Congressional panel examines JFK assassination files

Here are portions of the opening statements from Oliver Stone, who directed the 1991 film, JFK, and Jefferson Morley, an independent journalist and author.

Oliver Stone

“I ask the committee to reopen what the Warren Commission failed miserably to complete. I ask you in good faith, outside all political considerations, to reinvestigate the assassination of President Kennedy, from the scene of the crime to the courtroom -- which never happened -- but which means the chain of custody on the rifle, the bullets, the fingerprints, the autopsy that defies belief…

Let us reinvestigate the fingerprints of Intelligence all over Lee Harvey Oswald, from 1959 to 1963--his violent death--in 1963. And most importantly, this CIA, whose muddy footprints are all over this case. A true interrogation. James Angleton, before he died, who was one of the original members of the CIA, was talking about Dulles and Helms and the others, what he called the Grand Masters. And he's a Catholic--Angleton was a Catholic, in search, perhaps, of repentance before his death. He did say, quote, if you were in a room with them, you were in a room full of people that you had to believe would deservedly end up in hell. I guess I will see them soon. (Laughter) This is our democracy. This is our presidency. It belongs to us. Treat us with respect. Thank you.”

Jefferson Morley

“…Three top CIA officers lied under oath about JFK’s assassination. The first was deputy director Richard Helms. He lied to the Warren Commission in May 1964 when he said, under oath, that the CIA had only “minimal” knowledge of Oswald before JFK was killed. Helms was testifying behind closed doors to his good friend and former boss Allen Dulles, a member of the Warren Commission. His current boss, CIA director John McCone, was also part of the conversation.

Dulles: Looking back now that you have the full record do you feel that you received from the State Department adequate information at the time that they were aware of Oswald’s defection and later activities in the Soviet Union did you get at the time full information on those particular subjects?

McCone: Well, I am not sure we got full information Mr. Dulles. The fact is, we had very little information in our files. 

Helms: It was probably minimal.

The record now shows that the FBI had sent 12 reports on Oswald to the CIA between 1960 and 1963, two of which landed on Angleton’s desk in mid-November 1963. Angleton’s aide, Jane Roman, initialed routing slips on November 14 and 15 1963, indicating the reports had been delivered to the counterintelligence chief. See pp. 254 and 275 of THE OSWALD FILE for Roman’s initials (JAR) on the routing slips of the FBI reports on Oswald. At the time, the President and First Lady landed at Love Field in Dallas on Nov. 22, Angleton had a 180-plus-page dossier on the man who was about to be arrested for gunning down JFK. Helms clearly deceived the Warren Commission. One hundred and eighty pages of information cannot be truthfully described as “minimal.” Helms’ deception echoed on Capitol Hill 15 years later when Congress reopened the JFK investigation. In the spring of 1978, a career undercover officer was called out of retirement to serve as liaison to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). George Joannides was assigned to help investigators get access to CIA records and personnel. Joannides knew the subject at hand. As chief of covert operations at the Agency’s Miami station in 1963, he ran a Cuban student group (known by the Spanish acronym DRE) that was funded by the CIA under a covert action program code-named AMSPELL. His agents in New Orleans and Miami engaged in political action against Oswald’s pro-Castro activism, and generated propaganda about him both before and after Kennedy was killed. In response to a direct request from HSCA investigator Dan Hardway, Joannides denied knowing who ran the AMSPELL program in 1963, when, in fact, he himself had run it. When this deception was revealed in 2001, HSCA chief counsel G. Robert Blakey told the PBS series “Frontline” that Joannides had obstructed Congress, a felony. 

‘I was not told of Joannides’ background with the DRE, a focal point of the investigation. Had I known who he was, he would have been a witness who would have been interrogated under oath by the staff or by the committee. He would never have been acceptable as a point of contact with us to retrieve documents. In fact, I have now learned, as I note above, that Joannides was the point of contact between the Agency and DRE during the period Oswald was in contact with DRE. That the Agency would put a “material witness” in as a “filter” between the committee and its quests for documents was a flat-out breach of the understanding the committee had with the Agency that it would cooperate with the investigation.’

And now we have the CIA concealing that Angleton testified falsely under oath. One false statement might be incompetence. A second false statement could be construed as CYA for the first. But three false statements by top CIA officers about Kennedy’s killer? Three makes a pattern, a pattern of malfeasance of institutional misconduct. If three police officers lie about the defendant in a homicide case, who would call that exculpatory evidence? Such prevarication indicates guilty knowledge and legal culpability, individually and institutionally. The new JFK fact pattern leads to a new conclusion: Helms, Angleton, and Joannides were responsible for, or complicit in, JFK’s death, either by criminal negligence or covert action.

My recommendations for the Task Force: secure and release the personnel file of George Joannides, and ask Director Ratcliffe to provide a public statement answering the question: Why did these three top CIA officers lie to JFK investigators? The answers will help fulfill the Task Force’s goal of “full and complete” JFK disclosure. Thank you.