C.I.A. Still Cagey About Agent Who Knew Oswald

[undeterred]

Brendan Smialowski for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Is the Central Intelligence Agency covering up some dark secret about the assassination of John F. Kennedy? Probably not. But you would not know it from the C.I.A.’s behavior.

For six years, the agency has fought 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.

That concealment has fueled suspicion that Mr. Joannides’ real assignment was to limit what the House committee could learn about C.I.A. activities. The agency’s deception was first reported in 2001 by Jefferson Morley, a journalist and author who has doggedly pursued the files ever since, represented by James H. Lesar, a Washington lawyer specializing in Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. “The C.I.A.’s conduct is maddening,” said Mr. Morley, 51, a former Washington Post reporter and author of a 2008 biography of a former C.I.A. station chief in Mexico. After years of meticulous reporting on Mr. Joannides, who died at age 68 in 1990, he is convinced there is more to learn.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/17/us/17inquire.html?hp

[villager]

1. "We always like to keep tabs on all our 'lone nuts' -- who have absolutely no connection to anybody!

--well in advance. That's all."

[FreakinDJ]

2. "Nothing to see here - Move along Folks"

hummm.

[Myrina]

3. ... as i recall, he DID have the phone number and name of

... one "George H Bush, CIA, Houston TX" in his wallet ...

[Old and In the Way]

4. Who else was involved with Cuba/Bay of Pigs back then?

Oh yeah, GHWB. Other than the 2 FBI documents we've seen with Bush's name linked to the Kennedy assassination, I wonder what other evidence at CIA might document Bush's involvement to the event in Dallas in 1963. Interesting, too, that Bush was Director of CIA for less than a year...just before the House Select Committee on Assassinations began their work. I wonder what he spent his time on during his 'short' career as Director? Did Bush have any input on selecting Joannides for this task of Congressional gatekeeper?

[MinM]

11. Where in the World was Poppy? SanDiego?

No. :yoiks:

Here's a hint...

Poppy phoned in a tip to the FBI, ostensibly to create an alibi...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=385&topic_id=389832&mesg_id=390064

:dem: & R

[SDuderstadt]

12. JFK assassination conspiracy theory "Logic"

the fact that GHW Bush has an alibi for 11/22/63 actually proves he did it.

[MinM]

13. Who said it "proves he (GHWB) did it"?

:shrug:

[SDuderstadt]

15. It's satire....

you might want to look up the definition.

[JDPriestly]

5. So, why not release these files? It's been close to 50 years.

Mr. Posner, the anti-conspiracy author, said that if there really were something explosive involving the C.I.A. and President Kennedy, it wouldn’t 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.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/17/us/17inquire.html?hp

If no documents existed, certainly someone would be allowed to look at what does exist and verify that no documents exist. This controversy is either silly or something is being hidden. In either case, the hiding of these documents sounds more like bureaucratic rigidity than anything else.

Many of us who were alive at the time of the assassination have an uneasy feeling that something is wrong with the story we were told about it. The rapid chain of violent, seemingly unrelated and yet very related events was just jarring.

The official explanations did not ring true. Now, that does not mean that they were lies. It means that the authorities who were issuing press releases and explanations and the historians including Posner who have written have a heavy burden of suspicion to overcome in trying to convince us that the official explanations are really true.

To this date, I do not think we have nearly all the facts about the assassination. Everything should be opened up for public scrutiny. There should be no secrets, nothing hidden.

The suspected cover-up about the assassination, whether it occurred or not, was the beginning of an age of cynicism in American. We have lost our trust in our government and in our political system. And that loss of trust has grown until today we have Glenn Beck and Jon Stewart facing off with opposing comedy shows capitalizing on our distrust. (Love Jon Stewart, don't get me wrong.)

Conspiracy theories about the assassination exist because so many people have been unable to reconcile the official story with their own life experience, knowledge of the time, sense of history and the political course that drove the U.S. off cliff after cliff following that assassination. Not just the assassination, but the handling of the investigation into it, rent our country in two. And we will not be healed and whole until we deal openly and completely with the trauma of that moment on November 22, 1963 and the subsequent investigation.

Even our children, who were not alive then, though they may not know it, will forever suffer because of the secrecy that surrounds the evidence about those events. Everything even remotely related to the Kennedy assassination needs to be made public.

On edit, I add: As every litigation attorney knows, what is not in the files may be more revealing than what is. If this man had a contact with Oswald and did not report it or did not report it accurately or fully, or if there are anachronisms in the file, then the official story about what happened becomes even more questionable. So after so many years, we should be able to review this file.

[truedelphi]

9. Agree with you on every word you posted. n/t

[liam_laddie]

6. Best book on the killing of JFK

Please read "JFK and the Unspeakable : Why He Died and Why it Matters" by James W. Douglass, published April 2008.
This is a longish, thoroughly researched book and seems to me to be definitive. Fits the CIA's cover-up behavior. The shadow governing elite is still at work...

