WORLD EXCLUSIVE: The CIA's Pre-Assassination File on Lee Harvey Oswald

From the JFK files, a unique historic file ... not available anywhere else: What the CIA knew about the accused assassin, and when they knew it

The new JFK files show CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton monitored the movements, politics, and personal life of Lee Harvey Oswald for four years before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. (Credit: Chad Nagle)

Perhaps the single most significant new document to emerge from the new JFK assassination files in the past two years is the material that CIA counterintelligence officers compiled on Lee Harvey Oswald before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963.

Yes, the newly declassified 1961 memo that Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote to JFK about reorganizing the CIA exposed deep divisions between the White House and the clandestine service that persisted to the end of JFK’s presidency.

And yes, the public release of counterintelligence chief James Angleton’s false testimony to JFK investigators in 1978 crystallizes a pattern of malfeasance around accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald that points to CIA culpability in the president’s violent death.

But the Agency’s pre-assassination Oswald file — not fully declassified until April 2023— is foundational to both of those stories. This 181-page dossier shows us Oswald in the eyes of the CIA before JFK was ambushed in Dallas. It reveals a remarkable and largely unknown story: how a small clique of covert operatives monitored Oswald’s politics and personal life for four years before JFK was gunned down in Dallas — allegedly by Oswald.

JFK Facts is making the complete pre-assassination Oswald file publicly available to paid subscribers (and news organizations) as a public service in advance of the scheduled hearing on the new JFK files, sponsored by the House Task Force on Declassification of Federal Secrets.

The hearing, chaired by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (F-Fla.), will be held in the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center in Washington D.C. on at 2 p.m. ET Tuesday, April 1.

The Oswald File will figure prominently in the hearing, which is open to the public and will be livestreamed on the internet.

What did the CIA know about Oswald? And when did they know it? (Graphic by John Reid/Data by Margot Williams)