The Facts About the Joannides Personnel Files

I have to give Jefferson Morley credit.

He manages to maintain a single-minded devotion to his cause of convincing online followers that a "smoking gun" exists in the unreleased personnel records pertaining to deceased CIA operative George Joannides. He does this without any proof whatsoever and despite the fact that his assertions about the Joannides records and his general assassination claims have been continually debunked at this blog and several others for years now. It seems a brief refresher on the subject is in order.

Morley's latest onslaught of misinformation comes from the first article in a series purporting to advise readers about "Essential JFK Documents." Once again, let's take a look at his claims which appear in blue.

Pro tip: If you want to understand what’s going on with Trump and the assassination files, you’ll want to pay a visit to maryferrell.org. It’s a theory-free zone.)

Although it has nothing to do specifically with the Joannides records I should point out that the reason that Mary Ferrell (a site that is home to much useful information) is a "theory-free zone" is that the most prominent researchers represented there including Morley, Bill Simpich and John Newman do not agree on what happened in the assassination of JFK. Morley and Newman parted ways way back in the nineties after interviewing former CIA employee Jane Roman.

... there is a single batch of records whose disclosure will radically revise popular understanding of how President Kennedy came to die. We call it the Joannides file.

Morley cannot honestly make such a claim and, indeed, he admits "Of course, I could be wrong. After all, I haven’t seen the documents." But ARRB researcher Michelle Combs has and she reported:

The descriptions of [Joannides'] duties and accomplishments in the personnel file are very general and contain no specific reference to his relationship with the DRE. There is no mention of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in the file and no information relevant to the assassination in the file.

[Joannides'] paid agents were involved in the surveillance of accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, an ex-Marine with a penchant for left-wing politics.

The words "involved in the surveillance" implies that these agents were in New Orleans surveilling Oswald. But Joannides' "agents" were in Miami working with the agency and had no contact with Oswald although they did receive reports on his activities. The individuals who did interact with Oswald were in New Orleans and were not CIA agents but were unpaid DRE delegates.

I think Joannides was a “clean-up man” for a CIA operation involving Oswald before and after JFK was killed. I think that’s why he received a medal in 1981 and that’s why the reasons he received the medal are still top secret 44 years later.

Morley himself uncovered the medal citation which states clearly why Joannides received his award.

[Joannides'] personnel file is clearly covered by Trump’s order and should be made public immediately.

Trump's order says nothing specifically about JFK records not in the JFK collection. Morley and his cohorts seem to be relying on a very broad interpretation of the order. But the Joannides personnel records are not in the JFK collection and I believe Trump would have to designate them as JFK records in order for them to be released. Trump's knowledge of the JFK assassination would not seem to be extensive enough for him to even be aware of the Joannides records, although Tucker Carlson knows of Morley's claims and could alert the president.

CIA officials, however, are sure to tell director John Ratcliffe and Team Trump that the Joannides file is not an assassination-related record and should not be released. Like too many CIA claims about JFK’s assassination, that is factually false. In December 2022, Judge John Tunheim, chair of the Assassination Records Review Board in the 1990s, wrote a letter to President Biden calling for full JFK disclosure and asserting that “the Joannides file absolutely needs to be released in full.”

Yes, Tunheim wants the Joannides file released, but that does not prove Morley's claim that the file is "assassination-related." As previously mentioned, researcher Michelle Combs said it was not. Tunheim likely wants to see the records released because he believes it will end unwarranted speculation of the kind that Morley specializes in.

The documents in the Joannides file will shed light on how and why this one CIA field operative came to focus his propaganda and political action activities on the unknown Oswald in the summer of 1963 and what he reported to his superiors.

But Morley admits in his article that he has not seen the Joannides documents. So how could he know what they will show?

When these documents are declassified, I believe we will have evidence of a previously unknown CIA operation, authorized by one or more senior officials, to make Oswald what he said he was before he was killed: “a patsy,” a man framed for a crime he did not commit.

But surely Michelle Combs would consider a CIA operation to make Oswald a patsy to be assassination-related. Why would she then hide it? Morley has never claimed Combs is in on the plot and previously praised her for releasing Joannides' performance evaluations. It is almost a certainty that there is no evidence of an "Oswald operation" in the files.

Here is a video presentation on the Joannides file that I gave at the National Press Club in December 2022.

And here is my critque of that presentation.

The bottom line is that Morley has never seen the Joannides files and has no idea what they contain. Any pronouncements by him are pure speculation. It makes much more sense to rely on those individuals who have seen the records in question such as Michelle Combs and Judge Tunheim who has repeatedly stated there are no "smoking guns" in the records.

