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

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.

Was Nosenko Married to Solie's Sister-in-Law?

Photo: George (Yuri Nosenko) and Louise Rosnek. Photo credit-Jefferson Morley

Last Edited 2-19-24: Don't ask me why, but I recently picked up John Newman's Popov's Mole and thereby started a trip down a deep rabbit-hole. In fact, out of the myriad issues related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the subject of Yuri (sometimes spelled Yuriy) Nosenko and the search for Popov's mole may be the most complex of all which is saying something. So, how far down that rabbit-hole I am willing to travel remains to be seen. But I did stumble on one matter that is immediately debunkable.

First, some background. Newman believes that Nosenko was a false defector designed to divert attention from the KGB and their mole in the CIA. The identity of the mole? None other than Bruce Solie of the CIA's Office of Security. This concept is very convenient for Newman and other supporters of his work. That is because Solie was the person largely responsible for Nosenko being cleared of suspicion and declared a true defector by the CIA. So, if you say Solie was the mole, the rest of your analysis benefits from that assertion. But I digress.

Newman and supporters, which include researcher Malcolm Blunt, base their theory on the work of Tennent "Pete" Bagley, a CIA officer who originally handled the Nosenko case. Bagley vehemently argued that Nosenko was false and wrote a book about it called Spy Wars. Blunt had conversations with Bagley and the epigraph of Popov's Mole is taken from one of those talks that occured in 2011. Bagley is quoted as saying:

That Solie provided rock-like protection to Nosenko, there is no doubt. Why, is the question. The bond was sealed by Nosenko's marrying Solie's wife's sister. Let's add Solie to the short list.

The obvious answer to Bagley's question is that Solie may have helped Nosenko because he felt an injustice had been done in his case. Setting that aside, I assumed that the assertion that Nosenko married into the family could be checked out with a little Internet research. And I was right. Bruce Solie had only one wife. She was Mary Elizabeth Matthews whom he married on February 22, 1944. The couple were together until Bruce's death in 1992. Mary had two sisters. One died in infancy and the other sister was Helen Louise Matthews. Since Bruce Solie had only one wife and his wife had only one living sister, in order for Bagley's claim that Nosenko married "Solie's wife's sister" to be true Nosenko must have married Helen Louise Matthews. He did not.

Helen Louis Matthews married Orlin Hudson Shires and was married to him for 64 years (the couple lived in California) until his death in 2007 which puts the date of their union at circa 1943. Since Nosenko was still alive in 2007 and theoretically could have married Helen Louise at that point even though both were elderly, let's look at what Nosenko was doing to be sure.

Nosenko (who used the name George Martin Rosnek after his release from CIA custody) evidently married in November of 1969 after gaining his freedom in April of that year. This document from September of that year tells of his desire to gain a divorce from his then Russian wife so he could marry and some of the legal challenges he faced because of his unique situation. This first US wife's (he may have been married three times in Russia) name was Ruby F. Rosnek. Nosenko and Ruby relocated from the Maryland-Virginia DC suburbs to Oriental, North Carolina after fearing that the KGB had located them.

After the move to North Carolina, Ruby died in 1982. Nosenko then (date unclear) married Frances Warren who was formerly married to Stephen C. Morris who died in 1981. Nosenko and Frances remained married and lived in Oriental, North Carolina until his death in 2008. So as any reasonable person can see, short of a conspiracy theory involving doubles there is zero chance that he married "Solie's wife's sister."

Does any of this really matter? It seems strange to me that Newman would choose a quote for the epigraph of his book that contains verifiably false information. Sure, I had to do a little digging to find the truth but it wasn't that difficult. It seems like Newman and his team want to make Solie and Nosenko look as friendly as they can even if it means using information they didn't properly evaluate. Or maybe they are so entrenched in Bagley's thesis that they can't imagine anything he says might be wrong.

An interesting sidenote to all of this is Bagley's apparent belief that Solie could be the mole. He told Blunt "Let's add Solie to the short list [of mole suspects]." But according to the 2022 book The Spy Who Knew Too Much by Howard Blum, Bagley believed that John Paisley and not Solie was the "master spy that Nosenko was sent to protect." If Blum is to be believed then, Bagley (assuming he was quoted accurately) could have been simply telling Blunt what he wanted to hear about Solie.

