Monday, May 05, 2008

The CIA is still rebuffing a court order re Joannides

Jeff Morley reported on April 30 that, despite a court order, the CIA is still refusing to explain the absense of records on George Joannides. Joannides was the case officer for the DRE, an anti-Castro Cuban organization sponsored by the CIA. Lee Harvey Oswald famously had a run-in with DRE member Carlos Bringuier in New Orleans that, after which Oswald appeared on TV saying he was a "Marxist-Leninist".

Given the DREs involvement in that episode, which happened just months before the Kennedy assassination, records documenting Joannides' actions regarding the DRE should be released. As Morley wrote:
John Tunheim, a federal judge who chaired the Assassination Records Review Board in the 1990s, said the Joannides files should be made public.

"Had the Review Board known the truth about George Joannides everything bearing his name would have been made public," Tunheim said in an interview. The ARRB, a civilian review panel created by Congress in the wake of the controversy over Oliver Stone's "JFK," declassified thousands of assassination records between 1994 and 1998.
By refusing to answer the court order to explain the absence of Joannides records in this period, the CIA has essentially put themselves above the law. That's anti-American. In America, the highest authority is not the President, or the CIA. It's the constitution. The rule of law MUST be preserved in this country if we are to maintain a claim to being a democracy.

The CIA's refusal to turn over the records they have to have on this episode verges on treason. Let's hope saner heads prevail. The CIA has nothing to lose here but a false history. No one is going to abolish the current CIA for deeds of the past. It's time to set the truth free, at last, regarding the CIA's still withheld records regarding the Kennedy assassination.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

The truth shall set you free but first it should make you angry.
Wasn't it Richard Helms who told the Church Committee that the CIA had assassination plans that never appeared on paper? Then added, just in case the committee members hadn't fully understood, "And never will!"
And I think it was Allen Dulles who went on the record to say that the CIA would lie even to anyone to protect its secrets.
Lies and cover-ups are there modus operandi.
But let's forget about that for a moment. The news from N. Carolina is encouraging. It seems that Barack is going to win.

1:54 PM  
Blogger Real History Lisa said...

Actually - it was Bill Harvey's notes on "executive action", the euphemism used for assassination plots, that said "nothing on paper." And it was Richard Helms who said a secret operation should stay secret FOREVER. Helms also said you don't have an agent unless you own him "body and soul," implying their agents were blackmailed into submission.

Lies and coverups will always be a part of our history so long as we remain human. But I think we'll see less of them in the next few years.

I have never lost faith. I KNOW Obama WILL BE the next president of the United States.

I'll note, too, that some people in Reston Virginia seem very concerned about that. Google shows which cities are searching certain terms the most, and Reston, the home of the CIA, was the number one city searching Obama today. Very interesting....

7:32 PM  

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