The "Old" Morley Critics

You have to give credit to journalist turned JFK conspiracy theorist Jefferson Morley. He is certainly persistent in his promotion of misinformation about the assassination of the 35th President. And he is able to find sympathetic (or just in need of content) media outlets that are willing to provide him with a platform to promote his nonsense.

Morley's latest victim is Flemming Rose, a Danish journalist and author. Rose interviewed Morley after the noise made by his latest JFK "revelation"—an anonymous "whistleblower" who claims to have visited secret CIA archives where he or she saw both a video tape labeled "Mexico City" and a document describing the CIA's intentional obstruction of the House Select Committee on Assassination's investigation.

Morley told Rose that he "called on all the old critics to point out where I am wrong. They don't want to get into the debate that I have a point about the CIA and the Kennedy assassination..." It is unclear who the "old critics" Morley refers to are. They could be people like CIA historian David Robarge who has engaged in informal debates with Morley on several issues in the past. Or Morley could be referring to CIA media representatives who largely ignore him anyway.

The truth is that researchers and authors in the know have been actively engaged in fact checking Morley for some time now. For my part, I have published a detailed FAQ that refutes Morley's most notable claims.

Researcher and author Fred Litwin has written several articles on Morley. Additionally, Litwin has written extensively about New Orleans DA Jim Garrison whose scandalous claims were the basis for the movie JFK and Oliver Stone's ongoing criticism of the lone assassin viewpoint. This is relevant since Morley has expressed admiration for Stone's work.

Researcher and author Dale Myers has also tangled with Morley. Myers wrote the definitive book on the murder of JD Tippit and published work helping to debunk the HSCA acoustics evidence which was the sole basis for that panel's claim of "probable conspiracy." Myers also produced an award-winning animation project that authenticated the Warren Commission's single bullet theory. Myers, working with JFK author Gus Russo, wrote a series of articles circa 2008-2013 refuting many of Morley's claims.

Robert Reynolds is a professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature at National Chi Nan University in Puli, Taiwan. Reynolds' area of study as it pertains to the JFK case is the National Archives Assassination Records Collection. Reynolds has written two articles which were published by author Max Holland's Washington Decoded. The first, Once More 'Round the Plaza, is from 2021 and primarily looks at file releases in compliance with the JFK Records Act but mentions Morley and his claims. The second article, When Is the News Media Going to Catch On? is about media mis-reporting on the file releases but has an extensive section on Morley.

Back in 2022, after the media attention Morley garnered following his "revelation" of a non-existent "smoking gun" in the JFK case, none other than Gerald Posner, author of the classic anti-conspiracy tome Case Closed, penned an article that was skeptical of Morley.

Finally, researchers working behind the scenes have provided information to those who write skeptical articles about Morley. These researchers include Paul Hoch, Steve Roe, Larry Haapanen and Jerry Shinley.

Rest assured that this particular group of "old critics" will continue to inform the public about Morley whether it is through archived articles that anyone can access and which are still totally relevant or through new material. However, speaking for myself as one of Morley's chief critics, I have come to understand a few things. The following is my own personal opinion and not necessarily that of other Morley critics.

First, Morley is no longer the serious journalist who once worked for the Washington Post and said things like he understood that Oswald was likely guilty but he was just asking questions. Morley is now really an activist who promotes far-left causes. One of those causes is the destruction of the CIA. It is likely that Morley was a "wolf in sheep's clothing" all along and was fully invested in the "CIA-did-it" narrative of the assassination. From the period of about 1996-2008 he was simply biding his time to develop a strategy and a vehicle through which he could pursue his ideas. That vehicle is his adoption of the "alternative media" model which takes the form of his Substack page.

The second sober realization I have come to is that Morley will never stop. He can't. He has a subscriber base (some of them paying monthly) and this base has to be fed material (regardless of the quality of said material) on a constant basis or he becomes irrelevant. To prove this there is no need to look further than his anonymous whistleblower "revelation" which was met with shocked silence from the assassination conspiracy community even though he promoted it as "the most important JFK story I’ve ever done."

So, the "old critics" will stay active. But we can't stop Morley nor should we in a free society. But perhaps we can educate the public and the news media who can then look skeptically on his claims, as we do.

