JFK Most Wanted: The Joannides File
Coming soon, thanks to Trump's order: the secrets of a CIA officer involved in the surveillance of Oswald and the stonewalling of Congress.
[Editor’s note: This is the first installment of Essential JFK Documents: The Series, which was prompted by President Donald Trump’s executive order to release all files related to the JFK assassination. JFK Facts will be filing daily reports in the coming days. Read background on the series here.]
When Rex Bradford and I started the JFK Facts blog in 2012, we had lost patience with the lame press coverage of JFK’s assassination. Major media stories about the events of 1963 were routinely marred by lies and misstatements, and the press often sanctimoniously disparaged anyone who questioned obvious errors as a “conspiracy theorist.” We knew we could do better.
We had deep experience in journalism and programming. We had high-quality archival sources and high-tech capabilities for analyzing them. Rex, a programmer, had already launched the website of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, hosting the internet’s largest searchable collection of authenticated material on the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr.
(Pro tip: If you want to understand what’s going on with Trump and the assassination files, you’ll want to pay a visit to maryferrell.org. It’s a theory-free zone.)
Our short term goal in 2012 was to improve journalistic coverage of the 50th anniversary of the assassination in 2013. We had but slight success, alas. Over time, however, reporters began calling, first from Fox News, then from the New York Times and Washington Post. Over the years, the media stance toward JFK researchers slowly evolved from one of uniform hostility to one of wary curiosity. Maybe these guys are on to something.
Our long-term dream back then was completing the historical record of the JFK, RFK and MLK assassinations so that young people — our own children — could understand these pivotal events in U.S. history. We wanted to eliminate the distortions of self-interested media and government gatekeepers and overly imaginative conspiracy theorists. We took an empirical approach seeking full disclosure, a dull proposition for the conspiracy theorists but one with staying power for the sane.
Now, a decade later, President Trump’s executive order makes our dream a stunningly real possibility in the near future. A decade ago, many people thought our quest for declassification of all government records on the JFK, RFK, and MLK assassinations was a quaint and quixotic waste of time. We thought we had a strong case to which elected officials and thought leaders would eventually have to respond. We’re on to something, all right.
Sure, lazy JFK journalism still infects both liberal and conservative media outlets, but overall, the level of public discourse has been elevated. Eight years ago when Donald Trump talked about the JFK files, he smeared Ted Cruz’s dad and caved to CIA pressure. Now he has issued a sweeping executive order for full JFK, RFK and MLK disclosure with the comment “everything will be revealed.” Yuge Improvement.
Key Questions
It’s no surprise that social media is abuzz with JFK theories: Kennedy was killed because of UFOs (zero evidence) and Mossad-done-it (conjectural) and the KGB tricked Americans into believing in a CIA conspiracy (factually debunked). It’s no surprise that this ephemeral discourse has little historical value.
I also see plenty of reasonable questions from reasonable people across the political spectrum: Can we quit with conspiracy theories already? Will Trump’s order yield historically significant revelations? Is there a proverbial “smoking gun”?
The answers are: Yes, definitely; Yes, if; and Yes, absolutely.
Yes, definitely because the time for theories is over and the time for document release has come.
Yes, if because the CIA is sure to resist disclosure of embarrassing material and may well be able to prevail on Team Trump to hide certain things, at least initially.
And yes, absolutely, because that’s what 30 years of JFK reporting tells me. As longtime readers of this site know, there is indeed a “smoking gun” in the JFK assassination story. That is to say, there is a single batch of records whose disclosure will radically revise popular understanding of how President Kennedy came to die.
We call it the Joannides file.
For those of you who are new to the JFK story, repeat and remember (and retweet) it: #TheJoannidesFile.
What is the Joannides File?
We are talking about the personnel file of a deceased CIA officer named George Joannides (pronounced “Joe-uh-nee-deez”). He was a career CIA officer who, as documents first made public in 1998 show, served as chief of CIA covert operations in Miami in November 1963. He carried out secret missions for the man who sent him there, CIA Deputy Director Richard Helms.
Joannides’ personnel file, now held in CIA archives in the Washington D.C. area, contains 44 classified documents about his “intelligence methods” (tradecraft) and his “cover”(false identities) in 1963-64 when his paid agents were involved in the surveillance of accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, an ex-Marine with a penchant for left-wing politics.