[SDuderstadt]

7. Or you could read "Reclaiming History" and see...

how silly books like Douglass' are.

[CHIMO]

8. Cover Ups

Journalist Ann Louise Bardach on How Cuban Exile Luis Posada Carriles Remains a Free Man in Miami Despite His Role in Airline and Hotel Bombings

ANN LOUISE BARDACH: Yes, I’ve had so many subpoenas since 2005 that my husband suggested we have a mailbox that says “subpoenas only.” No kidding. And the trial begins in March.

We had a victory last week—the New York Times, myself and my co-writer on the series, Larry Rohter—because Posada’s attorneys subpoenaed—requested every hard drive, every tape, every piece of paper, I mean, just about everything the New York Times building, myself, private files, Larry Rohter’s, etc. It was this—this is what happens when they bring reporters in, subpoena reporters into these amazing cases. Fortunately, the judge denied that. But it was—believe me, we were very uncomfortable until that decision came down. I remain under subpoena to testify, and I’m praying for to get me out, or Eric Holder.

ANN LOUISE BARDACH: What happened was, of course, I co-authored the 1998 series in New York Times on Luis Posada. It was in the middle of an investigative series on all kinds of exile militant groups. Posada—I got very lucky. I made a few contacts. I had never thought in a thousand years he would say yes. I made contacts through my old colleagues at Vanity Fair. And lo and behold, I had a message on my answering machine from Luis Posada, basically saying, you know, “Ven aqui” You know, “Come down here to”—well, I guess where I ended up meeting him was Aruba. I think he contacted me from Salvador. And we had this miraculous interview, in the sense that he had never given an interview. And it became two of those five parts in the New York Times and, you know, ran on page one, and it attracted a huge amount of attention.

He wanted to give the interview, as I understood it, because he had orchestrated this bombing campaign in Havana in ’97 in order—for two stated purposes: to drive foreign investors out of Cuba and to scare people from going, so that the funds that Castro and Cuba, which is so cash-strapped, so dependent upon tourism, it would dry up, and then, consequently, Castro would fall. OK? This is a man who’s had a fifty-year career of various ways to take out Castro. So they finally decided, we’ll attack tourism, and then people will—the pipeline will end, will end it, the economic pipeline. And so, he wanted some publicity, because the Cuban government—you know, they’re very shrewd, very—you know, best security agency, intelligence agency probably in the world. And initially, they weren’t reporting what was going on, because they did not want the tourists to know. They did not want the foreign investors to know we’re having bombs going off here. So, initially they were keeping things low-key. And then Posada was getting kind of angry about this. The Cubans know how to play hardball. And so, he wanted some publicity, because, you know, what did we do this for, if people don’t get the word? So what better place than the New York Times? So he had his own agenda.

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/16/journalist_ann_louise_bardach_on_how
http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2009/oct/video/dnB20091016a.rm&proto=rtsp&start=00:32:18

[MinM]

14. Bardach invoked many players from JFK and Watergate on 'Democracy Now'

yesterday. Very informative segment:

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/16/journalist_ann_louise_bardach_on_how

ANN LOUISE BARDACH: Alright, well, this is very shadowy. And if you get confused, you wouldn’t be the first one. The CIA was a very different organization in the ’60s and ’70s than it is today. In fact, it led to a lot of Senate hearings, and things were changed. But the CIA that Luis Posada—Luis Posada gets involved in the CIA before Bay of Pigs. He is living in Havana. He is recruited probably by David Atlee Phillips, people—famous people, E. Howard Hunt, all of these names that became quite celebrated, who were working out of Havana immediately after the revolution to try to sabotage the new government or regime, whatever you want to call it. And Posada worked inside Havana, then got out in the early ’60s, immediately went into Fort Benning, Bay of Pigs.

But what happened with the CIA is some of these guys, even then—as I said, things were getting a little out of control. And these guys were not entirely just doing exile militant activities. There seemed to be a pattern where there were a little couple sidelines that made the CIA uncomfortable, like drug dealing, and so that it was...

Orlando Garcia, Orlando Bosch. The famous figure is Mono Morales, “Monkey,” El Mono. And these guys were real characters. I mean, these guys—El Mono was informing for Venezuelan intelligence, the CIA, the DEA, the FBI, and Miami-Dade intelligence, and, no doubt, the Cuban intelligence organ DGI. This was at—I call this period Casablanca on the Caribbean. These guys had so many balls in the air. And remember, this is a period of tremendous amount of narcotics trade coming out of Latin America. This is the discovery of cocaine. Everything came through Caracas. So—and you know what they say about Miami. Miami was built on the—you know, its renaissance came out of, you know, those wild, woolly drug years...

[troubledamerican]

10. "there are no cover-ups. There are no conspiracies. Somebody would have talked"

... Jimmy Hoffa