Fact Checking the Morley Press Conference

JFK conspiracy researcher and author Jefferson Morley held a press confernce via Zoom on October 7, 2024 to promote his latest JFK "revelation" about an anonymous source who claims to have seen a secret JFK file archive. Morley has made a video of the press conference available to paid subscribers only. Morley stated he was hosting fifteen journalists but only seven bothered to ask questions. One of the inquisitors was likely Fernand Armandi who introduced Antonio Veciana at a 2014 conference of the Assassination Archives and Research Center.

Morley used the beginning of the Zoom call to lanch into a seventeen-minute disertation on his theories. But was the information that he relayed to the assembled journalists really just propoganda? Morley's assertions to the group are in blue followed by my rebuttal.

And I went to [Jane Roman] with John Newman, a historian and army intelligence officer, and we interviewed her. And we showed her the newly declassified records from the Oswald, from the CIA's file on Oswald. And she said some remarkable things. She said that these documents showed, indicated a keen interest in Oswald before the assassination in her office at the highest levels of the CIA. And that that interest had been held on a need to know basis in her judgment, looking at the records. That, I thought, was a very important revelation…

Roman's remarks made after she was shown a series of documents by Newman and Morley out of context. Roman later said "My statements have been seriously contorted, taken out of context or, at best, misinterpreted." She told the Assassination Records Review Board that Morley's article about her was "sensationalistic, scurrilous" and "tendentious."

Read the complete story HERE

...the CIA had basically told the Warren Commission that they knew very little about Oswald before the assassination, that they didn't have an interest in him.

Morley is very fond of repeating this factoid usually mixing in the notion that CIA boss Richard Helms stated the agency's knowledge of the assassin was "minimal." But researcher Paul Hoch points out that Morley is mischaracterizing a discussion between between Helms, Allen Dulles and John McCone and taking Helms' remarks "badly out of context." In a discussion on a private email group, Hoch noted "The discussion was clearly about information provided to the CIA by the State Department relating to Oswald’s defection and time in Russia, It was not about what the CIA had at the time of the assassination."

Click HERE for a full discussion of the matter.

When asked direct questions about who was running the DRE in 1963, Joanides said he didn't know, when in fact, he was the answer to the question.

Morley is correct to the extent that Joannides was the DRE case officer in 1963. But where is Morley's documentation proving that Joannides was specifically asked by the HSCA who the DRE case officer was? To my knowledge, all Morley has are the assertions of HSCA staffers whose conspiracy orientation is well known.

Turned out Joannides had a residence in New Orleans where Oswald lived in 1963. He'd gotten a medal for his work, a career intelligence medal.

Yes, Joannides had a home in New Orleans as did millions of other people. And the medal was for his cumulative CIA work. It was not, as Morley has falsely claimed on several occasions, for "stonewalling" the HSCA.

Congress mounted in 1976, an investigation which came to the conclusion that Kennedy had been caught in crossfire and was thus the victim of a conspiracy.

Morley is being deceptive at best. What the HSCA concluded was that "Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots at President John F. Kennedy. The second and third shots struck the President. The third shot he fired killed the President." Morley's "crossfire" comes from the long debunked acoustics evidence which was the sole justification for their finding of "probable" conspiracy. The committee only said there was a "probable" conspiracy since they could find no other conclusive evidence of a plot and the grassy knoll gunman could have been just another lone nut.

Win Scott wrote a memoir and said, we definitely took pictures of Oswald in Mexico City.

Morley is refering to a document by Scott titled "Foul Foe" with a byline of Ian Maxwell. Scott's exact purpose in writing this document is unknown but given the fact that he used an alias anything that Scott says in it should not neccessarily be taken to be gospel truth. Especially the assertion that the CIA had photos of Oswald which they have always denied and which have never surfaced even though their existence would help the agency which has maintained Oswald was in Mexico.

I asked the CIA for comment And they basically don't dispute any of the facts in this story.

The CIA has a long history with Morley, who has sued them for records, and they mostly ignore him. The fact that they don't respond to any specific request proves nothing.

So that's the import of the story, but along with the Oswald surveillance photos and George Joannides' personnel file, all of this remains off the record.

The Joannides personnel file is not part of the JFK Assassination Records Collection and the CIA is under no obligation to release it. If the agency released a record every time they were sued by an individual like Morley there would soon be no secrets at the CIA. But in this instance, there is more to the story. Michelle Combs, an ARRB researcher who Morley respects, stated after viewing the Joannides files "The descriptions of his duties and accomplishments in the personnel file are very general and contain no specific reference to his relationship with the DRE. There is no mention of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in the file and no information relevant to the assassination in the file (emphasis added)." Combs' evaluation is why the Joannides file was not declared an assassination record.

