency lawyers will make their first
> response to a court order to explain the secrecy surrounding a career
> CIA undercover officer allegedly involved in the events that led that
> to the murder of the president on Nov. 22, 1963.
>
> For four years, the agency has been battling in federal court to block
> my Freedom of Information Act request seeking disclosure of the secret
> operations of a deceased CIA officer named George Joannides. He is a
> shadowy figure in the complex story of JFK's assassination. At the
> time of the Dallas tragedy, Joannides was serving as chief of the
> CIA's Miami-based "psychological warfare" operations against Cuban
> leader Fidel Castro. In December, a three-judge panel in the D.C.
> Court of Appeals threw out the many of the agency's decades-old claims
> of secrecy around Joannides.
>
> Circuit Judge Judith Rogers and two colleagues ordered the CIA to
> search its operational files for more material on Joannides. They also
> ordered the agency to explain why 17 re****ts on Joannides' secret
> operations in 1962, 1963 and 1964, are missing from CIA archives. In
> legal briefs, agency officials have claimed that more than 30
> do***ents about Joannides's actions in the 1960s and 1970s cannot be
> made public in any form--for reasons of "national security."
>
> Joannides' curious connection to the JFK assassination story was
> unknown until 2001. Declassified CIA records revealed that Joannides
> had guided and monitored a Cuban exile student group that publicly
> denounced the pro-Castro activities of Lee Harvey Oswald in August
> 1963. Three months later, Oswald shot Kennedy dead from an office
> buildings. Joannides' agents in Cuban Miami shaped the first day press
> coverage of JFK's assassination by generating evidence of Oswald's
> sup****t for Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
>
> The Joannides files could shed light on the question of whether CIA
> officers overlooked, underestimated or manipulated Oswald as he made
> his way to Dallas.
>
> The disputed files could prove more significant to the JFK case than
> the much-publicized files of Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade, made
> public last week. Those files mostly concern Wade's case against Jack
> Ruby, the Dallas nightclub owner who murdered Oswald in police custody
> before he could be brought to trial. Thanks to the Dallas Morning
> News, the Wade files can now be viewed online.
>
> By contrast, the complete Joannides file has never been public. What
> remains unknown is the extent of Joannides' control over his agents in
> the Cuban exile community who sought to link Oswald to Fidel Castro.
> The day after JFK was killed the Cuban communist leader scorned the
> re****ts that Oswald was a sup****ter of his revolution and suggested
> that the CIA was behind the charge. The available records show that
> Castro was right: CIA funds did help publicize the allegation.
>
> Joannides, who received a CIA medal in 1981, was never questioned by
> JFK assassination investigators. A resident of Potomac, Md,, he died
> in 1990. His Wa****ngton Post obituary described him as a "Defense
> Department Lawyer."
>
> To date, all efforts to pierce the veil of secrecy around Joannides'
> actions in 1963 have been thwarted. The agency has ignored an open
> letter from two dozen leading JFK scholars calling on the CIA to
> release the records.Last year, the National Archives requested access
> to the records without success. And the agency's public affairs
> officers agency refuse to answer any questions about Joannides.
>
> "Joannides' service as case officer of the Cuban exile group which
> dealt with Oswald make his files highly relevant and in need of public
> release," said Rex Bradford, senior analyst at MaryFerrell.org, the
> largest online archive of declasssified JFK assassination records.
> "The files are clearly within the scope of the JFK Records Act which
> remains in effect despite the CIA's failure to recognize the fact."
>
> The JFK Records Act, passed in 1992 after Oliver Stone's controversial
> movie, mandates the "immediate" public release of all JFK-related
> records.
>
> Judge Richard Leon will preside over the hearing in the DC Federal
> Courthouse on Wednesday morning.
>
> (The Fund for Investigative Journalism provided sup****t for the
> re****ting in this article. A fuller account of Joannides' role in the
> events of 1963 is found in my forthcoming book "Our Man in Mexico:
> Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA," now available on
> Amazon.com. I have also written about Joannides for Playboy.com. See
> "The Man Who Didn't Talk.")
What does the CIA site as their reason to their opposition to the
files being released?
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