Morley's "17-Month Gap"

Jefferson Morley may be feeling the heat this summer and not in a meteorological sense. I just released my Jefferson Morley FAQ which debunks numerous Morley assertions regarding the CIA's George Joannides and the DRE. Researcher and author Fred Litwin has also weighed in by engaging in an informal debate with Morley about his Operation Northwoods claims. Litwin followed his excellent first article with an in depth treatment that goes beyond Northwoods.

Now, Morley has released an article asserting that a "17 month gap" adds "new detail" to his JFK theories. Morley claims that two CIA operational files released on June 27th "yield a clue about how the American clandestine service monitored (and possibly manipulated) accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald." These files disprove the assertions of "Those who claim there’s nothing new in the JFK assassination files" according to Morley.

But are the files new? And what about Morley's various claims in this article? Morley's assertions are in green followed by my rebuttal.

"Those who claim there’s nothing new in the JFK assassination files have probably not seen two CIA operational files, released on June 27..."

Here are the two files. The first is a DRE progress report for September 1962. But this file is nothing new and has been available in one form or another since 1998.

The second document is also a DRE progress report that has been available since at least 2017. Although the 2017 version of the document seems to contain more redactions, the 2022 version appears to have about the same redactions as the version just released. In any case, Morley's arguments are not based on any new information revealed in the 2023 release. Rather they are the same arguments he has been making for some time wrapped in a new package.

"News organizations, podcasters, and fact-checkers can document the story independently."

Yes, that's just what researchers like myself, Fred Litwin, Robert Reynolds, Dale Myers, Gus Russo and others have been doing for years—fact checking Morley's claims. They do not stand up well.

"Likewise, the 17 month gap can be seen as strong evidence of a CIA cover-up in the JFK assassination investigation."

Actually the "17 month gap" just shows that the DRE progress reports for the period in question never existed or are missing for an unknown reason. And I know Morley knows there are other explanations besides a "CIA cover-up" for the missing reports because he admitted in a 2009 deposition that the CIA's Barry Harrelson was "on logically firmer ground" when he attributed the missing reports to the CIA's indecision about the "controversial" DRE.

In the spring of 1963 the CIA was funneling $51,000 a month to the AMSPELL network via its headquarters in Miami. This money supported DRE delegations in cities throughout North and South America.

Morley doesn't say this, but an uninformed person could get the idea that all delegations in North America, including the one in New Orleans manned by Carlos Bringuier, received CIA money. There is absolutely no evidence that this was the case and Bringuier strongly denied it (see below).

In August 1963 the AMSPELL delegation in New Orleans generated newspaper, radio and TV coverage of the city’s only public supporter of Fidel Castro, Lee Harvey Oswald. Indeed, all of Oswald’s pro-Castro activities took place in view of the AMSPELL or another CIA-linked organization, The Information Council of the Americas.

Morley's implication is that the CIA controlled the interactions that individuals had with Oswald in New Orleans. But New Orleans DRE delegate Bringuier has always maintained that his interaction with Oswald was his own idea and not controlled or funded by the CIA. In fact, Bringuier sent money to the Miami DRE. As for INCA, I am unaware that Morley has offered any specific evidence regarding that group's involvement in a CIA plot to kill Kennedy. Perhaps he is working on a new conspiracy theory.

So, if the DRE’s case officer filed a Monthly Progress Report he would have reported what the group’s intelligence [was] gathering on Oswald.

One mistake Morley and other theorists make is overemphasizing Oswald's importance before the assassination. Although Dale Myers has confirmed that the Miami DRE reported the Oswald-Bringuier interactions to Joannides, he might not have felt the need to mention it in a report since it did not even involve the Miami DRE the agency was funding.

In January 1998, a CIA official Barry Harrelson named responded with a remarkably inaccurate memo. He asserted:

• he CIA could not identify the case officer handling the AMSPELL program in 1963.
• The Agency did not know the identity of the CIA case officer whom the AMSPELL leaders knew as “Howard.”
• After consulting CIA officials described as “knowledgable,” Harrelson asserted “Howard” was not an “actual person,” merely a “routing indicator.”
• The monthly progress reports were not missing, Harrelson explained, because they had never been created. Policy differences between the CIA and AMSPELL leaders, he claimed, had resulted in a funding reduction and the end of the monthly reports.

Morley's assertions are discussed HERE.

The ARRB conducted its own investigation and found Harrelson’s memo was riddled with falsehoods. Either Harrelson was lying or he was sincerely passing on false information from his superiors.

