The CIA has released bombshell new documents that reveal Lee Harvey Oswald was on their radar months before he assassinated former President John F. Kennedy.
For the first time since JFK’s 1963 assassination, newly released files reveal that a surveillance officer ran a group that had contact with Oswald before the killing – something the agency had long denied.
The disclosure was buried in a batch of 40 documents, which were unearthed by the House Oversight Committee’s “federal secrets” task force earlier this month. It’s the latest revelation that undermines the CIA’s longstanding claims and lends new weight to theories of a broader cover-up.
The release confirmed that CIA officer George Joannides had led U.S. efforts to infiltrate anti-communist Cuban student groups opposed to Fidel Castro in the months before JFK was shot dead riding in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, in November 1963.
Joannides, who directed “all aspects of political action and psychological warfare” at the CIA’s Miami branch, ran a covert operation to disseminate anti-Castro propaganda and disrupt pro-Castro groups.
It included funding and directing the Cuban student group, commonly referred to as DRE.
Members of the group reportedly clashed with Oswald, who publicly promoted pro-Castro policy for the U.S., about three months before JFK’s assassination in August 1963.
A DRE member later claimed that Oswald approached the group with an offer of support, possibly intending to double-cross his own organization, the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.
A CIA memo from January 1963 revealed Joannides was directed to use an alias and a fake driver’s license bearing the name “Howard Mark Gebler.”
The DRE members in Miami used the name Howard for the CIA officer they kept updated on their activities. But the CIA told investigators in 1964 and again in 1978 that no such person existed.
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In 1998, the agency stated that it had no records of anyone named Howard and suggested the name might have been “nothing more than a routing indicator.”
Despite concealing his involvement, the CIA honored Joannides in 1981 with the Career Intelligence Medal.
Investigators later testified that Joannides withheld critical information about his role in 1963, effectively stonewalling their efforts.
“This confirms much of what the public already speculated: that the CIA was lying to the American people, and that there was a cover-up,” said Anna Paulina Luna, overseeing the House committee examining the newly released JFK document, in an email to the Washington Post.
The newly released documents don’t reveal any additional details on JFK’s shooting or settle the controversy over whether Oswald acted alone.
In March, the Trump administration released thousands of classified documents related to the JFK assassination.
On his third day in office, Trump ordered a “full and complete release of all John F. Kennedy assassination records,” with researchers anticipating some 3,500 documents that had never been shared with the public.
While experts noted that it was an “encouraging start,” they said that the release didn’t include two-thirds of the promised files, any of the 500 IRS records, or the recently discovered FBI files.
