CIA Still Stonewalls on JFK Mystery Man
By Jefferson Morley 04/30/2008 07:20PM
Flouting a federal court order, the CIA refused Wednesday to make public long-secret records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.
At a federal court hearing in Washington, CIA attorneys declined to provide any records related to the secret operations of a deceased undercover officer named George Joannides whose role in the JFK story has never been explained by the agency.
A three-judge appellate court panel ruled in December that the agency had to search its files for records of Joannides' secret operations in 1963, when he served undercover in Miami running "psychological warfare" operations against the government of Fidel Castro. The court also ordered the CIA to explain why 17 reports on Joannides' secret operations in 1962-1964 are missing from the National Archives.
The CIA provided no written explanation of its actions during a hearing before Judge Richard Leon. Afterwords, agency attorney John Truong claimed orally that a search of files on Joannides operations found no records responsive to my 2003 Freedom of Information Act request.
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