“Smoking Gun” Documents Point to CIA Machinations in JFK Assassination
Jefferson Morley Responds To Gerald Posner On The New CIA JFK Evidence
In February, Public published a podcast with investigative journalist Jefferson Morley, author of the critically acclaimed 2018 book, The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton. Since then, the Trump administration released evidence that a CIA agent named George Joannides was monitoring Kennedy’s alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.
On Monday, we published a response by Gerald Posner, an American investigative journalist and author of another critically-acclaimed book, the 1993 Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK.
Today, we are delighted to publish Morley’s response to Posner. — Michael
The release of the personnel file of undercover CIA officer George Joannides shifts the burden of proof in JFK assassination discussions onto the government and the theoreticians of the “lone gunman.” After two decades of CIA obfuscation, JFK researchers do not need to concoct a conspiracy theory to explain the malfeasance of the Agency and Joannides in 1963 and 1978. The Joannides file is smoking proof that the CIA lied repeatedly to investigators, Congress, and the public about Joannides’ actions as they related to Oswald and JFK’s assassination. Even Gerald Posner does not deny that.
Now the burden of proof has shifted to the government and the CIA to explain how the story emerging from the Joannides file—so carefully hidden from JFK investigators for six decades—supports the official narrative of the “lone gunman.” And as Posner is finding out, it’s not an easy burden to shoulder.
If the Joannides file, released by the CIA on July 3, 2025, had been released on July 3, 1964, the revelation that the CIA had monitored Oswald for four years would have been explosive. It would have radically revised the Warren Commission’s conclusions. The “lone gunman,” it turns out, was not so “lone.” He was monitored from the very top of the clandestine service. Posner’s book said nothing about Joannides, chief of the covert action in Miami, who ran the Cuban student group that generated propaganda about Oswald before and after JFK was killed. That’s because Posner didn’t know Joannides existed. Indeed, he believed the CIA’s cover story that he did not exist. Now that the Joannides file confirms he existed and deceived congressional investigators, Posner must recalibrate his narrative on the fly, with mixed results.
The Joannides file shows that the CIA lied to the Warren Commission when deputy director Richard Helms testified falsely under oath that the Agency had only “minimal” information about Oswald before JFK was killed. It was more like maximal.
A fake DC driver’s license indicates Joannides did indeed run an “off the books” operation that was not disclosed to JFK investigators and was hidden from the CIA itself. And my reporting will soon show that the Joannides’ false identity in 1963 was not put into the CIA’s database, confirming my hunch that his operations in 1963 were taken “off the books.”
A declassified memo shows that Joannides was awarded a CIA medal for his handling of Cuban student agents who generated propaganda about Oswald and for stonewalling congressional investigators about what he knew of Oswald’s contacts with his agents.
And a CIA official now concedes that he gave a false statement about Joannides to the Assassination Records Review Board in 1998.
In fact, the new JFK files show Oswald figured in six different code-named CIA operations in his short life, and that his actions were known to, and discussed by, senior CIA officers just weeks before JFK left for Dallas in November 1963. Posner does not deny these facts either. He just doesn’t talk about them.
The Joannides file debunks six decades of deceptive statements from the CIA about its knowledge of the so-called lone gunman before JFK was killed. In response, Posner cites Case Closed, which fails to explain what we have learned from the JFK files in recent years.
CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton collected a 194-page dossier on Oswald, the alleged “lone gunman,” between November 1959 and November 1963. Posner didn’t know anything about the CIA’s surveillance of Oswald when he wrote his book, and thus, Case Closed claimed there was no surveillance by Angleton’s staff.
The Joannides file makes no mention of Oswald, Posner points out, which is true. But a CIA personnel file never contains the names of agents or operations. Posner then denies that “Joannides was centrally involved in a secret operation that had direct or indirect contact with Oswald.” But that claim is false.
In fact, Joannides’ Cuban student agents, funded by a secret operation, code-named AMSPELL, had repeated direct contact with Oswald in August 1963 and generated propaganda about him, even calling for a congressional investigation of his one-man Fair Play for Cuba Committee chapter. Posner disputes that Joannides won a medal for stonewalling the HSCA. “In reality,” he avers, “the record shows the award was given for the overall breadth and quality of Joannides’ service, with no reference whatsoever [emphasis added] to the assassination or the Committee.”
That claim suggests Posner neglected to read Doc. 6 in the Joannides documents, collected by the Mary Ferrell Foundation. On page 3 of a 1981 CIA memo recommending Joannides for a Career Intelligence Medal, praised him for his handling of the Cuban student agents who generated propaganda about Oswald. On p. 4 this passage about Joannides career appears:
So, contra Posner, the CIA’s recommendation for the medal does make specific reference to his work with the House Select Committee on Assassinations and praises it. And why was the chief of the covert action branch of Miami generating propaganda about the so-called “lone gunman” who denied killing JFK and was killed in police custody? Why did Joannides illegally target U.S. citizens opposed to U.S. Cuba policy? What did Joannides report about his agents’ contacts with Oswald? Why did the CIA conceal those contacts in 1964, 1978, 1998, and 2023?
JFK investigators were never able to ask, much less answer, such questions, thanks to the cover story of a “lone gunman.” Posner’s argument that the CIA hid its actions from law enforcement because it was innocent of wrongdoing, or because it wanted to conceal its anti-Castro operations, is the sort of talk you might expect from a defense lawyer with a nervous client. So, Public News readers should keep Posner’s pattern of factual errors and reflexive apologia in mind when assessing his sweeping claims. He writes, “The evidence is clear. Oswald, acting alone, fired the shots that killed President Kennedy. Forensic ballistics, eyewitness testimony, and a mountain of corroborating data point to that conclusion.”
The evidence is rather clearer that Posner’s confident claims are a bluff, showing his determination to avoid new evidence that punctures the pretensions of his authoritative style.
Dr. Don Curtis, a young medical resident who treated the mortally wounded JFK at Parkland Hospital on November 22, 1963, testified at the May 20 hearing of the House Task Force on Declassification of Federal Secrets. Now a hale 88 years old, Curtis could not have been more explicit.
“Are the wounds you observed consistent with the government’s conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone?” asked Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.).
“No,” Curtis replied.
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