...the intelligence methods that Joannides was using at the time of his agents were in contact with Oswald...

Joannides' "agents," who were DRE members based out of Miami, were never "in contact" with Oswald. First, It is important to make a distinction between the Miami-based DRE and the New Orleans DRE delegation. The Miami DRE members were the ones on the CIA payroll, the ones who had CIA cryptonyms and the ones who interacted with CIA officials up to and including Richard Helms. And the Miami DRE members were the individuals that were managed by case officer George Joannides. None of these Miami DRE members had any connection whatsoever to Lee Harvey Oswald. It was the New Orleans DRE delegation (Carlos Bringuier and Celso Hernandez) that had the contact with Oswald. Note that the contact between Oswald and DRE delegate Carlos Bringuier was initiated by Oswald not the other way around.

My Timeline of the Early Life of LHO Now Available

UPDATE: The Table of Contents for the timeline may be found HERE.

Ancestry and Early Life 1880-1943 is now available. This timeline expands on one that I did many years ago for an old website called the Lee Harvey Oswald Page, which ran from about 1998 to 2004 and is still online although it is no longer updated. The purpose of that timeline was to give students and newcomers a very general overview of LHO's life.

The goals of this timeline are threefold. First, I want to provide a chronological look at an important part of the life of LHO that can be used as a tool for researchers. Secondly, by using quotes and correspondence from the principal figures in his life as well as documents created by the Warren Commission and other investigations, I hope to present a narrative that may be appreciated by anyone interested in twentieth century history. Finally, I hope that the logical progression of the chronology format will help to convince readers that LHO was exactly who he appeared to be and that he killed JFK acting alone as my own research since 1984 has convinced me is the case. Having said this, I believe this will be an extremely useful tool for anyone interested in researching LHO's life, even those who desire to debunk the official version of events.

I have more sections of the timeline completed but they need to be coded in HTML which is time consuming. I'll see how much interest there is before doing any more.

A Heritage of Nonsense by Fred Litwin Now Available

Fred Litwin, one of the top JFK researchers and authors around, has written his fourth book. It's called A Heritage of Nonsense. Fred does something not all JFK authors do. He goes out and visits document archives of all types and obtains primary material. Please check out this fine book which features debunkings of nine Garrison myths including Rose Cherami and Richard Case Nagell. The Kindle version is a steal at $4.99.

Morley-Revelation or Nothingburger?

Introduction

On October 4, 2024, conspiracy author Jefferson Morley began promoting a forthcoming article that he called the “most important JFK story I’ve ever done.” On "X" Morley claimed:

I've been reporting on the JFK assassination story for three decades now. Next week, I'll be publishing a revelatory story that penetrates and disrupts the government's 60-year-old account of the assassination. The story adds more detail to what I reported in my Dec 2022 “smoking gun" revelation at the National Press Club: the existence of a top-secret CIA psychological warfare operation involving Lee Harvey Oswald from Jan to Nov 1963 that the CIA still conceals via overclassification.

Of course, Morley’s much ballyhooed 2022 presser turned out to be not a “smoking gun” at all but rather simply more suspicions on his part about an alleged “Oswald operation” conducted by the CIA. At that press conference, Morley displayed a document that some media outlets attached an unwarranted significance to. All of this is explained in my report on the matter.

Despite this history of overstatement, the conspiracy community was abuzz with the news. Even the skeptical (like myself) wondered what Morley might have now. I postulated on one forum that it might be related to Jose Lanuza a DRE member who made the news with comments sympathetic to Morley’s position right about the time of the 2022 presser. An email correspondent speculated that Morley might have discovered the identity of the Cuban man who appeared in a film handing out leaflets with Oswald in New Orleans.

Morley's Revelation

But we were wrong. Morley’s “revelation” concerns the allegations of an unnamed (and apparently still current) government employee Morley calls a “whistleblower.” Morley’s source (hereafter referred to as the source) makes two claims. First, the source says that while at a “CIA declassification facility” in Herndon, Virginia (located at 399 Grove Street according to researcher Joe Backes who is also skeptical of Morley's article) in a special room dedicated for JFK assassination records, they saw a “gray plastic video case” that was marked with the words “Oswald in Mexico, or Oswald in Mexico City.” The video case was allegedly dated September 1963. “The detail is significant,” Morley writes. “If the CIA possesses film or video that depicts JFK’s accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico City, it would rewrite the JFK assassination story.”