The Joannides file also includes redacted records related to his CIA duties in 1978-79 when he thwarted the JFK probe of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). G. Robert Blakey, HSCA counsel, told PBS’s “Frontline” in 2003 that Joannides had obstructed his investigation, a felony.
In July 1981, Joannides received a Career Intelligence Medal for his service.
When Joannides died in 1990, he took his JFK secrets to his grave. Here’s his obituary as it appeared in the Washington Post.
The CIA Has a Copy
A long time ago, I sued the CIA for the Joannides file under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Ultimately, I was stiffed by none other than Brett Kavanaugh, but that’s another story.
The resolution of Morley v. CIA forced the agency to disclose limited information about the documents in dispute. That’s how we know the Joannides file has information about his tradecraft and false identities at the time when his agents had repeated contact with Oswald in the fateful summer of 1963.
The available documents show that after his agents had contact with Oswald, Joannides conducted “security reviews” of CIA covert operations in 1963-64 and that he maintained a residence in New Orleans, where Oswald lived in 1963.
Based on these records and interviews with several dozen people who knew him, I think Joannides was a “clean-up man” for a CIA operation involving Oswald before and after JFK was killed. I think that’s why he received a medal in 1981 and that’s why the reasons he received the medal are still top secret 44 years later.
I am not alleging that Joannides was a co-conspirator in JFK’s death. The evidence doesn’t support the claim. More likely, he was accessory after the fact. In any case, his personnel file is clearly covered by Trump’s order and should be made public immediately.
The CIA office that handles FOIA requests has a copy of the Joannides file or could locate it quickly.
CIA officials, however, are sure to tell director John Ratcliffe and Team Trump that the Joannides file is not an assassination-related record and should not be released. Like too many CIA claims about JFK’s assassination, that is factually false.
In December 2022, Judge John Tunheim, chair of the Assassination Records Review Board in the 1990s, wrote a letter to President Biden calling for full JFK disclosure and asserting that “the Joannides file absolutely needs to be released in full.”
Biden and the CIA ignored Tunheim’s recommendation.
Will Trump and Ratcliffe follow Biden’s lead? Presumably not, but we won’t know for sure until we see Trump’s Plan on Feb. 6.
What’s in the Joannides file?
Is the Joannides file proof of a CIA plot to kill JFK?
Not quite.
The documents in the Joannides file will shed light on how and why this one CIA field operative came to focus his propaganda and political action activities on the unknown Oswald in the summer of 1963 and what he reported to his superiors. The file will reveal more about why Joannides concealed his knowledge of Oswald from congressional investigators in 1978.
When these documents are declassified, I believe we will have evidence of a previously unknown CIA operation, authorized by one or more senior officials, to make Oswald what he said he was before he was killed: “a patsy,” a man framed for a crime he did not commit.
Of course, I could be wrong. After all, I haven’t seen the documents. Which is all the more reason to release the file. If I’m wrong, the CIA can clear the air by releasing the 44 documents and show that it has nothing to hide.
On the other hand, if the CIA tries to evade Trump’s order and resists disclosure of the Joannides file, we will have confirmation of the file’s historical significance.
Repeat, remember (and RT): #TheJoannidesFile.
[Background: Here is a video presentation on the Joannides file that I gave at the National Press Club in December 2022.]
More To Come
As we await release of Trump’s JFK plan, presumably on Feb. 6, I’ll be writing daily about other key JFK assassination documents — known to exist — that will become public, if and when the president’s order is fully enforced.
Next: the 1975 secret testimony of superspook James J. Angleton, the man who controlled the CIA’s file on Lee Harvey Oswald for all of JFK’s presidency.
If you want to resolve the JFK assassination story — and if you want to force the CIA to obey Trump’s order — you can help by subscribing to JFK Facts now.
An incredibly helpful post (both the article and the embedded video presentation).
One thing that I think would help us apply pressure as a community of researchers would be some kind of a graphical scorecard that lists the documents/files in this series - something easy to share on X and other social media platforms. This would be one image that could help us collectively hold the government accountable. Not sure if we've got a graphic artist in the group, but if I had that skillet, that's how I'd put it to use.
One quibble: in this field I find "empirical investigations, not mere speculations" anything but boring!