Jefferson Morley's Unbearable Lightness of Being

[Jon Banks]

I wrote a rather lengthy piece of Blakey. As I said, Hardway's comments are based on Blakey. Some of Blakey's comments are based on Fonzi of all people.

Don't try to get clicks for your blog. Defend the CIA here if that's your intention. Why can't you just give innocent explanations for the CIA's conduct here on this forum?

The CIA and Joannides should've disclosed their relationship with the DRE to the HSCA, period.

I haven't seen any good excuses for why that didn't happen but I'm all ears if you want to try to explain on this thread.

To a lay person like me it looks deceptive and looks like obstruction of the HSCA's investigation. 

When Morley can prove GJ was running an Oswald Operation of some type, he will have something. The problem is, Bringuier doesn't support it and the actual DRE guys in Miami don't support it even if they support CTs. In fact, nothing supports it. End of story.

Again, you're being dishonest or intentionally misleading.

Morley, to my knowledge, hasn't argued that Oswald was 'the subject' of Joannides' or Bringuier's work with the DRE.

Morley has even speculated that the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, not Oswald, was the subject of the CIA/Joannides' interest in 1963.

At worst, Morley has argued that the CIA lied about how much they knew about LHO prior to 11/22/63. And the documents which have been declassified since the ARRB 30 years ago have validated his thesis.

There's now a mountain of evidence confirming that the CIA knew plenty about LHO before the assassination.

I'm not going to play your game of building strawman arguments.

[Tom Graves]

Don't try to get clicks for your blog.

Righty-Lefty Banksky,

Have you read Tracy's article?

[W. Tracy Parnell]

Righty-Lefty Banksky,

Have you read Tracy's article?

It is obvious he has not read the relevant articles. No point in continuing.

[Jon Banks]

Righty-Lefty Banksky,

Have you read Tracy's article?

Why should I when the guy posts on this forum and responds to my posts?

If Michael T Griffith is gracious enough to answer questions here, so too should other writers who participate on the forum.

Posting here only to try to direct people to their blogs seems like a sleezy form of marketing to me.

Engage in debate and answer some questions, THEN I may check out your blogs 

I have no problem with engaging with people who have other points of view. I always encourage spirited debate.

[Tom Graves]

Why should I?

That's right.

Remain ignorant.

[W. Tracy Parnell]

Jon Banks,

I spent a week working on the Blakey article. The least you can do is read it and the ones Litwin has. Most of your questions/assertions would be answered.

[Jon Banks]

Jon Banks,

I spent a week working on the Blakey article. The least you can do is read it and the ones Litwin has. Most of your questions/assertions would be answered.

No thanks. I don't need you to explain what Blakey meant when I can read/hear what he has said about Joannides on my own.

Here's Blakey's take again:

Blakey, the committee's chief counsel, recalled how the CIA brought in Joannides to act as a middleman to help fill requests for documents made by committee researchers. "He was put in a position to edit everything we were given before it was given to us," Blakey said.

But Blakey didn't learn about Joannides' past until Morley unearthed it in files declassified years later.

"If I'd known Joannides was the case officer for the DRE, he couldn't have been liaison; he would have been a witness," Blakey told The Associated Press.

Blakey added: "Do I think I was snookered, precisely like the Warren Commission was? Yes."

----

Blakey isn't optimistic about getting all of the documents from the intelligence agency.

"They held stuff back from the Warren Commission, they held stuff back from us, they held stuff back from the ARRB," he said. "That's three agencies that they were supposed to be fully candid with. And now they're taking the position that some of these documents can't be released even today.

"Why are they continuing to fight tooth and nail to avoid doing something they'd promised to do?"

https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/5-decades-later-some-jfk-probe-files-still-sealed/1922978/



And in Jefferson Morley's defense, to my knowledge, he has never promoted the Joannides story as anything more than further proof (on top of the Angleton stuff) that the CIA hid the extent of their pre-November 1963 knowledge of Oswald. Which is widely accepted today even among LN researchers:

2013 -

Morley does not suggest the Joannides files point to agency involvement in the assassination itself, but more likely that their release would show the CIA trying to keep secret its own flawed performance before the assassination.

"The idea that Lee Harvey Oswald was some unknown quantity to CIA officers was false," Morley said. "There was this incredible high-level attention to Oswald on the eve of the assassination."

https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/5-decades-later-some-jfk-probe-files-still-sealed/1922978/

2022 -

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

2025 -

Morley and some others who've written extensively about Kennedy's assassination believe rogue CIA agents might have been involved in the killing, but Morley's not ready to say Joannides was one of them.

Link - https://www.axios.com/2025/07/05/cia-agent-oswald-kennedy-assassination

Without directing me to your blog again, what specifically do you object to about Morley's take on Joannides?