But who ever said that the CIA had a film of Oswald? What has been alleged by Morley and others is that the CIA photographed Oswald when he visited the Cuban and Soviet diplomatic facilities in the Mexican capital. According to this theory, the CIA is covering up the existence of these photos (or has destroyed them) for nefarious purposes even though they would confirm that Oswald was in Mexico which has always been the position of the Warren Commission and the government in general.

Greta Goyenechea

Later in the piece to bolster his source’s story, Morley mentions the case of Greta Goyenechea, a CIA employee who was chief of LIEMPTY-14, a base charged with surveilling the Soviet Embassy. Morley recently told The Hill’s weekday morning show Rising:

[Andre Goyenechea said his mother Greta told him] I took Oswalds picture coming and going and she remembered the face very clearly she… she attached no significance to it but Andre said you know we knew very well who was an American who was a Russian just by we've been doing it for years we knew all the people who worked in that Embassy so after the assassination when Greta Goyenechea saw Oswald she told her son yeah I took his picture coming and going.

So Greta Goyenechea “attached no significance” to the alleged photo of Oswald yet she immediately recalled photographing him after the assassination? Perhaps she experienced what dozens and dozens of witnesses who spoke to investigators following the assassination did. Those individuals reported seeing Oswald before the assassination but attached no importance to the encounter until after the murder. But it was proven that these persons could not have seen the real Oswald. Granted, Greta was in a position to have seen or photographed Oswald. But that doesn't prove she did.

Other possabilities are that Andre may have simply misremembered or misinterpreted what his now deceased mother told him. Another explanation is that Greta was embarrassed by the lack of photographic production by her base so she told her son a “white lie.” Or perhaps her employees falsely told her they had obtained the photos to cover their own ineptitude. My point is that such common-sense explanations are not considered by Morley. Instead, he refers to the non-existent “CIA surveillance photos of Oswald taken by Greta Goyenechea” as if their presence is now confirmed by his anonyomus source.

A Damning Document?

The second allegation (and obviously most important from Morley’s perspective) from the source is their discovery of a document (in a different facility) supposedly created by the CIA Inspector General’s office in the late seventies. The purpose of this forty-to-fifty-page document was to determine “whether the HSCA [House Select Committee on Assassinations] probe had compromised secret CIA operations.” The source was disturbed by the document because they felt it showed “an attempt to deceive.” According to Morley such a document does not exist in either the material released under the JFK Records Act or the material yet to be fully made public. All of this goes hand in hand with Morley’s favorite topic of a CIA cover-up in the JFK matter.

The problems with the account of the source are numerous. The first is the ostensible purpose of the document. Initially, Morley says that the purpose of the document was to determine “whether the HSCA probe had compromised secret CIA operations.” Fair enough. Such a document would make sense because numerous individuals had access to classified material during the HSCA investigation. But later, the document morphs into a “blueprint for how to hide things from the public and how to prevent investigative committees, appointed by Congress, from seeing documents that might incriminate offices of the government,” which is a less reasonable scenario in my view.

But the source wasn’t finished. “They conducted an investigation to see if they had succeeded in misleading the American public about Kennedy’s assassination and they concluded the lie had worked,” the source maintained. Again, how likely is it that the CIA would document their malfeasance in the JFK case in such a manner? After all, anything put in writing and preserved could turn up someday. And how likely is it that such an incriminating document would be placed in a records facility where any government employee could “inadvertently” discover it which is how the source characterized their finding of the report saying they weren’t even looking for JFK records. Similarly, how likely is it that this explosive document, which essentially incriminates the CIA in a JFK cover-up, could be taken by the source to an "offsite facility" as the article maintains?

An "Intellectually Uncurious" Blakey?

The source said the report mentioned the CIA’s handling of HSCA Chief Counsel Robert Blakey who was demanding “a cache of documents about Mexico.” The CIA skirted the matter by supplying Blakey with a three-volume set of documents regarding Mexico City operations which was sanitized to suit the agency. When Blakey asked for no further documents, the CIA tricksters were relieved with one calling Blakey “the most intellectually uncurious human being I have ever associated with.” All of this in a report whose purpose was ostensibly to determine if agency secrets had been compromised.

Morley provides a memo “declassified in 2005,” as collaboration for his source. But Joe Backes points out the memo has been around since 1998 when many documents were made public. Rather than being any type of proof, the memo simply shows that the information regarding Blakey’s meeting with the CIA to view Mexico City records has been in the public domain for many years.

