CIA still faces JFK assassination-related questions

By Jennifer J. Foster

The New York Times has an interesting article today about the ongoing skirmish between CIA officials and a former Washington Post reporter who wants some documents from them.

But not just any documents.

For six years, the agency has fought in federal court to keep secret hundreds of documents from 1963, when an anti-Castro Cuban group it paid clashed publicly with the soon-to-be assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. The C.I.A. says it is only protecting legitimate secrets. But because of the agency’s history of stonewalling assassination inquiries, even researchers with no use for conspiracy thinking question its stance.

The files in question, some released under direction of the court and hundreds more that are still secret, involve the curious career of George E. Joannides, the case officer who oversaw the dissident Cubans in 1963. In 1978, the agency made Mr. Joannides the liaison to the House Select Committee on Assassinations — but never told the committee of his earlier role.

What? The CIA lying about something related to the Kennedy Assassination?

No!!!!

I have a longstanding fascination with the Kennedy assassination. I first read about it when I was about 9 years old. I never forgot how I felt when I realized that someone was able to kill the president of the United States in broad daylight, in the presence of thousands of people.

And that discomfort grew as I got older and learned more about it—especially the conspiracy theories that implicate the government.

Mr. (Gerald) Posner, the anti-conspiracy author, said that if there really were something explosive involving the C.I.A. and President Kennedy, it would not be in the files — not even in the documents the C.I.A. has fought to keep secret.

“Most conspiracy theorists don’t understand this,” Mr. Posner said. “But if there really were a C.I.A. plot, no documents would exist.”

Well, if there isn’t anything to hide, then why not release the documents—or, better yet, why wasn’t the CIA straightforward about Joannides’ earlier role was back in 1978?

What motive could C.I.A. officials have to bury the details of Mr. Joannides’s work for so long? Did C.I.A. officers or their Cuban contacts know more about Oswald than has been revealed? Or was the agency simply embarrassed by brushes with the future assassin — like the Dallas F.B.I. officials who, after the assassination, destroyed a handwritten note Oswald had previously left for an F.B.I. agent?

Or has Mr. Morley spent a decade on a wild goose chase?

Max Holland, who is writing a history of the Warren Commission, said the agency might be trying to preserve the principle of secrecy.

“If you start going through the files of every C.I.A. officer who had anything to do with anything that touched the assassination, that would have no end,” Mr. Holland said.

Hmm. Well, I think that’s notable in itself.