Jefferson Morley's Unbearable Lightness of Being

[Jon Banks]

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.

From the Washington Post:

...when the news hit that Oswald had been arrested three months later, Lanuza and Rocha called Howard. Lanuza said Howard told them to call the FBI and provide the letter, and then alert the media to Oswald’s pro-Cuba leanings. The FBI came and took Oswald’s letter with a promise to return it, Lanuza said, but never did.

Lanuza then phoned his contacts in the news media, who promptly added Oswald’s political leanings to their coverage. The Fair Play for Cuba Committee soon imploded from its association with Oswald, a massive victory for the CIA — and for Howard.

Morley and other researchers always suspected Howard was Joannides, who died in 1990, but it wasn’t confirmed until the driver’s license documents were released July 3.

“Why couldn’t they say that [before 2025]?” Morley asked. “I think the only reason is there’s something nefarious going on. If it’s something innocent, just say this is what happened.”

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


Lanuza, the press officer for the DRE at the time, is the source of the claim that "Howard" approved of their going to the Press with information about their run-ins with Oswald in New Orleans. He has been telling that story for years.

The newly declassified files on Joannides confirm that "Howard Gebler" was his alias.

During the ARRB, the CIA denied that "Howard" existed. We now know that "Howard" did in fact exist and he was Joannides.

This stuff isn't as complicated as you're making it seem.

[Tim Nickerson]

From the Washington Post:

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


Lanuza, the press officer for the DRE at the time, is the source of the claim that "Howard" approved of their going to the Press with information about their run-ins with Oswald in New Orleans. He has been telling that story for years.

The newly declassified files on Joannides confirm that "Howard Gebler" was his alias.

During the ARRB, the CIA denied that "Howard" existed. We now know that "Howard" did in fact exist and he was Joannides.

This stuff isn't as complicated as you're making it seem.

The problem that I'm having is with the assertion that Roche and Lanuza needed the approval of Howard (Joannides) before going to the Press with information about DREs run-ins with Oswald in New Orleans.  I can't access the Post article. What is the real support for that assertion?

[Fred Litwin]

Lanusa went to the press before Joannides called back. He couldn't wait.

We have known that Joannides was the case officer for the DRE in 1963 since 1998. This is not news.

[Michael T. Griffith]

https://www.onthetrailofdelusion.com/post/jefferson-morley-s-unbearable-lightness-of-being

Jefferson Morley's Unbearable Lightness of Being

Now that the entire personnel file of George Joannides has been released, Jefferson Morley has now published his unified theory of nothingness.

There is nothing there. The only thing we have found out in over twenty years is that Joannides used the alias of Howard Gebler.

This is both disappointing and simply wrong. I don't understand how you can make these statements given the information in the released files.

For decades, the CIA, along with WC apologists, insisted, swore up and down, that the CIA had no interest whatsoever in Oswald before the assassination. Now we know that the CIA had a very intense interest in Oswald, and that the CIA was even reading Oswald's mail in the weeks before the assassination. This is a sea-state change in our knowledge of the case and is hardly a "nothing burger."

We also now know that Joannides brazenly misled the HSCA and did all he could to sabotage the HSCA's investigation into Oswald, the CIA, and the anti-Castro Cubans. How you can describe this as a "nothing burger" is hard to understand.

Through CIA officer Barry Harrelson's memo, the CIA disavowed any knowledge of a CIA agent in Miami in 1963 who used the alias Howard. The CIA memo asserted that “knowledgeable sources” at the CIA concluded Howard was not a real person.

Morley knew this was false. He filed a Freedom of Information Act request, which turned into a lawsuit covered by the New York Times and Fox News, and which went on for 15 years until Brett Kavanaugh killed it. All that time, the CIA kept insisting they didn’t know anything about any CIA officer using the alias of Howard in Miami. Your camp uncritically took the CIA's word on that said claimed there was no reason to doubt the CIA's version of the events of 1963.

The release of the Joannides file, however, has exposed the CIA's denial as false. Harrelson now acknowledges that his 1998 memo, sent to a civilian review board tasked with declassifying JFK files, was false. People tell big lies for a reason. Agencies tell big lies for a reason.

The CIA has acknowledged, for the first time in six decades, that Joannides used the alias Howard Gebler and knew of his actions in late 1963, that he ran an illegal operation via his agents in the Cuban Student Directorate (DRE) to confront and denounce Oswald’s chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) in August 1963, and that his agents had contact with Oswald--three months before JFK’s assassination.

This proves that Joannides sanctioned the Directorate’s public efforts in September 1963 to recruit assassins to kill Castro. The Directorate planted an article in a popular men’s magazine sold nationwide that offered a $10 million dollar reward “to person or persons who, with the help of the DRE, will assassinate Fidel Castro.” Joannides submitted an implausible denial for the file and the matter was forgotten, but now we know the truth.