Additionally, there is the assessment of Morley's handling of the Blakey matter by historian and JFK expert Robert Reynolds who outlined the following issues during an email exchange. In his piece, Morley writes:

[At an August 1978 meeting between Blakey and the CIA’s deputy IG, Scott Breckinridge] Blakey was given a three-volume history of the CIA’s Mexico City station. The memo says Blakey “did not at any time raise any questions” about its contents.

But Reynolds points out that the memo actually says, "Mr. Blakey thanked me [Breckinridge], but did not at any time raise any questions about deletions." Reynolds notes that "Morley alters the context of Breckinridge's comment completely, even changing the word 'deletions' to 'contents'. He does this by using an end quote just before the word 'deletions'."

Regarding the "intellectually uncurious" accusation, Reynolds says, "Under Blakey's command, HSCA played its cards very close to the vest. They wanted the CIA to know as little as possible about their investigation's direction and strategy. Blakey did not ask questions because he did not want to let CIA know what he was looking for in the history. Breckinridge knew this and would never have said Blakey was ‘uncurious’.” So, the “CIA hand” that the source talks about could not be Breckinridge nor anyone else of consequence.

Debunking His Own Story

But possibly the best argument against Morley’s story is his own reporting. All told, Morley interviewed sixteen relevant individuals but only one agreed with the source. Morley spoke with former Assassination Records Review Board Chairman John Tunheim who told him such a document, "should have been shared with the board." Tunheim added, "If we had seen something like that we would have released it." But Tunheim's comment could be interpreted to mean that he is also skeptical of the document's existence.

An anonymous individual identified as a “consultant” stated, “I knew there was a SCIF [Secure Compartmentalized Information Facility] for those [JFK] documents.” But out of six other persons who had been inside the facility in question, only two thought there “might” have been a JFK archive in the SCIF. Four others knew of no such SKIF. Carmen Medina, former director of the Agency’s Center for the Study of Intelligence, told Morley “whoever told you that may have been misinformed.”

Similarly, Kenneth McDonald, a former CIA historian told Morley, “I never heard of any SCIF dedicated to JFK records.” When asked about the plausibility of a CIA investigation into the HSCA, John Helgerson, CIA Inspector General from 2002 to 2009, told Morley, “Well, perhaps, but by no means necessarily.” Helgerson added, “Inspectors generals don’t usually get involved unless there’s reason to believe there’s malfeasance or wrongdoing or criminal activity. … I don’t know what the predicate would be here.”

The rest of Morley’s article is a mix of inaccurate and previously debunked material. Morley writes that the HSCA concluded that “JFK had been caught in crossfire and killed by conspirators who could not be identified.” This is totally false. The HSCA concluded that “Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots at President John F. Kennedy; the second and third shots he fired struck the President; the third shot he fired killed the President.” The committee did conclude that a second gunman fired from the grassy knoll, but this conclusion was based on the long-debunked acoustics evidence.

Other missteps by Morley:

• CIA officer Ruben Efron was reading Oswald’s mail for two years.
• Several claims about DRE boss George Joannides.

Conclusion

Rather than being a “revelation” or an “important” story, Morley’s report about his anonymous source is a nothingburger. I am not the only observer who believes this. Conspiracy researcher Joe Backes said in a Substack article, “I was hoping he had something.” Stealing my thunder, Backes concludes:

Is this a bombshell? Nope. So, what are we left with? A single source claiming there were, maybe still are, JFK assassination records in a SCIF at a CIA building in Herndon, VA. If we were reading any of them and they were indeed as claimed, then that would be a bombshell. I would love for this to pan out and be something. But right now it’s not. Sorry.

The fact that Morley believes his story is significant may say more about the state of his research and reporting in 2024 than it does about any JFK cover-up by the CIA. I will go so far as to say that this article is representitive of where the conspiracy community currently finds itself—with many suspicions but no proof.

Newman Talks to Danny Jones About Veciana

Conspiracy author and researcher John Newman did the world a favor when he published research in his book Into The Storm that refuted many of the claims of one Antonio Veciana. Theses claims concerned when and under what circumstances Veciana allegedly met his CIA handler Maurice Bishop whom he eventually maintained was really David Atlee Phillips—one of the favorite villains of the conspiracy crowd. Newman also provided solid evidence to show that Veciana was tied more to Army Intelligence than he was to the CIA. My eBook, The Bishop Hoax, demonstrated that Veciana lied not only about the things named by Newman but about anything that suited his varied purposes. The Conclusion chapter of my book lays out Veciana's most significant prevarications.

