CIA Fights JFK Era Files Release: Who was George Joannides and why is his story important?

JFK Facts reports:

Joannides, now deceased, was an undercover CIA officer, whose actions provides strong evidence that certain Agency personnel manipulated Lee Harvey Oswald for propaganda purposes before and after President Kennedy was shot dead in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

George Joannides, chief of CIA covert operations in Miami in 1963, also had a residence in New Orleans.

Declassified CIA records show that Joannides obstructed two official JFK investigations by not disclosing what he knew about contacts between his Cuban agents and Kennedy’s accused killer. Most records of his activities in the summer of 1963 are still classified.


Conspiratorial speculation aside, his story demonstrates the CIA is capable of keeping JFK assassination secrets, even 50 years later.

There is no evidence Joannides was involved in a plot to kill the president. He was not a “rogue officer.” As recipient of the agency’s Career Intelligence Medal, he retired from the CIA in 1981 with the esteem of colleagues, family, and friends. Whatever he did in 1963, he did at the behest of his superiors.

His story continues to emerge. In a federal court filing earlier this month, the CIA acknowledged for the first time that Joannides maintained a residence in New Orleans during his tenure running secret anti-Castro operations in Miami 1962-64. Oswald lived in New Orleans from April to September 1963.

To this day, the CIA will not disclose the nature or purpose of Joannides’s residence in New Orleans — for reasons of “national security.”

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