Not only did Joannides run an off-the-books operation illegally targeting U.S. dissidents (the FPCC) for disruption, and not only did his agents have contact with Oswald, but the DRE, which he handled, planted an ad in a national publication to recruit assassins to kill Castro.

This information was unknown until the Joannides records were released earlier this month. It is hard to understand how you can call all of this a "nothing burger."

[Steve M. Galbraith]

A few years ago Morley promoted the Antonio Veciana claim that Oswald was controlled by seen with a mysterious figure named Maurice Bishop who was supposedly CIA agent David Atlee Phillips. This claim then (I think; it's conspiracy world the details don't matter) had Oswald as a CIA asset, manipulated to connect him with Castro (Mexico City et cetera), and then framed for the shooting. Before that Morley said Angleton should have been charged with criminal negligence for not informing the Secret Service about the threat/danger that Oswald posed (Morley gave the FBI a pass). This has Oswald as the assassin and apparently a true Marxist. More recently he's promoted the Gary Underhill allegation about rogue CIA agents in the Far East Division killing JFK because he - and apparently no one else? - discovered that they were running drugs and guns. Where Oswald fits into this theory is, I guess, TBD. Now he has this Joannides claim about some sort of "Oswald Operation". There's more from him but that should be enough.

None of this, of course, gets us to Dallas, to November 22, 1963 and Dealey Plaza. He's just jumping around from superficial claim to superficial claim, all of it disconnected and incoherent and contradictory and without substance.

Appropriate analogy. It's the lightness of Morley's conspiracy world. In fairness, there's a lot of lightness in JFK conspiracy world.

[Jon Banks]

The CIA has finally vindicated Morley's research into George Joannides so now the cope from LN'ers is that its a "nothingburger".

Love to see it...

[Jon Banks]

This is both disappointing and simply wrong. I don't understand how you can make these statements given the information in the released files.

For decades, the CIA, along with WC apologists, insisted, swore up and down, that the CIA had no interest whatsoever in Oswald before the assassination. Now we know that the CIA had a very intense interest in Oswald, and that the CIA was even reading Oswald's mail in the weeks before the assassination. This is a sea-state change in our knowledge of the case and is hardly a "nothing burger."

We also now know that Joannides brazenly misled the HSCA and did all he could to sabotage the HSCA's investigation into Oswald, the CIA, and the anti-Castro Cubans. How you can describe this as a "nothing burger" is hard to understand.

Through CIA officer Barry Harrelson's memo, the CIA disavowed any knowledge of a CIA agent in Miami in 1963 who used the alias Howard. The CIA memo asserted that “knowledgeable sources” at the CIA concluded Howard was not a real person.

Morley knew this was false. He filed a Freedom of Information Act request, which turned into a lawsuit covered by the New York Times and Fox News, and which went on for 15 years until Brett Kavanaugh killed it. All that time, the CIA kept insisting they didn’t know anything about any CIA officer using the alias of Howard in Miami. Your camp uncritically took the CIA's word on that said claimed there was no reason to doubt the CIA's version of the events of 1963.

The release of the Joannides file, however, has exposed the CIA's denial as false. Harrelson now acknowledges that his 1998 memo, sent to a civilian review board tasked with declassifying JFK files, was false. People tell big lies for a reason. Agencies tell big lies for a reason.

The CIA has acknowledged, for the first time in six decades, that Joannides used the alias Howard Gebler and knew of his actions in late 1963, that he ran an illegal operation via his agents in the Cuban Student Directorate (DRE) to confront and denounce Oswald’s chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) in August 1963, and that his agents had contact with Oswald--three months before JFK’s assassination.

This proves that Joannides sanctioned the Directorate’s public efforts in September 1963 to recruit assassins to kill Castro. The Directorate planted an article in a popular men’s magazine sold nationwide that offered a $10 million dollar reward “to person or persons who, with the help of the DRE, will assassinate Fidel Castro.” Joannides submitted an implausible denial for the file and the matter was forgotten, but now we know the truth.

Not only did Joannides run an off-the-books operation illegally targeting U.S. dissidents (the FPCC) for disruption, and not only did his agents have contact with Oswald, but the DRE, which he handled, planted an ad in a national publication to recruit assassins to kill Castro.

This information was unknown until the Joannides records were released earlier this month. It is hard to understand how you can call all of this a "nothing burger."

Awesome summary. Thanks

[W. Tracy Parnell]

From what I can see, all the conspiracy people here need to go back and re-read Fred's article carefully. They are not getting the facts right. Here's one major fact. It is not just Bringuier saying that he had nothing to do with Joannides. None of the DRE people are claiming or have ever claimed that Joannides told Bringuier what to do. Bringuier did what came naturally when he saw a pro-Castro supporter like LHO.