This is very poor wording on Morley's part (that may be intentional) and makes it seem like the ARRB set out to investigate the Harrelson memo. Actually, the facts they uncovered were a routine part of their JFK document review.

[the Combs memo revealed] "Howard” was an actual person, not a “routing indicator.” (Four former AMSPELL leaders told me “Howard” was the alias used by Joannides and scores of memoranda in the DRE papers at the University of Miami, addressed to “Howard,” confirm their story.)

The Combs memo does not contain confirmation of the identity of "Howard." Indeed, it states that the Joannides Personnel file that Combs reviewed contains "no indication that Mr. Joannides may have used or been known by the name 'Howard'..." In fact, there is no existing CIA document that confirms "Howard" is Joannides or discusses him at all which is exactly what Harrelson maintained—not that "Howard" didn't exist. The CIA was simply reporting on the facts documented in their files and not on Morley's conspiracy-oriented research. Morley is right that the DRE's contact was known to them as "Howard" but since only one DRE man had personal contact with him it is not known for sure if this was Joannides or another individual he assigned as a contact man for the group. One eyewitness identification thirty years after the fact is not convincing.

And the monthly progress reports did not cease in December 1962 as Harrelson stated. The latest JFK files, released in June 2023, show the monthly AMSPELL reports resumed as soon as Joannides handed off responsibility to another case office in May 1964.

Harrelson said the reports "stopped" in late 1962. He never said they ceased forever. And his explanation for the missing reports, the "go-no go" status of the DRE during the time in question, was obviously speculative. Also, the fact that the monthly progress reports resumed after Joannides left his job as DRE case officer is not new. Morley links to various post-Joannides progress reports in his article including this one from May of 1964 which has been around since 1998.

The two Monthly Progress reports released on June 27, 2023 demonstrate it was standard CIA procedure to file such reports on the group.

There is no proof of what the "standard CIA procedure" was regarding the reports. The reports were either not filed for reasons that are unknown or are missing for reasons that are not necessarily nefarious.

Researcher Robert Reynolds has thought of another reason to believe that the reports never existed. In a recent group email discussion, Reynolds pointed out that earlier progress reports filed by Ross Crozier used existing documents to support the basic facts of his reports. Cables, dispatches and so on were filed as they occurred in real time and summarized later in the progress reports. So, it would not be enough for plotters to simply destroy progress reports for the period of the "17-month gap." Other DRE activity for the time Joannides was at the helm would also have to be deleted. And there is no evidence of this.

In fact, Morley's article contains several examples of CIA contact with the DRE in 1963:

• January
• April
• June
• July
• August
• September
• October

The AMSPELL propaganda blitz against Oswald in November 1963 showed Oswald was world-historic significant, and Joannides would have been derelict not to report on his contacts with his agents.

Oswald was "world-historic significant" only after he killed Kennedy. Before that he was a nobody whom Joannides may or may not have even known about.

A final argument against Morley's Joannides-managed "Oswald operation" is Morley's own familiarity with some of the DRE's members. Morley interviewed these DRE men on a few occasions. Presumably, he asked them if they were running an "Oswald operation" for Joannides. If he didn't, why not since he is now trying to convince others of the existence of that operation? And if he did ask them and they told him there was no such operation, then Morley must believe that the DRE men are lying to him (in which case how can he believe anything they say?) or that the CIA employed only Bringuier to interact with Oswald. If Morley does believe the DRE men lied to him, then he must believe they were brought in after the assassination to help "create a legend" of Oswald as a Marxist sympathizer and Castro supporter since that "legend" is a major part of Morley's theory. But none of this is consistent with the evidence that Bringuier needed no one to tell him what to do when confronted with a Castro supporter in New Orleans or that the Miami DRE men didn't need to be instructed to tie Oswald to Castro after the assassination through their newspaper. And there was no need to create a "legend" of Oswald as a Marxist sympathizer and Castro supporter since he supported Castro from late 1958 on and gravitated toward Marxism starting in 1953.

In conclusion, the two documents trumpeted by Morley are not new and are not evidence of revelations made available to the public by the JFK records releases. The fact is, very little is being discovered in the record releases that would be of interest to anyone besides hard core historians. But Morley must continue to make everyone believe that the releases are game-changing or his raison d'etre as a conspiracy gadfly ceases.