Jefferson Morley's Unbearable Lightness of Being

[Jon Banks]

The CIA gave the Joannaides' personnel file to the ARRB and the ARRB knew that Joannides was the case officer for the DRE and had worked with the HSCA. They released about 12 pages and said the rest was irrelevant. They were right.
There is really nothing here at all. No Oswald Operation. No nothing.

The CIA's rep for the ARRB admits that he was wrong about Joannides by the way. I can accept that he was misled by others.

From the Washington Post's article about the new docs:

Congress in 1994 created the Assassinations Records Review Board, which again tried to recover key documents from federal agencies, and again probed the CIA. The CIA responded with its memo about “Howard,” saying he didn’t exist.

“My memo was incorrect,” said J. Barry Harrelson, a former CIA official who wrote the memo. “But this wasn’t deliberate.” He said he wasn’t provided Joannides’s personnel file, but that it was provided to the review board. Morley said the review board received the file, but seeing no references to Oswald, didn’t realize its relevance. Harrelson said the release of the D.C. driver’s license notes was “the first time I’d seen it.”

----

Harrelson’s memo also noted that progress reports on Joannides’s Miami operation were missing for the 17 months he was there, which Morley said was another indicator that the anti-Castro program was secret even within the CIA.

The search for Howard began in the 1990s when Morley interviewed members of the Cuban group DRE, short for Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil, or Student Revolutionary Directorate. Among them was Jose Antonio Lanuza, now 86, who told The Post that “Howard” dealt only with the DRE’s leader, Luis Fernandez Rocha, and Rocha would pass on direction from “Howard.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/07/14/cia-oswald-jfk-assassination-joannides/


^The last sentence is for Steve 

[Tim Nickerson]

I simply don't accept Bringuier's word as proof that Joannides wasn't involved.

The burden is on you to prove that he was.

[Jon Banks]

The burden is on you to prove that he was.

See the newly declassified documents. The CIA has confirmed that Joannides was the handler for the DRE.

It has been all over the mainstream news media. Where have you been?

[Tim Nickerson]

See the newly declassified documents. The CIA has confirmed that Joannides was the handler for the DRE.

It has been all over the mainstream news media. Where have you been?

Sorry, but that just won't do. You're asking me to substantiate your claim.

As Steve Galbraith has pointed out,  Bringuier has repeatedly stated that he acted on his own and that he had no guidance from anyone. He says that he never met Joannides.  So,  where  in the documents that you refer to does it say that Joannides had a guiding hand in the operation of DRE in New Orleans?

[Jon Banks]

Sorry, but that just won't do. You're asking me to substantiate your claim.

As Steve Galbraith has pointed out,  Bringuier has repeatedly stated that he acted on his own and that he had no guidance from anyone. He says that he never met Joannides.  So,  where  in the documents that you refer to does it say that Joannides had a guiding hand in the operation of DRE in New Orleans?

From the Washington Post:

“Howard” dealt only with the DRE’s leader, Luis Fernandez Rocha, and Rocha would pass on direction from “Howard.”

Joannides was "Howard"

It doesn't matter if Bringuier never met the DRE's CIA handler because Bringuier was not the person who called the shots in the organization. Rocha passed information about Oswald to Joannides.

[Tim Nickerson]

From the Washington Post:

“Howard” dealt only with the DRE’s leader, Luis Fernandez Rocha, and Rocha would pass on direction from “Howard.”

Joannides was "Howard"

It doesn't matter if Bringuier never met the DRE's CIA handler because Bringuier was not the person who called the shots in the organization. Rocha passed information about Oswald to Joannides.

Where does the Washington Post get that Rocha would pass on direction from "Howard"?

Where do you get that Rocha passed information about Oswald to Joannides?

[Jon Banks]

Where does the Washington Post get that Rocha would pass on direction from "Howard"?

Where do you get that Rocha passed information about Oswald to Joannides?

In the summer of 63' Carlos Bringuier notified the group's leaders in Miami about his confrontations with LHO. Rocha, the DRE's leader, reported to Howard/Joannides.

In the immediate aftermath of 11/22/63, Howard/Joannides approved the DRE's efforts to go to the Press with details about Oswald's pro-Castro activism in New Orleans:

Lanuza, who was based in Miami at the time, said he gathered all the evidence he had about Oswald that Bringuier had forwarded to him (a Navy manual Oswald handed as proof of his credentials, the radio show recording and a handwritten letter by Oswald offering his services, which is now lost) to make the case to Luis Fernandez Rocha, the Directorate top secretary, that Oswald was an agent for Castro. Rocha, who is now deceased, contacted the organization’s CIA handler, a man named “Howard” whom researchers later identified as Joannides.

The CIA agent had one instruction: “Don’t give the press anything; wait an hour.”

“I did not wait for the hour. At exactly 50 minutes, I was sitting with two phones calling journalists,” Lanuza recalled.

“I left them a message saying: President John Kennedy was assassinated by a pro-Castro agent in the United States, a member of Fair Play for Cuba.

And I spent more than two hours on the phone.”

Other members of the Directorate repeated that message publicly at the time.

Morley has also advanced a version of this theory, but he told reporters last week that he believes Joannides may have used Oswald to undermine the work of Fair Play for Cuba. But whatever the nature of the CIA’s “operational interest in Oswald,” Morley said Thursday, “we don’t know. That’s why we need the documents.”

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article270075417.html#storylink=cpy

[Tim Nickerson]

In the summer of 63' Carlos Bringuier notified the group's leaders in Miami about his confrontations with LHO. Rocha, the DRE's leader, reported to Howard/Joannides.

In the immediate aftermath of 11/22/63, Howard/Joannides approved the DRE's efforts to go to the Press with details about Oswald's pro-Castro activism in New Orleans:

Your claim that Joannides approved the DRE's efforts to go to the press is lacking any real support. Where does the claim about Rocha receiving instruction from Joannides come from? Lanuza? Doubtful. The writer of the piece seemed to be adding his own spin on things. He has Joannides as being DRE's CIA handler and giving the instruction to Roche.