But instead of telling his followers that Veciana is not worthy of belief in any regard, Newman has incorporated the anti-Castro activist into his sprawling conspiracy theory to end all conspiracy theories. A recent conversation with Danny Jones, a pod caster who specializes in "fringe cultures," lays out the disturbing details of Newman's current thinking regarding the Veciana matter which is just one small aspect of Newman's convoluted grand hypothesis.

First, let's look at why the assassination had to occur, according to Newman, and Veciana's role in the scheme:

[The] Antonio Veciana story this is one of the biggest misdirections ever because you can't figure out the Armageddon that was that was ... underway um at the time that's what it was that's what they were trying to do was to blow the planet not to blow the planet up but to blow all the you know the Russia China all those those countries and and so Veciana was a way to help pin this on the CIA so you don't know who's actually behind all this this Armageddon stuff going on it's the military and he was working for the military the whole time they wanted people to think it was the CIA ..."

Yes, you read that correctly. The military brass wanted to nuke Russia and China. Not only that, but when JFK said no to their plan they decided that the youthful President had to be killed and the crime blamed on the CIA. This theory is the result of Newman reading too much into contingency plans which the government has many of but most remain unused. Veciana fits into all of this because Newman thinks that he was released from prison early for the sole purpose of telling the world the falsehood about his CIA handler Bishop and his meeting with Oswald.

How did the CIA get Veciana to lie? They just pinned a drug conviction on the hapless anti-Castro activist and then dangled an early release:

... they they put him in jail for a long while because a lot of those CIA guys were running dope you know in South American stuff so they had it on everybody and so so what they do sometimes if they want to use somebody they say okay uh here's what you're going to do for us and if he says no okay you can put him in jail and so he ended up in jail.

Exactly who framed Veciana and how is, of course, not detailed. But presumably since Newman mentions the CIA and South American drug activity, he thinks that it was a rogue CIA agent or agents that were controlled by the military brass. Newman continues:

... when um they put him in jail and uh they let him out really early ... they busted him for 25 kilos of um cocaine ... and that that get that gets you about um two uh non-consecutive uh 12 year terms instantly so he was he was going to be locked up for at least 12 years if not more than that and uh they let him out in about less than two years and there was no reason why ...

That's a lot to unpack so let's get started. First, Veciana's public pronouncements were designed to prove CIA involvement in the assassination. Veciana's case officer Bishop was CIA and met with Oswald—that is the story. During his conversation with Jones, Newman doesn't discuss the time period during which Veciana was supposed to be relaying his false information. But in another presentation in 2019 summarized here, Newman mentions assets of US intelligence including Veciana who were "weaponized and used as messengers." This weaponization occurred during "the period of the Church Committee's tenure" which ended in 1976. So, presumably Newman is talking about the time soon after Veciana's 1976 prison release. Which only makes sense because they wouldn't release Veciana unless they expected immediate action.

The problem is, Veciana never said that Bishop was CIA until many years after his release from prison. Veciana told Fonzi during the 1976 interviews that Bishop was "working for a private organization, not the government." Later that year, Veciana told Dick Russell that Bishop was "part of an American intelligence service" and then "instructed him not to ask which one." This left the door open to the possibility that Bishop was Army Intelligence which was exactly the opposite of what Veciana supposedly wanted to achieve. And in 1977, Veciana told Fonzi’s assistant Al Gonzales that he "never said that Bishop was CIA" but believed that he was with "some sort of intelligence agency or with a powerful interest group" again leaving the door open to Bishop being Army Intelligence.

In 1978, Veciana testified before the HSCA and again failed to name Bishop as a CIA asset. "I always had the opinion that Maurice Bishop was working for a private firm and not the government" Veciana stated. He also refused to say that Bishop was David Phillips. In his HSCA writeup, Fonzi noted that the "U.S. intelligence agency [Bishop] was associated [with], could not be determined." Veciana's Church Committee testimony is missing but it is doubtful it would contradict his numerous pronouncements that Bishop was not CIA.

The fact is, Veciana never said that Bishop was Phillips, thus providing a concrete tie to a known CIA agent, until 2013. It is true that numerous conspiracy theorists claimed Phillips was Bishop from about 1980 onward and maybe Newman believes that the development of public opinion that the CIA was behind the assassination was the goal. But if you are releasing someone from prison specifically to blame the assassination on the CIA, why not have that person come right out and say it instead of merely hoping that conspiracy types will step in and do the job for you?

