Declassified CIA records just dropped a bombshell: a shadowy officer was watching Lee Harvey Oswald before he gunned down President John F. Kennedy, as Axios reports. The agency’s decades-long cover-up of its ties to Oswald’s activities reeks of the deep state’s obsession with control. This isn’t just history -- it’s a wake-up call.
The CIA admitted Thursday that George Joannides, a psychological warfare expert, ran an operation intersecting with Oswald before the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination, while secretly funding an anti-Castro group that clashed with him. From 1962’s Pentagon plot to frame Cuba to Joannides’ lies to Congress, the agency’s fingerprints are all over this saga. Yet, the new documents leave us no closer to knowing if Oswald acted alone.
Back in 1962, the Pentagon cooked up Operation Northwoods, a sinister plan to stage a false-flag attack on U.S. soil and pin it on Cuba. The scheme was shelved, but it shows the lengths the government would go to manipulate narratives. Fast-forward to 1963, and the CIA’s Miami branch was playing similar games.
Joannides, deputy chief of the CIA’s Miami station, was neck-deep in political action and psychological warfare. He covertly bankrolled the Cuban Student Directorate (DRE), an anti-communist group hell-bent on toppling Fidel Castro. The CIA’s claim of no DRE involvement was a bald-faced lie for decades.
By January 1963, Joannides was operating under the alias “Howard Gebler,” complete with a fake driver’s license. A CIA memo reveals he was directed to hide his true identity while managing the DRE. This wasn’t espionage -- it was a deliberate smokescreen.
The CIA’s deception extended to denying Joannides was “Howard,” the case officer linked to the DRE. “Joannides assured me that they could find no record of any such officer,” said Robert Blakey, former House Select Committee counsel, in 2014. Trusting the CIA’s word was clearly a fool’s errand.
On August 9, 1963, Oswald was handing out pro-Castro pamphlets in New Orleans when four DRE operatives confronted him. The scuffle landed Oswald in court, drawing local media attention. The CIA’s pet project was now entangled with the future assassin.
Less than two weeks later, on Aug. 21, Oswald debated DRE activists on New Orleans television. His pro-communist stance got more airtime, cementing his public image as a Castro sympathizer. Joannides’ operation was steering the narrative, whether by design or chaos.
After Kennedy’s assassination, the DRE wasted no time branding Oswald as a pro-Castro zealot in its newsletter. The Miami Herald and Washington Post amplified the story, ensuring the world saw Oswald through the CIA’s lens. Coincidence? Hardly.
The CIA lied about its DRE ties to the Warren Commission in 1964, the Church Committee in 1975, and the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1977–78. Joannides himself stonewalled the latter, hiding his role while serving as the agency’s liaison. “Joannides was running a covert operation to undermine the congressional probe,” testified investigator Dan Hardway last month.
Joannides’ obstruction didn’t go unrewarded -- he snagged the CIA’s Career Intelligence Medal in 1981. “It’s vintage CIA. They obscure. They obfuscate,” said author Gerald Posner. The agency’s playbook thrives on burying the truth.
Even the Assassination Review Board, active until 1998, was fed lies about the CIA’s DRE involvement. “Joannides was 1,000 percent involved in a CIA coverup,” declared Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who’s spearheading the House committee reviewing the new JFK documents. Her bluntness cuts through the agency’s fog.
These revelations stem from President Trump’s order to enforce the JFK Records Act of 1992, with Joannides’ role first surfacing in 1998. “The cover story for Joannides is officially dead,” said Jefferson Morley, an assassination expert. The CIA’s about-face on Oswald is a rare crack in their armor.
The CIA now claims it’s fully complied, handing over unredacted documents to the National Archives. “The agency has provided all documents…in an unprecedented act of transparency,” a CIA spokesperson told Axios. Spare us the self-congratulation -- decades of deceit don’t vanish with a press release.
These documents don’t solve Kennedy’s murder or clarify Oswald’s motives. But they expose a CIA so obsessed with secrecy it hid its own officer’s tracks for half a century. If that’s not a red flag for the deep state’s grip on truth, what is?
