Week in Review: Joannides File Breaks News
The documents, the response, and the Epstein quagmire
As the digital version of The Washington Post’s news story by Tom Jackman about the Joannides File came up online on Monday, JFK Facts editor Jefferson Morley posted a deeply detailed narrative on the revelations within it. Morley has been pursuing these documents for more than twenty years, with information requests leading to a lawsuit and lengthy negotiations with the CIA and the National Archives.
Thanks to the efforts of this year’s House Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), the CIA’s personnel file on deceased undercover officer George Joannides is now open to the public.
The link to the file is within this article, but more important is Morley’s history and analysis of the facts within it, which confirm the previously denied role of a CIA officer in the surveillance of leftist activist Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin who denied killing Kennedy and was killed in police custody. Joannides also won a CIA medal for stonewalling JFK investigators.
On Tuesday morning, my paper copy of the newspaper displayed Jackman’s story on the front page, or as we say, “on A1.”
A Reader’s Guide: Part 1 & Part 2
For readers who want to know: What is the Joannides file anyway? What’s in a CIA file? What are we talking about here?
Morley provided a guide to CIA files and what’s relevant within these newly released documents. The Joannides personnel file contains some 40 documents about his work life, dated from 1961-1964 and 1978-81. They have little information about his operational work, but they do leave clues.
Morley goes deep into the explainer role in an interview with Vanity Fair contributor Jim Robenalt, who is both a popular historian (January 1973) and a corporate litigator. Watch the video and follow along with the transcript from the link in this post. You can also check out the JFK Facts on Substack channel on YouTube for all our video content.
Media Reactions to Joannides File
Chad Nagle and I compiled the media response to the release of the file. Along with interest in Joannides’ birth country (Greece), print, broadcast, and online media across the globe reported on the new disclosures in the 62-year old story of the assassination of President Kennedy and the alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.
Epstein Documents Entangle JFK Task Force
It shouldn’t have been a surprise that this week the furor opened up over President Trump’s statements about the so-called Epstein files spilled over into the JFK documents declassification and disclosure sphere.
The July 7 Justice Department announcement regarding financier/trafficker Jeffrey Epstein pulled the rug out from under Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, the Florida congresswoman who chairs the House Task Force on Declassification of Federal Secrets. Investigating Epstein file declassification is part of the mission of the task force, along with JFK, RFK, Dr. Martin Luther King, COVID-19, UAPs and 9/11. Quite a plate full.
Morley wrote about how the successes of the task force should inform and ameliorate the failures predicted by the Epstein story. He writes:
The Epstein debacle shows that the popular demand for transparency around public controversies is a powerful political force in a digital democracy. It generates endless conspiracy theories to explain unseen forces. It also can produce real results — witness the Joannides file and its revelations about the hidden hand of the CIA in the events of 1963.
Naysayers and Nothingburgers
Inevitably, the factionalized wilderness of mirrors comprising the JFK assassination research world surfaced members who disputed the newsworthiness of the released documents, the credibility of living witnesses and even the motives of the JFK Facts editor and staff here. Morley responded to an attack from the intelligence-insider SubStack publication SpyTalk - actually folks we know who seem to feel free with flinging insults.
From Russia, With Love?
But wait! Chad Nagle reported on a breakthrough, if it really happens. The disclosure of Lee Harvey Oswald’s files from the former Soviet Union’s KGB seems to be upcoming.
“I guess I’ll break it here first,” said Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, chair of the House Oversight Committee’s Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, to Chris Cuomo on NewsNation on Wednesday. “We have obtained information that the previously hidden files that the KGB actually had on JFK will be released in the fall.”
The Florida congresswoman was referring to the Soviet KGB’s records on the surveillance of Lee Harvey Oswald, accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy, during the two and a half years he resided in the Soviet Union from 1959-1962.
Nagle wrote about KGB records on Oswald generated outside the U.S.S.R., especially on his trip to Mexico City in the fall of 1963. Read this, and you’ll see why Nagle hopes that Rep. Luna can secure the release of this document as well.
For those eager to read the KGB files, remember they will be in Russian.
JFK Cinema: The ‘Limited Hangout’ Genre
Finally, Peter Voskamp provides an update on the status of the widely-rumored film “Assassination,” directed by Barry Levinson but originally planned with David Mamet at the helm. Mamet and top cast members were recently replaced, and the “Mob-dunnit” movie’s current status is uncertain. It reputedly posits the theory that Chicago Mafia boss Sam “Momo” Giancana orchestrated the assassination of JFK, and Giancana’s great nephew, Nick Celozzi, has filed a lawsuit over authorship rights.
However, Voskamp discovered another movie positing the theory that Giancana was behind JFK’s murder, which is now in production. John Travolta — who won an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of aspiring Italian-American dancer Tony Manero in “Saturday Night Fever” (1978) — stars as Las Vegas mobster Johnny Roselli, a friend and confidant of CIA assassination specialist William King Harvey. JFK Facts will keep you posted.
Tweet of the Week
We award first prize to Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who posted the article from the UK’s Daily Mail about the release of the Joannides file, juxtaposing her upbeat, smiling image with the late CIA psychological warfare officer’s grim visage.
The explosion of news generated by the Jackman/Morley WashPost/JFKF articles regarding the CIA, Joannides and Oswald elements of the JFK case is immense. There's a flurry of communication by phone, email, text and personal communication like nothing since the "JFK" Stone film(s). My phone is melting. Please, everyone --- support Rep. Luna and write and phone your Congress representatives about continuing the JFK Task Force. This is the time Congress has to press forward. Movies will be made and books written because of this moment. Thank you Margot Williams.
It remains unclear if the Joannides file story will enjoy a longer relevancy or greater impact than the already forgotten, impotent JFK podcasts by Rob Reiner.
My guess is that it will go the way of the life-saving biscuits that at the command of Trump's masters were incinerated in a time of famine.
And where, dear Brutus, will the fault lie?