What about the evidence that supports Newman's claim that Veciana's drug conviction was a setup? There isn't any. But there is plenty of evidence that says Veciana did exactly what he was accused of. Veciana's two co-conspirators testified against him and provided damning evidence. One of the most persuasive pieces of evidence was provided by an accountant who worked at a real estate firm where Ariel Pomares, one of Veciana's partners in crime, was employed. The accountant remembered a day that he answered the telephone in the absence of Pomares. The call was from Veciana who left a message for Pomares. "Tell him my name is Veciana and I received the documents," was the simple message. It turns out that the phrase "I received the documents" was a code to let Pomares know that the cocaine had arrived and was available for delivery. Those who believe Veciana was framed have a steep hill to ascend and so far Newman isn't climbing.

Another area where Newman is playing loose with the facts concerns Veciana's sentence and the time he served. Newman implies that Veciana should have received a mandatory sentence of two "non-consecutive" 12 year terms. He offers no evidence for this statement. According to my research, Veciana was sentenced to "two seven-year terms to run concurrently" with three years parole after that. So, the most he was going to do was seven years. If there was something funny about the sentence, it should be a simple matter to prove.

Newman also says that Veciana was released after "less than two years and there was no reason why." But according to Veciana's autobiography (page 223) he served "twenty-six months." Thus far, I have been unable to independently confirm the exact length of Veciana's term, but he presumably knew how long he was there. Veciana's book also confirms the two concurrent seven year sentences and the three years of probation. It is reasonable to assume that an individual would have to serve about three years of a seven-year term before gaining parole. But with good behavior or because of overcrowding, twenty-six months would not be abnormal and likely required no conspiratorial intervention.

Newman's rambling comments to Jones are often absurd and at times could even be called paranoid. For example, Newman, now and possibly for some time, believes that the CIA "pickpocketed" his cell phone at a conference where he was speaking about the Veciana matter. Newman told Jones that after misappropriating his phone the agency returned it to a pocket on his "carry bag." A "regular looking guy" who appeared to be in late fifties then approached Newman and said "you're okay, you're okay, it's okay they just want to know what you know. You're good don't worry."

Newman went on to explain that he first quite understandably thought the "okay man" was "a crazy guy." But "a year or so" after the event he was able to "figure out" that "they [the CIA] were that interested in me right? I hadn't gotten that far in ... in terms of of any notoriety or anything like that so um yeah but that's what happened that's what they want and then I had other things happen to me later on when people ... people would say stuff to me that was good you know that they were there ... there were times when they actually applauded what I was doing and and [gave] me some information."

From listening to various videos of Newman I have also learned that he believes that his books JFK and Vietnam and his current work Popov's Mole were "suppressed" by different means. Regarding the current book, Amazon decided that some documents (which Newman believes "prove" Bruce Solie was the legendary CIA mole predicted by Popov) Newman wanted to include were "illegible" and therefore delayed publication. However, once Newman removed the offending documents and placed them on the Internet, Amazon went ahead and published the book. Newman doesn't seem to understand that Amazon controls the process and you have to go along with their rules even when you don't agree with them. Such regulations are not necessarily "suppression" and Amazon has published two books of Newman's works previously.

The rambling nature of Newman's presentation caused one Education Forum poster to believe Newman had reversed his position on one matter. At 5:50 of the video Newman says "[David Phillips] meets Veciana in a hotel in Dallas Texas and um that is where uh Oswald is there for the meeting and this is only a month before the Kennedy assassination so it looks like ... this guy uh is plotting Kennedy's murder that's so they they put Veciana and Phillips in the same um office area of a big Bank in ... Dallas together the three of so ... that's proof ... that uh Phillips was in on it and he's big CIA guy so you know ... everybody after that said the CIA killed killed Kennedy and they wouldn't give it up no matter what."

And indeed in 2020 Newman said when asked during a presentation if Phillips was Bishop "No, I don’t think so … at best [Bishop] would be a composite of several people that played roles in the saga." But it is clear (to me anyway) that Newman was merely explaining the theory that Phillips met with Oswald and was seen by an early-arriving Veciana—not endorsing it.

Newman is promising more revelations about Veciana in the forthcoming book five of his series on the assassination including the results of court filings (spearheaded by Dan Hardway) to unseal Veciana's records for his drug conviction. While these might be interesting from a historical perspective, it is unlikely they will prove that Veciana was released early at the behest of the Church Committee or another government entity. But if Veciana were released early to tell about Bishop, that would provide an obvious motive for his lies about the imaginary mentor. In any case, if Newman's statements to Jones are any indication of what is to come, it is doubtful that he be able to offer anything of substance and surely nothing that will rival his worthwhile refutation of the Veciana claims mentioned at the beginning of this article.