Morley Must Clarify the Record on Joannides

Conspiracy author and researcher Jefferson Morley, who testified before a Congressional Task Force on April 1st, needs to do something to clarify the record. In a prepared statement submitted to the Task Force, Morley stated the following:

Three top CIA officers lied under oath about JFK’s assassination.

In the statement, Morley went on to identify the CIA men as James Angleton, Richard helms and George Joannides. I have previously addressed Morley's allegations concerning Helms. Fred Litwin has a five-part series discussing Morley and Angleton.

That brings us to Joannides. Morley claims:

In response to a direct request from HSCA investigator Dan Hardway, Joannides denied knowing who ran the AMSPELL program in 1963 — when, in fact, he himself had run it.

It is true that Joannides was the case officer for the DRE in 1963. But what evidence is there that Hardway asked Joannides about the DRE either "under oath" or informally? According to Robert Reynolds, who is an expert on the JFK file releases and has studied Joannides extensively, the evidence is just about non-existent for a Hardway request to Joannides regarding the identity of the DRE chief. He told me the following in a group email:

There are several lists of HSCA requests to CIA for information, There were hundreds of requests, and CIA kept close track of them, because they were accused by HSCA of delay and bad faith more than once. The CIA lists include both written and oral requests. Last year I looked through these and found no requests for the identity of the case officer of DRE, either written or oral.

Reynolds continues with a series of questions of his own:

Let's be specific about what Hardway is saying. He says he asked Joannides and Joannides gave him what would have been an evasive answer ... Did Hardway ever put down in writing his question to Joannides and Joannides response? If not, can he give us any specifics about when he asked Joannides? What were the circumstances, i.e. WHY did he ask Joannides this question? Was he researching DRE? Was he writing about DRE? When did Hardway research the DRE? Did Hardway sign the log sheets for DRE files? I've found at least 13 log sheets for DRE docs, and the only name on them is Betsy Palmer's, who looked at them all in August 1978.

There is a section on DRE in the HSCA report. Who wrote that? I'm sure Betsy Palmer at least assisted. Did Hardway assist in the writing of that? If Hardway is not researching the DRE, and not writing about the DRE, under what circumstances did he ask Joannides about the case officer of DRE?

The report mentioned by Reynolds was indeed written By Palmer and Gaeton Fonzi with Palmer listed as "researcher."

Reynolds finished his analysis with the following statement:

There are lots more questions I have about Hardway's claim. At this point, I don't find Hardway's statement credible.

It would seem that Morley needs to clarify the record. What specifically is the source of his statement that Joannides denied knowing who ran the DRE in 1963? Was this statement made "under oath" or not? If it was not, will Morley correct his sworn statement to the House Task Force?

In another matter, Morley is asking for a retraction from CBS News. On X, Morley wrote:

Your reporting about my appearance [at the] JFK hearing is false and defamatory. None of my books argue for “conspiracies.” I intend to sue for libel if this libel is not retracted.

But this may be a grey area at best for Morley. While it is true that he has not written a book whose sole purpose is to argue for a specific JFK assassination conspiracy theory, his 2020 eBook, Morley v. CIA, contained the following passage:

Perhaps now, observant people can understand how JFK’s enemies pulled off the “greatest magic trick under the sun,” [refers to a poem by Bob Dylan] how they made Oswald a patsy for their crime. They did it with covert psychological warfare schemes, like the AMSPELL program, whose workings are still protected by state secrecy.

Morley's belief that JFK's enemies killed him and that Oswald was just a patsy was echoed in his oral testimony before the Luna Task Force.

Debunking Morley's Congressional Statement

On April 1, 2025, conspiracy researcher and author Jefferson Morley submitted a written statement to the House Task Force on Declasification of Federal Secrets headed by Florida Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna. Morley's statement provided no new information but instead trotted out some timeworn myths that have been repeatedly debunked on this blog and elsewhere. And at the very least, Morley's claims have alternative explanations.

Morley claims a "fact pattern" demonstrates CIA culpability in the JFK murder. The "tipping point" for Morley was a newly released document about the HTLINGUAL mail opening program. But being a skeptic, I would say that what convinced Morley that the CIA was complicit in the JFK case was the Oliver Stone film JFK which he viewed in the nineties. Let's look at his statements to the Task Force.

Morley Claim: Richard Helms lied under oath to the Warren Commission when he said the CIA had only "minimal" knowledge of Oswald before JFK was killed.

The reality is the CIA certainly had some level of knowledge about LHO before the assassination. How one characterizes that knowledge is a matter of interpretation. But as reported here previously, Morley is mischaracterizing the Helms testimony.

