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.