Tunheim: Release Undercover Officer's JFK File

'We were misled by the CIA," says former chair of assassination records panel

Judge John Tunheim, former chair of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), has called for release of the long-suppressed files of an undercover officer involved in the events of November 1963.

On the Nov. 2 Out of the Blank podcast, host Robbie Robertson asked Tunheim what the government might still be hiding in the JFK files.

Tunheim, now chief judge for the federal court district of Minnesota, said he was “very irritated” that “the CIA misled us” about the actions of deceased undercover officer George Joannides.

“He was described to us as the public relations person who worked with the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) on behalf of the CIA—and he did do that,” Tunheim said. “He was the go-between the HSCA and the CIA [in 1978]. We had his personnel file, so we thought he wasn’t relevant to anything.”