Noted researcher Paul Hoch points out that Morley is taking Helms' remarks "badly out of context." In a discussion on a private email group, Hoch noted "It is quite clear from the context that Helms was referring to what the CIA knew at an early point, around the time of Oswald’s defection. It was not about what the CIA had at the time of the assassination." Hoch adds, "That conclusion is reinforced by two earlier events."

Hoch notes that Helms' testimony was on May 14, 1964. But over two months earlier, Helms had sent the Commission a copy of the “official dossier” on Oswald, which became CD 692. There were 30 documents, plus a sanitized memo covering October and November. "So it makes no sense" Hoch concludes, "to suggest that Helms intended to deceive the commission by referring to “minimal” pre-assassination information." Additionally, Hoch points out that "when Helms testified the Commission staff already knew a lot about the most sensitive late information which was not included in CD 692." This included the Coleman-Slawson-Willens visit to Mexico, on April 8-13.

Morley Claim: Three top CIA officers lied under oath about JFK’s assassination. In response to a direct request from HSCA investigator Dan Hardway, George Joannides denied knowing who ran the AMSPELL program in 1963 — when he himself had run it.

First, there is no documentation that officially states that Joannides (who did, in fact, run the DRE-AMSPELL program) was asked who ran the operation. We have Dan Hardway's claim and he is a reliable individual and good investigator. But he is biased toward conspiracy in the JFK matter and his memories from many years before could be influenced by this. He could be misremembering the situation.

But if Joannides did lie to Hardway, there is an alternative explanation. Joannides had no knowledge of the assassination or that any of his Miami agents were involved in any way. So, like Allen Dulles who did not disclose operations by the JFK administration to kill Castro, Joannides kept his CIA secrecy oath and withheld the information about the DRE and his role in that project. But he did so, not out of an effort to conceal guilty knowledge, but simply to keep the secrets of the agency.

Additionally, Morley claims that Joannides was one of three CIA men who lied under oath about the JFK murder. But when was Joannides questioned by Hardway or anyone about the DRE "under oath" as Morley maintains? To my knowledge, Joannides was never questioned by any government body under oath about the DRE or anything else.

By the way, while Morley is concerned about the CIA's alleged misrepresentation of information, he shows no indication that he is going to stop his own voluminous misrepresentations. For example, in his congressional statement, Morley says "[Joannides'] agents in New Orleans and Miami engaged in political action against Oswald’s pro-Castro activism, and generated propaganda about him both before and after Kennedy was killed." But Joannides had no "agents" in New Orleans. The individuals who interacted with Oswald in New Orleans, including Carlos Bringuier, were unpaid delegates of the DRE not CIA agents as Morley implies.

It is obvious that the congressional inquisitors were not well versed on the topic of Morley and Joannides. If they had been when Morley advised them to make the personnel file of Joannides available to the public, they could have asked if any government investigator has ever seen the file and what was their recomendation? They would have learned that ARRB investigator Michelle Combs saw the file and said it was not relevant to the assassination.

Morley Claim: CIA Counterintelligence Chief James Angleton lied to the HSCA about mail surveillence of LHO.

First, understand that Morley has been promoting the idea that Angleton was the mastermind behind the assassination for years and wrote a book broaching that subject in 2017. So, his suspicion of Angleton and the CIA is not based on new information.

Secondly, LHO was just one of many individuals who had their mail opened by the CIA. All of these people were put on the list to have their mail checked for a specific reason. In Oswald's case, it was triggered by his 1959 defection to the Soviet Union. And only one piece of mail, a corespondence with his mother talking about potholders among other things, was opened.

But assuming Angleton lied about Oswald's mail being opened rather than just forgetting he was in the program, is there any reason he would prevaricate other than to cover up a massive conspiracy that he orchestrated? Angleton may have been simply seeking to cover-up the extent of the CIA's involvement with the assassin both to protect the agency's secret operations and to avoid speculation that they could have done more to protect the president. One who subscribes to this view is author and researcher Gerald Posner who recently said on X:

I wrote a piece recently that JFK’s assassination might have been preventable if the CIA shared with the FBI all the information about Oswald’s unhinged behavior in Mexico City just 6 weeks before Kennedy visited Dallas. Is the CIA complicit or responsible for the assassination? The evidence is not there, no matter how many times researchers like Jeff wish it were so.

Finally, Fred Litwin has done a series of articles on Morley's views on Angleton that is well worth reading. See also Litwin's take on the Luna hearings.

Morley has been all over the news media recently trying to convince everyone that there are revelations in the new JFK documents. But the evidence against LHO is overwhelming and Morley makes no attempt in this media blitz to explain how the accused assassin fits into a conspiracy or who, if Oswald did not pull the trigger as Morley now claims, did murder JFK. Morley is simply using this congressional hearing as a means to gain attention for his cause which is to blame the assassination on the CIA.