David Morales Wrap-Up: Lessons Learned from Our Deep Dive Series

Revelations of the CIA ops officer's power and prestige heighten the need for transparency

Background: The presidential motorcade in Dealey Plaza captured between the time President Kennedy was first struck and the moment of the fatal shot (Credit: James Altgens). Foreground Image: CIA officer David Sanchez Morales in a superimposed image from an undated photo in Vietnam (Credit: tangodown63.com).

From Jan. 7 to Feb. 4, with invaluable help from researcher David Boylan, we produced five weekly installments on CIA officer David Sanchez Morales, who once ran all operations at the Agency’s sprawling Miami station, known as JMWAVE. Morales had also, while still working for the CIA, boasted of complicity in President Kennedy’s murder a decade after the crime. This is described in Part 1:

David Morales Deep Dive, Pt. 1: The CIA Man Who Incriminated Himself in JFK's Death

Morales rocketed to CIA stardom starting in 1949, when the CIA first conferred provisional “crypto clearance” (higher than top secret) on the 24-year-old enlisted man in Germany. There, he became a protégé of station chief William King Harvey, who would head the CIA’s assassinations program — ZRRI…